_dark_!  That's where he was!” “Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?” “Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see?  Say, how long are you going to stay here?  You got to stay always.  We can just have booming times--they don't have no school now.  Do you own a dog?  I've got a dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in.  Do you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness?  You bet I don't, but ma she makes me.  Confound these ole britches!  I reckon I'd better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm.  Are you all ready? All right.  Come along, old hoss.” Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've come across yet.  Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women.  They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked.  The young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs.  They all asked me questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how I come to be here.  So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it.  Then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I says: “Can you spell, Buck?” “Yes,” he says. “I bet you can't