This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. CHAPTER XXXVI. As soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night, we went down the lightning rod and shut ourselves up in the lean-to and got out our pile of foxfire and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said we was right behind Jim's bed now and we'd dig in under it, and when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know that there was any hole there, because Jim's counterpin hung down most of the ground and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. So we dug and dug with the case knives till most midnight, and then we was dog-tired and our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything hardly. At last I says, This ain't no thirty-seven year job, this is a thirty-eight year job, Tom Sawyer. He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking. Then he says, It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't a gonna work. If we was prisoners it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted and no hurry. And we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig every day while there was changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could keep it up right along year in and year out, and do it right, and the way it ought to be done. But we can't fool along, we got the rush, we ain't got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well. Couldn't touch a case knife with them sooner. Well, then what are we going to do, Tom? I'll tell you. It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't like it to get out. But there ain't only just the one way. We got to dig him out with the picks and let on its case knives. Now you're talkin', I says. Your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, Tom Sawyer, I says. Picks is the thing, moral or no moral. And as for me I don't care shucks for the morality of it, no how.   And if it picks the handiest thing, that's the thing I'm going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday school book out with.  Well, he says, There's excuse for picks and let on in a case like this. If it weren't so I wouldn't approve of it. Nor I wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke. Because right is right and wrong is wrong.  It might answer for you to dig Jim out with a pick, without any letting on, because you don't know no better. But it wouldn't for me because I do know better. Give me a case knife. He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down and says, Give me a case knife. I didn't know just what to do, but then I thought. I scratched round amongst the old tools and got a pickaxe and give it to him. And he took it, went to work and never said a word. He was always just that particular, full of principle. So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turned about, made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up. But we had a good deal of a hole to show for it. When I got upstairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doin' his level best with the lightnin' rod. But he couldn't come it, his hands was so sore. At last he says, It ain't no use, it can't be done. What you reckon I better do? Can't you think of no way? Yes, I says. But I reckon it ain't regular. Come up the stairs and let on its lightnin' rod. So he done it. Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles, and I hung around the nigger-cavins and laid for a chance and stole three tin plates. Tom says it wasn't enough, but I said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel and gymson weeds under the window-hole. Then we could tote them back and he could use them all over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then he says, Now the thing to study out is how to get the things to Jim. Take them in through the hole, I says, when we get it done.  By and by he said he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide on any of them yet. Said we got to post Jim first. That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard Jim snoring, so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. Then we whirled in with a pick and shovel, and about two hours and a half the job was done. We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin, and pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim a while, and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried, and called us honey, and all the pet names he could think of, and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away, and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how unregular it would be, and sat down and told him all about our plans, and how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm, and not to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, sure. So Jim he said it was all right, and we sat there and talked over old times a while. And then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and have plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says, Now I know how to fix it. We'll send you some things by them. I said, Don't do nothing of the kind. It's one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck. But he never paid no attention to me, went right on. It was his way when he got his plans set. So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the lookout and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them. And we would put small things in Uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out. And we would tie things to Aunt's apron strings, or put them in her apron pocket if we got a chance, and told him what they would be and what they was for, and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he couldn't see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and no better than him, so he was satisfied and said he would do it all just as Tom said. Jim had plenty corn cob pipes and tobacco, so we had a right-down good sociable time. Then we crawled out through the hole and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they'd been charred. Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life and the most intellectual, and said if we only could see his way to it, we would keep it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out, for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out to as much as eighty years, and would be the best time on record, and he said it would make us all celebrated that it had a hand in it. In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them in the pewter spoon in his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a corn-pone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble. When Jim bit into it, it most smashed all his teeth out, and there weren't ever anything could have worked better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, you know. But after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into at three or four places first. And whilst we was astounded there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed, and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there weren't hardly room in there to get your breath. By jings we forgot to fasten that lean-to door. The nigger Nat he only just hollered witches once and keeled over on to the floor amongst the dogs and begun to groan like he was dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door. And I know that he fixed the other door too. Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. He raised up and blinked his eyes around and says, Mars said you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't believe I see most a million dogs or devils or something I wish I may die right here in these tracks. I did most surely. Mars said I felt him. I felt him, sir. They was all over me. Dad fetch it. I just wished I could get my hands on one of them witches just once. Only just once. That's all I'd ask. But mostly I wish they'd leave me alone. I does. Tom says, Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this runaway nigger's breakfast time? It's because they're hungry. That's the reason. You make them a witch pie. That's the thing for you to do. But my lamb Mars said how's I going to make them a witch pie. I don't know how to make it. I ain't ever hearing of such a thing before. Well then I'll have to make it myself. Will you do it, honey? Will you? I'll worship the ground on your foot. I will. All right. I'll do it.  But you've got to be mighty careful. When we come around you turn your back. And then whatever we've put in the pan don't you let on. You see it at all. And don't you look when Jim unloads the pan. Something might happen. I don't know what. And above all don't you handle the witch things. Handle them, Mars said. What is you talking about? I wouldn't lay the weight of my finger on them. Not for ten hundred thousand billion dollars I wouldn't. End of chapter. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. CHAPTER XXXVII. That was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbish pile in the backyard, where they keep the old boots and rags and pieces of bottles, and wore out tin things and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin wash pan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast. And I found a couple of shingle nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and drop one of them in Aunt Sally's apron pocket which was hanging on a chair, and the other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silas's hat which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped a pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come yet, so we had to wait a little while. And when she came she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait for the blessing. And then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand, and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other, and says, I've hunted high, and I've hunted low, and it does beat all what has become of your other shirt. My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn crust started down my throat after it, and got met on the road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-woop. And Tom, he turned kind of blue around the gills, and all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute, or as much as that. And I would have sold out for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right again. It was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly well I took it off, because you ain't got but one on. Just listen at the man. I know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gathering memory, too, because it was on the clothesline yesterday. I see it there myself. But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have to change to a red flannel one till I can get time to make a new one. And it'll be the third I've made in two years. It just keeps the body on the jump to keep you in shirts. And whatever you do manage to do with them all is more than I can make out. A body think you would learn to take some sort of care of them at your time of life. I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be all together my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me. And I don't believe I've ever lost one of them off of me.  