But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and shiny, with pa’m-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn’t anything to us; we just slapped on a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we couldn’t seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like a dream; but we couldn’t get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she was gone! Tom’s eyes took a spread, and he says: “Boys, it was a _my_ridge!” Said it like he was glad. I didn’t see nothing to be glad about. I says: “Maybe. I don’t care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know is, what’s become of it?” Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn’t speak, but he wanted to ask that question himself if he could ’a’ done it. Tom says: “What’s _become_ of it? Why, you see yourself it’s gone.” “Yes, I know; but where’s it gone _to?_” He looked me over and says: “Well, now, Huck Finn, where _would_ it go to! Don’t you know what a myridge is?” “No, I don’t. What is it?” “It ain’t anything but imagination. There ain’t anything _to_ it.” It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says: “What’s the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer? Didn’t I see the lake?” “Yes—you think you did.” “I don’t think nothing about it, I _did_ see it.” “I tell you you _didn’t_ see it either—because it warn’t there to see.” It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of pleading and distressed: “Mars Tom, _please_ don’t say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. You ain’t only reskin’ yo’ own self, but you’s reskin’ us—same way like Anna Nias en Siffra. De lake _wuz_ dah—I seen it jis’ as plain as I sees you en Huck dis minute.” I says: “Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first. _Now_, then!” “Yes, Mars Tom, hit’s so—you can’t deny it. We all seen it, en dat _prove_ it was dah.” “Proves it! How does it prove it?” “Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson might be drunk, or dreamy or suthin’, en he could be mistaken; en two might, maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it’s _so_. Dey ain’t no gittin’ aroun’ dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom.” “I don’t know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousand million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the other every day. Did that prove that the sun _done_ it?” “Course it did. En besides, dey warn’t no ’casion to prove it. A body ’at’s got any sense ain’t gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now—a sailin’ thoo de sky, like she allays done.” Tom turned on me, then, and says: “What do _you_ say—is the sun standing still?” “Tom Sawyer, what’s the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody that ain’t blind can see it don’t stand still.”