A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles below "Cave Hollow," Tom said:

     "Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the cave hollow--no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now."

     They landed.

     "Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it."

     Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:

     "Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this country. You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in--because of course there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it. Tom Sawyer's Gang--it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?"

     "Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?"