 29 They was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along and a nice-looking younger one with his right arm in a sling, and by souls how the people yelled and laughed and kept it up. But I didn't see no joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to see any. I reckoned they'd turn pale, but no nary a pale did they turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went a goo-gooing around happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out buttermilk, and as for the king he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them newcomers, like it gave him the stomach ache in his very heart to think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done it admirable! Lots of the principal people gathered round the king to let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see straight off he pronounced like an Englishman, not the king's way, though the king's was pretty good for an imitation. I can't give the old gents words, nor I can't imitate him, but he turned round to the crowd and says about like this. It is a surprise to me, which I wasn't looking for, and I'll acknowledge candid and frank, that I ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it, for my brother in me has had misfortunes. He's broke his arm, and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night by a mistake. I am Peter Wilkes's brother Harvey, and this is his brother William, which can't hear nor speak, and can't even make signs to amount to much, now that he's only got one hand to work them with. We are who we say we are, and in a day or two when I get the baggage I can prove it, but up till then I won't say nothing more but go to the hotel and wait. So him and the new dummy started off, and the king he laughs and blethers out, broke his arm, very likely, ain't it, and very convenient, too, for a fraud that's got to make signs and ain't learned how, lost their baggage, that's mighty good and mighty ingenious under the circumstances. So he laughed again and so did everybody else, except three or four, or maybe half a dozen. One of those was that doctor, another one was a sharp-looking gentleman with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made out of carpet stuff that had just come off the steamboat and was talking to him in a low voice and glancing towards the king now and then and nodding their heads. It was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to Louisville, and another one was a big rough husky that came along and listened to all the old gentlemen said and was listening to the king now, and when the king got done this husky up and says, say, lookie here, if you are Harvey Wilkes, when did you come to this town? The day before the funeral friend, says the king, but what time of day? In the evening, about an hour or two before sundown. How did you come? I came down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati. Well, then how did you come to be up at the pint in the morning in a canoe? I weren't up the pint in the morning. It's a lie. Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher. Preacher behanged. He's a fraud and a liar. He was up at the pint that morning. I live up there, don't I? Well, I was up there and he was up there. I see him there. He come in a canoe along with Tim Collins and a boy. The doctor, he up and says, would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Heinz? I reckon I would, but I don't know. Why yonder he is now? I know him perfectly easy. It was me, he pointed at. The doctor says, neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not, but if these two ain't frauds, I'm an idiot, that's all. I think it's our duty to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this thing. Come along, Heinz. Come along the rest of you. We'll take these fellows to the tavern and affront them with to other people, and I reckon we'll find out something before we get through. It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends, so we all started. It was about sundown. The doctor, he led me along by the hand and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go of my hand. We all got in a big room in the hotel and lit up some candles and fetched in the new couple. First the doctor says, I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilkes left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're all right. Ain't that so? Everybody agreed to that, so I judged they had our gang in a pretty tight place right at the out-start. But the king, he only looked sorrowful and says, Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation of this miserable business. But alas, the money ain't there. You can send and see if you want to. Where is it, then? Well, when my niece gave it to me to keep for her, I took it and hid it inside of the straw tick of my bed, not wishing to bank it for the few days we'd be here, and consider in the bed a safe place, we not be in use to niggers and supposin' I'm honest like servants in England. The niggers stole it the very next morning after I had went downstairs. And when I sold them, I hadn't missed the money yet, so they got clean away with it. My servant here can tell you about it, gentlemen. The doctor in several said shucks, and I see nobody didn't all together believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said no, but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid and had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says, Are you English, too? I says yes, and him and some others laughed and said, Stuff. Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody ever said a word about supper, nor ever seemed to think about it. And so they kept it up and kept it up. And it was the worst mixed up thing you ever see. They made the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell hisen. And anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads could have seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth, and Tother one lies. And by and by they had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he gave me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right side. I begun to tell all about Sheffield and how we lived there, and all about the English Wilkses, and so on. But I didn't get pretty fur till the doctor begun to laugh, and leave eye-bell the lawyer says, Set down, my boy, I wouldn't strain myself if I was you. I reckon you ain't used to lying. It don't seem to come handy. What you want is practice. You do it pretty awkward. I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off anyway. The doctor he started to say something and turns and says, If you'd been in town at first, leave eye-bell. The king broke in and reached out his hand and says, Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often about? The lawyer in him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased, and they talked right along a while, and then got to one side and talked low. And at last the lawyer speaks up and says, That'll fix it. I'll take the order and send it along with your brothers, and then we'll know it's all right. So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted his head to one side and shot his tongue and scrawled off something. And then they gave the pen to the duke, and then for the first time the duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer turns to the new old gentleman and says, You and your brother, please write a line or two and sign your names. The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. The lawyer looked powerful, astonished, and says, Well, it beats me. And snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket, and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then them again, and then says, These old letters is from Harvey Wilkes. And here's these two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write them. The king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see how the lawyer had took them in. And there's this old gentleman's handwriting, and anybody can tell easy enough he didn't write them. Fact is, the scratches he makes ain't properly writing at all. Now here's some letters from the new old gentleman says, If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother there, so he copies for me. It's his hand you've got there, not mine. Well, says the lawyer, This is a state of things. I've got some of William's letters, too. So if you'll get him to write a line or so, then we can, he can't write with his left hand, says the old gentleman. If he could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and mine, too. Look at both, please. They're by the same hand. The lawyer done it, and says, I believe it's so, and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger resemblance than I noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well. I thought we was right on the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass partly. But anyway, one thing is proved. These two ain't neither of them Wilkes's. And he wagged his head towards the king and the duke. Well, what do you think? That mule-headed old fool wouldn't give in then. Indeed, he wouldn't. Said it weren't no fair test. Said his brother William was the cussetist joker in the world and hadn't tried to write. He, see, William was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he was actually beginning to believe what he was saying himself. But pretty soon the new gentleman broke in and says, I've thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out the late Peter Wilkes for burying? Yes, says somebody. Me and Ab Turner done it. We're both here. Then the old man turns towards the king and says, Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast. Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, for he'd a squash down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him so sudden. And, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most anybody squash to get fetched with such a solid one as that without any notice because how was he going to know what was tattooed on the man? He whitened a little. He couldn't help it. And it was mighty still in there and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. Says I to myself, Now he'll throw up the sponge. There ain't no more use. Well, did he? A body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. I reckon he thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out so they'd thin out and him and the duke would break loose and get away. Anyway, he said there and pretty soon he begun to smile and says, It's a very tough question, ain't it? Yes, sir, I can tell you what's tattooed on his breast. It's just a small, thin blue arrow. That's what it is. And if you don't look close, you can't see it. Now what do you say, hey? Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out and out cheek. The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his part and his eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king this time and says, There you've heard what he said. Was there any such mark on Peter Wilk's breast? Both of them spoke up and says, We didn't see no such mark. Good, says the old gentleman. Now what you did see on his breast was a small, dim P and a B, which is an initial he dropped when he was young, and a W with dashes between them, so P, B, W, and he marked them that way on a piece of paper. Come, ain't that what you saw? Both of them spoke up again and says, No, we didn't. We never seen any marks at all. Well, everybody was in a state of mind now and they sings out. The whole violin of them's frauds. Let's duck them. Let's drown them. Let's ride them on a rail. And everybody was whooping at once and there was a rattling pow wow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells and says, Gentlemen, gentlemen, hear me just a word, just a single word, if you please. Now there's one way yet. Let's go and dig up the corpse and look. That took them. Hurray, they all shouted and was starting right off. But the lawyer and the doctors sung out, Hold on, hold on, collar all these four men and the boy and fetch them along too. We'll do it, they all shouted, and if we don't find them marks we'll lynch the whole gang. I was scared now, I tell you, but there weren't no getting away, you know. They gripped us all and marched us right along straight for the graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river and the whole town at our heels, for we made noise enough and it was only nine in the evening. As we went by our house, I wish I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town, because now if I could tip her the wink, she'd light out and save me and blow on our dead beats. Well, we swarmed along the river road, just carrying on like wildcats, and to make it more scary the sky was darkening up and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter and the wind to shiver amongst the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and the most dangerous sum I ever was in, and I was kind or stunned. Everything was going so different from what I had allowed for. Instead of being fixed so I could take my own time if I wanted to and see all the fun and have Mary Jane at my back to save me and set me free when the close fit come, here was nothing in the world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo marks. If they didn't find them, I couldn't bear to think about it, and yet somehow I couldn't think about nothing else. It got darker and darker and it was a beautiful time to give the crowd the slip, but that big husky had me by the wrist, Heinz, and a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip. He dragged me right along and was so excited that I had to run to keep up. When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it like an overflow, and when they got to the grave they found they had about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't thought to fetch a lantern, but they sailed into digging anyway by the flicker of the lightning and sent a man to the nearest house a half a mile off to borrow so they dug and dug like everything, and it got awful dark and the rain started and the wind swished and swished along and the lightning came brisker and brisker and the thunder boomed, but them people never took no notice of it, they was so full of this business, and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd and the shovelfuls of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped it all out and you couldn't see nothing at all. At last they got out the coffin and began to unscrew the lid and then such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was to scourge in and get a sight you never see, and in the dark that way it was awful. Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and I reckoned he cleaned for God I was in the world he was so excited and panting. All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare and somebody sings out, by the living jingle there's a bag of gold on his breast. Hines let out a whoop like everybody else and dropped my wrist and gave a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit out and shinied for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell. I had the road all to myself and I fairly flew, least ways I had it all to myself except the solid dark and the now again glares and the buzzing of the rain and the thrashing of the wind and the splitting of the thunder and sure as you are born I did clip it along. When I struck the town I see there weren't nobody out in the storm so I never hunted for no back streets but humped it straight through the main one and when I begun to get towards our house I aimed my eye and said it no light there the house all dark which made me feel sorry and disappointed I didn't know why. But at last just as I was sailing by flash comes the light in Mary Jane's window and my heart swelled up sudden like to bust and the same second the house and all was behind me in the dark and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world. She was the best girl I ever see and had the most sand. The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the tow head I began to look sharp for a boat to borrow and the first time the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and shoved. It was a canoe and weren't fastened with nothing but a rope. The tow head was a rattling big distance off a way out in the middle of the river but I didn't lose no time and when I struck the raft at last I was so fagged I could have just laid down to blow and gasp if I could afforded it but I didn't as I sprung aboard I sung out out with you Jim and set her loose glory be to goodness were shot of them. Jim lit out and was a coming for me with both arms spread he was so full of joy but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in my mouth and I went overboard backwards for I forgot he was old King Lear and a drowned A-Rab all in one and it most scared the livers and lights out of me but Jim fished me out and was going to hug me and bless me and so on he was so glad I was back and we was shot of the King and the Duke but I says not now have it for breakfast have it for breakfast cut loose and let her slide so in two seconds away we went to sliding down the river and it did seem so good to be free again and by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us I had to skip around a bit and jump up and crack my heels a few times I couldn't help it but about the third crack I noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well and held my breath and listened and waited and sure enough when the next flash busted out over the water here they come and just a laying to their oars and making their skiff hum it was the King and the Duke so I wilted right down onto the planks then and give up it was all I could do to keep from crying end of chapter 29 chapter 30 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Karen Salami The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 30 when they got up where the King went for me and shook me by the collar and says trying to give us a slip was he you pup tired of our company hey I says no your majesty we want please don't your Majesty quick Finn tell us what was your idea I'll shake the insides out of you honest I tell you everything just as it happened your Majesty the man that had a hold to me was very good to me and kept saying he had a boy about as big as me that died last year and he was sorry to see a boy in such a dangerous fix and when they was all took by surprise by finding the gold and made a rush for the coffin he lets go of me and whispers heal it now the hanging sure and I let out it didn't seem no good for me to stay I couldn't do nothing and I didn't want to be hung if I could get away so I never stopped running till I found the canoe and when I got here I told Jim to hurry or they'd catch me and hang me yet and said I was a furred you and the Duke went live now and I was awful sorry and so was Jim and was awful glad when we see you coming you may ask Jim if I didn't Jim said it was so and the king told him to shut up and said oh yes it's mighty likely and shook me up again and said he'd reckon he drowned me but the Duke says let go the boy you old idiot would you have done any different did you inquire around for him when you got loose I don't remember it so the king let go of me and begun to cuss that town and everybody in it but the Duke says you better a blame site give yourself a good cussing for you're the one that's entitled to it most you ain't done a thing from the start that had any sense to it except coming out so cool and cheeky without imaginary blue air remark that was bright it was right down bully and it was the thing that saved us for if it hadn't been for that they'd have jailed us till them Englishman's baggage come and then the penitentiary you bet but that trick took him to the graveyard and the gold done us still a bigger kindness for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holds and made that rush to get a look we'd have slept in our cravits tonight cravits warranted to wear too longer than we'd need them they were still a minute thinking then the king says kind of absent my delight and we record the nigger stole it that made me squirm yes said the Duke kind of slow and deliberate and sarcastic we did after about a minute the king draws out least ways I did the Duke says the same way on the contrary I did the king kind of ruffles up and says looky here bilge water what are you referring to the Duke says pretty brisk when it comes to that maybe you'll let me ask what was you referring to shucks at the king very sarcastic but I don't know maybe you was asleep and didn't know what you was about the Duke bristles up now and says oh let up on this cuss nonsense did you take me for a blame fool don't you reckon I know who hid the money in that coffin yes sir I know you do know because you done it yourself it's a lie and the Duke went for him the king sings out take your hands off leg on my throat I take it all back the Duke says well you just sewn up first that you did hide the money there intended to give me this slip one of these days and come back and dig it up and have it all to yourself wait just a minute Duke answer me this one question honest and fair if you didn't put the money there say it and I believe you and take back everything I said yo scoundrel I didn't and you know I didn't there now well then I believe you but answer me only just this one more now don't get mad didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it the Duke never said nothing for a little bit then he says well I don't care if I did I didn't do it anyway but you not only had it in mind to do it but you've done it I wished I never die if I'd done it Duke and that's honest I won't say I weren't gonna do it because I was but you I mean somebody got in ahead of me it's a lie you done it and you got to say you done it or the king began to gurgle and then he gasped out enough I don't know I was very glad to hear and say that it made me feel much more easier than what I was feeling before so the Duke took his hands off and says if you ever deny it again I'll drown you it's well for you to sit there and blubber like a baby it's fitting for you after the way you've acted I've never seen such old ostrich for wanted to gobble everything and I trust in you all the time like you was my own father you ought to be ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on a lot of poor niggas and you never say a word for him it makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to believe that rubbish because you I can see now why you were so anxious to make up the deficit you wanted to get what money I'd got out of the non-such and one thing or another and scoop it all the king says timid and still is snuffling why Duke it was you that said make up the deficit it weren't me dry up I don't want to hear no more out of you says a Duke and now you see what you've got by it they've got all their own money back and all of our but a shekel or two besides go long bet and don't you deficit me no more deficits long you live so the king sneaked into the wig woman took to his bottle for comfort and before long the Duke tackled his bottle and so in about half an hour they was the stick of thieves again and the tighter they got the lovinger they got and went off a snoring in each other's arms they both got powerful mellow but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money back again that made me feel easy and satisfied of course when they got to snoring we had a long gobble and I told Jim everything end of chapter 30 recording by Karen Salami chapter 31 of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Glenn Simonson the adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 31 we dassen stop again at any town for days and days kept right along down the river we was down south in the warm weather now and a mighty long ways from home we begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards it was the first I ever see it growing and it made the woods look solemn and dismal so now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger and they begun to work the villages again first they done a lecture on temperance but they didn't make enough for them both to get drunk on then in another village they started a dancing school but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo does so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and pranced them out of town another time they tried to go at yellow cushion but they didn't yell acute long till the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out they tackled missionarying and mesmerizing and doctoring and telling fortunes and a little of everything but they couldn't seem to have no luck so at last they got just about dead broke and later on the raft as she floated