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"Sounds like-like hogs grunting. No-it's somebody snoring, Tom."

"That is it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?"

"I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he just lifts things when he snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever coming back to this town any more."

The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more.

"Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?"

"I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!"

Tom quailed.

But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to their heels if the snoring stopped.

So they went tiptoeing stealthily down, the one behind the other.

When they had got to within five steps of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap.

The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight.

It was Muff Potter.

The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now.

They tip-toed out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little distance to exchange a parting word.

That long, lugubrious howl rose on the night air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing within a few feet of where Potter was lying, and facing Potter, with his nose pointing heavenward.

"Oh, geeminy, it's him!" exclaimed both boys, in a breath.

"Say, Tom-they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and there ain't anybody dead there yet."

"Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?"

"Yes, but she ain't dead. And what's more, she's getting better, too."

"All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about these kind of things, Huck."

Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom window the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution, and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his escapade. He was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was awake, and had been so for an hour.

When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone.

There was a late look in the light, a late sense in the atmosphere.

He was startled.

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