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SUMMARY
That night, Huck creeps into the King's room. He steals the booty from the King's room and hears him snoring. Peeping through a crack in the wall of the dining room, he is happy to see all the people guarding the coffin, fast asleep. Suddenly he hears a sound coming from somewhere and quickly he runs to the parlor and decides to hide the bag in the coffin. From his hiding place, he notices that it is Mary Jane. She comes near the coffin, kneels down and starts crying.
He plans that once they are a couple of hundred down the river; he would write to Mary Jane, telling her all about the money and where it is hidden.
The funeral begins with Reverend Hobson's delivery of the funeral sermon. Huck doesn't dare look under the lid of the coffin though he is extremely curious to be sure that the money is where he had kept it the previous night. Suddenly a dreadful thought strikes him. He realizes that somebody may have stolen the money back from the coffin. In this Case, if he writes to Mary Jane about the money and she doesn't find it there, she would doubt Huck's integrity. He might be hunted up and jailed for this.
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| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 27 |
With all these apprehensions playing on his mind, Huck finds the "solemn talk" extremely long and tiring because he is apprehensive the money will be found. He keeps his fingers crossed and, only when the undertaker closes the coffin tightly, does he heave a sigh of relief.
After the burial, the King goes around convincing people that, though he would have loved to stay on a little longer, certain commitments, back home in England, wouldn't allow it. So he plans to auction the entire estate and settle matters as early as possible. He also announces his decision of taking the girls to England with him. He assures everybody that the girls would be amongst their own family members. This pleases everyone, including the girls, immensely. But their happiness receives a blow when, the next day, slave traders come to fetch the niggers who have been sold by the King. A heartrending scene ensues with the niggers "hanging around each other's necks and crying". Though the townspeople do not really approve of this move of the King, they are not too vociferous about it.
On the day of the auction, the King discovers that the money is missing and he questions Huck who cleverly puts the blame on the sold slaves. He does not feel guilty about doing so because the slaves have, anyways, been sold. Therefore, no harm can possibly come on them. Both, the King and the Duke, feel extremely sorry that all their plans have come to naught.