You'd have done it if you could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone another. There's a spoon gone. And that ain't all. There was ten, and now there's only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon. That's certain. Why, what else is gone, Sally? There's six candles gone. That's what. The rats could have got the candles, and I reckon they did. I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it.  You'd never find it out. But you can't lay the spoon on the rats, and that I know. Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it. I've been remiss, but I won't let tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes. Oh, I wouldn't hurry. Next year, oldu. Matilda Angelina are meant to phelps. Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger-woman steps on to the passage and says, Mrs., there's a sheet gone. A sheet gone? Well, for the land's sake. I'll stop up them holes today, says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.  Suppose the rats took the sheet? Where's it gone, Silas? Glad to goodness I ain't no notion, Miss Sally. She was on the close line yesterday, but she done gone. She ain't dead no more now. I reckon the world is coming to an end. I never see the beat of it my all my born days. A shirt and a sheet, and a spoon, and six kent, Mrs., comes a young yaller wench. There's a brass candlestick missing. Clear out from here, you hussy. I'll take a skillet to you. Well, she was just a-boiling. I begun to lay for a chance. I reckon I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She kept the raging ride along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet. And at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped with her mouth open and her hands up, and as for me I wished I was in Jerusalem or somewheres. But not long, because she says, It's just as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time, and like it's not, you've got the other things there, too. How do you get there? I really don't know, Sally. He says, kind of apologizing. Or you know I would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts 17 before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my testament in. And it must be so, because my testament ain't in. But I'll go and see. And if the testament is where I had it, I'll know I didn't put it in.  Go long now, the whole kitten balling of you, and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my peace of mind. I'd have heard her if she'd have said it to herself, let alone speaking it out. And I'd have got up and obeyed her if I'd have been dead. As we was passing through the setting-room, the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says, well, it ain't no use to send things by him no more, he ain't reliable. Then he says, but he'd done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without him knowing it, stop up his rat-holes. There was a noble good lot of them down-seller, and it took us a whole hour, but we'd done the job tight and good in ship-shape. Then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid, and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in the other, looking as absent-minded as year before last. He went a-mooning around, first to one rat-hole, and then another, till he'd been to them all. Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallard-drip off of his candle and thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying, Well, well, for the life of me I can't remember when I'd done it. I could show her now that I want to blame on account of the rats, but never mind. Let it go. I reckon he wouldn't do no good. And so he went on a-mumbling upstairs, and then we left. He was a mighty nice old man, and always is. Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said we got to have it. So he took a think. When he had siphored it out, he told me how we was to do. Then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till we see Aunt Sally coming. And then Tom went to count in the spoons and lay in them out to one side, and I slid one of them up my sleeve, and Tom says, Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons yet. She says, Go along to your play, and don't bother me. I know better. I counted them myself. Well, I've counted them twice, Auntie, and I can't make but nine. She looked out of all patience, but, of course, she'd come to count anybody would. I declare to gracious there ain't but nine. She says, Why, what in the world? Play, take the things. I'll count them again. So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she says, Hang the troublesome rubbish. There's ten now. And she looked huffy and bothered both. But Tom says, Why, Auntie, I don't think there's ten. You numbskull, didn't you see me count them? I know, but, well, I'll count them again. So I smooched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well, she was in a tearing way, just a trembling all over. She was so mad. But she counted, and counted till she got that addled she'd start counting the basket four spoons sometimes. And so three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she grabbed up the basket and slammed it across the house, and knocked the cat galley west. And she said, Clear out, and let her have some peace. And if we come bothering round her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us. So we had the odd spoon and dropped it in her apron pocket while she was giving us our saline orders. And Jim got it all right, along with her shinglenail, before noon. We was very well satisfied with this business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took. Because he said now she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save her life, and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she did. And said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days, he judged she'd give it up and offered to kill anybody that wanted her to ever count them any more. So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her closet, and kept on putting it back, and stealing it again for a couple of days, till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more, and she didn't care, and weren't it going to bully rag the rest of her soul out about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life, but she'd rather die first. So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed up counting, and as to the candlestick it warn't no consequence it would blow over by and by. But that pie was a job. We had no end of trouble with that pie. We fixed it up away down in the woods and cooked it there, and we got it done at last, and very satisfactory too, but not all in one day, and we had to use up three washpans full of flour before we got through, and we got burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with a smoke, because you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course we thought of the right way at last, which was to cook the latter two in the pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore up the sheet all in little strings, and twisted them together, and long before daylight we had a lovely rope that you could have hung a person with. We let on it took nine months to make it. And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into the pie. Being made of a whole sheet that way, there was roping up for forty pies if we'd wanted them, and plenty left over for soup or sausage or anything you choose. We could have had a whole dinner. But we didn't need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed the rest away. We didn't cook none of the pies in the washpan. Afraid the solder would melt. But Uncle Silas he had a noble brass warming pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged to one of his ancestors, with a long wooden handle that come over from England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower, or one of them early ships, and was hit away up Garrett with a lot of other old pots and things that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they weren't, but on account of them being relics, you know. And we snaked her out private, and took her down there. But she failed on the first pies, because we didn't know how. But she come up smiling on the last one.  