along thinking and thinking and never saying nothing by half the day at a time and dreadful blue and desperate and at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time jim and me got uneasy we didn't like the look of it we judged they was studying up some kind of worst devil tree than ever we turned it over and over and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into somebody's house or store or was going into the counterfeit money business or something so then we was pretty scared and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such actions and if we ever got the least show we would give them a cold shake and clear out and leave them behind well early one morning we hid the raft in a good safe place about two miles below a little bit of a shabby village named pikesville and the king he went ashore and told us all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if anybody had got any wind of the royal nuns such there yet house to rob you mean I says to myself and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what's become of me and jim and the raft and you'll have to take it out and wondering and he said if he weren't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right and we was to come along so we stayed where we was the duke he fretted and sweated around and was in a mighty sour way he scolded us for everything and we couldn't seem to do nothing right he found fault with every little thing something was a brewing sure I was good and glad when midday come and no king we could have a change anyway and maybe a chance for the change on top of it so me and the duke went up to the village and hunted around there for the king and by and by we found him in the back room of a little low doggery very tight and a lot of loafers bully ragging him for sport and he a cussing and threatening with all his might and so tight he couldn't walk and couldn't do nothing to them the duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool and the king begun to sass back and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook the reefs out of my hind legs and spun down the river road like a deer for I see our chance and I made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me and Jim again I got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy and sung out said or lose Jim we're all right now but there weren't no answer and nobody come out of the wigwam Jim was gone I set up a shout and then another and then another one and run this way and that in the woods whooping and screeching but it want no use old Jim was gone then I sat down and cried I couldn't help it but I couldn't set still long pretty soon I went out on the road trying to think what I better do and I run across a boy walking and asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so and he says yes whereabouts says I down to Silas Phelps's place two mile below here he's a runaway nigger and they've got him was you looking for him you bet I ain't I run across him in the woods about an hour or two ago and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out and told me to lay down and stay where I was and I done it been there ever since I feared to come out well he says you needn't be a feared no more because they've got him he run off from down South Summers it's a good job they got him well I reckon there's two hundred dollars reward on him it's like picking up money out in the road yes it is and I could have had it if I'd been big enough I see him first who nailed him it was an old fellow a stranger and he sold out his chance in him for forty dollars because he's got to go up the river and can't wait think of that now you bet I'd wait if it was seven year that's me every time says I but maybe his chance ain't worth no more than that if he'll sell it so cheap maybe there's something ain't straight about it but it is though straight as a strain I see the handbill myself it tells all about him to a dot paints him like a picture and tells the plantation he's from below New Orleans no Surrey Bob there ain't no trouble about that speculation you bet you say give me a chalk tobacco won't you I didn't have none left so he left I went to the raft and sat down in the wigwam to think but I couldn't come to nothing I thought till I wore my head sore but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble after all this long journey and after all we'd done for them scoundrels here was it all come to nothing everything all busted up and ruined because they could have a heart to serve Jim such a trick as that and make him a slave again all his life and amongst strangers too for forty dirty dollars once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was as long as he'd got to be a slave and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was but I soon give up that notion for two things she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her and so she'd sell him straight down the river again and if she didn't everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger and they'd make Jim feel it all the time and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced and then think of me it would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame that's just the way a person does a low-down thing and then he don't want to take no consequences of it thinks as long as he can hide it it ain't no disgrace that was my fix exactly the more I studied about this the more my conscious went to grinding me and the more wicked and low down and ornery I got to feeling and at last when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm and now was showing me there's one that's always on the lookout and ain't going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further I'm most dropped in my tracks I was so scared well I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked and so I weren't so much to blame but something inside of me kept saying there was the Sunday school you could have gone to it and if you'd have done it they'd have learnt you there that people at access I'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire it made me shiver and I about made my mind up to pray and see if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of boy I was and be better so I kneel down but the words wouldn't come why wouldn't they it weren't no use to try to hide it from him nor from me neither I know very well why they wouldn't come it was because my heart weren't right it was because I weren't square it was because I was playing double I was letting on to give up sin but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing and going right to that niggers owner and tell where he was but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie and he knowed it you can't pray a lie I found that out so I was full of trouble full as I could be and didn't know what to do at last I had an idea and I says I'll go and write the letter and then see if I can pray why it was astonishing the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off and my troubles all gone so I got a piece of paper and a pencil all glad and excited and sat down and wrote Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send Huck Finn I felt good and I'll wash clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life and I knowed I could pray now but I didn't do it straight off but laid the paper down and set their thinking thinking how good it was that all this happened so and how near I come to being lost and going to hell and went on thinking and got to thinking over our trip down the river and I see Jim before me all the time in the day and in the nighttime sometimes moonlight sometimes storms and we are floating along talking and singing and laughing but somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him but only the other kind I'd see him standing my watch on top of his instead of calling me so I could go on sleeping and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog and when I come to him again in the swamp up there where the feud was and such like times and would always call me honey and pet me and do everything he could think of for me and how good he always was and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small pox aboard and he was so grateful and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world and the only one he's got now and then I happen to look around and see that paper it was a close place I took it up and held it in my hand I was trembling because I got to decide forever betwixt two things and I noted I studied a minute sort of holding my breath and then says to myself all right then I'll go to hell and tore it up it was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said and I let them stay said and never thought no more about reforming I shoved the whole thing out of my head and said I would take up wickedness again which was in my line being brung up to it and the other warrant and for a starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again and if I could think up anything worse I would do that too because as long as I was in and in for good I might as well go the whole hog then I set to think and over how to get at it and turned over considerable many ways in my mind and at last fixed up a plan that suited me so then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down the river apiece and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my raft and went for it and hid it there and then turned in I slept the night through and got up before it was light and had my breakfast and put on my store clothes and tied up some others in one thing or another in a bundle and took the canoe and cleared for shore I landed below where I judged was Phelps place and hid my bundle in the woods and then filled up the canoe with water and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where I could find her again when I wondered her about a quarter of a mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank then I struck up the road and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it Phelps sawmill and when I come to the farmhouses two or three hundred yards further along I kept my eyes peeled but didn't see nobody around though it was good daylight now but I didn't mind because I didn't want to see nobody just yet I only wanted to get the lay of the land according to my plan I was going to turn up there from the village not from below so I just took a look and shoved along straight for town well the very first man I see when I got there was the Duke he was sticking up a bill for the royal nuns such three night performance like the other time they had the cheek them frauds I was right on him before I could shirk he looked astonished and says hello where'd you come from then he says kind of glad and eager where's the raft got her in a good place I says why that's just what I was going to ask your grace then he didn't look so joyful and says what was your idea for asking me he says well I says when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says to myself we can't get him home for hours till he's soberer so I went a loaf in a round town to put in the time and wait a man up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a sheep and so I went along but when we was dragging him to the boat and the man left me a halt of the rope and went behind him to shove him along he was too strong for me and jerk loose and run and we after him we didn't have no dog and so we had to chase him all over the country till we tired him out we never got him till dark then we fetched him over and I started down for the raft when I got there and see it was gone I says to myself they've got into trouble and had to leave and they've took my nigger which is the only nigger I've got in the world and now I'm in a strange country and ain't got no property no more nor nothing and no way to make my living so I sat down and cried I slept in the woods all night but what did become of the raft then and Jim poor Jim blamed if I know that is what's become of the raft that old fool had made a trade got 40 dollars and when we found him in the doggery the loafers had matched half dollars with him and got every cent but what he spent for whiskey and when I got him home late last night and found the raft gone we said that little rascal has stole our raft and shook us and run off down the river I wouldn't shake my nigger would I the only nigger I had in the world and the only