Welcome to this first edition of Rambling News, my new obscure news blog. In this edition, an introduction to this new blog, Silence of the Eco-Modernists, updating last month's video on George Monbiot with some new research studies, and Fusion Confusion reviewing the news about the new Fusion milestone in the USA. I'm a great believer in the sieve of time, the idea that the progress of time discards the irrelevant, leaving us just the essential things that we should focus on. But if we could muster sufficient discernment to focus on those things in the here and now, rather than being distracted by the irrelevances that surround our lives, how much more progress might we make? Well, for those who follow my work, that's always what I've tried to do. For 2023 I thought I'd start a new series of posts and videos, a sort of regular bulletin of obscure news, to win her down as little nuggets in the media's rolling sound and fury, and give them some much-needed publicity. And as so often when I publish a video, a new study will come out a few weeks later which adds new depth to the issues considered. This would also be a space to revisit past work with new information. I can't say precisely how many of these bulletins I'll make, because I'll do so only when I have something to say. For me, the curse of the modern media is the need to fill dead air, which ultimately creates the tirade of dross that is the 24-hour rolling news cycle. It might be as many as one a month, depending upon other pressures in my life, and how much new news there is to comment on. You might also consider these bulletins a prologue for videos I might make in the future. So if any particular item seems interesting, please get in touch, and I might be able to prioritise that issue in the work schedule. And so to business. About a month ago I released my longest and most detailed video. Notionally, it was about George Monbiot in his presentation of eco-modernist ideas, dove far deeper into what that represents in the media generally. Thus far it's done rather well, with over 800 views and some truly bizarre comments by the supporters of that mindset. As expected, the man himself has remained silent, and I don't expect that to change any time soon. Here's no compunction to reply, I can only dig a deeper hole by doing so, which is entirely the point of the film. The media's green pundits are wholly unaccountable for the quality of what they generate. When we look at the research evidence popping up every month, the environmental debate is clearly not just irrelevant to events, it's arguably harmful to positive change. It generates stasis by eliciting confusion and fear as it relates seemingly insurmountable problems and power structures without defining directly inactable responses. That's because it does not challenge the core issue that's driving this, the lifestyle of the globally affluent 10%. The issue is not so much George Monbiot himself as a class of people he represents, and why that is leading, managerially and politically, the environmental movement to fail so abysmally. As my film outlines, bright green environmentalism doesn't challenge ecological destruction. It props up the current systems of inequality and exploitation in order to preserve the economic status quo. And it's their failure to fully account for their plans, especially in terms of the resources required or the emissions created by the transition process, which renders their positive view of change deeply flawed. That said, I'd like to flag up a new study in energy economics. Assessing the effectiveness of energy efficiency measures in the residential sector gas consumption through dynamic treatment effects evidenced from England and Wales. Contrary to the tongue-twisting title, it's an interesting study as it not only contradicts an awful lot of the hope you're promoted by the government and industry, but even alleged radicals such as Insulate Britain. What it focuses on is something called the rebound effect. The Guardian article on the study put this name in quotes, like it's something astoundingly new that had just been discovered. The fact is, the rebound effect has been known about ever since it was first observed by William Stanley Jevin in 1865. What the study found was that the energy savings from home improvements disappeared after a few years. I'm planning a video on this later in 2023, so I won't get ahead of myself as it's complicated to explain. That's completely unsurprising. The UK Energy Research Centre discovered similar things almost 20 years ago, and one of the researchers in this study published a similar paper in Nature Climate Change in 2021. The point is, things like the rebound effect strike at the idea of decoupling, the ecomodinous belief that we can separate the physical actuality of our lives from the ecological footprint they create. This leads them to advance simplistic solutions which leave our lifestyle sacrosanct while often changing the technology around us to solve the perceived problem. Most often, though, the problem is not eliminated and may be swapped for something qualitatively worse, such as biomass burning. This is the danger of pundits like George Monbiot fixating on a certain technology that will save us while the elephant in the room, our lifestyle, goes unchallenged. In mid-December, there was an article in Nature on degrowth making similar points to my criticisms here. The article flags the problem of economic growth and why eliminating that core assumption is the key to making any progress on ecological issues. Humans have had technology to amplify our physical bodies ever since we started banging rocks together. Where that millennia process underwent a step change was when we started, almost simultaneously, settled agriculture and metallurgy 12,000 years ago. How we step back from the literal world change and implications of that process today, while minimising the seemingly biblical level of fall that would entail, is the reason why so many seemingly sensible people spin such wondrous tales in order to remain oblivious to the facts. There are many possible solutions to our present predicament. What unites the best of those is to accept, a priori, that your life as you have known it is over. It was never viable in the first place, especially after scientists pointed that out in the 1970s, but everyone denied the obvious fact to preserve their economic advantage. That said, what we need to be exploring are the options for simplification, degrowth, and taking the technology out of our lives. Right now, though, that discussion cannot take place in the open because the figures who dominate the environmental media refuse to seriously explore that and will not make way for those who will. US scientists confirm major breakthrough in nuclear fusion trumpeted the Guardian. Thing is, it wasn't, and arguably was never meant to be. I've been following fusion since the early 1990s, and I occur to see the fact that Europe's leading fusion research centre at Cullum is a little over 30 miles from my home. Like many journalists and writers, I maintain a conveyor belt of stories, which I'll slowly develop over time, adding more and more information and references until they reach critical mass and a story or video can be created. I've been working to produce a video on fusion since Jeff Bezos' announcement that he wanted to build his fusion project at Cullum in June 2021. I might finish that later in the year. When I saw the Guardian headline, one quick speed read made it clear to me that this was all hype because the reality was not being stated at any point in the story. The downfall came with this statement. In the latest experiment, researchers pumped in 2.05 megajoules of laser energy and got 3.15 megajoules out, a roughly 50% gain and a sign that the fusion reactions in the pellet were driving further fusion reactions. As physicists, Sabine Hosenfelder elegantly outlined in a science news bulletin, the energy gain of the experiment is an illusion because it only measures the laser energy hit in the target and then the energy re-radiated back out again. Powering the lasers to create that reaction took 400 megajoules, and so in reality the energy gain is a fraction of 1% of the energy it took to create it. Even that is not the full story here though. As others have argued, the point of this experiment is not necessarily to produce energy for power generation. It's to create bigger bombs. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories National Ignition Facility is not primarily designed as a power generator in the experiment. It was set up to research improved designs for thermonuclear bombs, controlling their yield by increasing the efficiency of the fusion component of the hydrogen bomb. Fusion power is just a greenwash that facility applies to its work to justify the funding. In reality, the arguments against fusion power, ignoring the link to nuclear weapons production, are many and quite probably insurmountable. That's what I hope to outline in a video later this year on the whole system required to deliver a nuclear fusion process, not simply the sticking atoms together part of it. What is key here is that many of those critical arguments get zero investigation in the mainstream media. Our society fetishizes technology and as the Guardian article demonstrates, that means eliminating any objective sense in the discussion instead focusing on a hyperreal abstraction of it in order to titillate our desire for progress. That's it for this first edition of Ramblin's. I'll hopefully be back with more in the near future and I welcome any feedback that you have on it. Finally, as I always say, it would really help promote this work if you could like, subscribe and most importantly, share this video. In today's Digital Analytics Popularity Contest, all that button pressing means something in this messed up world.