But the person that edit would want to fetch a couple of kegs of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't cramp him down to business, I don't know nothing what I'm talking about, and lay him in enough stomach ache to last him till next time, too. That didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan, and we put the three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the viddles, and so Jim got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into the pie, and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw-tick, and scratched some marks on the tin plate, and throwed it out of the window-hole. End of CHAPTER This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Fenn, by Mark Twain. CHAPTER 38 Making them pens was a distressed tough job, and so was the saw, and Jim allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That's the one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have it. Tom said he got to. There warn't no case of a state prisoner not scrabbling his inscription to leave behind and his coat of arms. Look at Lady Jane Gray, he says. Look at Guilford Dudley. Look at old Northumberland. Why, Huck, suppose it is considerable trouble. What you going to do? How you going to get around it? Jim's got to do his inscription and coat of arms. They all do. Jim says. Why, Mars-Tom, I ain't got no coat of arms. I ain't got nothing but dish-year-old shirt, and you knows I got to keep the journal on that. Oh, you don't understand, Jim. A coat of arms is very different. Well, I says. Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat of arms because he ain't. I reckon I know'd that, Tom says. But you bet he'll have one before he goes out of this, because he's going out right, and there ain't going to be no flaws in his record. So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brick-bad apiece, Jim am making hisn out of the brass, and I'm making mine out of the spoon, Tom's had to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd struck so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take. But there was one which he reckoned he'd decide on, he says. On the scutcheon we'll have a bend ore in the dexter base, a salt-tire Murray in the fests, with a dog Couchon for it common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled for slavery, with a chevron vert in a chief engrailed, and three in vected lines on a field azure, with the nombral points rampant on a denset indented, crest a runaway nigger, sable, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister, and a couple of ghouls for supporters, which is you and me, motto Maggiore fretta minore auto, got it out of a book, means the more haste, the less speed. Gee willikens, I says, but what does the rest of it mean? We ain't got no time to bother over that, he says. We got to dig in like all get-out. Well, anyway, I says. What's some of it? What's a fess? A fess is—a fess—a fess is—you don't need to know what a fess is, I'll show him how to make it when he gets to it. Shucks, Tom, I says, I think you might tell a person, what's a bar sinister? Oh, I don't know, but he's got to have it, all the nobility does. That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you, he wouldn't do it. You might pump at him a week, it would make no difference. He got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a mournful inscription. Said Jim got to have one, like they all done.  1. Here a captive heart busted. 2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the world in friends, fretted his sorrowful life. 3. Here a lonely heart broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest after thirty-seven years of solitary captivity. 4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of Louis XIV. Tom's voice tremble whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down. When he got done he could no way make up his mind which one for Jim to scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good. But at last he allowed he would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with the nail, and he didn't know how to make them letters besides. But Tom said he would block them out for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the lines. Then pretty soon he says, 3. Come to think, the logs ain't a going to do. They don't have log-walls in a dungeon. We got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. We'll fetch a rock. Jim said the rock was worse than the logs. He said it would take him such a poison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out. But Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look to see how me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was most pesky, tedious, hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the sores. We didn't seem to make no headway hardly, so Tom says, 4. I know how to fix it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock. There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smooch it, and carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too. It warn't no slouch of an idea, and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone another, but we allowed we'd tackle it. It warn't quite midnight yet, so we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work. We smooched the grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most-nation-tough job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over, and she come mighty near mashing us every time. Jim said she was going to get one of us sure before we got through. We got her half-way, and then we was plum-played out, and most drownded with sweat. We see it warn't no use. We got to go and fetch Jim. So he raised up his bed and slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapped it round and round his neck, and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim and me laid into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing, and Tom super-intended. He could out-super-intend any boy I ever see. He knowed how to do everything. Our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone through. But Jim he took the pick, and soon made it big enough. Then Tom marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them with the nail for a chisel, and an iron bolt from the rubbage and the lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under his straw-tick and sleep on it. Then we helped him fix his chain back on the bed-leg and was ready for bed ourselves. But Tom thought of something and says, You got any spiders in here, Jim?  All right, we'll get you some. But bless you, honey, I don't want none. I's a-feared of them. I just soon have rattlesnakes around. Tom thought a minute or two and says, It's a good idea, and I reckon it's been done. It must have been done. It stands to reason. Yes, it's a prime good idea. Where could you keep it? Keep what, Mars, Tom? Why a rattlesnake? The goodness gracious alive, Mars, Tom, why if there was a rattlesnake to come in here I'd take and bust right out through that log wall I would with my head. Why, Jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little. You could tame it. Tame it? Yes, easy enough. Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting, and they wouldn't think of hurting a person that pets them. Any book will tell you that. You try. That's all I ask. Just try for two or three days.  Please, Mars, Tom, don't talk so. I can't stand it.  I lay he'd wait a powerful long time for I asked him. And more than that, I don't want him to sleep with me. Jim, don't act so foolish.  Why, Mars, Tom, I don't want no such glory. Snake taken by Jim's chin off, then where is the glory? No, sir, I don't want no such doings. Blame it, can't you try? I only want you to try. You needn't keep it up if it don't work. But the trouble all done if the snake bit me while I was a-trying him. Mars, Tom, I'm willing to tackle most anything that ain't unreasonable. But if you and Huck fetches a rattlesnake in here for me to tame, I was going to leave that shore. Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bullheaded about it.  I can stand dim, Mars, Tom, but blame if I couldn't get along without them. I tell you that. I never know before it was so much bother and trouble to be a prisoner. Well, it always is when it's done right. Got any rats round here? No, sir, I ain't seen none. Well, we'll get you some rats. Well, I'm Mars, Tom, I don't want no rats. There's the dead, blameless creatures to disturb a body and rust round over them and bite his feet when he's trying to sleep I ever see. No, sir, give me garter snakes if I's got to have them, but don't give me no rats. I ain't got no use for them scarcely. But, Jim, you've got to have them. They all do. So don't make no more fuss about it. Prisoners ain't ever without rats. There ain't no instance of it. And they train them and pet them and learn them tricks, and they get to be as sociable as flies. But you've got to play music to them. You got anything to play music on?  Yes, they would. They don't care what kind of music it is. A juice harp's plenty good enough for a rat. All animals like music. In a prison they doad on it. Especially, painful music.  It always interests them. They come out to see what's the matter with you. Yes, you're all right. You're fixed very well.  Play, the last link is broken. That's the thing that'll scoop a rat quicker than anything else. And when you played about two minutes you'll see all the rats and the snakes and spiders and things begin to feel worried about you and come and they'll just fairly swarm over you and have a noble good time. Yes, they will, I reckon, Mars, Tom, but what kind of time is Jim having? Blessed if I can see the point. But I'll do it if I got to. I reckon I better keep the animals satisfied and not have no trouble in the house. Tom waited to think it over and see if there weren't nothing else. And pretty soon he says, Oh, there's one thing I forgot. Could you raise a flower here, do you reckon? I don't know, but maybe I could, Mars, Tom. But it's tolerable dark in here, and I ain't got no use for no flower, no how. Wouldn't she be a powerful side of trouble? Well, you try it anyway. Some other prisoner has done it. One or dem big cat-tail-looking mullin' stalks will grow in here, Mars, Tom. I reckon. But she wouldn't be worth half the trouble she'd cost. Don't you believe it? We'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in the corner over there and raise it. And don't call it mullin, call it pitchiola. That's its right name when it's in a prison. You want to water it with your tears. Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars, Tom. You don't want spring water, you want to water it with your tears. It's the way they always do. What Mars, Tom, lay I can raise one of dem mullin' stalks twice with spring water whilst another man's a startin' one with tears. That ain't the idea. You got to do it with tears.  