When I came down in the morning, the door of the girls’ room was open, and I saw Mary Jane sitting by her old trunk. She had been packing for England, but now she sat with a dress in her lap and her face in her hands, crying. I went in and asked her what was wrong.
It was the slaves, as I expected. She said she could never be happy in England, knowing that the mother and her children would never see each other again.
“But they will, inside of two weeks, and I know it!” I said.
It was out before I could think. She threw her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again!
I had said too much, and I asked her to let me think a minute. A person who tells the truth in a tight place takes a big risk, I thought. But here the truth looked better, and even safer, than a lie. It was so strange that I had to think about it some other time. At last I decided to take the chance, though it felt like sitting on a barrel of gunpowder and lighting it to see where you would land.
“Miss Mary Jane,” I said, “is there a place outside town where you could go for a few days?”
“Yes, Mr. Lothrop’s. Why?”
“If I tell you how I know the slaves will see each other again, will you go there?”
“I’ll stay a year!”
I shut the door. “Now, don’t shout. These uncles of yours aren’t your uncles at all. They’re a couple of frauds, and when everybody knows it, the sale of the slaves won’t count.”
It shook her terribly, of course, but I went right on and told her everything, from the young man by the steamboat to the moment she threw herself into the king’s arms at the door. Then she jumped up, with her face red as the sunset. “The brute! Come, don’t waste a minute! We’ll have them tarred and feathered and thrown in the river!”
“Of course,” I said. “But do you mean before you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or—”
“Oh, what am I thinking!” She sat down again. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
I told her I had to travel with these frauds a while longer, because of another person she didn’t know about. Then I had an idea: get them put in jail here, and leave with Jim at night. So she must stay at Mr. Lothrop’s until about nine tonight and then come home and put a candle in her window. If I didn’t come by eleven, it meant I was gone and safe, and she could tell the whole town and have the frauds put in jail. And if I got caught with them, she must stand by me.
“Stand by you! They won’t touch a hair on your head!” she said, and her eyes flashed.
I wrote on a piece of paper: “Royal Nonesuch, Bricksville.” If the court wanted witnesses, I told her, they should send to Bricksville and say they had caught the men who played the Royal Nonesuch. The whole town would come down, and come angry, too.
“Now I’ll go down to breakfast,” she said, “and then go to Mr. Lothrop’s.”
“No, go before breakfast. You can’t hide what you feel. Anybody can read your face like a book. Can you face your uncles when they come to kiss you good morning?”
“No, no! I’ll go before breakfast.”
Then I told her I had stolen the money from the frauds to give to her, but I had had to hide it in a hurry, and I was afraid it wasn’t there any more. I couldn’t make my mouth say where, so I wrote it on a paper for her to read on the road: “I put it in the coffin. It was in the coffin when you were crying beside it that night. I was behind the door, and I was very sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane.”
When I gave it to her, there were tears in her eyes. She shook my hand hard and said, “Goodbye. I’ll do everything just as you said. And if I never see you again, I’ll never forget you, and I’ll pray for you!” And she was gone.
Pray for me! If she knew me, she would pick an easier job. But I bet she did it anyway; she was that kind. She had more courage than any girl I ever saw. I never saw her again, but I have thought of her millions of times, and of her saying she would pray for me.
Then I told Susan and Joanna that Mary Jane had gone across the river to visit a friend with a terrible new kind of mumps. Joanna wanted to tell Uncle Harvey, but I said that a preacher couldn’t lie about it to the ship’s captain, and the captain would make them all wait three months to see if Mary Jane had caught it. Nobody wanted to wait, so they only told their uncles that Mary Jane had gone to ask some people to come and buy the house. I thought Tom Sawyer couldn’t have done it better himself.
The auction was in the town square that afternoon. The king stood next to the auctioneer and said a few words from the Bible now and then, and the duke went around making signs with his hands. By evening everything was sold, except a little piece of land in the graveyard.
Just then a steamboat landed, and a crowd came up the street, laughing and shouting, “Here are two more heirs of old Peter Wilks! You pay your money and you take your choice!”