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

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

Chapter Four Well, three or four months run along and it was well into the winter now.

I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is 35, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever.

I don't take no stock in mathematics anyway.

At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it.

Whenever I got uncommon tired, I played hooky, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up.

So the longer I went to school, the easier it got to be.

I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways too, and they weren't so raspy on me.

Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me.

I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones too, a little bit.

The widow said I was coming along slow but sure and doing very satisfactory.

She said she weren't ashamed of me.

One morning I happened to turn over the salt cellar at breakfast.

I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck.

But Miss Watson wasn't ahead of me and crossed me off.

She says, Take your hands away, huckleberry.

What a mess you're always making.

The widow put in a good word for me, but that weren't going to keep off the bad luck.

I knowed that well enough.

I started out after breakfast feeling worried and shaky and wondering where it was going to fall on me and what it was going to be.

There's ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind.

So I never tried to do anything but just poked along, low spirited and on the watch out.

I went down to the front garden and climbed over the still where you go through the high board fence.

There was an inch of new snow on the ground and I seen somebody's tracks.

They had come up from the quarry and stood around the still for a while and then went on around the garden fence.

It was funny they hadn't come in after standing around, so I couldn't make it out.

It was very curious somehow.

I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first.

I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did, there was a cross in the left boot heel made with big nails to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shining down the hill.

I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody.

I was at Judge Thatcher's.

As quick as I could get there, he said, Why, my boy, you're all out of breath.

Did you come for your interest?

No, sir, I says.

Is there some for me?

Oh, yes.

A half yearly, as in last night.

Over $150.

Quite a fortune for you.

You'd better let me invest it along with your 6000, because if you take it, you'll spend it.

No, sir, I says.

I don't want to spend it.

I don't want it at all.

Nor the 6000 another.

I want you to take it.

I want to give it to you, the 6000 in all.

He looks surprised.

He couldn't seem to make it out.

He says, Why, what can you mean, my boy?

I says, don't you ask me no questions about it, please.

You'll take it, won't you?

He says, Well, I'm puzzled.

Is something the matter?

Please take it, says I, and don't ask me nothing.

Then I won't have to tell no lies.

He studied a while and then says, oh ho, I think I see.

You want to sell all your property to me, not give it.

That's the correct idea.

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over and says, there, you see?

It says, for a consideration that means I've bought it off you and pay you for it.

Here's a dollar for you.

Now you sign it.

I signed it and left.

Miss Watson's servant Jim had a hairball as big as your fist which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox and he used to do magic with it.

He said there was a spirit inside of it and it knowed everything.

So I went to him that night and told him PAP was here again for I found his tracks in the snow.

What I wanted to know was what was he going to do and was he going to stay?

Jim got out his hairball and said something over it and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor.

It fell pretty solid and only rolled about an inch.

Jim tried it again and then another time and it acted just the same.

Jim got down on his knees and put his ear against it and listened.

But it weren't no use.

He said it wouldn't talk.

He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money.

I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter that weren't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little and it wouldn't pass knowhow even if the brass didn't show because it was so slick it felt greasy and so that would tell on it every time, I reckoned.

I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge.

I said it was pretty bad money but maybe the hairball would take it because maybe it wouldn't know the difference.

Jim smelted and bid it and rubbed it and said he would manage so the hairball would think it was good.

He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night.

And next morning you couldn't see no brass and it wouldn't feel greasy no more and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hairball.

Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it.

Jim put the quarter under the hairball and got down and listened again.

This time he said the hairball was all right.

He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to.

I says, go on.

So the hairball talked to Jim and Jim told it to me.

He says you old father don't know yet what he's going to do.

Sometimes he spec he'll go away and then again speck he'll stay.

The best way is to rest easy and let the old man take his own way.

These two angels hovering round bout him.

One of them is white and shiny and the other one is black.

The white one gets him to go ride a little while.

Then the black ones sail in and bust it all up.

A body can't tell yet which going to fetch him at Delasse, but use all right.

You gwen to have considerable trouble in your life and considerable joy.

Sometimes you going to get hurt and sometimes you going to get sick but every time you's going to get well again.

Days two gals flying bounce in you life.

One of them's light and the other one is dark.

One is rich and the other is pole.

You going to marry the one first.

And which one?

By and by you wants to keep way foam to water as much as you can and don't run no risk.

Case it's down into bills that you is going to get hung.

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there sat PAP his own self.

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today where 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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