She surely will. Cos I don't scarcely ever cry. So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over and then said Jim would have to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's coffee pot in the mornin'. Jim said he would just as soon have tobacco in his coffee, and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising the mullin' and Jews harpin' the rats, impetting and flattering up the snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do on pens and inscriptions and journals and things, which made it more trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he ever undertook. The Tom most lost all patience with him, said he was just loading down with more goddier chances than a prisoner ever had in the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved for bed. Reporting is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain Chapter 39 In the mornin' we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones, and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. While we was gone for spiders, little Thomas Franklin, Benjamin, Jefferson, Alexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out. And they did. And Aunt Sally, she come in, and when we got back she was astanted on top of the bed raising cane, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickory, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, trapped that medicine-cup, and they weren't the likeliest nether, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders and bugs and frogs and caterpillars, and one thing or another, and we liked to have got a hornet's nest, but we didn't. The family was at home. We didn't give it right up, but stayed with them as long as we could. Because we allowed we'd tire them out, or they got to tire us out, and they done it. Then we got alley-compane and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right again, but couldn't set down convenient. And so we went for the snakes, and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house snakes, and put them in a bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and a rattling good honest day's work. And hungry? Oh, no, I reckon not. And there weren't a blessed snake up there when we went back. We didn't half-tie the sack, and they worked out somehow and left. But it didn't matter much, because they were still on the premises somewheres. So we judged we could get some of them again. No, there weren't no real scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You'd see them tripping from the rafters and places every now and then, and they generally landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of the time where you didn't want them. Well, they was handsome and striped, and there weren't no harm in a million of them. But that never made no difference to Aunt Sally. She despised snakes, be the breed what they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it. And every time one of them flopped down on her it did make no difference what she was doing. She would just lay that work down and light out. I never see such a woman. And you could hear her whooped a Jericho. You couldn't get her to take a hold of one of them with the tongs. And if she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a house so you would think the house was a fire. She disturbed the old man so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the house for as much as a week Aunt Sally weren't over it yet. She weren't near over it. When she was set in thinking about something you could touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was just so. He said they was made that way, for some reason or other. We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she allowed these lickens warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever loaded up the place again with them. I didn't mind the lickens, because they didn't amount to nothing. But I minded the trouble we had to lay in another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things, and you never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd all swarm out for music and go for him. Jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders didn't like Jim, and so they'd lay for him, and make it mighty warm for him. And he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grandstone there weren't no room in bed for him, scarcely, and when there was a body couldn't sleep. It was so lively, and it was always lively, he said, because they never all slept at one time, but took turn about. So when the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in the snakes come on watch. So he always had one gang under him, in his way, and the other gang having a circus over him. And if he got up to hunt a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over. He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner again, not for a salary. Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would get up and ride a little in his journal while the ink was fresh. The pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was carved on the grandstone, the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had ed up the sawdust, and it give us a most amazing stomach ache. We reckon we was all going to die, but didn't. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see, and Tom said the same. But as I was saying we got all the work done now at last, and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because there weren't no such plantation. So he allowed he would advertise Jim and the St. Louis and New Orleans papers, and when he mentioned the St. Louis ones he'd give me the cold shivers, and I see we had no time to lose. So Tom said, now for the anonymous letters. What's them, I says. Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done one way, sometimes another. But there's always somebody spying around that gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI was going to light out of the Tullerys a servant-girl done it. It's a very good way, and so is the anonymous letters. We'll use them both. And it's usual for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in, and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that, too. But looky here, Tom, what do we want to warn anybody for that something's up? Let them find it out for themselves. It's their lookout. Yes, I know, but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've acted from the very start. Left us to do everything. They're so confiding and mullet-headed they wouldn't take no notice of nothing at all. So if we don't give them notice, there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us. And so after all our hard work and trouble, this escape will go off perfectly flat. Won't amount to nothing. Won't be nothing to it. Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like. Shucks, he says, and look disgusted. So I says, but I ain't gonna make no complaint. Any way that suits you suits me. What are you gonna do about the servant girl? You'll be her. You slide in in the middle of the night and hook that yowler girl's frock. Why, Tom, that'll make trouble next morning, because of course she probably ain't got any but that one. I know, but you don't want it but 15 minutes to carry the anonymous letter and shove it in under the front door. All right, then. I'll do it. But I could carry it just as handy in my own dogs. You wouldn't look like a servant girl, then, would you? No, but there won't be nobody to see what I look like anyway. That ain't nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to do our duty and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not. Ain't you got no principle at all? All right, I ain't sayin' nothin'. I'm the servant girl. Who's Jim's mother? I'm his mother. I'll hook a gown from Aunt Sally. Well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin with me and Jim leaves. Not much.  When a prisoner of style escapes, it's called an evasion. It's always called so when a king escapes, for instance. And the same with a king's son. You don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one. So Tom, he wrote the anonymous letter, and I smooched the yowler wenches frock that night and put it on, and shoved it under the front door the way Tom told me to. It said, Beware! Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp look out. Unknown friend. Next night we stuck a picture, which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull and crossbones on the front door, and next night another one of a coffin on the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They couldn't have been worth scared if the place had been full of ghosts laying for them behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped and said, Ouch! If anything fell she jumped and said, Ouch! If you happen to touch her when she weren't noticing, she'd done the same. She couldn't face no way and be satisfied because she allowed there was something behind her every time, so she was always a whirling around sudden and saying, Ouch! And before she got two-thirds around she'd whirl back again and say it again, and she was afraid to go to bed, but she doesn't set up. So the thing was working very well, Tom said. He said he never see a thing work more satisfactory. He said it showed it was done right. So we said now for the grand bulge. So the very next morning at the streak of dawn we got another letter ready and was wondering what we better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to have a nigger on watch at both doors all night.  This letter said, Don't betray me. I wish to be your friend.  I am one of the gang, but have got religion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will betray the hellish design. They will sneak down from Northards along the fence at midnight exact with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin to get him.   