The judge took the
di'monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and cleared his
throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and
says:
"I'll keep them and notify the owners; and when
they send for them it will be a real pleasure to me to
hand you the two thousand dollars, for you've earned
the money -- yes, and you've earned the deepest and
most sincerest thanks of this community besides, for
lifting a wronged and innocent family out of ruin and
shame, and saving a good and honorable man from a
felon's death, and for exposing to infamy and the pun-
ishment of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his
miserable creatures!"
Well, sir, if there'd been a brass band to bust out
some music, then, it would 'a' been just the perfectest
thing I ever see, and Tom Sawyer he said the same.
Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his
crowd, and by and by next month the judge had them
up for trial and jailed the whole lot. And everybody
crowded back to Uncle Silas's little old church, and was
ever so loving and kind to him and the family and
couldn't do enough for them; and Uncle Silas he
preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons
you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you
couldn't find your way home in daylight; but the peo-
ple never let on but what they thought it was the clear-
est and brightest and elegantest sermons that ever was;
and they would set there and cry, for love and pity;
but, by George, they give me the jim-jams and the fan-
tods and caked up what brains I had, and turned them
solid; but by and by they loved the old man's intellects
back into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as
ever he was, which ain't no flattery, I reckon.
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