TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE by MARK TWAIN
TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
CHAPTER I.
AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
[Footnote: Strange as the incidents of this story are,
they are not inventions, but facts -- even to the
public confession of the accused. I take them from an
old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors,
and transfer the scenes to America. I have added some
details, but only a couple of them are important
ones. -- M. T.]
WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom
Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he
was chained up for a runaway slave down there on
Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was
working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and
it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every
day; and next it would be marble time, and next
mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next
kites, and then right away it would be summer and go-
ing in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to
look ahead like that and see how far off summer is.
Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around,
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