property we never thought of that fact is I reckon we'd come to consider him our nigger yes we did consider him so goodness knows we had trouble enough for him so when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke there weren't anything for it but to try the royal none such another shake and I've begged long ever since dry as a powder horn where's that ten cents give it here I had considerable money so I give him ten cents but begged him to spend it for something to eat and give me some because it was all the money I had and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday he never said nothing the next minute he worlds on me and says do you reckon that nigger would blow on us we'd skin him if he'd done that how can he blow ain't he run off no that old fool sold him and never divided with me and the money's gone sold him I says and begun to cry why he was my nigger and that was my money where is he I want my nigger well you can't get your nigger that's all so dry up your blubbering looky here do you think you venture to blow on us blamed if I think I'd trust you why if you was to blow on us he stopped but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before I went on a whimpering and says I don't want to blow on nobody and I ain't got no time to blow know how I got to turn out and find my nigger he looked kinder bothered and stood there with his bills fluttering on his arms thinking and wrinkling up his forehead at last he says I'll tell you something we got to be here three days if you'll promise you won't blow and won't let the nigger blow I'll tell you where to find him so I promised and he says a farmer by the name of Silas F and then he stopped you see he started to tell me the truth but when he stopped that way and begun to study and think again I reckoned he was changing his mind and so he was he wouldn't trust me he wanted to make sure of having me out of the way the whole three days so pretty soon he says the man that bought him is named Abram Foster Abram G Foster and he lives 40 miles back here in the country on the road to Lafayette all right I says I can walk it in three days and I'll start this very afternoon no you won't you'll start now and don't you lose any time about it neither nor do any gabbling by the way just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along and then you won't get into trouble with us do you hear that was the order I wanted and that was the one I played for I wanted to be left free to work my plans so clear out he says and you can tell Mr Foster whatever you want to maybe you can get him to believe that Jim is your nigger some idiots don't require documents least ways I've heard there's such down south here and when you tell him the hand bill and the rewards bogus maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting him out go long now and tell him anything you want to but mind you don't work your jaw any between here and there so I left and struck for the back country I didn't look around but I kinder felt like he was watching me but I knowed I could tire him out at that I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I stopped then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps I reckoned I better start in on my plans straight off without fooling around because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellas could get away I didn't want no trouble with their kind I'd seen all I wanted two of them and wanted to get entirely shut of them end of chapter 31 of the adventures of a Huckleberry Finn recording by Glenn Simonson chapter 32 of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this reading by Ken Tischler of Hammett Louisiana the adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 32 when I got there it was all still and Sunday like and hot and sunshiny the hands was going to the fields and there was them kind of faint dronins of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone and if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves it makes you feel mournful because you feel like it's spirits whispering spirits that's been dead ever so many years and you always think they're talking about you as a general thing it makes a body wish he was dead too and done with it all Phelps's was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations and they all look alike a rail fence round a two-acre yard a style made out of logs sawed off and upended in steps like barrels of a different length to climb over the fence with and for the women to stand on when they are going to jump onto a horse some sickly grass patches in the big yard but mostly it was bare and smooth like an old hat with the nap rubbed off big double log house for the white folks huge logs with the chinks topped up with mud or martyr and these mud stripes been whitewashed some time or another round log kitchen with a big broad open but roofed passage joining it to the house log smokehouse back of the kitchen three little log nigger cabins in a row to the side the smokehouse one little hut all by itself way down against the back fence and some outbuildings down a piece the other side ash hopper and big kettle to buy a soap in by the little hut bench by the kitchen door with bucket of water and a gourd hound asleep there in the sun more hounds asleep round about and three shade trees away off in a corner some current bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch then the cotton fields began and after the fields the woods i went around and climbed over the back style by the ash hopper and started for the kitchen when i got a little ways i heard the dim hum of a spinning wheel wailing long up and sinking along down again and then i knowed for certain i wished i was dead for that is the lonesomeest sound in the whole world i went right along not fixing fixing up any particular plan but just trusting the providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come for i'd noticed that providence always did put the right words in my mouth if i left it alone when i got halfway first one hound and then another got up and went for me and of course i stopped and faced them and kept still and such another powwow as they made in a quarter of a minute i was a kind of hub of a wheel as you may say spokes made out of dogs circle of 15 of them packed together around me with their necks and noses stretched up towards me a barking and howling and more coming you could see them sailing over fences in around corners from everywhere a nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in her hand singing out be gone you tag you spot be gone saw and she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling and then the rest followed and the next second half of them come back wagging their tails around me and making friends with me there ain't no harm in a hound no how and behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger boys without anything on but totaling in shirts and they hung on to their mother's gown and peeped out from behind her at me bashful the way they always do and here comes the white woman running from the house about 45 or 50 year old bareheaded and her spinning stick in her hand and behind her comes her little white children acting the same way the little niggers was going she was smiling all over so she could hardly stand and says it's you at last ain't it I out with a yesum for I thought she grabbed me and hugged me tight and the grip me by both hands and shook and shook and the tears come in her eyes and run down over and she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough and kept saying you don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would but law sakes I don't care for that I'm so glad to see you dear dear it does seem like I could eat you up children it's your cousin Tom tell him howdy but they duck their heads and put their fingers in their mouths and hid behind her so she run on lies hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away or did you get your breakfast on the boat I said I had got it on the boat so then she started for the house leading me by the hand and the children tagging after when we got there she set me down in a split bottom chair and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me holding both of my hands and says now I can have a good look at you and laws of me I've been hungry for it a many and many a time all these long years and it's come at last we've been expecting you a couple of days and more what kept you boat get a ground yes I'm she don't say yes I'm say Aunt Sally where'd she get a ground I didn't rightly know what to say because I didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down but I go a good deal on instinct and my instinct said she would be coming up from down towards Orleans that didn't help me much though for I didn't know the names of bars down that way I see I'd got to invent a bar or forget the name of the one we got a ground on or now I struck an idea and fetched it out it weren't the grounding that didn't keep us back but a little we blowed out a cylinder head good gracious anybody hurt norm killed a nigger well it's lucky because sometimes people do get hurt two years ago last christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from new Orleans on the old lally rook and she blowed out a cylinder head and crippled a man and I think he died afterwards he was a Baptist your uncle Silas know the family and baton roots that know his people very well yes I remember now he did die mortification set in and they had to amputate him but it didn't save him yes it was mortification that was it he turned blue all over and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection they say he was a sight to look at your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you and he's gone again not more than an hour ago he'll be back any minute now you must have met him on the road didn't you oldish man with a no I didn't see nobody aunt Sally the boat landed just a daylight and I left my baggage on the wharf boat and went looking around the town and out of peace in the country to put in the time and not get here too soon and so I come down the back way who'd you get the baggage to nobody why child it'll be stole not where I hid it I reckon it won't I says how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat it was kinder thin ice but I says the captain see me standing around and told me I better have something to eat before I went ashore so he took me in the Texas to the officer's lunch and gave me all I wanted I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good I had my mind on the children all the time I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little and find out who I was but I couldn't get no show Mrs. Phelps kept it up and run on so pretty soon she made the cold chill streak all down my back because she says but here we're running on this way and you ain't told me a word about sis nor any of them now I'll rest my works a little and you start up your just tell me everything tell me all about them all every one of them and how they are and what they're doing and what they told you to tell me and every last thing you can think of well I see I was up a stump and up it good Providence had stood by me this fur all right but I was hard and tight of ground now I see it weren't a bit of use to try to go ahead I'd got to throw up my hand so I says to myself here's another place where I got to rest the truth I opened my mouth to begin but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed and says here he comes stick your head down lower there that'll do it you can't be seen now don't you let on you're here I'll play a joke on him children don't you say a word I see I was in a fix now but it weren't no use to worry there weren't nothing to do but just hold still and try to be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he came in then the bed hit him Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him and says has he come no says her husband goodness gracious she says what in the world can have become of him I can't imagine says the old gentleman and I must say it makes me dreadful uneasy uneasy she says I'm ready to go distracted he must have come and you've missed him along the road I know it's so something tells me so why Sally I couldn't miss him along the road you know that but oh dear dear what will sis say he must have come you must have missed him he oh don't