to, behine de chile, ker-BLAM!--en my lan', de chile never move'!  My breff mos' hop outer me; en I feel so--so--I doan' know HOW I feel.  I crope out, all a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says POW! jis' as loud as I could yell.  _She never budge!_  Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing!  De Lord God Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as long's he live!'  Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en dumb--en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!” CHAPTER XXIV. NEXT day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns.  Jim he spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours, because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all day in the wigwam tied with the rope.  You see, when we left him all alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger, you know. So the duke said it _was_ kind of hard to have to lay roped all day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it. He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it.  He dressed Jim up in King Lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint and painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull, solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days.  Blamed if he warn't the horriblest looking outrage I ever see.  Then the duke took and wrote out a sign on a shingle so: Sick Arab--but harmless when not out of his head. And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five foot in front of the wigwam.  Jim was satisfied.  He said it wa