Huck's New Life

Tom found Huck hiding behind an old barrel at the edge of town, dirty and content.

"I can't go back, Tom," Huck said. "The widow means well, but it's too much. You have to get up at a fixed time, eat at a fixed time, go to bed at a fixed time. You have to wash. The clothes feel like iron. I don't belong in a house."

Tom sat down beside him. "Huck, listen. I'm forming a band of robbers — a real one, with a proper name and secret signs. But you have to be respectable to join. You have to go back to the widow's."

Huck stared at him. He thought it over for a long time.

"All right," he said at last. "I'll go back. For a month, anyway. But it has to be a really good band."

Tom grinned and put out his hand. They shook on it.

The two boys walked back into town together as the sun went down over the Mississippi River, the same river that had carried them away on a raft and brought them back again, the same river that had run past their whole lives without ever stopping or asking any questions at all.

— The End —