distress me anymore and I'm already distressed I don't know what in the world to make of it I'm at my wit's end and I don't mind acknowledging it I'm downright scared but there's no hope that he's come for he couldn't come and me miss him Sally it's terrible just terrible something's happened to the boat sure why Silas look yonder up the road ain't that somebody coming he sprung to the window at the head of the bed and that gave mrs. Phelps the chance she wanted she stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and gave me a pull and out I come and when he turned back from the window there she stood a beaming and a smiling like a house of fire and I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside the old gentleman stared and says why who's that who do you reckon tips I ain't no idea who is it it's Tom Sawyer by James I most slumped through the floor but there weren't no time to swap knives the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook and kept on shaking and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid and Mary and the rest of the tribe but if they was joyful and weren't nothing to what I was for it was like being born again I was so glad to find out who I was well they froze to me for two hours and it lasts when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly go no more I had told them more about my family I mean the Sawyer family that never happened to any six Sawyer families and I explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder head at the mouth of the white river and it took us three days to fix it which was all right and worked first rate because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it if I'd have called it a bolt head it would have done just as well now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side and pretty uncomfortable all up the other being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a steamboat coughing along down the river then I says to myself suppose Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat and suppose he steps in here any minute and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet well I couldn't have it that way it wouldn't do it all I must go up the road and way lay him so I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage the old gentleman was forgoing along with me but I said no I could drive the horse myself and I'd rather he wouldn't take no trouble about me end of chapter 32 recording by Ken Tischler of Hammond, Louisiana chapter 33 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this reading by Ken Tischler of Hammond, Louisiana The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 33 so I started for town in the wagon and when I was halfway I see a wagon coming and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer and I stopped and waited till he come along I says hold on and it stopped alongside and his mouth opened up like a trunk and stayed so and he swallowed two or three times like a person that's got a dry throat and then says I ain't ever done you no harm you know that so then what you want to come back and haunt me for I says I ain't come back I ain't been gone when he heard my voice it righted him up some but he weren't quite satisfied yet he says don't you play nothing on me because I wouldn't on you honest engine you ain't a ghost honest engine I ain't I says well I I well that ought to settle it of course but I can't somehow seem to understand it no way looky here weren't you ever murdered at all no I weren't ever murdered at all I played it on them you come in here and feel of me if you don't believe me so he done it and it satisfied him and he was that glad to see me again he didn't know what to do and he wanted to know all about it right off because it was a grand adventure and mysterious and so it hit him where he lived but I said leave it alone till by and by and told his driver to wait and we drove off a little piece and I told him the kind of fix I was in and what did he reckon we better do he said let him alone a minute and don't disturb him so he thought and thought and pretty soon he said it's all right I've got it take my trunk and your wagon and let on it's your and you turn back and fool along slow so as to get to the house about the time you ought to and I'll go towards town apiece and take a fresh start and get there a quarter or a half hour after you and you needn't let on to know me at first I says all right but wait a minute there's one more thing a thing that nobody don't know but me and that is there's a nigger here that I'm trying to steal out of slavery and his name is Jim Ole Miss Watson's Jim he says what why Jim is he stopped and went to study I says I know what you'll say you'll say it's a dirty low-down business but what if it is I'm low down and I'm gonna steal him and I want you to keep mum and not let on will you his eyes lit up and he says I'll help you steal him well I let go all holds then like I was shot it was the most astonishing speech I ever heard and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer felt considerable in my estimation only I couldn't believe it Tom Sawyer a nigger stealer oh shucks I says you're joking I ain't joking either well then I says joking or no joking if you hear anything said about a runaway nigger don't forget to remember that you don't know nothing about him and I don't know nothing about him then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon and he drove off his way and I drove mine but of course I forgot all about driving slow on a council being glad and full of thinking so I got home a heap too quick for the length of the trip the old gentleman was at the door and he said why this is wonderful whoever would have thought it was in that mare to do it I wish we'd have timed her and she ain't sweated a hair not a hair it's wonderful why I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that horse now I wouldn't honest and yet I'd have sold her for 15 before and thought to us all she was worth that's all he said he was the innocentest best old soul I ever see but it weren't surprising because he weren't only just a farmer he was a preacher too and had a little one horse log church down back of the plantation which he built himself at his own expense for a church and schoolhouse and never charged nothing for his preaching and it was worth it too there was plenty of the farmer preachers like that and done the same way down south in about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front style and Aunt Sally she see it through the window because it was only about 50 yards and says why there's somebody come I wonder who it is why I do believe it's a stranger Jimmy that's one of the children running to lies to put on another plate for dinner everybody made a rush for the front door because of course a stranger don't come every year and so he lays over the yaller fever for interest when he does come Tom was over the style and starting for the house the wagon was spinning up the road for the village and we was all bunched in the front door Tom had his store clothes on and an audience and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer in them circumstances there weren't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was suitable he weren't a boy to meekie along up that yard like a sheep no he come calm and important like the ram when he got a front of us he lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainy like it was the lid of a box that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them and says Mr. Archibald Nichols I presume no my boy says the old gentleman I'm sorry to say to your driver has deceived you Nichols places down a matter of three mile more come in come in Tom he took a look back over his shoulder and says too late he's out of sight yes he's gone my son and you must come in and eat your dinner with us and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's oh I can't make you so much trouble I couldn't think of it I'll walk I don't mind the distance but we won't let you walk it wouldn't be southern hospitality to do it come right in oh do says Aunt Sally it ain't a bit of trouble to us not a bit in the world you must stay it's a long dusty three mile and we can't let you walk and besides I've already told him to put on another plate when I see you coming so you mustn't disappoint us come right in and make yourself at home so time he thanked them very hearty and handsome and let himself be persuaded and come in and when he was in he said he was a stranger from Hicksville Ohio and his name was William Thompson and he made another bow well he run on and on and on making up stuff about Hicksville and everybody in it he could invent and I was getting a little nervous and wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape and at last still talking along he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the mouth and then settled back again in his chair comfortable and was going on talking but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back her hand and says you audacious puppy he looked kind of hurt and says I'm surprised at you ma'am you're why what do you reckon I am I have a good notion of taking say what do you mean by kissing me he looked kind of humble and says I didn't mean nothing ma'am I didn't mean no harm I thought you'd like it why you born fool she took up the spinning stick and it looked like it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it what made you think I'd like it well I don't know only they they told me you would they told you I would whoever told you is another lunatic I never heard the beat of it who's they why everybody they all said so ma'am it was all she could do to hold in and her eyes snapped and her fingers worked like she wanted to scratch him and she says who's everybody out with their names or they'll be an idiot short he got up and looked distressed and fumbled his hat and says I'm sorry and I weren't expecting it they told me to they all told me to they all said kiss her and said she'd like it they all said it every one of them but I'm sorry ma'am and I won't do it no more I won't honest you won't won't you well I should reckon you won't know I'm honest about it I won't ever do it again till you ask me till I ask you well I never see the beat of it my born days I lay you'll be the Methuselum num skull of creation before ever I ask you or the likes of you well he says it does surprise me so I can't make it out somehow they said you would and I thought you would but he stopped and looked around slow like he wished he could run across a friendly I somewhere and fetched up on the old gentleman and says didn't you think she'd like me to kiss her sir why no I well no I believe I didn't then he looks around the same way to me and says Tom didn't you think Aunt Sally'd open out her arms and say Sid Sawyer my land she says breaking in and jumping for him you impudent young rascal to fool a body so and was going to hug him but he fended her off and says no not till you've asked me first so she didn't lose no time but asked him and hugged him and kissed him over and over again and then turned him over to the old man and he took what was left and after they got a little quiet again she says why dear me I never see such a surprise we weren't looking for you at all but only Tom sister never wrote to me about anybody coming but him it's because it weren't intended for any of us to come but Tom he says but I begged and begged at the last minute she let me come too so coming down the river me and Tom thought it would be a first rate surprise for him to come here to the house first and for me to buy and buy tag along and drop in and let on to be a stranger but it was a mistake aunt Sally this ain't no healthy place for a stranger to come no not impudent welp Sid you ought to have your jaws boxed I ain't been so put out since I don't know when but I don't care I don't mind the terms I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to have you here well to think of that performance I don't deny it I was most putrefied with astonishment when you gave me that smack we had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and a kitchen and there was things enough on that table for seven families and all hot too none of your flabby tough meat that's laid in a cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold cannibal in the morning Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing