Well, sir, what do you suppose? I got down in the cellar and began to scrape around and kick ashes and sticks around; and all at once I struck iron or something, and I scraped off the ashes and things and there was a soap kettle turned upside down, and sunk like in the dirt floor of the cellar. I leaned down and tugged and pulled it up and inside was a lot of cans, four or five, and inside the cans the greatest lot of money you ever see. Great big copper coins and silver dollars and paper dollars. Well, I was just paralyzed. I couldn't believe my eyes. Struck it, I says to myself—struck it without any more trouble or worry, and no need to see Tom Sawyer and find out how to find treasure. Here it was before my eyes. After a bit I called out, "O, Mitch"—but he was around sommers and didn't come till I called again. Then he peeked over into the cellar and I just pointed and couldn't speak. Mitch slid down into the cellar and bent over lookin' at the money, and turned to me and said, "Well, Skeeters, this is all right for you—but not for me. You found it, and I didn't. You've won out, but I've got to go on and find some for my own self."
Struck It, I Says
"Not on your life," says I. "What's mine is yours. And besides we came here together—we've been working together; if we hadn't, you wouldn't have been here, and I wouldn't. It's all because we've been chums and huntin' together—and half of this is yours, just the same as half of it would be mine if you'd happened to get in the cellar first."
Just then Mitch found a piece of paper with Nancy Allen written on it, and a little bundle which he unwrapped and found inside a breast pin with the initials N. A. on it, which showed that the money was Nancy Allen's, saved from sellin' rags and paper. For we remembered when she used to go about with a gunny sack pickin' up old rags, bottles and things.
I was just puttin' the cans into the kettle when pa came up and saw me, and says, "What you got?" Then he saw what it was. And Nigger Dick came up and says, "Bless my soul!" And pa took the kettle up on the ground and began to count the money. "That's mine," I said to pa; but he didn't notice me, just went on countin' till he found out there was about $2000.00. Then he said, "This money goes to the county. Nancy Allen didn't have any relatives, and it goes to the county." Well, I began to perk up and I said, "Ain't Mrs. Bender her sister—and if it ain't mine for findin' it, why don't it go to her sister?" Pa said: "No, Mrs. Bender ain't her sister, and I know she didn't have any relatives. Anyway, we'll advertise and if no relatives claim the money, it goes to the county."
I began to sniffle. And Mitch says: "Tell me, then, how Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn got to keep what they found. Injun Joe had no relatives, and Judge Thatcher knew the law, or was supposed to; and why didn't that money go to the county?"
"Why, Mitch," said pa, "don't you know that's just a story? You don't take that for true. You mustn't let a yarn like that get into your head and fix your ideas about things. And it's a good lesson to both of you. You'll find when you grow up that there'll be lots of prizes that are just about to fall in your hands when some superior right takes 'em away. And you'll find that everything that happens in boyhood and on the school yard happens when you grow up, only on a bigger scale, and hurts more. And you'll see that everything in life when you're grown is just a repetition of what happens on the school yard—friendship, games, battles, politics, everything."
By this time Nigger Dick had come up again and he said he'd found some footprints coming to and going away from the house. It had rained the night before and the marks had staid. So pa got Old Bender and made him walk and compared the prints, but they wasn't the same. And pa said that was a clew. For Old Bender claimed he woke up and found the house on fire. So they took a box and turned it upside down over some of the prints and then pa took the kettle and put it in the rig, and Old Bender came up and said that he knew Nancy Allen had some money, but he didn't know where she kept it. Then we drove away.