{"id":"01KG2TSH45PHVY65HGQD1S9PKD","cid":"bafkreidmdvz5ci3vaovg4wujrtqyzrbnc72zusv4ckqf5edbodcamwtm5m","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5837,"extracted_at":"2026-01-28T17:35:34.218Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG2T4RHC4E1XKJ12BJRXE8E8","start_line":5783,"text":"There were some boys-and-girls’ parties, but they were so few and so\r\ndelightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.\r\n\r\nBecky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her\r\nparents during vacation—so there was no bright side to life anywhere.\r\n\r\nThe dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very\r\ncancer for permanency and pain.\r\n\r\nThen came the measles.\r\n\r\nDuring two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its\r\nhappenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got\r\nupon his feet at last and moved feebly downtown, a melancholy change had\r\ncome over everything and every creature. There had been a “revival,” and\r\neverybody had “got religion,” not only the adults, but even the boys and\r\ngirls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed\r\nsinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. He found Joe\r\nHarper studying a Testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing\r\nspectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a\r\nbasket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to\r\nthe precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. Every boy\r\nhe encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in\r\ndesperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn\r\nand was received with a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he\r\ncrept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost,\r\nforever and forever.\r\n\r\nAnd that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful\r\nclaps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his head\r\nwith the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for\r\nhe had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him.\r\nHe believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above to the\r\nextremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might have\r\nseemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a\r\nbattery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the\r\ngetting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf from\r\nunder an insect like himself.\r\n\r\nBy and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its\r\nobject. The boy’s first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His\r\nsecond was to wait—for there might not be any more storms.\r\n\r\nThe next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks he\r\nspent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad\r\nat last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how\r\nlonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted\r\nlistlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a\r\njuvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her\r\nvictim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a\r\nstolen melon. Poor lads! they—like Tom—had suffered a relapse.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG2TRBKXXD66BSKM6527N9RS","peer_label":"CHAPTER XXII","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG2T4RHC4E1XKJ12BJRXE8E8","peer_label":"tom_sawyer.txt","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_label":"Test Collection","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG2TSHAC1TH63VCPVD4HYBEJ","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-28T17:35:34.764Z","ts":"2026-01-28T17:35:35.687Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}