CHAPTER XXVI Well, when they were all gone, the king asked Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn it into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot, and up a garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley, meaning me. So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. She said she'd have her frocks, and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they weren't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calacle that hung down to the floor. There was an old hair-trunk in one corner, and a guitar box in another, and all sorts of knick-knacks and gym-cracks around, like the girl's brisking up a room with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty small, but flinty good enough, and so was my cubby.  They sat at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ordinary and tough the fried chickens was, and all that kind of rot, the way women always do, for to force out compliments, and the people all knowed everything was tip-top, and said so, said, how do you get biscuit to brown so nice, and where for the land's sake did you get these amazing pickles, and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know. And when it was all done, me and the hairlip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up things, the hairlip, she got to pumping me about England, and, blessed if I didn't think the ice was getting might-y thin sometimes, she says, did you ever see the king? Oh, William IV? Well, I bet I have. He goes to our church. I know he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes to church, she says, well, regular? Yes, regular. His pew's right over opposite arm, on the other side, the pulpit. I thought he lived in London. Well, he does. Where would he live? But I thought you lived in Sheffield. I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with the chicken bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says, I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield. That's only in the summer time, when he comes out there to take the sea-baths. La, how you talk? Sheffield ain't on the sea? Well, who said it was? Why, you did. I didn't, mother. You did. I didn't. You did. I never said nothing of the kind. Well, what did you say then? Said he come to take the sea-baths. That's what I said. Well then, how's he going to take the sea-baths if it ain't on the sea? Lookie here, says I. Did you ever see Congress water? Yes. Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it? Why, no. Well, neither does William Worth have to go to the sea to get a sea-bath. How does he get it, then? Gets the way people done here get Congress water, in barrels. There in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. They can buy all that amount of water away off there at the sea. They haven't got no conveniences for it. Oh, I see now. You might have said that in the first place in safe time. When she said that I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was comfortable and glad, next she says, Do you go to church too? Yes, regular. Where do you sit? Well, in our pew. How's pew? Why, Arne, your uncle Harvey's. His… what does he want with a pew? Wanted to sit in. Why did you reckon he wanted with it? Well, I thought he'd be in the pulpit. Brought him. I forgot he was a preacher. I see I was up a stump again, so I played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says, Blame it, these oppose their ink but one preacher to a church. Why, what do they want with more? Why, to preach before a king? I never did see such a girl as you. They don't have no less than seventeen. Seventeen? My land. Why, I wouldn't set out such a string as that, not if I never got to glory. It mustn't take them a week. Shucks, they don't all of them preach the same day, only one of them. Well then, what does the rest of them do? Oh, nothing, lull around, pass the plate, and one thing or another, but mainly they don't do nothing. Well then, what are they there for? Why, they're for style. Don't you know nothing? Well, I don't want to know such foolishness as that. How is servants turn in England? Do they treat them better when we treat our niggers? No, a servant ain't nobody there. They treat them worse than dogs. They won't just give them holidays the way we do, Christmas and New Year's week and fourth of July. Oh, just listen, anybody could tell you ain't ever been to England by that.  Well, I was gone up again. I forgot I was the old man's servant, but next time I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was different from a common servant, and had to go to church whether he wanted to or not, and said with the family, an account of its being the law. But I didn't do it pretty good, and when I got done I see she wasn't satisfied. She says, honest engine. Now, ain't you been telling me a lot of lies? Honest engine, says I. None of it at all? None of it at all? Not a lie in it, says I. Lay your hand on this book and say it. I see it weren't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and said it. So then she looked a little better satisfied and says, well then I'll believe some of it, but I hoped gracious if I'll believe the rest. What is it you won't believe, Joe? says Mary Jane, stepping in with Susan behind her. It ain't right nor kind for you to talk so damn, and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be treated so? That's always your way, meme. Always sailing in to help somebody before they're hurt. I ain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers, I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow at all, and that's every bit and grain I did say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that. Can't he? Now I don't care whether it was little or whether it was big. He's here in our house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. If you was in his place, it would make you feel ashamed, and so you oughtn't to say a thing to another person that will make them feel ashamed. Well, ma'am, he said, I don't make no difference what he said. That ain't the thing.  That says to myself, this is a girl that I'm letting that old reptile rob her of her money. Then, Susan, she waltzed in, and if you'll believe me, she did give Hairlet Park from the tomb, says I to myself, and this is another one I'm letting him rob her of her money. Then, Mary Jane, she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely again, which was her way. But when she got done, there weren't hardly anything left but a poor hair lip. So she hollered. How right then, says the other girls, you just ask as pardon. She done it too, and she done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it was good to hear, and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies so she could do it again. That says to myself, this is another one that I'm letting him rob her of her money. And when she got through, they all just laid themselves out to make me feel at home and know I'm amongst friends. I felt so ornery and low down, and mean that I says to myself my friends made up. I'll hive that money for them or bust. So then I let out for bed, I said, meaning some time or another. When I got by myself, I went to thinking the thing over. I says to myself, shall I go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? No, that won't do. He might tell who told him, then the king and the duke would make it warm for me. Shall I go, private, and tell Mary Jane? No, I danced to do it. Her face would give them a hint. Sure, they forgot the money, and they'd slide right out and get with it. If she was to fetch and help, I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, I judge. No, there ain't no good way but one. I got to steal that money somehow, and I got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that I'd done it. They've got a good thing here, and they ain't going to leave till they've played this family and this town for all their worth. So I'll find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it, and buy and buy, when I'm away down the river, or write a letter until Mary Jane where it's hid. But I better hide it if I can, because the doctor maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has. He might scare them out of here yet. So, thanks I, I'll go and search them rooms. Upstairs the hall was dark, but I found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands. But I recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else take care of that money but his own self. So then I went to his room, then begun to paw around there. But I could see I couldn't do nothing without a candle, and I dassen't light one, of course. So I judged I got to do the other thing, lay them, and eavesdrop. About that time I hears their footsteps coming, and I was going to skip under the bed. I reached for it. But it wasn't where I thought it would be. But I touched the curtain that hid Mary Jane's frocks. So I jumped in behind that and snuggled in amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still.  