"
Tom says:
"We'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell
who you are if you ain't Jubiter Dunlap."
"Why?"
"Because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, Jake.
You're the spit'n image of Jubiter."
"Well, I'm Jake. But looky here, how do you
come to know us Dunlaps?"
Tom told about the adventures we'd had down there
at his uncle Silas's last summer, and when he see that
there warn't anything about his folks -- or him either,
for that matter -- that we didn't know, he opened out
and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made
any bones about his own case; said he'd been a hard
lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned he'd be a hard lot
plumb to the end. He said of course it was a danger-
ous life, and --
He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a person
that's listening. We didn't say anything, and so it
was very still for a second or so, and there warn't no
sounds but the screaking of the woodwork and the chug-
chugging of the machinery down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about
his people, and how Brace's wife had been dead three
years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny and she shook
him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him
and Uncle Silas quarreling all the time -- and then he
let go and laughed.
"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all
this tittle-tattle, and does me good. It's been seven
years and more since I heard any.
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