Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the eighth chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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Today we'll be continuing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

Chapter Eight tom dodged, hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of the track of returning scholars and then fell into a moody jog.

He crossed a small branch two or three times because of a prevailing juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit.

Half an hour later he was disappearing behind the Douglas Mansion on the summit of Cardiff Hill, and the schoolhouse was hardly distinguishable away off in the valley behind him.

He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the center of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak.

There was not even a zephyr stirring.

The dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds.

Nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound.

The boy's soul was steeped and melancholy.

His feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings.

He sat long with his elbows on his knees and its chin in his hands, meditating.

It seemed to him that life was but a trouble at best, and he more than half envied.

Jimmy Hodges so lately released.

It must be very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and ever with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers over the grave and nothing to bother and grieve about ever anymore.

If he only had a clean Sunday school record, he could be willing to go and be done with it all.

Now, as to this girl, what had he done?

Nothing.

He had meant the best in the world and been treated like a dog.

Like a very dog.

She would be sorry someday, maybe when it was too late.

Off.

He could only die temporarily.

But the elastic heart of youth could not be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again.

What if he turned his back now and disappeared mysteriously?

What if he went away ever so far away into unknown countries beyond the seas and never came back anymore?

How would she feel then?

The idea of being a clown recurred to him now only to fill him with disgust?

For frivolty and jokes and spotted tights were an offense when they intruded themselves upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the romantic.

No.

He would be a soldier and return after long years all war worn and illustrious.

No, better still, he would join the Indians and hunt buffaloes and go on the war path in the mountain ranges and the trackless great plains of the Far West.

And away in the future, come back a great chief bristling with feathers hideous with paint and prance into Sunday school some drowsy summer morning with a blood curdling war whoop and sear the eyeballs of his companions with unappeasable envy.

But no, there was something gaudier even than this.

He would be a pirate.

That was it.

Now his future lay plain before him and glowing with unimaginable splendor.

How his name would fill the world and make people shudder.

How gloriously he would go plowing the dancing seas in his long, low black hole racer the spirit of the storm with his grizzly flag flying at the fore and at the zenith of his fame.

How he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into a church brown and weather beaten in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jack boots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse pistols, his crime rusted cutlass at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled with a skull and crossbones on it.

And here was swelling ecstasy, the whisperings, it's Tom Sawyer, the pirate.

The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main.

Yes, it was settled.

His career was determined.

He would run away from home and enter upon it.

He would start the very next morning.

Therefore, he must now begin to get ready.

He would collect his resources together.

He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under one end of it with his Barlow knife.

He soon struck wood that sounded hollow.

He put his hand there and uttered this incantation.

Impressively.

What hasn't?

Come here.

Come what's?

Here.

Stay here.

Then he scraped away the dirt and exposed a pine shingle.

He took it up and disclosed a shapely little treasure house whose bottom and sides were of shingles.

In it lay a marble.

Tom's astonishment was boundless.

He scratched his head with a perplexed errand, said, well, that beats anything.

Then he tossed the marble away pettishly and stood cogitating.

The truth was that a superstition of his had failed here, which he and all his comrades had always looked upon.

As infallible, if you buried a marble with certain necessary incantations and left it alone a fortnight and then opened to the place with the incantation he had just used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had gathered themselves together there meantime, no matter how widely they had been separated.

But now this thing had actually and unquestionably failed.

Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations.

He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding, but never of its failing before.

It did not occur to him that he had tried it several times before himself, but could never find the hiding places afterward.

He puzzled over the matter some time and finally decided that some witch had interfered and broken the charm.

He thought he would satisfy himself on that point, so he searched around till he found a small sandy spot with a little funnel shaped depression in it.

He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and called, doodlebug doodlebug, tell me what I want to know doodlebug, doodlebug, tell me what I want to know.

The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a second and then darted under again in a fright.

He doesn't tell.

So it was a witch that done it.

I just knowed it.

He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he gave up, discouraged.

But it occurred to him that he might as well have the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a patient search for it.

But he could not find it now.

He went back to his treasure house and carefully placed himself just as he had been standing when he tossed the marble away.

Then he took another marble from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying, brother, go find your brother.

He watched where it stopped and went there and looked, but it must have fallen short or gone too far, so he tried twice more.

The last repetition was successful.

The two marbles lay within a foot of each other, just here.

The blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green aisles of the forest.

Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log, disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a laughed sword and a tin trumpet and in a moment had seized these things and bounded away bare legged with fluttering shirt.

He presently halted under a great elm, blew an answering blast and then began to tiptoe and look warily out this way and that, he said cautiously to an imaginary company hold, my merry men.

Keep hid till I blow.

Now appeared Joe Harper as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.

Tom called, hold.

Who comes into Sherwood Forest without my pass?

Thy of Gisborne wants no man's pass.

Who art thou that dares to hold such language?

Said Tom, prompting for they talked by the book from memory.

Who art thou that dares to hold such language?

I indeed, I am Robin Hood, as thy cadeth Carcass soon shall know.

Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw.

Rightly glad will I dispute with thee the passes of the merry wood have at thee.

They took their laugh swords, dumped their other traps on the ground struck a fencing attitude foot to foot and began a grave, careful combat, two up and two down.

Presently Tom said, now, if you've got the hang, go it lively.

So they went it lively.

Panting and perspiring with the work by and by, Tom shouted, fall.

Fall.

Why don't you fall?

I shan't.

Why don't you fall yourself?

You're getting the worst of it.

Why, that ain't everything.

I can't fall.

That ain't the way it is in the book.

The book says then with one backhanded stroke, he slew, poor Guy of Gisborne, you're to turn around and let me hit you in the back.

There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received the whack and fell.

Now, said Joe, getting up, you got to let me kill you.

That's fair.

Why, I can't do that.

It ain't in the book.

Well, it's blamed mean, that's all.

Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much, the miller's son and lamb with me a quarter staff or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me.

This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out.

Then Tom became Robin Hood again and was allowed by the treacherous nun to bleed his strength the way through his neglected wound.

And at last Joe, representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws dragged him sadly forth, gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, where this arrow falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree.

Then he shot the arrow and fell back and would have died.

But he lit on a nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.

The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements and went off grieving that there were no outlaws anymore.

And wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss they said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than president of the United states forever.

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 the Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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To take a look in the book and let's see what we can find.

Take a chapter by chapter, one at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb.