Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Huck arrives at the Phelps’ and feels lonesome, because the droning of bugs and quivering of leaves make it feel “like everybody’s dead and gone.” He says that, generally, such a feeling makes a person wish he were dead too. As he approaches the Phelps’ kitchen, he hears the wailing of a spinning wheel and wishes that he himself were dead, thinking it the “lonesomest sound” in the world.

Dogs swarm around Huck, but soon a slave comes out and yells at the dogs to scram. The slave is followed by two black children, a white woman (Aunt Sally), and two white children, who, Huck notes, respond to him in the same way the black children do. The white woman welcomes Huck, thinking that he is none other than her expected guest and nephew…a boy named Tom. Huck plays along.

The woman who welcomes Huck is called Aunt Sally. She takes Huck inside where she questions him about his trip, such that Huck is forced to lie to keep his cover from being blown. Huck gets especially nervous when Aunt Sally asks him about his family, but is saved when a man, Uncle Silas, enters the room. Aunt Sally hides Huck behind a bed and pretends as though “Tom” hasn’t arrived yet. But Aunt Sally is playing a trick on Uncle Silas: while he’s not looking, she pulls Huck out from behind the bed and introduces him to Uncle Silas as Tom Sawyer.

Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas question Huck, thinking him Tom, about their relatives, and Huck answers their questions with ease. As they’re talking, Huck hears a steamboat coughing down the river. The real Tom could be aboard, Huck thinks, and he could accidentally blow Huck’s cover, so Huck decides to meet him. He tells the Phelpses that he’s going to fetch his baggage from where he hid it, and heads out.