Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-seventh chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry.

Finn by Mark Twain.

Chapter 27 I crept to their doors and listened.

They was snoring, so I tiptoed along and got downstairs.

All right, there weren't a sound anywhere.

I peeped through a crack of the dining room door and see the men that was watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs.

The door was open into the parlor where the corpse was laying and there was a candle in both rooms.

I passed along and the parlor door was open, but I see there weren't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter, so I shoved on by, but the front door was locked and the key wasn't there.

Just then I heard somebody come down the stairs back behind me.

I run in the parlor and took a swift look around and the only place I see to hide the bag was in the coffin.

The lid was shoved along about a foot showed the dead man's face down in there with a wet cloth over it and his shroud on.

I tucked the money bag in under the lid just down beyond where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, it was so cold.

And then I run back across the room and in behind the door the person coming was Mary Jane.

She went to the coffin very soft and kneeled down and looked in.

Then she put up her handkerchief and I see she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me.

I slid out, and as I passed the dining room I thought I'd make sure them watchers hadn't seen me.

So I looked through the crack and everything was all right.

They hadn't stirred.

I slipped up to bed feeling rather blue on accounts of the thing playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much risk about it.

Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right because when we get down the river 100 miles or two I could write back to Mary Jane and she could dig him up again and get it.

But that ain't the thing that's going to happen.

The thing that's going to happen is the money will be found when they come to screw on the lid.

Then the king will get it again and it'll be a long day before he gives anybody another chance to smouch it from him.

Of course, I wanted to slide down and get it out of there, but I dastn't try it every minute.

It was getting earlier now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir and I might get catched catched with $6,000 in my hands that nobody hadn't hired me to take care of.

I don't wish to be mixed up in no such business as that, I says to myself.

When I got downstairs in the morning, the parlor was shut up and the watchers was gone.

There weren't nobody around but the family and the widow Bartley and our tribe.

I watched their faces to see if anything had been happening, but I couldn't tell.

Towards the middle of the day, the undertaker come with his man and they set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs and then set all our chairs in rows and borrowed more from the neighbors till the hall in the parlor in the dining room was full.

I see the coffin lid was the way it was before but I dast and go look under it with folks around.

Then the people began to flock in and the beats and the girls took seats in the front row at the head of the coffin.

And for a half an hour the people filed round slow in single rank and looked down at the dead man's face a minute and some dropped in a tear and it was all very still and solemn.

Only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and keeping their heads bent and sobbing a little.

There weren't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and blowing noses because people always blows them more at a funeral than they do at other places except church.

When the place was packed full, the undertaker, he slid around in his black gloves with this softly soothing waves, putting on the last touches and getting people and things all ship shape and comfortable and making no more sound than a cat.

He never spoke.

He moved people around, he squeezed in late ones.

He opened up passageways and done it with nods and signs with his hands.

Then he took his place over against the wall.

He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see.

And there weren't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.

They had borrowed a melodium, a sick one.

And when everything was ready, a young woman sat down and worked it.

And it was pretty squeaky and colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one that had a good thing, according to my notion.

Then the Reverend Hobson opened up, slow and solemn and begun to talk.

And straight off the most outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard.

It was only one dog, but he made a most powerful racket and he kept it up right along the parson.

He had to stand there over the coffin and wait.

You couldn't hear yourself think.

It was right down awkward, and nobody did seem to know what to do.

But pretty soon they see that long legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say don't you worry, just depend on me.

Then he stooped down and begun to glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over people's heads.

So he glided along and the POW wow and racket getting more and more outrageous all the time.

And at last, when he'd gone around two sides of the room, he disappears down cellar.

Then in about 2 seconds we heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with the most amazing howl or two.

And then everything was dead still, and the parson began his solemn talk where he left off in a minute or two, here comes this undertaker's back and shoulders gliding along the wall again.

And so he glided and glided around three sides of the room and then rose up and shaded his mouth with his hands and stretched his neck out towards the preacher over the people's heads, and says in a kind of a hoarse whisper, he had a rat.

Then he dropped down and glided along the wall again to his place.

You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because naturally they wanted to know a little thing like that don't cost nothing.

And it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up to and liked.

There weren't no more popular man in town than what that undertaker was.

Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome, and in the King he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbish.

And at last the job was through and the undertaker began to sneak up on the coffin.

With his screwdriver.

I was in a sweat then and watched him pretty keen but he never meddled at all.

Just slid the lid along as soft as mush and screwed it down tight and fast.

So there I was.

I didn't know whether the money was in there or not.

So says, I suppose somebody has hogged that bag on the sly.

Now.

How do I know whether to write to Mary Jane or not?

Suppose she dug him up and didn't find nothing.

What would she think of me?

Blame it, I says.

I might get hunted up and jailed.

I'd better lay low and keep dark and not write at all.

The thing's awful mixed now, trying to better it.