over it but it was worth it and it didn't cool it a bit neither the way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times there was a considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon and me and Tom was on the lookout all the time but it weren't no use they didn't happen to say nothing about any runaway nigger and we was afraid to try to work up to it but it's supper at night one of the little boys says pa meant Tom and said me go to the show no says the old man I reckon there ain't gonna be any and you couldn't go if there was because the runaway nigger told Burton and me all about that scandalous show and Burton said he would tell the people so I reckon they've drove the audacious loafers out of town before this time so there it was but I couldn't help it Tom and me was to sleep in the same room in bed so being tired we did good night and went up to bed right after supper and clump out the window and down the lightning rod and shoved for the town for I didn't believe anybody was going to give the king and the Duke a hint and so if I didn't hurry up and give them one they'd get into trouble sure on the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered and how Pat disappeared pretty soon and didn't come back no more and what a stirrer was when Jim run away and I told Tom all about our royal none such rapscallions and as much of the rap forage as I had time to and as we struck into town and up through the here comes a raging rush of people with tortures and an awful whooping and yelling and banging ten pans and blowing horns and we jumped to one side to let them go by and as they went by I see that they had the king and the Duke a straddle of a rail that is I know it was the king and the Duke though they was all over tar and feathers and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human just look like a couple of monstrous big soldier plumes well it made me sick to see it and I was sorry for them poor pitiful rascals it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any hardness against them anymore in the world it was a dreadful thing to see human beings can be awful cruel to one another we see we was too late couldn't do no good we asked some stragglers about it and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage then somebody gave the signal and the house rose up and went forth so we poked along back home and I weren't feeling so brash as I was before but kind of ornery and humble and to blame somehow though I hadn't done nothing but that's always the way you don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong a person's conscience ain't got no sense and just goes for him anyway if I had a yaller dog that didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would poison him it takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides and yet ain't no good know how Tom Sawyer he says the same end of chapter 33 recording by Ken Tischler of Hammond Louisiana chapter 34 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this reading by Ken Tischler of Hammond Louisiana The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 34 we stopped talking got the thinking by and by Tom says looky here hut what fools we are not to think of it before I bet I know where Jim is no where in that hut down by the ash hopper why looky here when we was at dinner didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vitals yes what did you think the vitals was for for a dog so would I well it wasn't for a dog why because part of it was watermelon so it was I noticed it well it does be at all that I never thought about a dog not eating watermelon shows how our body can see and don't see at the same time well the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in and he locked it up again when he came out he fetched uncle a key about the same time we got up from table same key I bet watermelon shows man lock shows prisoner and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation and where the people is also kind and good Jim's the prisoner all right I'm glad we found it out detective fashion I wouldn't give shucks for any other way now you work your mind and study out a plan to steal Jim and I will study one out two and we'll take the one we like the best what a head for just a boy to half if I had Tom Sawyer's head I wouldn't trade it off to be a duke nor made of a steamboat nor clown in a circus nor nothing else I can think of I went to thinking out a plan but only just to be doing something I'd know very well where the right plan was going to come from pretty soon Tom says ready yes I says all right bring it out my plan is this I says we can easily find out if it's Jim in there then get up my canoe tomorrow night and fetch my raft over from the island then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the old man's bridges after he goes to bed and shove off down the river on the raft with Jim hiding day times and running nights the way me and Jim used to do before wouldn't that plan work work why certainly it would work like rats are fighting but it's too blame simple there ain't nothing to it what's the good of a plan that ain't no more trouble than that it's as mild as goose milk why a hook it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory I never said nothing because I weren't expecting nothing different but I know mighty well that whenever he got his plan ready it wouldn't have none of them objections to it and it didn't he told me what it was and I see in a minute it was worth fifteen of mine for style and would make Jim just as free a man as mine would and maybe get us all killed besides so I was satisfied and said we would waltz in on it I needn't tell what it was here because I know it wouldn't stay that way it was I know he would be changing it around every which way as we went along and heaving in new bulliness at whenever he got a chance and that is what he done well one thing was dead sure and that was that Tom Sawyer was in earnest and was actually gonna help steal that nigger out of slavery that was the thing that was too many for me here was a boy that was respectable and well-brung up and had a character to lose and folks at home that had characters and he was bright and not leatherheaded and knowing and not ignorant and not mean but kind and yet here he was without any more pride or rightness or feeling than to stoop to this business and make himself ashamed and his family ashamed before everybody I couldn't understand it no way at all it was outrageous and I know it I ought to just up and tell him so and so be his true friend and let him quit the thing right there where he was and save himself and I did start to tell him but he shut me up and says don't you reckon I know what I'm about don't I generally know what I'm about yes didn't I say I was going to help steal the nigger yes well then that's all he said and that's all I said it weren't no use to say anymore because when he said he'd do a thing he'd always done it but I couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing so I just let it go and never bothered no more about it if he was bound to have it so I couldn't help it when we got home the house was all dark and still so we went on down to the hut by the ash hop before to examine it we went through the yard so as to see what the hounds would do they noticed and didn't make no more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in the night when we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the two sides and on the side I weren't acquainted with which was the north side we found a square window hole up tolerable high with just one stout board nailed across it I says here's the ticket this hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we wrench off the board Tom says it's as simple as tit-tat-toe three in a row and as easy as playing hooky I should hope we can find a way that's a little more complicated than that hook fin well then I says how'll it do to saw him out the way I'd done before I was murdered that time that's more like it he says it's real mysterious and troublesome and good he said but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long there ain't no hurry let's keep on looking around betwixt the hut and the fence on the back side was a lean to that joined the hut at the eaves and was made out of plank it was as long as the hut but narrow only about six foot wide the door to it was at the south end and was padlocked Tom he went to the soap kettle and searched around and fetched back the iron thing they left the lid with so he took it and prized out one of the staples the chain fell down and we opened the door and went in and shut it and struck a match and see the shed was only built against the cabin and had no connection with it and there weren't no floor to the shed nor nothing in it but some old rusty played out hose and spades and picks and a crippled plow the match went out and so did we and shoved in the staple again and the door was locked as good as ever Tom was joyful he says now we're all right we'll dig him out it'll take about a week then we started for the house and I went in the back door you only have to pull a buck's skin latch string they don't fasten the doors but that weren't romantic enough for Tom Sawyer no way would do him but he must climb up the lightning rod but after he got up halfway about three times and missed fire and fell every time and the last time most busted his brains out he thought he'd got to give it up but after he was rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for lug and this time he made the trip in the morning we was up at break of day and down to the nigger cabins to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim if it was Jim that was being fed the niggers was just getting through breakfast and starting for the fields and Jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan with bread and meat and things and whilst the others was leaving the key come from the house this nigger had a good nature chuckle-headed face and his wool was all tied up in little bunches with thread that was to keep the witches off he said the witches was pestering him awful these nights and making him see all kinds of strange things and hear all kinds of strange words and noises and he didn't believe he was ever witch so long before in his life he got so worked up and got the running on so about his troubles he forgot all about what he'd been going to do so Tom says what's the vitals for going to feed the dogs the nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face like when you heave a brick bat in a mud puddle and he says yes boss said a dog curious dog too does you want to go and look at him yes i hunched Tom and whispers you going right here in the daybreak that weren't the plan no it weren't but it's the plan now so dragged him we went along and i didn't like it much when we got in we couldn't hardly see anything it was so dark but jim was there sure enough and could see us and he sings out why hook and good land ain't that mistletom i just know how it would be i just expected it i didn't know nothing to do and if i had i couldn't have done it because that nigger busted in and says why did gracious sakes do he know you gentlemen we could see pretty well now Tom he looked at the nigger steady and kind of wondering and says does who know us why just your runaway nigger i don't reckon he does but what put that into your head what put it there didn't he just this minute sing out like he knows you Tom says in a puzzled up kind of way well that's mighty curious who sung out when did he sing out what did he sing out and turns to me perfectly calm and says did you hear anybody sing out of course there weren't nothing to be said but the one thing so i says no i ain't heard nobody say nothing then he turns to jim and looks him over like he never seen him before and says did you sing out nosa says jim i ain't said nothing sir not a word nosa i ain't said a word did you ever see us before nosa not as i knows on so Tom turns to the nigger which was looking wild and distressed and says kind of severe what do you reckon's the matter with you anyway what made you think somebody sung out oh it's the dad blame witches sir and i wished i was dead i do they's all is at it sir and they do most kill me they scares me so please don't tell nobody about it sir for Omar Silas he'll scold me because he say they