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

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Today we'll be continuing Adventures of Huckleberry.

Finn by Mark Twain 32 when I got there, it was all still and Sundaylike and hot and sunshiny.

The hands was gone to the fields and there was them kind of faint dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and like everybody's dead and gone.

And if a breeze fans along and quivers the leaves, it makes you feel mournful because you feel like it's spirits, whispering spirits that's been dead ever so many years.

You always think they're talking about you as a general thing.

It makes a body wish he was dead too, and done with it all.

Phelps's was one of these little one horse cotton plantations, and they all look alike.

A rail fence round a two acre yard, a still made out of logs, sawed up and upended in steps like barrels of a different length to climb over the fence with and for the women to stand on when they're going to jump onto a horse.

Some sickly grass patches in the big yard, but mostly it was bare and smooth like an old hat with the nap rubbed off.

Big double log house for the white folks.

Huge logs with the chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud stripes been whitewashed sometime or another.

Round log kitchen with a big broad open but roofed passage, joining it to the house.

Log smokehouse, back of the kitchen, three little log servant cabins in a row.

The other side of the smokehouse.

One little hut all by itself away down against the back fence and some outbuildings down a piece the other side, ash hopper and big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut bench by the kitchen door with bucket of water and a gourd hound asleep there in the sun.

More hounds asleep round about three shade trees away.

Off in a corner, some current bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence.

Outside of the fence, a garden and a watermelon patch.

Then the cotton fields begins.

And after the fields, the woods I went around and clum over the back still by the ash hopper, and started for the kitchen.

When I got a little ways, I heard the dim of a spinning wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again.

And then I knowed for certain I wished I was dead, for that is the lonesomest sound in the whole world.

I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting the Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come, for I'd notice that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if I left it alone when I got halfway.

First one hound and then another got up and went for me.

And of course, I stopped and faced them and kept still, and such another POW wow as they made in a quarter of a minute.

I was a kind of a hub.

Of a wheel, as you may say.

Spokes made out of dogs.

Circle of 15 of them packed together around me with their necks and noses stretched up towards me, a barking and howling and more coming.

You could see them sailing over fences and round corners from everywheres.

A servant woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling pin in her hand, singing out, begone, you tig, you spot begon, sir.

And she fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling.

And then the rest followed.

And the next second half of them come back, wagging their tails around me and making friends with me.

There ain't no harm in a hound, nohow.

And behind the woman comes a little servant girl and two little servant boys without anything on but Tolen in shirts.

And they hung on to their mother's gown and peeped out from behind her at me bashful, the way they always do.

And here comes the white woman running from the house, about 45 or 50 year old, bareheaded, and her spinning stick in her hand.

And behind her comes her little white children acting the same way the little servants was doing.

She was smiling all over so she could hardly stand, and says, it's you at last, ain't it?

I out with a yes, him before I thought.

She grabbed me and hugged me tight and then gripped me by both hands and shook and shook.

And the tears come in her eyes and run down over.

And she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough and kept saying you don't look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would.

But lost sakes, I don't care for that.

I'm so glad to see you.

Dear, dear.

It does seem like I could eat you up.

Children.

It's your cousin Tom.

Tell him howdy.

But they ducked their heads and put their fingers in their mouths and hid behind her so she run on lies.

Hurry and get him a hot breakfast right away.

Or did you get your breakfast on the boat?

I said I had got it on the boat.

So then she started for the house, leading me by the hand and the children tagging after.

When we got there, she set me down in a split bottomed chair and set herself down on a little low stool in front of me holding both of my hands and says, now I can have a good look at you.

And laws of me.

I've been hungry for it many a time, all these long years.

And it's come at last.

We've been expecting you a couple of days and more.

What kept you?

Boat get aground?

Yes, m.

She don't say, yes, m.

Say Aunt Sally, where'd she get aground?

I didn't rightly know what to say because I didn't know whether the boat would be coming up the river or down.

But I go a good deal on instinct and my instinct said she'd be coming up from down towards Orleans.

That didn't help me much though for I didn't know the names of bars down that way.

I see I got to invent a bar or forget the name of the one we got a ground on or now I struck an idea and fetched it out.

It weren't the grounding that didn't keep us back, but a little.

We blowed out a cylinder head.

Good gracious.

Anybody hurt?

No.

Em killed a servant.

Well, it's lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt.

Two years ago last Christmas, your Uncle Silas was coming up from New Orleans.

On the old Lally Rock and she.

Blowed out a cylinder head and crippled a man and I think he died afterwards.

