"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him. He run off f'm down South, som'ers."

"It's a good job they got him."

"Well, I _reckon_!  There's two hunderd dollars reward on him.  It's like picking up money out'n the road."

"Yes, it is—and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him _first_. Who nailed him?"

"It was an old fellow—a stranger—and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait.  Think o' that, now!  You bet _I'd_ wait, if it was seven year."

"That's me, every time," says I.  "But maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap.  Maybe there's something ain't straight about it."

"But it _is_, though—straight as a string.  I see the handbill myself.  It tells all about him, to a dot—paints him like a picture, and tells the plantation he's frum, below Newr_leans_.  No-sirree-_bob_, they ain't no trouble 'bout _that_ speculation, you bet you.  Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?"

I didn't have none, so he left.  I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think.  But I couldn't come to nothing.  I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble.  After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.