Then I was glad I hadn't been and found the bed when I wanted it. And yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under the bed when you are up to anything private. They sets down then, and the king says, well, what is it? And cut it middling short, because it's better for us to be down there a whooping up in the morning than up here giving them a chance to talk us over. Well, this is Capet. The eye ain't comfortable. The doctor lays on my mind. I wanted to know your any lands. I've got an ocean, and I think it's a sound one. What is it, duke? That we better glide out of this before three in the morning and clip it down the river with what we've got. Especially seeing we got it so easy, given back to us, flogged at our hands, as you may say, when, of course, we allowed to have it to steal it back. I'm for knocking off and lighting out. That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would, it had been a little different, but it made me feel bad and disappointed. The king rips out and says, what, and not sell out the rest of the property, march off like a parcel of fools, and leave eight or nine thousand dollars worth of property laying around just suffering to be scooped in, and all good, salable stuff, too. The duke grumbled, said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want to go no deeper, didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of everything they had. Why, how you talk, says the king. We shan't rob them of nothing at all, but just this money. The people that buys the property is the sufferers, because as soon as it's found, we didn't own it, which won't be long after we've slid. The sale won't be valid, and it'll all go back to the estate. These your orphans, it'll get their house back again. And that's enough for them. They're young and spry, and kinesi are in eleven. They ain't going to suffer, I just think there's thousands and thousands that ain't nigh so well off.  Well, the king he talked him blind, so at last he gave in and said all right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that doctor hanging over them. But the king says, cost the doctor. What do we care for him? Ain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town? So they got ready to go downstairs again. The duke says, I don't think we put that money in a good place. That cheered me up. I began to think I weren't going to get a hint of no kind to help me. The king says, why? Because Mary Jane will be in mourning from this out, and first you know the nigger that does come up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up and put them away.  Your head's level again, duke, says the king, and he comes a fumbling of under the curtain, two or three foot from where I was. I snuck tight to the wall, and maybe still, though quivery, and I wondered what them fellows would say to me if they catched me. And I tried to think what I'd do better do if they did catch me. But the king, he got the bag before I could think more than about a half the thought, and he never suspicion I was round. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw-tick that was under the feather-bed, and crammed in a foot or two amongst the straw, and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up a feather-bed, and don't turn over the straw-tick only about twice a year. And so it weren't in no danger of getting stole now. But I knowed better. I had it out up there before they was half way downstairs. I dropped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I could get a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good ransacking. I know that very well. Then I turned in with my clothes all on, but I couldn't have gone to sleep if I had wanted to. I was in such a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king, the duke, come up. So I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But nothing did. So I held on till all the late sounds had quit, and the early ones hadn't begun yet. And then I slipped down the ladder. End of Chapter 26 Red by Elijah Fisher Chapter 27 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Chapter 27 I crept to their doors and listened. They were snoring, so I tiptoed along and got downstairs all right. There weren't a sound anywhere. I peeped through a crack of the dining room door, and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open. But I see there weren't nobody in there, but the remainders of Peter. So I shoved on by. But the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then I heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the parlor, and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his shroud on. I tucked the money bag in under the lid, just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep. They were so cold. Then I run back across the room and in behind the door. The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin very soft, and kneeled down and looked in. Then she put up her handkerchief. And I see she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. I slid out, and as I passed the dining room, I thought I'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me. So I looked through the crack, and everything was all right. They hadn't stirred. I slipped up to bed, feeling rather blue, on accounts of the thing playing out that way, after I had took so much trouble and run so much risk about it. Says I. If it could stay where it is all right, because when we get down the river a hundred mile or two, I could write back to Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it. But that ain't the thing that's going to happen. The thing that's going to happen is, the money will be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king will get it again, and it'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him. Of course, I wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but I doesn't try it. Every minute it was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I might get catched. Catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself. When I got downstairs in the morning the parlor was shut up and the watchers was gone. There weren't nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn't tell. Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they set up the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then set all our chairs in rows and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall and the parlor and the dining room was full. I see the coffin lid was the way it was before, but I doesn't go look in under it with folks around. Then the people began to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the people filed around slow and single rank and looked down at the dead man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent and sobbing a little. There weren't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church. When the place was packed full the undertaker, he slid around in his black gloves with his soft soothering ways, putting on the last touches and getting people and things all ship shape and comfortable and making no more sound than a cat. He never spoke. He moved people around, he squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways and done it with nods and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall. He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see, and there weren't no more smile to him than there is to a ham. They had borrowed a melodium, a sick one, and when everything was ready a young woman sat down and worked it, and it was pretty squeaky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the reverend hopson opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk, and straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard. It was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right along, the parson he had to stand there over the coffin and wait. You couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward and nobody didn't seem to know what to do, but pretty soon they see that long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much to say, don't you worry just depend on me. Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall just his shoulders showing over the people's heads, so he glided along and the pow wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time, and at last when he had gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar.  In a minute or two here comes the undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again, and so he glided and glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up and shaded his mouth with his hands and stretched his neck out towards the preacher over the people's head and says in a kind of course whisper, he had a rat. Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people because naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost nothing and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked. There weren't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was. Well the funeral sermon was very good, but parson long and tiresome, and when the king he shoved in and got some of the usual rubbish, and at last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the coffin with his screwdriver. I was in a sweat then and watched him pre-king, but he never meddled at all, just slid the lid along as soft as mush and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was. I didn't know whether the money was in there or not. So says I, suppose somebody has hogged that bag on the slide. Now how do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not? Suppose she dug him up and didn't find nothing. What would she think of me? Blame it, I says. I might get hunted up and jailed. I'd better lay low and keep dark and not write at all. The thing's awful mix now. Trying to better it, I've worsened it a hundred times and I wish the goodness I'd just left it alone. Dad fetched the whole business. They buried him and we came back home and I went to watch in faces again. I couldn't help it and I couldn't rest easy, but nothing came of it. The faces didn't tell me nothing. The king he visited round in the evening and sweetened everybody up and made himself ever so friendly. And he give out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody. They wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he said of course him and William would take the girls home with them, and that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations. And it pleased the girls too, tickled them so they clean forgot they ever had trouble in the world and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to and they would be ready. Them poor things was that glad and happy. It made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune. Well blamed that the king didn't build the house and the niggers and all the property for oxen straight off. Sailed two days after the funeral, but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to. So the next day after the funeral, along about noon time, the girls' joy got the first jolt.   