"Huck, ain't it bully!" says Tom.

"Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the
paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to
listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but I
didn't; I wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from
under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took
me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at
last I struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color
of the carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the end of
your little finger, and I says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest
you've come from. Before long I spied out the plug's mate.

"Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up that
scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and
done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. He set there and
took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and
stick in the di'monds and screw on his plates again. He allowed we would
steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get
drownded, and by George it's just what we done! I think it was powerful
smart."

"You bet your life it was!" says Tom, just full of admiration.




CHAPTER IV. THE THREE SLEEPERS

WELL, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it