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

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

Chapter 40.

We was feeling pretty good after breakfast and took my canoe and went over the river of fishing with a lunch and had a good time and took a look at the raft and found her all right and got home late to supper and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they was standing on and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done supper and wouldn't tell us.

What the trouble was and never let on a word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did.

And as soon as we was half upstairs and her back was turned, we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed and got up about 11:30 and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch but says, Where's the butter?

I laid out a hunk of it, I says, on a piece of cornpone.

Well, you left it laid out then.

It ain't here.

We can get along without it, I says, we can get along with it too.

He says, you just slide down cellar and fetch it and then mosey.

Write down the lightning rod and come along.

I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise and be ready to bow like a sheep and shove soon as you get there.

So audi went, and down cellar went I.

The hunk of butter, big as a person's fist was where I had left it.

So I took up the slab of cornpone with it on and blowed out my light and started upstairs very stealthy and got up to the main floor all right.

But here comes Aunt Sally with a candle.

And I clapped the truck in my hat and clapped my hat on my head.

And the next second she see me and she says, you been down seller?

Yes, m.

What you been doing down there?

Nothing.

Nothing?

No.

Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?

I don't know him.

You don't know?

Don't answer me that way, Tom.

I want to know what you've been doing down there.

I ain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally.

I hope to gracious if I have.

I reckon she'd let me go now.

And as a general thing, she would.

But I suppose there was so many strange things going on.

She was just in a sweat about every little thing that weren't yardstick straight.

So she says very decided, you just march into that setting room and stay there till I come.

You've been up to something you know, business to.

And I lay I'll find out what it is before I'm done with you.

So she went away.

As I opened the door and walked into the setting room, my, but there was a crowd there, 15 farmers, and every one of them had a gun.

I was most powerful, sick and slunk to a chair and sat down.

They were setting around, some of them talking a little in a low voice and all of them fidgety and uneasy but trying to look like they weren't.

But I knowed they was, because I was always taking off their hats and putting them on and scratching their heads and changing their seats and fumbling with their buttons.

I weren't easy myself, but I didn't take my hat off.

All the same, I did wish Aunt Sally would come and get done with me and lick me if she wanted to and let me get away and tell Tom how we'd overdone this thing.

And what a thundering hornets.

Nest we'd got ourselves into so we could stop fooling around straight off and clear out with Jim before these rips got out of Patience and come for us.

At last.

She come and began to ask me questions, but I couldn't answer them straight.

I didn't know which end of me was up because these men was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right now and lay for them desperados and saying it weren't but a few minutes to midnight and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep signal.

And here was Auntie Pegging away at the questions and Mia shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks.

I was that scared.

And the plates getting hotter and hotter and the butter beginning to melt and run down my neck and behind my ears.

And pretty soon one of them says I'm forgoing and getting in the cabin first and right now and catching them when they come.

I most dropped and a streak of butter come a trickling down my forehead.

An Aunt Sally, she see it and turns white as a sheet and says, for the land's sake, what is the matter with the child?

He's got the brain fever as sure as you're born.

And they're oozing out, and everybody runs to see.

And she snatches off my hat and out comes the bread and what was left of the butter.

And she grabbed me and hugged me and says, oh, what a turn you did give me.

And how glad and grateful I am it ain't no worse for luck's against us.

And it never rains but it pours.

And when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you for I knowed by the color and all it was just like your brains would be if dear, dear.

Why didn't you tell me that was what you'd been down there for?

I wouldn't have cared.

Now clear out to bed and don't let me see no more of you till morning.

I was upstairs in a second and down the lightning rod in another one and shining through the dark for the lean to.

I couldn't hardly get my words out, I was so anxious.

But I told Tom as quick as I could, we must jump for it now and not a minute to lose.

The house full of men yonder with guns.

His eyes just blazed and he said no.

Is that so?

Ain't it bully?

Why, Huck, if it was to do over again I bet I could fetch 200 if we could put it off till hurry.

Hurry, I says.

Where's Jim?

Right at your elbow.

If you reach out your arm, you can touch him.

He's dressed, and everything's ready now.

We'll slide out and give the sheep signal.

But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door and heard them begin to fumble with the padlock and heard a man say I told you we'd be too soon.

They haven't come.

The door is locked.