I thought them poor girls and them niggers would break their hearts for grief. They cried around each other and took on so, most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they hadn't dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town. I can't ever get it out of my memory. The sight of them poor miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying and reckoned I couldn't have stood it at all, but would have had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't know the sale weren't no count and the niggers would be back home in a week or two. The thing made a big stir in the town too and a good many come out flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way. It injured the fraud some, but the old fool he bulled right along spite of all the Duke could say or do and I tell you the Duke was powerful uneasy. The next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and the Duke came up in the garret and woke me up and I see by their look that there was trouble. The king says was you in my room night before last know your majesty which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang weren't around was she in there yesterday or last night know your majesty honor bright now no lies honor bright your majesty I'm telling you the truth I ain't been in near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the Duke and showed it to you the Duke says have you seen anybody else go in there no your grace not as I remember I believe stop and think I studied a while and see my chance then I says well I see the niggers go in there several times both of them gave a little jump and look like they hadn't ever expected it and then like they had then the Duke says what all of them no least ways not all at once that is I don't think I ever seen them all come out at once but just one time hello when was that it was the day we had the funeral in the morning it weren't early because I overslept I was just starting down the ladder and I see them well go on go on what did they do how did they act they didn't do nothing they didn't act anyway much as far as I could see they tiptoed away so I seen easy enough that they shoved in there to do up your majesty's room or something supposing you was up found you weren't up and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up if they hadn't already wake you up great guns this is a ghost as the king and both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly they stood there a thinking and scratching their heads a minute and the Duke keep busting to a kind of little raspy chuckle and says ha it does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand they let on to be sorry they was going out of this region and I believe they was sorry and so did you and so did everybody don't ever tell me any more than a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent why the way they played that thing it would fool anybody in my opinion there's a fortune in them if I had capital in a theater I wouldn't want a better layout than that and here we've gone and sold them for a song yet and ain't privileged to sing the song yet say where is that song that draft in the bank for to be collected where would it be well that's all right then thank goodness says I kind of timid like is something going wrong the king whirls on me and rips out none of your business you keep your head shut and mind your own affairs if you got any long as you're in this town don't you forget that you hear then he says to the Duke we gotta just swallow it and say nothing mom's the word for us as they was starting down the ladder the Duke he chuckles again and says quick sales and small profits it's a good business yes the king snarls around on him and says I was trying to do for the best and selling them out so quick if the profits had turned out to be none lacking considerable and none to carry is it my fault more than his yarn well they'd be in this house yet and we wouldn't if I could have got my advice listened to the king sass back as much as was safe for him and then swapped around and led into me again he gave me down the banks for not coming and telling him I see the niggers coming out of his room acting that way said any fool would have known something was up and then walked in and cussed himself a while and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again so they went off a join and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it all off to the niggers and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it end of chapter 27 the adventures of huckleberry fin chapter 28 of the adventures of huckleberry fin this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org recording by linda mary nielson thank you for bc the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain chapter 28 by and by it was getting up time so I come down the ladder and started for downstairs but as I come to the girl's room the door was open and I see mary jane setting by her old hair trunk which was open and she'd been packing things in it getting ready to go to england but she had stopped now with a folded gown in her lap and had her face in her hands crying I felt awful bad to see it of course anybody would I went in there and says miss mary jane you can't bear to see people in trouble and I can't most always tell me about it so she done it and it was the niggers I just expected it she said the beautiful trip to england was most about spoiled for her she didn't know how she was ever going to be happy there knowing the mother and the children weren't ever going to see each other no more and then busted out bitterer than ever and flung up her hands and says oh dear to think they ain't ever going to see each other anymore but they will and inside of two weeks and I know it says I laws it was out before I could think and before I could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again say it again say it again I see I had spoke to sudden and said too much and was in a close place I asked her to let me think a minute and she said there very impatient and excited and handsome but looking kind of happy and eased up like a person that's had a tooth pulled out so I went to studying it out I says to myself I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is in a tight place is taking considerable many risks though I ain't had no experience and can't say for certain but it looks so to me anyway and yet here's a case where I'm blessed if it don't look to me like the truth is better and actually safer than a lie I must lay it by in my mind and think it over sometime or other it's so kind of strange and unregular I never see nothing like it well I says to myself at last I'm a going to chance it I'll up and tell the truth this time though it does seem most like setting down on a keg of powder and touching it off just to see where you'll go to then I says Miss Mary Jane is there any place out of town a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days yes mr. Lawthrops why never mind why yet if I'll tell you how I know the dingers will see each other again inside of two weeks here in this house and prove how I know it will you go to mr.  Lothrop's or oh she says what am I thinking about she says and set right down again don't mind what I said please don't you won't now will you laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first I never thought I was so stirred up she says now go on and I won't do so anymore you tell me what to do and whatever you say I do it well I says it's a rough game them two frauds and I'm fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer whether I want to or not I'd rather not tell you why and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws and I'd be all right but they'd be another person you don't know about who would be in big trouble well we got to save him ain't we of course well then we won't blow on them saying them words put a good idea in my head I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds get them jailed here and then leave but I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me so I didn't want the plan to begin working till pretty late tonight I says Miss Mary Jane I'll tell you what we'll do and you won't have to stay at Mr. Lawnthrope so long another how fur is it a little short of four miles right out in the country back here well that's the answer now you go along out there and lay low till nine or half past tonight and then get them to fetch you home again tell them you thought of something if you get here before eleven put a candle in this window and if I don't turn up wait till eleven and then if I don't turn up it means I'm gone and out of the way and safe then you come out and spread the news around and get these beats jailed good she says I'll do it and if it just happens so that I don't get away but get took up along with them you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand