Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-ninth chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter 39.

In the morning, 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 15 of the bulliest kind of ones.

And then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed.

But 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.

An Aunt Sally.

She come in.

And when we got back, she was standing on top of the bed raising cane and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dole times for her.

So she took and dusted us both with a hickory and we was as much as 2 hours catching another 15 or 16 drat that meddlesome cub.

And they wasn't the likeliest another 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 sordid spiders and bugs and frogs and caterpillars in one thing or another and we liked to 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'd got to tire us out, and they'd done it.

Then they got all come up in 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 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 they 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 somewhere.

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 dripping 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.

Oh, 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 didn't 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 whoop to Jericho.

You couldn't get her to take a hold of one with them tongs.

And if she turned over and found one in bed, she would scramble out and lift a howl that she 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 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 setting 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 lickings weren't nothing to do what she would do if we loaded up the place again with them.

I didn't mind the lickings 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 grindstone, there weren't no room in bed for him.

Scastly.

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 turnabout.

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 on 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 write a little in his journal.

Whilst the ink was fresh, the pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the grindstone.

The bed lake was thawed in two and we had ed up the sawdust, and it gave us a most amazing stomach ache.

We reckoned 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 phased 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 servant, but hadn't got no answer because there weren't no such plantation.

So he allowed.

He would advertise Jim in the St.

Louis and New Orleans papers.

And when he mentioned the St.

Louis ones, it gave me the cold shivers.

And I see we hadn't no time to lose.

So Tom said, now for the nonanimous 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 XV was going to light out of the tooleries, a servant girl done it.

It's a very good way.

And so is the nonanimous 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 don't take 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 shocks, he said, and looked disgusted.

So I says, But I ain't going to make no complaint any way that suits you.

Suits me?

What you going to do about the servant girl?

You'll be her.

You slide in in the middle of the night and hook that yellow girl's frock.

Why, Tom, that'll make trouble next morning.

Because, of course, she probably hank got any but that one.

I know, but you don't want it but 15 minutes to carry the unanimous letter and shove it under the front door.

All right, then, I'll do it.

But I could carry it just as handy in my own togs.

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 got 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 saying nothing.

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're hot to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves?

Not much.

I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed to represent his mother in disguise.

And Jim will take the servant woman's gown off me and wear it.

And we'll all evade together.

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.

It don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one.

So Tommy wrote the nonanimous letter and I smoutched the yellow winch's 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 lookout, 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 worse 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 happened 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 he 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 servant on watch at both doors all night.

Tommy went down the lightning rod to spy around and the servant at the back door was asleep and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back.

This letter said don't betray me, I wish to be your friend.

There's a desperate gang of cutthroats from over in the Indian territory going to steal your runaway servant tonight and they've been trying to scare you so as you'll stay in the house and not bother them.

I'm 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 northwards along the fence at midnight exact with a false key and go in the servant's cabin to get him.

I'm to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any danger.

But instead of that I will bath like a sheep soon as they get in and not blow at all.

Then whilst they're getting its chains loose, you slip there and lock them in and can kill them at your leisure.

Don't do anything but just the way I'm telling you.

If you do, they'll suspicion something and raise whoop jamboree.

I do not wish any reward but to know I've done the right thing.

Unknown friend.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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