Читать книгу The Complete Works of Mark Twain онлайн

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"Why, is it hid all around?"

"No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck — sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses."

"Who hides it?"

"Why, robbers, of course — who'd you reckon? Sunday-school sup'rintendents?"

"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have a good time."

"So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and leave it there."

"Don't they come after it any more?"

"No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or else they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the marks — a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly signs and hy'roglyphics."

"HyroQwhich?"

"Hy'roglyphics — pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean anything."

"Have you got one of them papers, Tom?"