and you must stand by me all you can stand by you indeed I will they shan't touch a hair of your head she says and I see her nostril spread and her eyes snap when she said it too if I get away I shan't be here I says to prove these rapschillions ain't your uncles and I couldn't do it if I was here I could swear they was beats and bummers that's all though that's worth something well there's others can do that better than what I can and there are people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be I'll tell you how to find them give me a pencil and a piece of paper there royal none such bricksville put it away and don't lose it when the court wants to find out something about these two let them send up to bricksville and say they've got the men that played the royal none such and ask for some witnesses why you'll have that entire town down here before you can hardly wink miss mary and they'll come a billing to I judged we had got everything fixed about right now so I says just let the auction go right along and don't worry nobody don't have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on accounts of the short notice and they ain't gone out of this till they get that money and the way we fixed it the sale ain't going to count and they ain't going to get no money it's just like the way it was with the niggers it weren't no sale and the niggers will be back before long why they can't collect the money for the niggers yet they're in the worst kind of a fix miss mary well she says I'll run down to breakfast now and then I'll start straight for mr. Lothrop's deed that ain't the ticket miss mary jane I says by no manner of means go before breakfast why what did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for miss mary well I never thought and come to think I don't know what was it why it's because you ain't one of those leather face people I don't want no better book than what your face is a body can sit down and read it off like course print do you reckon you can go and face your uncles when they come to kiss you good morning and never they're there don't yes I'll go before breakfast I'll be glad to and leave my sisters with them yes never mind about them they've got to stand it yet a while they might suspicion something if all of you was to go I don't want you to see them nor your sisters nor nobody in this town if a neighbor was to ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something no you go right along miss mary jane and I'll fix it with all of them I'll tell miss susan to give your love to your uncles and say you went away for a few hours to get a little rest and change or to see a friend and you'll be back tonight or early in the morning gone to see a friend is all right but I won't have my love given to them well then it shan't be it was well enough to tell her so no harm in it it was only a little thing to do and no trouble and it's the little things that smooth people's roads the most down here below it would make mary jane comfortable and it wouldn't cost nothing then I says there's one more thing that bag of money well they've got that and it makes me feel pretty silly to think how they got it no you're out there they ain't got it why who's got it I wish I knowed but I don't I had it because I stole it from them and I stole it to give to you and I know where I hid it but I'm afraid it ain't there no more I'm awfully sorry miss mary jane I'm just as sorry as I can be but I done the best I could I did honest I come not getting caught and I had to shove it into the first place I came to and run and it weren't a good place oh stop blaming yourself is too bad to do it and I won't allow it you couldn't help it it wasn't your fault where did you hide it I didn't want to set her thinking about her troubles again and I couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see the corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach so for a minute I didn't say nothing then I says I'd rather not tell you where I put it miss mary jane if you don't mind letting me off but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper and you can read it along the road to mr. Lothrop's if you want to do you reckon that'll do oh yes so I wrote I put it in the coffin it was in there when you were crying there away in the night I was behind the door and I was mighty sorry for you miss mary jane it made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by herself in the night and then devils laying there right under her own roof shaming her and robbing her and when I folded it up and gave it to her I see the water come into her eyes too and she shook me by the hand hard and says goodbye I'm going to do everything just as you told me and if I don't ever see you again I shan't ever forget you and I'll think of you of many and and many time and I'll pray for you too and she was gone pray for me I reckon if she knowed me she take a job that was more nearer her size but I bet she'd done it just the same she was just that kind she had the grit to pray for Judas if she took the notion there weren't no back down to her I judge you may say what you want to but in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see in my opinion she was just full of sand it sounds like flattery but it ain't no flattery and when it comes to beauty and goodness too she lays over them all I ain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go out of that door no I ain't ever seen her since but I reckon I thought of her a many and a many million times and of her saying she would pray for me and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me to pray for her blamed if I wouldn't have done it or bust well Mary Jane she let out the back way I reckon because nobody see her go when I struck Susan and the hair lip I says what's the name of them people or the other side of the river that you all goes to see sometimes they says there's several but it's the proctors mainly that's the name I says I most forgot well Miss Mary Jane she told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry one of them sick which one I don't know these ways I kind of forgot but I think it's sakes alive I hope it ain't Hannah I am sorry to say it I says but Hannah's the very one my goodness and she's so well only last week is she took bad it ain't no name for it they set up with her all night Miss Mary Jane said and they don't think she'll last many hours only think of that now what's the matter with her I couldn't think of anything reasonable right off that way so I says mumps mumps your granny they don't set up with people that's got the mumps they don't don't they you better bet they do with these mumps these mumps is different it's a new kind Miss Mary Jane said how's it a new kind because it's mixed up with other things what other things while measles and whooping cough and eras dipolis and consumption and yellow jaunders and brain fever and I don't know what all my land and they call it the mumps that's what Miss Mary Jane said well what in the nation do they call it the mumps for why because it is the mumps that's what it starts with well there ain't no sense in it a body might stump his toe and take pisson and fall down the well and break his neck and bust his brains out and somebody come along and ask what killed him and some numbskill up and say why he stumped his toe wouldn't there be any sense in that no and there ain't no sense in this neither is it catching is it catching why how you talk is a harrow catching in the dark if you don't hitch on to one tooth you're bound to on another ain't you and you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole harrow along can you well these kinds of mumps is a kind of harrow as you may say and it ain't no slouch of a harrow another you come to get it hitched on good well it's awful I think says the hair lip I'll go to uncle Harvey and oh yes I says I would of course I would I wouldn't lose no time well why wouldn't you just look at it a minute and maybe you can see ain't your uncles obliged to get a long home to England as fast as they can and do you reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that journey by yourselves you know they await for you so fur so good your uncle Harvey's a preacher ain't he very well then is a preacher going to deceive a steamboat clerk is he going to deceive a ship clerk so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard now you know he ain't what will he do then well he'll say it's a great pity but my church matters has got to get along the best way they can for my niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus on numb mumps and so it is my bold and duty to sit down here and wait the three months it takes to show on her if she's got it but never mind if you think it's best to tell your uncle Harvey shucks and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane got it or not why you talk like a muggins well anyway maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors listen at that now you do beat all for natural stupidness can't you see that they'd go and tell there ain't no way but just to not tell anybody at all well maybe you're right yes I judge you are right but I reckon we ought to tell uncle Harvey she's gone out a while anyway so he won't be uneasy about her yes miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that she says tell them to give uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss and say I've run over the river to see mr mr what is the name of that rich family your uncle Peter used to think so much of I mean the one that why you must mean the upthorps ain't it of course bother them kind of names a body can't ever seem to remember them half the time somehow yes