ain't no witches i just wish the goodness he was here now then what would he say i just bet he couldn't find no way to get around it this time but it's all is just so people's that's sot stays sot they won't look into nothing and find it out for themselves and when you find it out and you tell them about it they don't believe you Tom gave him a dime and said we wouldn't tell nobody and told him to buy some more thread to tie up his will with and then looks at jim and says i wonder if uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger if i was to catch a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away i wouldn't give him up i'd hang him and whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the dime and bite it to see if it was good he whispers to jim and says don't ever let on to know us and if you hear any digging going on nights it's us we're gonna set you free jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it then the nigger come back and said we'd come again sometime if the nigger wanted us to and he said he would more particular if it was dark because the witches went for him mostly in the dark and it was good to have folks around then end of chapter 34 recording by ken tishler of hamming louisiana chapter 35 of the adventures of huckleberry fin this is a libra fox recording all libra fox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit the bravox.org adventures of huckleberry fin by mark dwayne chapter 35 it would be most an hour yet till breakfast so we left and struck down into the woods because tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by and a lantern makes too much and might get us into trouble what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox fire and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place we've fetched an armful and hit it in the weeds and set down to rest and tom says kind of dissatisfied blame it this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be and so it makes it a so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan there ain't no watchman to be drugged now there ought to be a watchman there ain't even a dog to give a sleeping mixture to and there's jim chained by one leg with a ten foot chain to the leg of his bed why all you got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain and uncle silas he trusts everybody sends the key to the punkin headed nigger and don't send nobody to watch the nigger jim could have got out of that window hole before this only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel with a ten foot chain on his leg why dread it huck it's the stupidest arrangement I ever see you got to invent all the difficulties well we can't help it we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got anyhow there is one thing there is more honor in getting him out through a lot of difficulties and dangers where there weren't one of them furnished to you by the people who was their duty to furnish them and you had to contrive them all out of your own head now look at just that one thing of the lantern when you come down to the cold facts we simply got to let on that a lantern's risky why we could work with a torchlight procession if we wanted to I believe now whilst I think of it we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we get what do we want of a saw what do we want of a saw hey we got to saw the leg of jim's bed off so as to get the chain loose why you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain off well if that ain't just like you huck finn you can get the infant schooliest ways of going at a thing why ain't you ever read any books at all barren trank nor cassanova nor ben venuto chalini nor henry forth nor none of them are heroes whoever heard of getting a prisoner loose in such an old matey way is that no the way all the best authorities does it is to saw the bed leg into and leave it just so and swallow the sawdust so it can't be found and put some dirt and grease around the sawd place so the very keenest thethical can't see no sign of its being sawed and thinks the bed leg is perfectly sound then the night you're ready fetch the leg a kick down she goes slip off your chain and there you are nothing to do but hit your rope ladder to the battlements shin down it break your leg in the moat because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short you know and there's your horses and your trusty vassals and they scoop you up and fling you across the saddle and the way you go to your native languedoc or navere or wherever it is it's gaudy huck i wish there was a moat to this cabin if we get time the night of the escape we'll dick one i says what do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under the cabin but he never heard me he had forgotten me and everything else he had his chin in his hand thinking pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head then sighs again and says no it wouldn't do there ain't necessity enough for it for what i says why to saw jim's leg off he says good land i says why there ain't no necessity for it and what would you want to saw his leg off for anyway well some of the best authorities has done it they couldn't get the chain off so they just cut their hand off and shoved and a leg would be better still but we got to let that go there ain't necessity enough in this case and besides jim's a nigger and wouldn't understand the reasons for it and how it's the custom in europe so we'll let it go but there's one thing he can have a rope ladder we can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough and we can send it to him in a pie it's mostly done that way and not that worse pies why tom Sawyer how you talk i says jim ain't got no use for a rope ladder he has got use for it how you talk you better say you don't know nothing about it he's got to have rope ladder they all do what in the nation can he do with it do with it he can hide it in his bed can't he that's what they all do and he's got to too huck you don't ever seem to want to do anything that's regular you want to be starting something fresh all the time suppose he don't do nothing with it in there in his bed for a clue after he's gone and don't you reckon they'll want clues of course they will and you wouldn't leave the many that would be a pretty howdy do wouldn't it i never heard of such a thing well i says if it's in the regulations and he's got to have it all right let him have it because i don't wish to go back on no regulations but there's one thing tom Sawyer if we go to tearing up our sheets to make jim a rope ladder we're going to get into trouble with aunt sally just as sure as you're born now the way i look at it a hickory bark ladder don't cost nothing and don't waste nothing and it's just as good to load up a pie with and hide in a straw tick as any rag ladder you can start and as for jim he ain't had no experience and so he don't care what kind of a all shucks huck finn if i was as ignorant as you i'd keep still that's what i'd do whoever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a hickory bark ladder why it's perfectly ridiculous well all right tom fix it your own way but if you'll take my advice you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline he said that would do and that gave him another idea and he says borrow a shirt too what do we want of a shirt tom want it for jim to keep the journal on journal your granny jim can't write suppose he can't write he can make marks on the shirt can't he if we make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron barrel hoop why tom we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better one and quicker too prisoners don't have geese running around the dungeon to pull pens out of you muggins they always make their pens out of the hardest toughest troublesomeest piece of old brass candlestick or something like that they can get their hands on and it takes them weeks and weeks and months and months to file it out too because they've got to do it by rubbing it on the wall they wouldn't use a goose quill if they had it it ain't regular well then what do we make him the ink out of many makes it out of iron rust and tears but that's the common sort and women the best authorities uses their own blood jim can do that and when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to let the world know where he's captivated he can write it on the bottom of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window the iron mask always done that and it's a blame good way too jim ain't got no tin plates they feed him in a pan that ain't nothing we can get him some can't nobody read his plates that ain't got anything to do with it huck finn all he's got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out you don't have to be able to read it why half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on a tin plate or anywhere else well then what's the sense in wasting the plates why blame it all it ain't the prisoners plates but it's somebody's plates ain't it well supposing it is what does the prisoner care who's he broke off there because we heard the breakfast horn blowing so we cleared out for the house along during the morning i borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the clothes line and i found an old sack and put them in it and we went down and got the fox fire and put that in too i called it borrowing because that's what pap always called it but tom said it weren't borrowing it was stealing he said we was representing prisoners and prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it and nobody don't blame them for it either it ain't no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with tom said it's his right and so as long as we was representing a prisoner we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least used for to get ourselves out of prison with he said if we want prisoners it would be a very different thing and nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he warned a prisoner so we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy and yet he made a mighty fuss one day after that when i stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it and he made me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for tom said that what he meant was we could steal anything we needed well i says i needed the watermelon but he said i didn't need it to get out of prison with there is where the difference was he said if i wanted it to hide a knife in and smuggle it to jim to kill the center school with it would have been all right so i let it go at that though i couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if i got to set down and jaw over a lot of gold leaf distinctions like that every time i see a chance to hog a watermelon well as i was saying we waited that morning till everybody was settled down to business and nobody in sight around the yard then tom he carried the sack into the lean to whilst i stood off a piece to keep watch by and by he come out and we went and sat down on the wood pile to talk he says everything's all right now except tools and that's easy fixed tools i says yes tools for what why to dig with we ain't not going to gnaw him out are we ain't them old crippled picks and things and they're good enough to dig a nigger out with i says he turns on me looking pity enough to make a body cry and says huck finn did you ever hear of a prisoner having picks and shuffles and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with now i want to ask you if you got any reasonableness in you at all what kind of a show would that give him to be a hero why they might as well lend him the key and done with it picks and shovels why they wouldn't furnish him to a king well then i says if we don't want the picks and shovels what do we want a couple of case knives to dig the foundations out from under that cabin with yes confounded it's foolish tom it don't make no difference how foolish it is it's the right way and it's the regular way and there ain't no other way that ever i heard of and i've read all the books that gives any information about these things they always dig out with a case knife and not through dirt mind you generally it's through solid rock and it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks and forever and ever why look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the castle deep in the harbor of mercilies that dug himself out that way how long was