"But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the
bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes
and slid in after him.
"They fell on him and clubbed him to death.
"Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never
had no mercy on him, but clubbed him to death. And
two men that was running along the road heard him
yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca- i
more bunch -- which was where they was bound for,
anyway -- and when the pals saw them they lit out and
the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight as
they could go. But only a minute or two -- then these
two new men slipped back very quiet into the syca-
mores.
"THEN what did they do? I will tell you what they
done. They found where the thief had got his disguise
out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one of them strips
and puts on that disguise."
Tom waited a little here, for some more "effect" --
then he says, very deliberate:
"The man that put on that dead man's disguise was
-- JUBITER DUNLAP!"
"Great Scott!" everybody shouted, all over the
house, and old Uncle Silas he looked perfectly
astonished.
"Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see.
Then they pulled off the dead man's boots and put
Jubiter Dunlap's old ragged shoes on the corpse and put
the corpse's boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter
Dunlap stayed where he was, and the other man lugged
the dead body off in the twilight; and after midnight
he went to Uncle Silas's house, and took his old green
work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the
passage betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on,
and stole the long-handled shovel and went off down
into the tobacker field and buried the murdered man.
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