I've worsened it a hundred times and I wished a goodness I just let it alone.

Dad fetched the whole business.

They buried him, and we come back home.

And I went to watching faces again.

I couldn't help it and I couldn't rest easy.

But nothing come of it.

The faces didn't tell me nothing.

The King, he visited around in the evening and sweetened everybody up and made himself ever so friendly.

And he gave out the idea that his congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him.

So he must hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave her home.

He was very sorry.

He was so pushed and so was everybody.

They wished he could stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done.

And he said, of course him and William would take the girls home with them.

And that pleased everybody too because then the girls would be well fixed and amongst their own relations.

And it pleased the girls, too, tickled them.

So they cleaned, forgot they ever had trouble in the world and told him to sell out as quick as he wanted to.

They would be ready.

Important things was that glad and happy.

It made my heart ache to see them getting fooled and lied to So.

But I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and change the general tune.

Well blamed if the King didn't build the house and the servants and all the property for auction straight off sale two days after the funeral.

But anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.

So the next day after the funeral, along about noontime the girls joy got the first jolt.

A couple of servant traders come along and the King sold them the servants for reasonable for three day drafts, as they called it.

And away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis and their mother down the river to Orleans.

I thought them poor girls and them servants would break up their hearts for grief.

They cried around each other and took on So.

It most made me down sick to see it.

The girl said they hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the town.

I can't ever get it out of my memory.

The sight of them poor miserable girls and servants hanging around each other's necks and crying.

And I reckon I couldn't have stood at all but would have had to bust out and tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale weren't no account and the servants would be back home in a week or two.

The thing made a big stir in the town too and a good many come out flat footed and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the children that way.

It injured the fraud some, but the old fool, he bowled right along spite of all the Duke could say or do.

And I tell you the Duke was powerful and easy.

Next day was auction day, about broad day.

In the morning, the King and the Duke come up in the garret and woke me up.

And I see by their look that there was trouble.

The King says, Was you in my room night before last?

Know, Your Majesty?

Which was the way I always called him when nobody but our gang weren't around.

Was you in there yesterday or last night?

Know, Your Majesty, honor bright now.

No lies.

Honor.

Bright, your Majesty.

I'm telling you the truth.

I ain't been in near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you in the Duke and showed it to you.

The Duke says, have you seen anybody else go in there?

Know, your Grace.

Not as I remember.

I believe stop and think.

I've studied a while and see my chance.

Then I says, well, I see the servants go in there several times.

Both of them gave a little jump and looked like they hadn't ever expected it and then likely they had.

Then the Duke says, what, all of them?

No least way.

It's not all at once.

That is, I don't think I ever see them all come out at once but just one time.

Hello.

When was that?

It was the day we had the funeral in the morning.

It weren't early because I overslept.

I was just starting down the ladder and I see them well, go on, go on.

What did they do?

How'd they act?

They didn't do nothing and they didn't act anyway much as far as I see.

They tiptoed away.

So I seen easy enough that they'd shoved in there to do up Your Majesty's room or something.

Supposing you was up and found you weren't up and so they was hoping to slide out of the way of trouble without waking you up if they hadn't already waked you up.

Great guns.

This is a go, says the King.

And both of them looked pretty sick and tolerable silly.

They stood there thinking and scratching their heads a minute.

And the Duke, he bust into a kind of little raspy chuckle and says it does beat all how neat the servants played their hand.

They let on to be sorry.

They was going out of this region, and I believe they was sorry.

And so did you and so did everybody.

Don't ever tell me any more that a servant ain't got a histronic talent.

Why, the way they played that thing, it would fool anybody.

In my opinion.

There's a fortune in them.

If I had capital in a theater, I wouldn't want a better layout than that.

And here we've gone and sold them for a song.

Yes, and ain't privileged to sing the song yet.

Say, where is that song?

That draft in the bank for it to be collected.

Where would it be?

Well, that's all right then.

Thank goodness, says I, kind of timid like.

Is something gone wrong?

The King whirls on me and rips out, none of your business.

You keep your head shut and mind your own affairs if you got any.

Long as you're in this town.

Don't you forget that, you hear?

Then he says to the Duke, we got to just swallow it and say nothing.

Mums the word for us.

As they were starting down the ladder, the Duke, he chuckles again and says, quick sales and small profits is a good business.

Yes.

The King snarls around on him and says, I was trying to do for the best in selling them out quick.

If the profits has turned out to be none lacking considerable and none to carry, is it my fault any more than it's yawn?

Well, they'd be in this house yet, and we wouldn't if I could have got my advice, listened to the King sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into me again.

He gave me down the banks for not coming and telling him I see the servants come out of his room acting that way.

Said any fool would have knowed something was up and then waltzed in and cussed himself a while and said it all come of him not laying late and taking his natural rest that morning and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it again.

So they went off at Jawing, and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it all off onto the servants and yet hadn't done the servants no harm by it.

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.

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