seen a bigger one.  He would a been worth a good deal over at the village.  They peddle out such a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry. Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a stirring up some way.  I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and find out what was going on.  Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go in the dark and look sharp.  Then he studied it over and said, couldn't I put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl?  That was a good notion, too.  So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it.  Jim hitched it behind with the hooks, and it was a fair fit.  I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like looking down a joint of stove-pipe.  Jim said nobody would know me, even in the daytime, hardly.  I practiced around all day to get the hang of the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I didn't walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to get at my britches-pocket.  I took notice, and done better. I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark. I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town.  I tied up and started along the bank.  There was a light burning in a little shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had took up quarters there.  I slipped up and peeped in at the window.  There was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was on a pine table.  I didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know.  Now this was lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had come; people might know my voice and find me out.  But if this wom