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stump, and just as it’s midnight you back up against the stump and jam your
hand in and say: “Barley-corn, Barley-corn, injun-meal shorts, Spunk-water,
spunk-water, swaller these warts;” and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with
your eyes shut, and then turn around three times and walk home without
speaking to anybody. Because if you speak the charm’s busted.” “Well that
sounds like a good way; but that ain’t the way Bob Tanner done.” “No, sir, you
can bet he didn’t, becuz he’s the wartiest boy in this town; and he wouldn’t have
a wart on him if he’d knowed how to work spunk-water. I’ve took off thousands
of warts off of my hands that way, Huck. I play with frogs so much that I’ve
always got considerable many warts. Sometimes I take ‘em off with a bean.”
“Yes, bean’s good. I’ve done that.” “Have you? What’s your way?” “You take
and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some blood, and then you put
the blood on one piece of the bean and take and dig a hole and bury it ‘bout
midnight at the cross-roads in the dark of the moon, and then you burn up the
rest of the bean. You see that piece that’s got the blood on it will keep drawing
and drawing, trying to fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to
draw the wart, and pretty soon off she comes.” “Yes, that’s it, Huck-that’s it;
though when you’re burying it, if you say ‘Down bean; off, wart; come no more
to bother me!’ it’s better. That’s the way Joe Harper does, and he’s been nearly to
Constantinople and most everywheres.

But say-how do you cure ‘em with dead cats?” “Why you take your cat and go
and get in the graveyard ‘long about midnight when somebody that was wicked
has been buried; and when it’s midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or
three, but you can’t see em, you can only hear something like the wind, or
maybe hear ‘em talk; and when they’re taking that feller away, you heave your
cat after ‘em and say ‘Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I’m
done with ye!’ That’ll fetch any wart.” “Sounds right. D’you ever try it, Huck?”
“No, but old Mother Hopkins told me.” “Well I reckon it’s so, then. Becuz they
say she’s a witch.” “Say! Why Tom I know she is. She witched pap. Pap says so
his own self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he
took up a rock, and if she hadn’t dodged, he’d a got her. Well that very night he
rolled off’n a shed wher’ he was a-layin’ drunk, and broke his arm.” “Why that’s
awful. How did he know she was a-witching him.” “Lord, pap can tell, easy.
Pap says when they keep looking at you right stiddy, they’re a-witching you.
Specially if they mumble. Becuz when they mumble they’re a-saying the Lord’s
Prayer back’ards.” “Say, Huck, when you going to try the cat?” “To-night. I
reckon they’ll come after old Hoss Williams to-night.” “But they buried him
Saturday, Huck. Didn’t they get him Saturday night?” “Why how you talk! How
could their charms work till midnight?- and then it’s Sunday. Devils don’t slosh
around much of a Sunday, I don’t reckon.” “I never thought of that. That’s so.
Lemme go with you?” “Of course-if you ain’t afeard.” “Afeard! ‘Tain’t likely.
Will you meow?” “Yes-and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you
kep’ me a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says
‘Dem that cat!’ and so I hove a brick through his window-but don’t you tell.” “I