Here, I'll lock some of you into the cabin.

And you lay for them in the dark and kill them when they come.

And the rest scatter around a piece and listen if you can hear them coming.

So when they come but they couldn't see us in the dark and most trod on us whilst we was hustling to get under the bed.

But we got under all right and out through the hole, swift but soft.

Jim first, me next and Tom last, which was according to Tom's orders.

Now we was in the lean to and heard trampings close by outside, so we crept to the door and Tom stopped us there and put his eye to the crack but couldn't make out nothing, it was so dark, and whispered and said he would listen for the steps to get further.

And when he nudged us, Jim must glide out first and him last.

So he set his ear to the crack and listened and listened and listened, and the steps of scraping around out there all the time.

And at last he nudged us and we slid out and stooped down, not breathing and not making the least noise, and slipped stealthily towards the fence an engine file and got it all right and me and Jim over it.

But Tom's Britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail and then he hear the steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and made a noise.

And as he dropped in our tracks and started, somebody sings out.

Who's that answer.

I'll shoot.

But we didn't answer.

We just unfurled our heels and shoved.

Then there was a rush and a bang bang, bang and the bullets fairly whizzed around us.

We heard them sing out, here they are.

They've broke for the river after them, boys, and turn loose the dogs so here they come full tilt.

We could hear them because they wore boots and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell.

We was in the path to the mill, and when they got pretty close on to us, we dodged into the bush and let them go by and then dropped in behind them.

They had had all the dogs shut up so they wouldn't scare off the robbers, but by this time somebody had let them loose and here they come, making POW wow enough for a million.

But they was our dog, so we stopped in our tracks till they catched up.

And when they see it weren't nobody but us and no excitement to offer them, they only just said, howdy and tore right ahead towards the shouting and clattering.

And then we upstream again and whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill and then struck up through the bush to where my canoe was tied and hopped in and pulled for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more noise than we was obliged to.

Then we struck out easy and comfortable for the island where my raft was and we could hear them yelling and barking at each other all up and down the bank till we was so far away the sounds got dim and died out.

And when we stepped onto the raft, I says, now, old Jim, you're a free man again and I bet you won't ever be a slave no more.

And a mighty good job it was, too.

Huck.

It is planned beautiful and it is done beautiful and d.

Nobody can get up a plan that's mo mixed up and splendid in what that one was.

We was all glad as we could be but Tom was the gladest of all because he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.

When me and Jim heard that, we didn't feel so brash as we did before.

It was hurting him considerable and bleeding.

So we laid him in the wig wham and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him.

But he says, Give me the rags, I can do it myself.

Don't stop now.

Don't fool around here.

And the Evasion booming along so handsome.

Man the sweeps and set her loose, boys, we done it.

Elegant deed we did.

I wish we'd have had the handling of Louis XV.

There wouldn't have been no son of St.

Louis ascend to heaven wrote down in his biography.

No, sir.

We'd have whooped him over the border.

That's what we'd have done with him.

And done it just as slick as nothing at all too.

Man the sweeps.

Man the sweeps.

But me and Jim was consulting and thinking and after we'd thought a minute I says, say it, Jim.

So he says, well, then, this is the way it looked to me.

Huck.

If it was him dad is being sought free and one of them boys was to get shot, would he say, go on and save me mind about a doctor for to save this one.

Is that like Mars Tom Sawyer.

Would he say that?

You bet he wouldn't.

Well, then, is Jim going to say it?

No, sir.

I don't budge a step out in this place doubt a doctor.

Not if it's 40 year.

I know he was wide inside and I reckoned he'd say what he did say.

So it was all right now, and I told Tom I was going for a doctor.

He raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn't budge.

So he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself, but we wouldn't let him.

Then he'd give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't do no good.

When he sees me getting the canoe ready he says well then, if you're bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do.

When you get to the village, shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and fast and make him swear to be silent as the grave and put a purse full of gold in his hand.

And then take and lead him all around the back alleys and everywhere's in the dark.

And then fetch him here in the canoe in a roundabout way amongst the islands and search him and take his chalk away from him and don't give it back to him till you get him back to the village or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again.

It's the way they all do.

So I said I would and left and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see the doctor coming till he was gone again.

Thank you for joining Bite at a.

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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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Take a look in the broken.

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