All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out and the balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, and Tom gave his last orders: “It’s 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. In 24 hours you’ll be home, and it’ll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. When you strike the village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods, out of sight; then you rush down, Jim, and shove these letters in the post-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over your face so they won’t know you. Then you go and slip in the back way to the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git away, and don’t let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else. Then you jump for the balloon and shove for Mount Sinai three hundred miles an hour. You won’t have lost more than an hour. You’ll start back at 7 or 8 A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3 P.M., Mount Sinai time.” Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had wrote on it: “THURSDAY AFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer the Erronort sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai where the Ark was, and so does Huck Finn, and she will get it to-morrow morning half-past six.”* “TOM SAWYER THE ERRONORT” * This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck’s error, not Tom’s.—M.T. “That’ll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come,” he says. Then he says: “Stand by! One—two—three—away you go!” And away she _did_ go! Why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second. Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big plain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe. The balloon come back all right, and brung the pipe; but Aunt Polly had catched Jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened: she sent for Tom. So Jim he says: “Mars Tom, she’s out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin’ for you, en she say she ain’t gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold of you. Dey’s gwyne to be trouble, Mars Tom, ’deed dey is.” So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither. [Illustration: “Homeward bound”]