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

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

Chapter 36 as soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night, we went down the lightning rod and shut ourselves up in the lean to and got out our pile of fox fire and went to work.

We cleared everything out of the way about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log.

Tom said he was right behind Jim's bed now, and we dig in under it.

And when we got through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole there because Jim's counterpin hung down most to the ground and you'd have to raise it up and look under to see the hole.

So we dug and dug with the case knives till most midnight, and then we was dogged tired and our hands was blistered and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything.

Hardly.

At last I says, this ain't no 37 year job.

This is a 38 year job.

Tom Sawyer, he never said nothing, but he sighed and pretty soon he stopped digging.

And then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking.

Then he says, It ain't no use, Huck.

It ain't going to work.

If we was prisoners, it would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted in no hurry, and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig every day while they was changing watches and so our hands wouldn't get blistered.

And we could keep it up right along year in and year out and do it right and the way it ought to be done.

But we can't fool along.

We got a rush.

We ain't got no time to spare.

If we was to put in another night this way we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well.

Couldn't touch a case knife with them sooner.

Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?

I'll tell you.

It ain't right and it ain't moral, and I would like it to get out.

But there ain't only just the one way.

We got to dig him out with the pics and let on its case knives.

Now you're talking, I says.

Your head gets leveler and leveler all the time, Tom Sawyer, I says.

Pics is the thing, moral or no moral.

And as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it know how when I start in to steal a servant or a watermelon or a Sunday school book, I ain't no waste particular how it's done.

So it's done.

What I want is my servant, or what I want is my watermelon or what I want is my Sunday school book.

And if it picks the handiest thing, that's the thing I'm going to dig that servant or that watermelon or that Sunday school book out with.

And I don't give a dead rat what the authorities think about it.

Another well, Heath says there's excuse for picks and letting on in a case like this.

If it weren't so, I wouldn't approve of it.

Nor I wouldn't stand by and see the rules broke because right is right and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better.

It might answer for you to dig Jim out with a pick without any letting on because you don't know no better.

But it wouldn't for me, because I do know better.

Give me a case knife.

He had his own by him, but I handed him mine.

He flung it down and says, give me a case knife.

I didn't know just what to do, but then I thought I scratched around amongst the old tools and got a pickaxe and give it to him.

And he took it and went to work and never said a word.

He was always just that particular, full of principle.

So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled turn about and made the fur fly.

We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long as we could stand up, but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it.

When I got upstairs, I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his level best with the lightning rod, but he couldn't come it his hands were so sore.

At last he says it ain't no use.

It can't be done.

What you reckon I better do?

Can't you think of no way?

Yes, I says, but I reckon it ain't regular.

Come up the stairs and let on it's a lightning rod.

So we done it.

Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house for to make some pens for Jim out of and six tallow candles.

And I hung around the servant cabins and laid for a chance and stole three tin plates.

Tom says it wasn't enough but I said nobody wouldn't ever see the plates that Jim throwed out because they'd fallen the dog fennel and gypsum weeds under the window hole.

Then we could tote them back and he could use them over again.

So Tom was satisfied.

Then he says now the thing to study out is how to get the things to Jim take them in through the hole.

I says when we get it done.

He only just looked scornful and said something about nobody ever heard of such an idiotic idea.

And then he went to studying by and by.

He said he had ciphered out two or three ways but there weren't no need to decide on any of them yet.

Said we'd got to post Jim first.

That night we went down the lightning rod a little after ten and took one of the candles along and listened under the window hole and heard Jim snoring.

So we pitched it in and it didn't wake him.

Then we whirled in with the pick and shovel and in about 2 hours and a half the job was done.

We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin and pawed around and found the candle and lit it and stood over Jim a while and found him looking hearty and healthy.

And then we woke him up gentle and gradual.

He was so glad to see us he most cried and called us honey and all the pet names he could think of and was for having us hunt up a cold chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away and clearing out without losing any time.

But Tom, he showed him how unregular it would be and sat down and told him all about our plans and how we could alter them in a minute anytime there was an alarm and not to be the least afraid because we would see he got away sure.

So Jim said it was all right.

And we sat there and talked over.

Old times a while.

And then Tom asked a lot of questions.

And when Jim told him, uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of them was kind as they could be, Tom says Now I know how to fix it, we'll send you some things by them.

I said don't do nothing of the kind.

It's one of the most jackass ideas I ever struck, but he never paid no attention to me.

Went right on it was his way when he got his plan set.

So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope ladder, pie and other large things by Nat the servant that fed him, and he must be on the lookout and not be surprised and not let Nat see him open them.

And we would put small things in Uncle's coat pockets and he must steal them out.

And we would tie things to Aunt's apron strings or put them in her apron pocket if we got a chance, and told him what they would be and what they was for and told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with his blood and all that.

He told him everything.

Jim.

He couldn't see no sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed better than him, so he was satisfied and said he would do it all just as Tom said.

Jim had plenty corn, cob, pipes and tobacco, so we had to write down good sociable time.

Then we crawled out through the hole and so home to bed with hands that looked like they'd been chawed.

Tom was in high spirits.

He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life and the most intellectual, and said if he only could see his way to it, we would keep it up all the.

Rest of our lives and leave Jim.

To our children to get out.

For he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it.

He said that in the way it could be strung out to as much as 80 year and would be the best time on record.

And he said it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.

In the morning, we went out to the wood pile and chopped up the brass candlestick into handy sizes and Tom put them in the pewter spoon in his pocket.

Then we went to the servant cabins and while I got Nat's notice off, tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a cornpone that was in Jim's pan.

And we went along with Nat to see how it would work.

And it just worked noble.

When Jim bit into it, it most mashed all his teeth out and there weren't ever anything could have worked better.

Tom said so himself.

Jim, he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread, you know.

But after that he never bit into nothing but what.

He jabbed his fork into it three or four places first.

And whilst we was standing there in the dimmish light here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed and they come on piling in till there was eleven of them and there weren't hardly room in there to get your breath by.

Jeans.

We forgot to fasten that lean to door.

The servant Nat.

He only just hollered witches once and killed over onto the floor amongst the dogs and begun to groan like he was dying.

Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat and the dogs went for it and in 2 seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door and I knowed he'd fix the other door too.

Then we went to work on the servant, coaxing him and petting him and asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again.

He raised up and blinked his eyes around and says mars Sid, you'll say as a fool but if I didn't believe I see most a million dogs or devils or summon while I wish I may die right here in these tracks.

I did mostly, Mars said I felt, I felt so they was all over me.

Dad, fetched it.

I just wished I could get my hands on one of them witches just once.

Only just once.

It's all I dast.

But mostly I wish they'd leave me alone.

I does, Tom says, while I tell you what I think.

What makes them come here just at this runaway servants breakfast time?

It's because they're hungry, that's the reason.

You make them a witch pie.

That's the thing for you to do.

But my landmars, Sid, how's I going to make him a witch pie?

I don't know how to make it.

I ain't ever heard such a thing before.

Well then I'll have to make it myself.

Will you do it, honey?

Will you?

I'll worship the ground on your foot.

I will.

All right, I'll do it.

Seeing it's you and you've been good to us and showed us the runaway servant.

But you got to be mighty careful when we come around.

You turn your back and then whatever we've put in the pan don't let on you see it at all.

And don't you look when Jim unloads the pan something might happen.

I don't know what.

And above all, don't you handle the witch things.

Annel, my Sid, what is you talking about?

I wouldn't lay the weight of my finger on him.

Not for ten hundred thousand billion dollars, I wouldn't.

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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In The Broken.

Let's see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter, one at a time.

So many adventures and mountains we can climb.