Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the second chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry.

Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter Two We went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees, back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads.

When we was passing by the kitchen, I fell over a root and made a noise.

We scroouched down and laid still.

Miss Watson's big servant named Jim was sitting in the kitchen door.

We could see him pretty clear because there was a light behind him.

He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening.

Then he says, who DA?

He listened some more, then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us.

We could have touched him nearly.

Well, likely.

It was minutes and minutes that there weren't a sound and we all there so close together.

There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I doesn't scratch it.

And then my ear begun to itch and next to my back, right between my shoulders seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch.

Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since.

If you're with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy, if you're anywhere where it won't do for you to scratch, I'll itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.

Pretty soon Jim says, Say, who is you.

Where is you dog my cats.

If I don't hear something, well, I know what I's going to do.

I was going to sit down here and listen till I hears it again.

So we sat down on the ground betwixt me and Tom.

He leaned his back up against a tree and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine.

My nose begun to itch itched till the tears come into my eyes, but I doesn't scratch.

Then it begun to itch on the inside.

Next I got to itching underneath.

I don't know how I was going to set still.

This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes, but it seemed to sight longer than that.

I was itching in eleven different places now.

I reckoned I couldn't stand it more than a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try.

Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy.

Next he begun to snore.

And then I was pretty soon comfortable again.

Tom made a sign to me, kind of a little noise with his mouth, and we went creeping away on our hands and knees.

When we was ten foot off, Tom whispered to me and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun, but I said no, he might wake and make a disturbance and then they'd find out I weren't in.

Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more.

I didn't want him to try.

I said Jim might wake up and come, but Tom wanted to rescue it.

So we slid in there and got three candles and Tom laid $0.05 on the table for pay.

Then we got out and I was in a sweat to get away, but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was on his hands and knees and play something on him.

I waited, and it seemed a good while.

Everything was so still and lonesome.

As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path around the garden fence and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house.

Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off his head and hung it on a limb right over him.

And Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake.

Afterwards, Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance and rode him all over the state and then set him under the trees again and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it.

And next time Jim told it, he said they rode him down to New Orleans.

And after that, every time he told it, he spread it more and more till by and by he said they rode him all over the world and tired him most to death.

And his back was all over saddleboils.

Jim was monstrous proud about it and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other servants.

Servants would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any servant in that country.

Strange servants would stand with their mouths open and look them all over, same as if he was a wonder.

Servants is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire.

But when everyone was talking and letting on to know all about such things, jim would happen in and say, what you know about witches?

And that servant was corked up and had to take a backseat.

Jim always kept that five centerpiece round his neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil gave to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it.

But he never told what it was he said to it.

Servants would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had just for a side of that five centerpiece, but they wouldn't touch it because the devil had had his hands on it.

Jim was most ruined for a servant because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rowed by witches.

Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop, we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling where there were sick folks maybe.

And the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine.

And down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad and awful still and grand.

We went down the hill and found Joe Harper and Ben Rogers and two or three more of the boys hid in the old Tanyard.

So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half to the big scar on the hillside and went to shore.

We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret and then showed them a hole in the hill right in the thickest part of the bushes.

Then we lit the candles and crawled in on our hands and knees.

We went about 200 yards, and then the cave opened up.

Tom poked about amongst the passages and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't have noticed that there was a hole.

We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped.

Tom says, now we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.

Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath and write his name in blood.

Everybody was willing.

So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on and read it.

It swore every boy to stick to the band and never tell any of the secrets.

And if anybody done anything to any boy in the band.

Whichever boy was ordered to kill that person in his family must do it.

And he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts which was the sign of the band.

And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark.

And if he did, he must be sued.

And if he'd done it again, he must be killed.

And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets he must have his throat cut and then have his carcass burned up and the ashes scattered all around and his name blotted off the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.

Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head.

He said some of it.

But the rest was out of pirate books and robber books.

And every gang that was high toned had it.

Some thought it would be good to kill the families of boys that told the secrets.

Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in.

Then men Rogers says here's Huck Finn, he ain't got no family.

What you going to do about him?

Well, Hainty got a father, says Tom Sawyer.

Yes, he's got a father, but you.

Can'T never find him these days.

He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the Tanyard but he ain't been seen in these parts for a year or more.

They talked it over and they was going to rule me out because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others.

Well, nobody could think of anything to do.

Everybody was stumped and set.

Still.

I was most ready to cry.

But all at once I thought of a way.

And so I offered them Miss Watson.

They could kill her.

Everybody said, oh, she'll do that's all right.

Huck can come in.

Then they all stuck a pen in their fingers to get blood to sign with and I made my mark on the paper now, says Ben Rogers.

What's the line of business of this gang?

Nothing.

Only robbery and murder, Tom said.

But who are we going to rob houses or cattle or stuff?

Stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary, says Tom Sawyer.

We ain't burglars.

That ain't no sort of style.

We're highway men.

We stop stages and carriages on the road with masks on and kill the people and take their watches and money.

Must we always kill the people?

Oh, certainly.

It's best.

Some authorities think different but mostly it's considered best to kill them.

Except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed.

Ransomed?

What's that?

I don't know, but that's what they do.

I've seen it in books and so, of course, that's what we've got to do.

But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?

Why blame it all?

We've got to do it.

Don't I tell you?

It's in the books.

Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books and get things all muddled up?

Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them?

That's the thing I want to get at.

Now, what do you reckon it is?

Well, I don't know.

But perhaps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead.

Now, that's something like that'll answer.

Why couldn't you said that before?

We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death in a bothersome lot.

They'll be, too, eating up everything and always trying to get loose.

How you talk, ben Rogers.

How can they get loose when there's a guard over them ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?

A guard?

Well, that is good.

So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep just as to watch them.

I think that's foolishness.

Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?

Because it ain't in the book, so that's why.

Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular or don't you?

That's the idea.

Don't you reckon that the people that made the books know what's the correct thing to do?

Do you reckon you can learn them anything?

Not by a good deal, no, sir.

We'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way.

All right.

I don't mind, but I say it's a full way anyhow.

Say, do we kill the women, too?

Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you, I wouldn't let on kill the women.

No, nobody ever saw anything in the books like that.

You fetch them to the cave and you're always as polite as pie to them.

And by and by they fall in love with you and never want to go home anymore.

Well, if that's the way I'm agreed.

But I don't take no stock in it.

Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women and fellows waiting to be ransomed that there won't be no place for the robbers.

But go ahead.

I ain't got nothing to say.

Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up, he was scared and cried and said he wanted to go home to his ma and didn't want to be a robber anymore.

So they all made fun of him and called him crybaby, and that made him mad.

And he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets.

But Tom give him five cents to keep him quiet and said we would all go home and meet next week and rob somebody and kill some people.

Then Roger said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday.

But all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday.

And that settled the thing.

They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could.

And then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Joe Harper second captain of the gang.

And so started home.

I climbed up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking.

My new clothes was all greased up and clay, and I was dog tired.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a.

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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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