"Meddling with WHO?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.

     "With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"

     Tom looks at me very grave, and says:

     "Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"

     "HIM?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!"

     Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and shutting like gills, and sings out to me:

     "They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up! SHOVE!--and don't you lose a minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur that walks this earth!"

     "What DOES the child mean?"

     "I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go. I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and SAID so; and she set him free in her will."