Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned
the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said
it was out of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim about it
when he got time. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was ready to drop,
and I wanted Tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that
knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could go straight to the
place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would
answer. So on we went. Then at last the remarkablest thing happened I
ever see. The house was gone--gone hundreds of years ago--every last rag
of it gone but just one mud brick. Now a person wouldn't ever believe
that a backwoods Missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before
could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but Tom Sawyer
done it. I know he done it, because I see him do it. I was right by his
very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize
it. Well, I says to myself, how DOES he do it? Is it knowledge, or is it
instink?
Now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it
their own way. I've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion
that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. The
reason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with
his name on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out and
put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know
the difference--but there was a difference, you see.
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