she said say she has run over to ask for the upthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house because she's allowed her uncle Peter would rather they had it than anybody else and she's going to stick to them till they say they come and then if she ain't too tired she's coming home and if she is she'll be home in the morning anyway she said don't say nothing about the proctors but only about the upthorps which shall be perfectly true because she is going there to speak about their buying the house I know it because she told me herself all right they said and cleared out to lay for their uncles and give them the love and the kisses and tell them the message everything was all right now the girls wouldn't say nothing because they wanted to go to England and the King and the Duke would rather Mary Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Dr. Robinson I felt very good I judged I had done it pretty neat I reckon Tom Sawyer couldn't have done it no neater himself of course he would have thrown more style into it but I can't do that very handy not being brung up to it well they held the auction in the public square along towards the end of the afternoon and it strung along and strung along and the old man he was on hand and looking his level pacenist up there alongside of the auctioneer and chipping in a little scripture now and then or a little goody goody saying of some kind and the Duke he was around goo gooing for sympathy all he knowed how and just spreading himself generally but by and by the thing dragged through and everything was sold everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard so they'd got to work that off I never see such a giraffe as the king was for wanting to swallow everything well whilst they was at it a steamboat landed and in about two minutes up comes a crowd of whooping and yelling and laughing and carrying on and sinking out here's your opposition line here's your two sets or airs to old Peter Wilkes and you pays your money and you takes your choice end of chapter 28 recording by Linda Marie Nielsen Vancouver BC chapter 29 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 the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 29 they was fetching a very nice looking old gentleman along in a nice looking younger one with his right arm in a sling and my 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 reckon they'd turn pale but no nary a pale they did the Duke he never let on as he's suspicion what was up but just went a goo gooing around happy and satisfied like a joke that's googling out buttermilk and as for the King he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful on them newcomers like it give him in 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 around 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 prounced like an Englishman not the King's way though the King's was pretty good for an invitation I can't give the old gents words nor I can imitate him but he turned around the crowd and says about like this this is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for and all acknowledged candid and frank I ain't very well fixed to meet it and answer it for my brother and 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 brother Harvey and this is his brother William which can't hear nor speak and can't even make signals to amount too much now he's only got one hand to work 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 leathers out broke his arm very likely ain't it and very convenient too or a frauds that got too many signs and ain't learned how was 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 have he doesn't one of these 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 of the steamboat and was talking to him in a little voice and glancing towards the King now and then and nodding their heads it was Levy 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 looky here if you are Harvey Wilkes and you'd come to this town the day before the funeral friends says the King but what time a day in the evening about an hour or two before sundown how would you come I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati well then how would you come up to be at the pint in the morning in a canoe I weren't up at the pint in the morning it's a lot several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an old man and a preacher preacher be hanged he's a fraud and a liar he was up at the pint that morning I live up there don't die well I was up there and he was up there I see him there becoming a canoe along with Tim Collins and a boy the doctor he up and says who'd you know the boy again if he was to see him hands I reckon I would but I don't know why younger he is now I know him perfectly easy it was me he pointed at the doctor says neighbors I don't know whether the couple is frauds or not but 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 hands come along the rest of you we'll take these fellas to the tavern and affront them with the other couple and I reckon we'll find out something before we get through it was not for the crowd though maybe not for the king's friends so we all started it was about sundown the doctor he let me along by the hand and was plenty kind enough but he never let go 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 complexes maybe we don't know what it's about if they have won't the calm places get away with that big gold peter wilkes left it ain't unlikely if these men ain't frauds they won't object to sending for that money then letting us keep it till they prove they're right ain't that so everybody agreed to that so I judge they had our gang in a pretty tight place right at the out start but the king he only looks sorrowful and says gentlemen I wish the money was there her ain't got no disposition to throw anything in the way of a fear open out and out investigation all 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 and hit it oh the straw to go my bed now wishing to bank it for the few days we'd be here but considering the bed a safe place we're not being used to niggers and supposing and mom is like servants in England the niggers still at 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 and several said shucks and I see nobody didn't altogether 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 not only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them there was all they asked about me then the doctor rolls 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 never 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 his and anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would have seen that the old gentleman was spinning truth and the other one lies and by and by they had me up to tell what I know the king he give me a left-handed look out of the corner of his eye so I know it enough to talk on the right side I began to tell about Sheffield and how we lived there and all about the English Wilkes's and so on but he didn't get pretty far till the doctor began to laugh then let me bell the lawyer says sit down my boy I won't strain myself if I was you I reckon you ain't used to lying that don't seem to come handy what you want is practice you did 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 lovey bill the king broke out and and reached out his hand and says what is this my four dead brothers old friend that he's wrote so often about the lawyer and him shook hands and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased and they talked right along a while and then got to one side and talk now and at last the lawyer speaks up and says I'll fix it I'll take the order and send it along with your brothers and they'll know it's all right so they got some paper and a pen and the king he sat down and twisted his head to one side and chawed his tongue and scrawled off something and then they give 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 could 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 hand writings and anybody can see they didn't write them the king and the duke looked so old and foolish I tell you to see how the lawyer had took them in and here'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 yeah says the lawyer this is a state of things I've got some of williams letters too so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can come he can't write with his left hand says the old gentleman and if he could use his right hand you would see that he wrote his own letters in mine too look at both please they're by the same hand the lawyer done it and says I believe it so and if it ain't so there's a heap stronger resemblance that I'd noticed before anyway well well I thought we was right on track of a solution but it's gone to grass partly but anyway one thing it's proved these ain't either of them wilks's and he waged his head towards the king and the duke well what do you think the mule headed old foo one gift and then indeed he went said it weren't no fair test said his brother william was the cussidist 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 whirling and whirling right along till he was actually beginning to believe what he was saying himself but pretty soon the new gentleman broken and says I've thought of something is there anybody here that helped to lay out by help to lay out the late peter wilks for burying yes says somebody me and abturner done it we're both here the old man turns around 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 or he'd squished himself down like a bluff bank that a river has cut under it took him so sudden and mind you it was a thing that was calculated to make most anybody's squish to get fetched 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 