The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Supernatural Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
"I don't want any marks. They always bury it [treasure] under a ha'nted house or on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out. Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch, and there's lots of deadlimb trees -- dead loads of 'em." (25.17)
In St. Petersburg, no superstition or spooky locale is left unaccounted for; the strange thing is, Tom's logic does work. He watches Injun Joe take treasure from the "haunted" house.
"We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts a-fluttering around so." (25.91)
Considering that Tom and Huck are so young, and that their knowledge of the world is so limited, their belief in strange, otherworldly things is understandable – also, in this case, ghosts and witches provide Huck with a perfect reason to stop digging a hole late at night, an unenviable task if there ever was one.
"My! I never once thought of it, Huck!"
"Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was Friday."
"Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday."
"Might! Better say we would! There's some lucky days, maybe, but Friday ain't." (26.4-7)
Here again, superstition gives Huck and Tom the opportunity to delay what is, no doubt, a scary endeavor – they go off and pretend to be Robin Hood instead.