he at it you reckon i don't know well yes i don't know a month and a half 37 year and he come out in china that's the kind i wish the bottom of this fortress was solid rock jim don't know nobody in china what's that got to do with it neither did that other fellow but you're always a wondering off on a side issue why can't you stick to the main point all right i don't care where he comes out so he comes out and jim don't either i reckon but there is one thing anyway jim's too old to be dug out with a case knife he won't last yes he will last too you don't reckon it's going to take 37 years to dig out through a dirt foundation do you how long will it take tom well we can't risk being as long as we ought to because it may take very long frunkle to hear from down there by new orleans he'll hear jim ain't from there then his next move will be to advertise jim or something like that so we can't risk being as long digging it out as we ought to by rights i reckon we ought to be a couple of years but we can't things being so uncertain what i recommend is this that we really dig right in as quick as we can and after that we can let on to ourselves that we was at 37 years then we can snatch him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm yes i reckon that'll be the best way now there's sense in that i says let it on don't cost nothing let it on ain't no trouble and if it's any object i don't mind letting on we was added a hundred and fifty year it wouldn't strain me none after i got my hand in so i'll mosey along now and smooch a couple of case knives smooch three he says we won't want to make a saw out of tom if it ain't unregular and irreligious to suggest it i says there's an old rusty saw blade around yonder sticking under the weatherboarding behind the smokehouse he looked kind of weary and discouraged like and says it ain't no use to try to learn you nothing huck run along and smooch the knives three of them so i done it end of chapter 35 chapter number 36 of the adventures of huckleberry fin this is a livery box recording all livery box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit livery box dot org recording by a father xyle the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain chapter 36 as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the lightning rod and shut ourselves up in the lean to and got out our pile of fox fire and went to work we cleared everything out of the way about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log tom said he was right behind jim's bed now and we dig in under it and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there because jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole so we dug and dug with the case knives till most midnight and then we was dog tired and our hands was blistered and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything hardly and last that says this ain't no 37 year job this is a 38 year job tom soya he never said nothing but he sighed and pretty soon he stopped digging and then for a good little while i know what he was thinking and he says ain't no use huck it ain't a going to work if we was prisoners it would because then we'd have as many years as we wanted and no hurry and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig every day while there was change in watches and so our hands wouldn't get blistered and we could keep it up right along year in and year out and do it right and the way it ought to be done but we can't fool along we got to rush we ain't got no time to spare if we was to put in another night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well couldn't touch a case knife with them sooner well then what we're going to do tom i'll tell you it ain't right and it ain't moral and i wouldn't like to get it out but there ain't only just the one way we got to dig him out with the picks and let on its case knives now you're talking i says your head gets leveler and leveler all the time tom soya i says picks is the thing moral or no and as for me i don't care shucks for the morality of it know how when i start into steal a nigger or a watermelon or a sunday school book i ain't no ways particular how it's done or so is it's done what i want is my nigger or what i want is my watermelon or what i want is my sunday school book and if it picks the handiest thing that's the thing i'm going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that sunday school book out with and i don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks about it another well he says there's excuse for picks and letting on in a case like this if it weren't so i wouldn't approve of it nor i wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke because right is right and wrong is wrong and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better it might answer for you to dig jim out with a pick without any letting on because you don't know no better but it wouldn't for me because i do know better give me a case knife he had his own by him but i handed him mine he flung it down and says give me a case knife i didn't know just what to do but then i thought i scratched around amongst the old tools and got a pickaxe and give it to him and he took it and went to work and never said a word he was always just that particular full of principle so then i got a shovel and then we picked and shoveled turn about and made the fur fly we stuck to it about half an hour which was as long as we could stand up but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it when i got upstairs i looked out at the window and see tom doing his level best with a lightning rod but he couldn't come it his hands was so sore and last he says it ain't no use it can't be done what do you reckon i better do can't you think of no way yes i says but i reckon it ain't regular come up the stairs and let on it's a lightning rod so he done it next day tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house for to make some pens for jim out of and six tallow candles and i hung around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance and stole three tin plates tom says it wasn't enough but i said nobody wouldn't never see the plates that jim throwed out because they'd fall in the dog fennel and jimson weeds under the window hole then we could tow them back and he could use them over again so tom was satisfied then he says now the thing to study out is how to get the things to jim take them in through the hole i says when we get it done he only just looked scornful and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea and then he went to studying by and by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways but there weren't no need to decide on any of them yet said we'd got to post jim first that night we went down the lightning rod a little after ten and took one of the candles along and listened under the window hole and heard jim snoring so we pitched it in and it didn't wake him then we whirled in with the pick and shovel and in about two hours and a half the job was done we crept in under jim's bed and into the cabin and poured around and found the candle and lit it and stood over jim a while and found him looking hearty and healthy and then we woke him up gentle and gradual he was so glad to see us he most cried and called us honey and all the pet names he could think of and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off his leg with right away and clearing out without losing any time but tom he showed him how unregular it would be and sat down and told him all about our plans and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm and not to be the least afraid because we would see he got way sure so jim said it was all right and we sat there and talked over old times a while and then tom asked a lot of questions and when jim told him uncle silas come in every day or two to pray with him and on salad come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat and both of them was kind as they could be tom says now i know how to fix it we'll send you some things by them i said don't do nothing of the kind it's one of the most jackass ideas i ever struck but he never paid no attention to me went right on it was his way when he'd got his plan set so he told jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope ladder pie and other large things by nat the nigger that fed him and he must be on the lookout and not be surprised and not let nat see him open them and we would put small things in uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out and we would tie things to aunt's apron strings or put them in her apron pocket if we got a chance and told him what they would be and what they was for and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood and all that he told him everything jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it but he allowed we was white folks and had no better than him so he was satisfied and said he would do it all just as tom said jim had plenty corn cob pipes and tobacco so we had a right down good sociable time then we crawled out through the hole and so home to bed with hands that looked like they'd been charred tom was in high spirits he said it was the best fun he ever had in his life and the most intellectual and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave jim to our children to get out for he believed jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it he said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as a year and would be the best time on record and he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it in the morning we went out to the wood pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes and tom put them and the pewter spoon in his pocket then we went to the nigger cabins and while i got nat's notice off tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn pole that was in jim's pan and we went along with nat to see how it would work and it just worked noble when jim bit into it it almost gnashed all his teeth out and there weren't ever anything could have worked better tom said so himself jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread you know but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first and whilst we was a standing there in the diminished light here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under jim's bed and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them and there weren't hardly room in there to get your breath by jings we forgot to fasten that lean to door the nigger nat he only just hollered witches once and kneeled over onto the floor amongst the dogs and begun to groan like he was dying tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of jim's meat and the dogs went for it and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door and i knowed he'd fixed the other door too then he went to work on the nigger coaxing him and petting him and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again he raised up and blinked his eyes around and says maus said y'all say i's a fool but if i didn't believe i'd see most a million dogs or devils or something i wished i may die right here in these tracks i did most surely maus said i felt him i felt him sir they was all over me dad fetch it it's just wish i could get my hands on one of them witches just wants only just wants it's all i'd asked but mostly i wish dad let me loan i does tom says well i tell you what i think what makes them come here just this runaway niggers breakfast time it's because they're hungry that's the reason you make them a witch pie that's the thing for you to do but my land maus said how's that going to make much pie i don't know how make it i had never heard or such a thing before well then i'll have to make it myself will you do it honey will you i wasp to ground and your foot i will all right i'll do it seeing it's you and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger but you got to be mighty careful when we come around you turn your back and then whatever we put in the pan you don't let on you see it at all and you don't look when jim unloads the pan something might happen i don't know what and above all don't you handle the witch things handle them maus said what is you're talking about i would lay to wait here my finger on them not for ten hundred thousand billion dollars i wouldn't end of chapter 36 reading by father xyle of detroit michigan d r z e i l e dot net