on there and everybody bending the 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 thin out and him and the Duke could break loose and get away anyway he's set 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 card 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 Wilkes's breast both of them spoke up and says we didn't see no such mark good says the old gentleman now what did you see on his breast was a small P and a B which is the initial he dropped when he was young and a W with dashes between them so PB 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 villain of them frauds let's stuck them let's drown them let's ride them on a rail and everybody was swooping 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 there's one way yet let's go and dig up the corpse and look that took them hooray they all shouted and was starting right off but the lawyer and the doctor sung out hold on hold on call 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 inch the whole game I was scared now I tell you but there weren't no getting away you know the 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 wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town because now I could tip her the wink she'd laid out and save me and blow on our dead beets well we formed along down the river road just carrying on like wildcats and to make it more scary this guy was darking up and the lightning beginning to wink and flitter in the wind to shiver amongst the leaves this was the most awful trouble and most dangerous some I ever was in and I was kinder stun 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 from the close fit to come here was nothing in the world that tweaks 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 I'd got darker and darker and it was 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 goalie or the slip he dragged me right along he was so excited and 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 that he 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 the man to the nearest house a half a mile off to borrow one so they dug and dug like everything and it got awful dark and the rain started and the wind swished and swushed along and the lightning hum brisker and brisker and the thunder boomed and then people never took no notice of it they were so full of this business and one minute you could see everything and every face in that big crowd and the shovelfuls of dirt sealing 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 of the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid and then such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was to scrowge in and get a sight you never see and in the dark that way it was awful Heinz he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so and I reckon he clean forgot I was in the world he was so excited and panting all of a sudden the lightning let a go perfect sluice of white glare and somebody sings out by the living jingo here's the bank of gold on his breast Heinz let out a whoop like everybody else and dropped my wrist and gave a big surge to bust in his way in and good luck and the way I let out and shined for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can't 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 now and then glares and the buzzing of the rain and the thrashing of the red 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 baxeries 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 don't know why but at last just as I was sailing by the 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 it 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 I could make the town I began to look sharp for 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 towhead was a rattling big distance off the way out there in the middle of the river but I didn't lose no time and when I struck the raft as last I was so fag I would just lay down to blow and graft if I could afford it but I didn't as I sprung aboard I sung out out with you Jim and center loose glory beaded goodness were shut of them Jim lit out and was a coming for me with both arms spread he was so full of joy but I mean he glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up and my mouth and I went overboard backwards for I forgot he was old king layer 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 shut of the king and 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 but it did seem to be so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us I just skip around a bit and jump up and to crack my heels a few times I couldn't help it but about the third crack I noticed a sound that I know it might be 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 delaying 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 and it was all I could do to keep from crying and of chapter 29 red by Elijah Fisher chapter 30 of huckleberry fin this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org the adventures of huckleberry fin by mark twain chapter 30 when they got aboard the king went for me and shook me by the collar and says trying to give us the slip was he you pop tired of our company hey I says no your majesty we weren't please don't your majesty quick then and tell us what was your idea I'll shake the insides out of you honest I'll tell you everything just as it happened your majesty the man that had a hold of 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 or they'll hang me sure and I let out I 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 afraid you and the Duke wasn't alive now and I was awful sorry and so was Jim and that 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 reckoned he drowned me but the Duke says look oh 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'd better a blame sight you give yourself a good cussing for you're the one that entitled to it most you ain't done a thing from the start that had any sense in it except coming out so cool and cheeky with that imaginary blue arrow mark that was bright it was right down bully and it was the thing that saved us there if it hadn't been for that they'd jailed us till the Englishman's baggage come and then the penitentiary you bet but that trick took him to the graveyard and the gold done us a stool back greater kindness for if the excited fools hadn't let go all holds and made that rush to get the look we slept in a Kravitz tonight Kravitz weren't it too weird too longer than we need them they was still a minute thinking then the king says kind of absent minded like and we'd reckon the niggers stole it that made me squirm yes says the Duke kinder slow and deliberative sarcastic we did after about a half 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 rustles ruffles up and says look here billy water what are you referring to the Duke says pretty brisk when he comes to that maybe you let me ask but was you referring to shucks says the king very sarcastic but I don't know maybe you was asleep and didn't know what he was about the Duke crystals up now and says oh let it up this cuss of nonsense do you take me for a blame fool don't you reckon I know who hid that money in the coffin yes sir I know you do know because you've done it yourself it's a lie then the Duke went for him the king seems out take your hands off let go my throat I take it all back the Duke says well he was just stoned up first that you did hide that money there intending to give me the slip one of these days and come back and gave 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'll believe you and take back everything I said you old scantral I didn't and you know I did they are now well then I believe you but answered me only just this once 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 in 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 done it I wish I never die if I'd done it Duke that's honest I won't say I weren't going to 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 grasps out no I own up I was very glad to hear him 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 set there a then blubber like a baby it's written for you after the way you've acted I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything and I trust in you all the time like you was my own father you ought to have been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot of poor niggers and you never see a word for him he makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to believe that rubbish cost you I can see now why you were so anxious to make up the deficit you wanted to get what money I got out of a non-such and one thing or another and I'll scoop it all the king says timid and still a snuffling my Duke was who's that 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 the Duke and now you see what you got by it you've got all their own money back and all armed by a shekel or two besides long to bed and don't you deficit me no more deficits long as you live so the king sneaked into the wig warm and took off to his bottle for comfort and before long the Duke tackled his bottle and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again and the tighter they got the loving where 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 bag again that made me feel easy and satisfied of course when they got to snoring we had a long gavel and I told Jim everything end of chapter 30 read by Elijah Fisher chapter 31 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 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain chapter 31 We doesn't stop 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 and 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 practiced them out of town another time they tried to go at