Don't do anything but just the way I am telling you, if you do they will suspicion something and raise whoop jamboree who. I do not wish any reward, but to know I have done the right thing. UNONENFRIED. This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibreVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBерri Fin. like Mark Twain. CHOPTER 40 We was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river efficient, with the lunch, and had a good time, and took a look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper, and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they were standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half upstairs, and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cupboard, and loaded up a good lunch, and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he stole, and was going to start with the lunch, but says, Where's the butter? I laid out a hunk of it, I says, on a piece of a corn-pone. Well, you left it laid out then, it ain't here. We can get along without it, I says. We can get along with it, too, he says. Just you slide down cellar and fetch it, and then Mosey write down the lightning rod and come along. I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to buy like a sheep and shove soon as you get there. So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a person's fist was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started upstairs very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right. But here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me, and she says, You been down cellar? Yes, I'm. What you been doing down there? Nothing. Nothing? No. Well then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night? I don't know. You don't know. Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you've been doing down there. I ain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally. I hoped gracious if I have. I reckon she'd let me go now, and as a general thing she would, but I suppose there were so many strange things going on she'd just in a sweat about every little thing that warn't yardstick straight. So she says, very decided. You just march into that setting room and stay there till I come. You've been up to something you've no business to, and I lay I find out what it is before I'm done with you. So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting room. My, but there was a crowd there. Fifteen farmers and every one of them had a gun. I was most powerful, sick, and slunked to a chair and set down. They were setting around, some of them talking a little in a low voice, and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't. But I knowed they was because they was always taking off the hats and putting them on, and scratching their heads and changing their seats and fumbling with their buttons. I warn't easy myself, but I didn't take my hat off all the same.  At last she'd come and begun to ask me questions, but I couldn't answer them straight. I didn't know which end to me was up, because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right now, and lay for them desperados, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight, and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep signal, and here was Auntie pecking away at the questions, and me as shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared, and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears, and pretty soon when one of them says, I'm forgoing and getting in the cabin first and right now, and catching them when they come. I most dropped, and a streak of butter coming trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and says, for the land's sake what is the matter with the child? He's got the brain fever as sure as you're born, and they're oozing out. Everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me and hugged me, and says, oh, what a turn you did give me, and how glad and grateful I am it ain't no worse, for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if, dear, dear, why didn't you tell me that was what you'd been down there for? I wouldn't have cared. Now clear out to bed, and don't let me see no more you till morning. I was upstairs in a second, and down the light and rod in another one, and shinin' through the dark for the lean to. I couldn't hardly get my words out, I was so anxious, but I told Tom as quick as I could we must jump for it now, and now at a minute to lose the house was full of men yonder with guns. His eyes just blazed, and he says, no, is that so? Ain't it bully? Why, Huck, if it was to do over again I bet I could fetch two hundred, if we could put it off till, hurry, hurry! I says, where's Jim?  He's dressed and everything's ready. Now we'll slide out and give the sheep signal. But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them beginin' to fumble with the padlock, and heard a man say, I told you we'd be too soon, they haven't come, door is locked.  So in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most tried on us whilst we was hustlin' to get under the bed. But we got under all right, and out through the hole, swift but soft, Jim first, me next, and Tom last, which was according to Tom's orders. Now we was in the lean to, and heard trampons close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack. But couldn't make out nothin' it was so dark, and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further. And when he nudged us, Jim must glide out first, and him last. So he said his ear to the crack, and listened, and listened, and listened, and the steps are scrappin' around out there all the time. And at last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathin', and not makin' the lease noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence and engine file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it. But Tom's britches catch fast on the splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the steps comin' so he had a pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise, and as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings out, Who's that? Answer or I'll shoot. But we didn't answer, we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there was a rush, and a bang, bang, bang, and the bullets fairly whizzed around us. We heard them sing out, Here they are, they broke for the river, after them boys, and turned loose the dogs. So here they come full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell. We was in the path to the mill, and when they got pretty close on to us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They'd had all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers. But by this time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, makin' pow well enough for a million. But they was our dogs. Now we stopped in our tracks till they catched up. And when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no excitement to offer them, they only just said, howdy, and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering. And then we upsteem again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obliged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable, for the island where my raft was, and we could hear them yellin' and barkin' at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out.  But am I a good job, it was, too, Huck. It is planned beautiful, and it was done beautiful, and there ain't nobody can get up a plan that's more mixed up and splendid than what that one was. We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg. When me and Jim heard that, we didn't feel so brash as what we did before. It was hurtin' him considerable and bleedin', so we laid him in the wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts to bandage him, but he says, Give me the rags, I can do it myself.  Boys, we done it elegant, deed we did. I wish we'da had the hand on the Louis XVI, and there wouldn't have been no Son of St. Louis ascend to heaven, wrote down in his biography, No, sir, we'da whooped him over the border. That's what we'da done with him, and done it just as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps, man the sweeps. But me and Jim was consulting and thinkin', and after we'd thought a minute, I says, Say it, Jim. So he says, Well then, this is the way it looked to me, Huck. If it was him that has been sought free, and wanted the boys was to get shot, would he say, Go on and save me, never mind about a doctor for to save this one? Is that like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say that? You bet he wouldn't. Well then, is Jim going to say it? No sir, I don't budge a step out in this place without a doctor, not if it's forty years. I knowed he was white inside, and I reckon he'd say what he did say. So it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a goin' for a doctor. He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it, and wouldn't budge. So he was for crawlin' out and set the raft loose his self. But we wouldn't let him. Then he gave us a piece of his mind, but it didn't do no good. So when he sees me gettin' the canoe ready, he says, Well then, if you're bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do when you get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a first full of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywhere's in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe, in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again. It's the way they all do. So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor comin' till he was gone again. And a chapter. This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Chapter 41. The doctor was an old man, a very nice, kind-lookin' old man when I got him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island, huntin' yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about midnight he must have kicked his gun in his dreams for it went off and shot him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say nothin' about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home this evening and surprise the folks. Who is your folks, he says. The Phelps is down yonder. Oh, he says. And after a minute he says, how'd you say he got shot? He had a dream, I says, and it shot him. Singular dream, he says. So he lit up his lantern and got his saddle-bags, and we started. But when he seized the canoe, he didn't like the look of her. Said she was big enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two.  