He was a Baptist.

Your Uncle Silas knowed a family in Baton Rouge that noticed people very well.

Yes, I remember now.

He did die.

Mortification set in and they had to amputate him, but it didn't save him.

Yes, it was mortification.

That was it.

He turned blue all over and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection.

They say he was a sight to look at.

Your uncle's been up to the town every day to fetch you and he's gone again not more than an hour ago.

He'll be back any minute now.

You must have met him on the road, didn't you, oldish man with a no, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally.

The boat just landed at daylight, and I left my baggage on the wharf boat and went looking around the town and out of peace in the country to put in the time and not get here too soon.

So I come down the back way.

Who'd you give the baggage to?

Nobody.

Why, child, it'll be stole.

Not where I hid it, I reckon it won't.

I says, how'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?

It was kind of thin ice.

But I says, the captain see me standing around and told me I better have something to eat before I went to shore.

So he took me in the Texas to the officer's lunch and give me all I wanted.

I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good.

I had my mind on the children all the time I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them a little and find out who I was, but I couldn't get no show.

Mrs.

Phelps kept it up and run on, so pretty soon she made the cold chill streak all down my back because she says but we're here running on this way and you ain't told me a word about CIS nor any of them.

Now, I'll rest my works a little, and you start up yawn.

Just tell me everything.

Tell me all about them and every one of them and how they are and what they're doing and what they told you to tell me and every last thing you can think of.

Well, I see I was up a stump, and up it good.

Providence had stood by me.

This for, all right, but I was hard and tied to ground.

Now I see it weren't a bit of use to try to go ahead.

I've got to throw up my hand.

So I says to myself, here's another place where I got to risk the truth.

I opened my mouth to begin, but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the bed and says, here he comes.

Stick your head down lower.

There.

That'll do.

You can't be seen now.

Don't let on your here, I'll play a joke on him.

Children, don't you say a word.

I see, I was on a fix now, but it weren't no use to worry.

There weren't nothing to do but just hold still and try and be ready to stand from under when the lightning struck.

I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in.

Then the bed hit him.

Mrs.

Phelps, she jumps for him and says, has he come?

No, says her husband.

Goodness gracious, she says, what in the world can it become of him?

I can't imagine, says the old gentleman.

And I must say it makes me dreadful uneasy.

Uneasy?

She says.

I'm ready to go.

Distracted.

He must have come and you've missed him along the road.

I know it's.

So something tells me so.

Why, Sally, I couldn't miss him along the road.

You know that.

But, oh, dear, dear.

What will SIS say?

He must have come.

You must have missed him.

He oh, don't distress me more than I'm already distressed.

I don't know what in the world to make of it.

I'm at my wits end, and I don't mind acknowledging I'm right down scared.

But there's no hope that he's come, for he couldn't come and me miss him.

Sally, it's terrible, just terrible.

Something's happened to the boat.

Sure.

Why, Silas, look yonder up the road.

Ain't that somebody coming?

He sprung to the window at the head of the bed and that give Mrs.

Phelps the chance she wanted.

She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and give me a pull and out I come.

And when he turned back from the window, there she stood, a beaming and a smiling like a house of fire.

And I standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside Neil.

Gentleman stared and says why, who's that?

Who do you reckon is?

I no idea.

Who is it?

It's Tom Sawyer.

Thy jeans.

I most slumped through the floor, but there weren't no time to swap knives.

The old man grabbed me by the hand and shook and kept on shaking.

And all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and cry.

And then how they both did fire off questions about Sid and Mary and the rest of the tribe.

But if they was joyful, it weren't nothing to what I was for.

It was like being born again.

I was so glad to find out who I was.

Well, they froze to me for 2 hours and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't hardly go anymore.

I had told them more about my family, I mean the Sawyer family than ever happened to any six Sawyer families.

And I explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder head at the mouth of White River and it took us three days to fix it, which was all right and worked first rate because they didn't know but what it would take three days to fix it.

If I'd have called it a bolt head, it would have done just as well.

Now it's feeling pretty comfortable all down one side and pretty uncomfortable all up the other.

Being Tom Sawyer was easy and comfortable and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a steamboat coughing along down the river.

Then I says to myself, suppose Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat and suppose he steps in here any minute and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep quiet.

Well, I couldn't have it that way.

It wouldn't do it all.

I must go up the road and waylay him.

So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to the town and fetch down my baggage.

The old gentleman was for going along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself and I'd rather he wouldn't take no trouble about me.

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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