"Well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke—because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better.  It might answer for _you_ to dig Jim out with a pick, _without_ any letting on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me, because I do know better.  Gimme a case-knife."

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine.  He flung it down, and says:

"Gimme a _case-knife_."

I didn't know just what to do—but then I thought.  I scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and never said a word.

He was always just that particular.  Full of principle.

So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and made the fur fly.  We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was so sore.  At last he says:

"It ain't no use, it can't be done.  What you reckon I better do?  Can't you think of no way?"

"Yes," I says, "but I reckon it ain't regular.  Come up the stairs, and let on it's a lightning-rod."

So he done it.

Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house, for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I hung around the n***** cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin plates.  Tom says it wasn't enough; but I said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel and jimpson weeds under the window-hole—then we could tote them back and he could use them over again.  So Tom was satisfied.  Then he says:

"Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim."

"Take them in through the hole," I says, "when we get it done."

He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying.  By and by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide on any of them yet.  Said we'd got to post Jim first.