She carried the three of us easy enough. What three? Why me and Sid and the guns? That's what I mean. Oh, he says. But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her and shook his head, and said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. But they was all locked and chained. So he took my canoe and said for me to wait till he come back, or I could hunt around further, and maybe I better go down home and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I said I didn't. So I told him just how to find the raft, and then he started. I struck an idea pretty soon. I says to myself, supposing he can't fix that leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is. Supposing it takes him three or four days. What are we going to do? Lay around there till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir. I know what I'll do. I'll wait. And when he comes back, if he says he's got to go anymore, I'll get down there, too, if I swim, and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and shove out down the river. And when Tom's done with him, we'll give him what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get ashore. So then I crept into a lumber pile to get some sleep, and next time I waked up, the sun was a way up over my head. I shot out and went for the doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time or other, and weren't back yet. Well, thinks I, that looks powerful bad for Tom, and I'll dig out for the island right off. So away I shoved, and turned the corner, and nearly ran my head into Uncle Silas' stomach. He says, Why, Tom, where have you been all this time, you rascal? I ain't been nowhere, I says, only just hunting for the runaway nigger, me and Sid. Why, wherever did you go, he says, your aunt's been mighty uneasy. She needn't, I says, because we was all right. We followed the men and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them. But we thought we heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and crossed over. We couldn't find nothing of them. So we cruised along up shore till we got kind of tired and beat out, and tied up the canoe, and went to sleep, and never waked up until about an hour ago. Then we paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's at the post office to see what he can hear, and I'm a branching out to get something to eat for us, and then we're going home. So then we went to the post office to get Sid. But just as I suspicioned he weren't there. So the old man he got a letter out of the office, and we waited a while longer, but Sid didn't come. So the old man said, come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it when he got done fooling around. But we would ride. I couldn't get him to let me stay and wait for Sid, and he said there warn't no use in it, and I must come along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right. When we got home Aunt Sally was that glad to see me. She laughed and cried both, and hugged me, and gave me one of them licking to her, and that don't amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he'd come. And the place was plumb full of farmers and farmers' wives to dinner, and such another clack a body never heard. Old Mrs. Hodgkiss was the worst. Her tongue was a-going all the time.  I says to Sister Damrell, did not, Sister Damrell. Says I. He's crazy, says I. Them's the very words I said. You all heard me. He's crazy, says I. Everything shows it, says I. Look at that air grindstone, says I. But to tell me that a creature in his right mind is going to scrabble all them crazy things on to a grindstone, says I. Here's such and such a person busted his heart, and here's so and so pegged along for thirty-seven years, and all that natural son of Louis somebody in such everlasting rubbish. He's plumb crazy, says I. It's what I says in the first place. It's what I says in the middle, and it's what I says last and all the time. The nigger's crazy. Crazy, never couldn't ease her, says I. And look at that air ladder made out of rags, Sister Hotchkiss. Says old Mrs. Damrell. Why in the name of goodness could he ever want of? The very words I was saying no longer go this minute to Sister Utterback, and she'll tell you so herself, says she. Look at that air rag ladder, says she, and says I. Yes, look at it, says I. What could he have wanted of it? Says I. Says she. Sister Hotchkiss. Says she. But how in the nation they ever get that grindstone in there anyway? And who dug that air hole? And who? My very words, Brear Penrod. I was a-saying, past that air sacer of molasses, won't you? I was a-saying to Sister Dunlap just this minute. How did they get that grindstone in there? Says I. Without help, mind you, without help. Don't tell me, says I. There was help, says I. And there was a plenty help, too, says I.  And I lay-eyed skin every last nigger on this place, but I'd find out who done it, says I. And moreover, says I, a dozen says you. Forty couldn't have done everything that's been done. Look at them case-knives, saws, and things. How tedious they have been made. Look at that bed-leg, sawed off with them. A week's work for six men. Look at that nigger made out of straw on the bed, and look at— Well, you may say it, Brear Hightower. It's just as I was saying to Brear Phelps, his own self. Says he. What do you think of it, Sister Hotchkiss? Says he. Think of what, Brear Phelps? Says I. Think of that bed-leg sawed off that away, says he. Think of it, says I. I lay it never sawed itself off, says I. Somebody sawed it, says I. That's my opinion. Make it or leave it. It may even be no cat, says I. But such as it is, it's my opinion, says I. And if anybody can start a better one, says I, let him do it, says I. That's all. I says to Sister Dunlap, says I.  Look at that shirt. Every last inch of it covered over with secret African rye and done with blood. There must have been a raft of them at it right along, all the time, almost. Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read to me, and as for the niggers that wrote it, I'd allow I'd take and lash them until— People to help him, Brear Ther Marples. Well, I reckon you'd think so if you'd have been in this house for a while back. Why, they stole everything they could lay their hands on. And we are watching all the time, mind you. They stole that shirt right off of the line, and as for that sheet they made the rag-bladder out of. There ain't no telling how many times they didn't steal that. In flour, in candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming pan, and most a thousand things that I just remember now, and my new calico dress, and me and Silas, my Sid and Tom on the constant watch, day and night, as I was a-telling you. And not a one of us could catch hide nor hear nor sight nor sound of them.   And that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at that very time. I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever heard of. Why, spirits couldn't have done better and been no smarter. And I reckon they must have been spirits, because you know our dogs, and there ain't no better. Well, them dogs never even got on the track of them once. You explain that to me if you can, any of you. Well, it does be laws alive, I never—so help me, I wouldn't have been—how steves as well as—living as gracious sakes, I'd have been afraid to live in such a—fraid to live, why, I was that scared I'd do something hard to go to bed, or get up or lay down or set down, Sister Ridgeway, why, they'd steal the very—why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was in by the time midnight come last night. I hoped to gracious if I weren't afraid they'd steal some of the family. I was just to that pass I didn't have no reason and faculties no more. It looks foolish enough now, in the daytime, but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep way upstairs in that lonesome room, and I declared a goodness I was that uneasy that I crept up there and locked them in. I did, and anybody would, because, you know, when you get scared that way and it keeps running on and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits get to addlin' and you get to doin' all sorts of wild things, and by and by you think to yourself, supposin' I was a boy and was a way up there and the door ain't locked and you—she stopped lookin' kind of wonderin', and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me I got up and took a walk. Says I to myself, I can't explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little, so I done it. But a dashing gopher or she to send for me, and when it was late in the day the people all went, and when I come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and said, and the door was locked and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning rod and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try that no more. And then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas before, and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harem-scarrem lot as fur as she could see. And so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well, and she had us still, instead of fretting over what was past and done. So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown study, and pretty soon jumps up and says, why, law's the mercy, it's most night, and said not come yet. What has become of that boy? I see my chance, so I skips up and says, I'll run right up the town and get him, I says. No you won't, she says, you'll stay right where you are, ones enough to be lost at a time. If he ain't here to supper, you're Uncle will go. Well, he warn't there to supper, so right after supper Uncle went. He come back about ten a little bit uneasy, had run across Tom's track, and Sally was a good deal uneasy, but Uncle Salas he said there won't no occasion to be, boys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to be satisfied, but