like they'd lost the twelve disciples.  Well, if ever I struck anything like it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race. CHAPTER XXV. THE news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on their coats as they come.  Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd, and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march.  The windows and dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence: “Is it _them_?” And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say: “You bet it is.” When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the three girls was standing in the door.  Mary Jane _was_ red-headed, but that don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come. The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for them, and the hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they had it!  Everybody most, leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have such good times. Then the king he hunched the duke private--I see him do it--and then he looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping, people saying “Sh!” and all the men taking their hats off and drooping their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall.  And when they got there they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then they bust out a-crying so you could a heard them to Orleans, most; and then they put their arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I never see two men leak the way they done.  And, mind you,