Chapter 14
When Tom awoke in the morning,he wondered where he was.He sat up and rubbed his eyes and looked around.Then he comprehended.It was the cool gray dawn,and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods.
Not a leaf stirred;not a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation.Beaded dewdrops stood upon the leaves and grasses.A white layer of ashes covered the fire,and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air.Joe and Huck still slept.
Now,far away in the woods a bird called;another answered;presently the hammering of a woodpecker was heard.Gradually the cool dim gray of the morning whitened,and as gradually sounds multiplied and life manifested itself.
The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to work unfolded itself to the musing boy.A little green worm came crawling over a dewy leaf,lifting two-thirds of his body into the air from time to time and“sniffing around,”then proceeding again — for he was measuring,Tom said;and when the worm approached him,of its own accord,he sat as still as a stone,with his hopes rising and falling,by turns,as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to go elsewhere;and when at last it considered a painful moment with its curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and began a journey over him,his whole heart was glad—for that meant that he was going to have a new suit of clothes—without the shadow of a doubt a gaudy piratical uniform.Now a procession of ants appeared,from nowhere in particular,and went about their labors;one struggled manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms,and lugged it straight up a tree trunk.A brown-spotted ladybug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade,and Tom bent down close to it and said,“Ladybug,ladybug,fly away home,your house is on fire,your children's alone,”and she took wing and went off to see about it—which did not surprise the boy,for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations,and he had practiced upon its simplicity more than once.A tumblebug came next,heaving sturdily at its ball,and Tom touched the creature,to see it shut its legs against its body and pretend to be dead.The birds were fairly rioting by this time.
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