she said she'd set up for him awhile anyway, and keep a light burning so he could see it. Then when I went up to bed she'd come up with me, and fetched her candle and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and like I couldn't look her in the face. And she sat down on the bed and talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him. He kept asking me every now and then if I reckon he could've got lost or hurt or maybe drownded, he might be laying at this minute somewhere suffering or dead, and she not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down silent, and I would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning, sure, and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in so much trouble. And when she was going away she looked down in my eyes so steady and gentle, and says, The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there's the window and the rod, but you'll be good, won't you? And you won't go? For my sake. Laws knows I wanted to go bad enough to see about Tom and was all intended to go, but after that I wouldn't have went, not for kingdoms. But she was on my mind, and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very restless, and twice I went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around front, and see her sitting there by her candle in the window, with her eyes towards the road, and the tears in them, and I wished I could do something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear that I would never do nothing to grieve her any more, and the third time I waked up at dawn, and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep. End of Chapter This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Chapter 42 The old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no track of Tom, and both of them sat at the table thinking, and not saying nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not eating anything, and by and by the old man says, Did I give you the letter? What letter? The one I got yesterday out of the post office. No, you didn't give me no letter. Well, I must have forgot it. So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had laid it down, and fetched it and give it to her. She says, Why, it's from St. Petersburg. It's from Sis. I allowed another walk would do me good, but I couldn't stir. But before she could break it open, she dropped it and run, for she see something, and so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress, and that old doctor, and Jim in her calico dress with his hands tied behind him, and a lot of people. I hid the letter behind the first thing to come handy and rushed.  I know he's dead. And Tom, he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other, which showed he weren't in his right mind. Then she flung up her hands, and says, He's alive, thank God! And that's enough. And she snatched a kiss of him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders right and left at the niggers and everybody else as fast as her tongue could go, every jump of the way. I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim, and the old doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to all the other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, keeping a whole family scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, Don't do it! It wouldn't answer at all. He ain't our nigger, and his owner would turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a nigger that ain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the most anxious to pay for them when they've got their satisfaction out of him. They cussed Jim considerable, though, and give him a cuff or two side the head once in a while. But Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to know me. They took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on him, and chained him again, not to know bed-leg this time, but to a big staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after this till his owner come. For he was sold at auction, because he didn't come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and set a couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime. About this time they was through with the job, and was tapering off with a kind of general good-bye cussing, and the old doctor comes and takes a look, and says, Don't be no rougher on him than your bleach, too, because he ain't a bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy, I see I couldn't cut the bullet out without some help, and he warn't no condition for me to leave to go and get help. And he got a little worse, and a little worse, and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come and nigh him any more. He said if I chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no end of wild foolishness like that. And I see I couldn't do anything at all with him, so I says, I got to have help somehow, and the minute I says it, outcrawls this nigger from somewheres, and says he'll help, and he done it, too, and done it very well. Of course I judged he must be a runaway nigger, and there I was. And there I had to stick right straight along all through the rest of the day and all night. It was a fix, I tell ya. I had a couple of patience with the chills, and, of course, I'd have liked to run up to town and see them, but a dacent, because the nigger might get away, and then I'd be to blame, and yet never a skiff come close enough for me to hail. So there I had to stick plum until daylight this morning, and I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or a faithfuler, and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out too, and I see plain enough he'd worked mean hard lately. I like the nigger for that.  I had everything I needed, and the boy was doing as well there as he would have done at home. Better maybe, because it was so quiet. But there I was, with both of them on my hands, and there I had to stick till about dawn this morning. Then some men and a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it, the nigger was set by the pallet where his head propped on his knees, sound asleep. So I motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him, and grabbed him, and tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble. And the boy, being in a kind of flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars, and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the nigger never made the least row, nor set a word from the start. He ain't no bad nigger, gentlemen. That's what I think about him. Somebody says, Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obliged to say. Then the others softened up a little, too. Now I was mighty thankful to that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn, and I was glad it was according to my judgment of him, too, because I thought he had a good heart in him, and was a good man the first time I see him. Then they all agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some notice took of it and reward, so every one of them promised, right out at hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more. Then they come out and locked him up. I was hoping they was going to say he could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten heavy, or could have beaten and greens with his bread and water, but they didn't think of it, and I reckon it weren't best for me to mix in. But I judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or other as soon as I got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me.  But I had plenty time. Aunt Sally she stuck to the sick room all day and all night, and every time I see Uncle Sally's moaning around I dodged him. Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt Sally was gone to get a nap, so I slipped to the sick room, and if I found him awake I reckon we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash. But he was sleeping, sleeping very peaceful too, and pale, not fire-faced the way he was when he come. So I sat down and laid for him to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I was, up a stump again. She motioned me to be still and sat down by me, and begun to whisper and said we could all be joyful now, because all the symptoms was first rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so long, and looking better and peacefuler all the time, and ten to one he'd wake up in his right mind.  Why, I'm at home. How's that? Where's the raft? It's all right, I says. And Jim? The same, I says, but I couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never noticed, but says, Good, splendid. Now we're all right and safe. Did you tell Auntie? I was going to say yes, but she chipped in and says, About what, Sid? Why about the way the whole thing was done? What whole thing? Why the whole thing? There ain't but one. How we set the runaway nigger free, me and Tom? Good land. Set the run. What is the child talking about? Dear, dear, out of his head again.  I know all what I'm talking about. We did set him free, me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we'd done it. And we'd done it elegant, too. He got a start, and she never checked him up, just set and stared and stared and let him clip along, and I see it warn't no use for me to put in. Why, Addy, it costs us a power of work, weeks of it, hours and hours every night, whilst you was all asleep, and we had to steal candles and the sheet and the shirt and your dress and spoons and tin plates and case knives and the warming pan and the grindstone and flour and just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make the saws and pens and inscriptions in one thing or another, you can't think half the fun it was. And we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, anonymous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning rod and dig the hole into the cabin and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket. And load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on for company for Jim, and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the cabin and we had to rush and they heard us and let drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they weren't interested in us but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe and made for the raft and was all safe, and Jim was a free man and we'd done it all by ourselves, and wasn't it bully, Addy? Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my poor days.  I have as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out of you this very minute, to think here I've been night after night, and you just get well-washed, you young scamp, and I'll tend the old Harry out of both of you, but Tom, he was so proud and joyful he just couldn't hold in, and his tongue just went it, she a-chippin' in and spittin' fire all along, and both of them goin' at it once, like a cat convention, and she says, well, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it now, for mind I tell you, if I catch you meddling with him again. Meddling with who? Tom says, droppin' his smile and lookin' surprised. With who? Why, the runaway nigger, of course, who'd you reckon? Tom looks at me very grave and says, Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away? Him, said Aunt Sally, the runaway nigger, deed he hasn't. They got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again on bread and water, and loaded down with chains till he's claimed or sold.   What does the child mean? I mean every word I say, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'll go. I've known him all his life, and so is Tom there. Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so, and she set him free in her will. Then what on earth did you want to set him free for, since he was already free? Well, that is a question, I must say, and just like women, why I wanted the adventure of it, and I'd have waited neck deep in blood to, goodness, alive Aunt Polly! If she weren't standing right there just inside the door, looking as sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never! Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hucked the head off of her, and cried over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in the little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there, looking across at Tom over her spectacles, kind of grinding him into the earth, you know.  Oh, dear in me, says Aunt Sally. Is he changed so? Why that ain't Tom, it's Sid, Tom's, Tom's, why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago. You mean where's huck Finn? That's what you mean. I reckon I hate to raise such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I see him. That would be a pretty how-to-do. Come out from under that bed, huck Finn. So I'd done it, but not feelin' brash. Aunt Sally, she was one of the mixed-upest-lookin' persons I ever see, except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in, and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer meeting sermon that night that gave him a ratlin' ruptation, because the oldest man in the world couldn't have understood it.  I'm used to it now, and ain't no need to change. That when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer, I had to stand it. There won't no other way. And I knowed he wouldn't mind, because it would be nuts for him bein' a mystery, and he'd make an adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out, and he led on to be said, and made things as soft as he could for me. And his Aunt Polly, she said Tom was right about old Miss Watts and settin' Jim free in her will.  And I could never understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he could help a body set a nigger free with his bringin' up. Well, Aunt Polly, she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and Sid had come all right and safe, she says to herself, Look at that now! I might have expected it, lettin' him go off that way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go in traipse all the way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creature's up to this time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you about it. Why, I never heard nothin' from you, says Aunt Sally. Well, I wonder why I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean by Sid bein' here. Well, I never got him, sis.  Well, what? He says, kinda, pettish.  Hand out them letters. What letters? Them letters. They're bound if I have to take a hold of you, I'll— They're in the trunk. They're now. And they're just the same as they was when I got them out of the office. I ain't looked into them, I ain't touched them. But I know they'd make trouble, and I thought if you weren't in no hurry I'd— Well, you do need skinnin'—there ain't no mistake about it.  I ain't read it yet, but it's all right. I've got that one. I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckon maybe it was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothin'. End of Chapter. This is a LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. CHAPTER THE LAST. That means the last chapter. The first time I catched Tom Private I asked him what was his idea, time of the evasion, what it was he planned to do if the evasion worked all right, and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before, and he said what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft and have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat in style, and pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the niggers around, and have them waltz him in a town with a torchlight procession and a brass band, and then he would be a hero, and so would we, but I reckon it was about as well the way it was. We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom, they made a heap of fuss over him and fixed him up prime, and gave him all he wanted to eat, and a good time and nothing to do. And we had him up to the sick room, and had a high talk, and Tom gave Jim forty dollars for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim was pleased most to death, and busted out and says, Da now, Huck, what I tell you, what I tell you up there in Jackson Island, I told you I got a hairy breast, and what's the sign of it, and I told you I've been rich once, and go on to be rich again, and it's come true, and here she is, Da now, don't talk to me, signs is signs, mind I tell you, and I know just as well as I was going to be rich again as I was astounded here this minute, and then Tom he talked along and says, let's all three slide out of here one of these nights, and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the engines over in the territory for a couple of weeks or two, and I says all right, that suits me, but I ain't got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from home, because it's likely Pap's been back before now and got it all away from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up. You know he ain't, Tom says, it's all there yet, six thousand dollars and more, and your Pap ain't ever been back since, hadn't when I come away anyhow. Jim says, kind of solemn, he ain't coming back no more, Huck. I says, why, Jim? Never mind why, Huck, but he ain't coming back no more. But I kept at him, so at last he says, don't you remember the house that was floating down the river, and there was a man in there covered up, and I went in and uncovered him, and didn't let you come in? Well then, you can get your money when you want it, because that was him. Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watchguard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd have known what a trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't have tackled it, and ain't it going to no more. But I reckon I got the light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally, she's going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before. That's the end of this year book. Thanks for listening.


Now, United Nations women in Nigeria has decreed the high rate of human trafficking attributed to the high rate of unemployment in the country. It also wants the government to build shelters for the return of victims of trafficking. Programme analysts of UN Women, Aminat Stockman, made this known in a boarder at a workshop organised by Klin Foundation in collaboration with the United Nations Women. The theme was Methodology, a workshop on gender-ordered tool development for the assessment of protection services and shelters on forced migration and human trafficking. She urged the government to allow us to enforce Tifa laws against human trafficking to prevent consistent deaths and slavery of Nigerians. So, it's a Methodology workshop on gender audits and why gender audits would support from the UN women implemented several interventions that are aimed at unraveling all the problems associated with trafficking in persons in Edo and Lagos states. The article was revealing part of the problem reviewed or part of the challenges reviewed are all the issues associated with lack of adequate parental care and even the criminality of chains of criminals that benefit from these illegal activities, including parents. If they receive appropriate counseling against Nigerians and if they are empowered after coming back, they may not go back into that trafficking and that's why we're doing this gender audit of shelters and gender audit of providers of protection services in Abuja because if they are able to do appropriate counseling, if they are able to provide them with the required services when they return, if they are able to empower them, if they are able to make them see reasons why they should not go back, that is if they make them see reasons why they need to stay in the country. Human trafficking issues should be but should be into should be added to educational columns by of course the relevant stakeholders, the experts so that from young ages, if it's not possible from primary institutions, it should be from secondary so that from a young age a young person or a child would be well informed about what human trafficking is, the ills of human trafficking and how human trafficking contributes to the decadence of our society. I think this will go a long way in helping to solve the problem of human trafficking.