yellow cushion but they didn't yellow cute long until the audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them skip out they tackled misionering 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 laid around the raft as she floated along thinking and thinking and never sing nothing by the half a 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 worse diviltry 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 the 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 shabby village named pikesville and the king he went to shore 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 nonsuch there yet house to rob you mean says i to myself and when you get through robbing it you'll come back here and wonder what has become of me and jib and the raft and you'll have to take it out and wondering and he said if you weren't back by midday the duke and me would know it was all right so 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 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 raking him for sport and he a cussing and a threading 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 raves out of my hind legs and spun down the river road like a deer for i see our chance i made up my mind that it would be a long day before they ever see me in jim again i got down there all out of breath but loaded up with joy and sung out set her loose jim we're all right now but there weren't no answer and nobody came 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 weren't no use old jim was gone then i sat down and cried i couldn't help it but i couldn't sit 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 as i down to sylas phelps place two miles below there he's a runaway nigger and they got him was he looking for him you bet i ain't i went across him in the woods about an hour or two ago and he said if i hollered he'd cut off my levers out and told me to lay down and stay where i was and i done it then there ever since a free to come out 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 who is 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'd bet i'd wait if it was seven year that's me every time says i but maybe his chains 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 string 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 siri bob there ain't no trouble about that speculation you that you stay give me a chat backer won't you i didn't have none so he left i went to the raft and sat down in the web mom to think but i couldn't come to nothing i thought till i wore my head store but i couldn't see no way out of trouble after all this long journey and after we'd done for them scoundrels here it was all to come to nothing everything all bustled up and ruined because they could have the heart to serve jim as such a trick is that i make him a slave again all his life and among 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 soyer 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 knicker and they'd make jim feel it all the time and so he'd feel runny and disgraced and then think of me it would get all around that huck fen helped the knicker 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 in ornery it got to feeling and at last when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plane 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 will stay was dealing a poor old woman's knicker that hadn't ever done no harm to me and now was showing me there's one that always is on the lookout and ain't it going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so far and no further i most dropped in my tracks i was so scared well i tried the best i could to kindersoft up somehow for myself by saying i was brought up wicked and so i wasn't so much to blame but something inside of me kept saying that it was a sunday school you could have gone to it and if you'd done it they'd learned you there that people that acts as i'd been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire it made me shiver and i about made up my mind to pray and see if i couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy i was and be better so i kneeled down but the words one come why wouldn't they it weren't no use to try and 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 ups in 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 go right to that nigger's owner and tell where he was but deep down in me i know it was lie and he noted you can't pray 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 this was 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 mrs watson your runaway nigger jim is down here two miles below pikesville and mr felps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send huck finn i felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time i had ever felt so in my life and i know what i could pray now but i didn't do it straight off but leave the paper down and set their thinking thinking how good it was all this happened so and how near i came 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 night time sometimes moonlight sometimes storms and we 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 me a 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 smallpox 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 happened to look around and see that paper it was a close place i took it up and held it in my hand i was a trembling because i'd got to decide forever between 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 then tore it up it was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said and i let them stay set 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 brought up to it and the other warrant and first 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 said to thinking over how to get at it and turned over some 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 of peace and as soon as it was fairly dark i crept out of the raft and went for it and hid it there and then i turned in i slept the night through and got up before it was in the light and had my breakfast and put on my store clothes and tied up some others and one thing or another in a bundle and took the canoe and cleared for sure and 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 wanted her about a quarter of a mile below the stream saw mill that was on the bank then i struck up the road and when i passed the mill i see a sign of it phelps saw mill and when i come to the farmhouses two or three hundred yards further along i kept my eyes peeled but didn't see in 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 for a bill for the royal nonsuch three night performance like that other time they had the cheek them frauds i was right on him before i could shirk he looked astonished and said hello where'd you come from then he says kind of glad and eager where's the raft got her in a good place says why that's just what i was going to ask you grace then he didn't look so joyful and says what was your idea for asking me he says well says i when i see the king and that doggery yesterday i says to myself we can't get him home for hours till he's sober or so i went to loafing around town to put in the time and weight 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 he was dragging him to the boat and the man left me a halt of the row and went behind him to shove him along he was too strong for me and tricked 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 were tired him out we never got him till dark and 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 gotten to 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 and got forty dollars and when we found him in the doggery well his had marched half dollars with him and got every cent that what he'd spent for whiskey and when i got him home last night he 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 come to consider him earlier 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 nonset another shake and i've pegged along 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 more because it was all the money i had and i hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday he never said nothing the minute he worlds on me and says 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 thing sold him and never divided with me and the money's gone sold him i says and began to cry 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'd 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 churn out and find my nigger he looked kinder bothered and stood there with his bills spluttering on his arm thinking and wrinkling up his forehead at last he says i'll tell you something i 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 salis then 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 reckon 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 mile 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 in order to any grabbing on the way but just keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along and then you won't get into trouble with us did 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 cleared 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 handbill on the rewards bogus maybe who believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting him out go along now and tell him anything you want to but mind you won't work your jaw any between here and there so i left and struck for the back country i didn't look around and i kind of felt like he was watching me but i know i could tire him out at that i went straight on in the country as much as a mile before i stopped then i doubled back through the woods towards felps i reckoned i better start it on my plan 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 32 red by elijah fischer