Episode 12: Huck feels terrible about letting such sweet women be swindled and resolves to get them their money back. He goes to the con men’s room to search for the money and hides when they enter. Huck finds the $6,000 in gold and hides the sack of money in Peter Wilks’s coffin which is sealed. The next morning, Huck finds Mary Jane crying in her bedroom. All her joy about the trip to England has given way to distress over the separation of the slave family because the two con men have sold them South. Huck unthinkingly blurts out that the family will be reunited in less than two weeks. Mary Jane, overjoyed, asks Huck to explain. He tells Mary Jane the truth but asks her to wait at a friend’s house until later that night in order to give …show more content…
Then, the two start to have secret discussions, worrying Jim and Huck, who resolve to ditch them at the first opportunity. However, after they pull ashore one day when Huck heads back to the raft Jim has disappeared. A boy explains that a man recognized Jim as a runaway from a handbill that offered $200 for Jim’s capture in New Orleans. This is the same fraudulent handbill that the duke had printed earlier. The boy says that the man who captured Jim had to leave suddenly and sold his interest in the captured runaway for forty dollars to a farmer named Silas Phelps. Huck suddenly realizes that this moral dilemma for freeing Jim must be God’s punishment for the sin of helping Jim. However he thinks of the time he spent with Jim on the river, of Jim’s kind heart, and of their friendship and decides, to steal Jim back and help him. Huck finds the Phelps’s house, and the white mistress of the house, Sally, comes outside, delighted to see Huck because she is certain he is her nephew, Tom …show more content…
Tom is at first startled by the “ghost,” believing that Huck was murdered back in St. Petersburg, but is eventually convinced that Huck is actually alive. Tom agrees to help Huck free Jim. That night, Huck and Tom sneak out of the house. As they walk on the road, they see a mob of townspeople with the duke and the dauphin, who are tarred and feathered. Huck feels bad for the two, and his ill feelings toward fade away. Tom remembers seeing a black man delivering food to a shed on the Phelps property earlier that evening and deduces that the shed is where Jim is being held. Tom then comes up with a wild plan that Huck admits is more stylish than his own but it might get all three of them killed. They escape the night that Tom Sawyer sends anonymous letters to his Uncle and Aunt. However, he plans are foiled after Tom gets shot in the leg and Jim is captured saving Tom’s life. Tom tells everyone that Jim is free and they treat Jim like a king after that. Jim tells Huck that Huck’s father is dead and Huck resolves to go out