The boys went to the trash pile in the back yard. They found an old tin pan and fixed the holes in it. They went to the cellar and took some flour to bake a pie. Tom Sawyer also found two nails. He said a prisoner needs nails to write his name and his sad story on the walls.
The boys put one nail in Aunt Sally’s apron pocket. They put the other nail in the band of Uncle Silas’s hat. They heard that Aunt Sally and Uncle Silas were going to visit Jim that morning. Then the boys went to breakfast. Tom Sawyer dropped a spoon into the pocket of Uncle Silas’s coat.
Aunt Sally came to breakfast. She was very hot and angry. She hit one of the children on the head with her thimble (a small metal cap for a finger used when sewing). Aunt Sally said she could not find Uncle Silas’s other shirt. Huckleberry Finn was very afraid. He coughed and a piece of bread hit a child in the eye.
Uncle Silas was very surprised. He said he remembered taking the shirt off. Aunt Sally said she saw the shirt on the clothesline yesterday. She said Uncle Silas was not careful with his clothes. Uncle Silas said he tried to be careful, but he only saw the shirts when he wore them.
Aunt Sally said other things were missing too. She said a spoon was gone. She said six candles were missing. She thought rats took the candles. She was very angry at Uncle Silas because he did not close the rat holes. Uncle Silas promised to close the holes that day.
Then a servant came into the room. She said a sheet was missing from the clothesline. Aunt Sally was shocked. Then another servant came and said a brass candlestick (a metal holder for a candle) was missing. Aunt Sally was so angry that Huckleberry Finn wanted to run away to the woods.
Uncle Silas looked in his pocket and found the spoon. Aunt Sally stopped talking and looked at him. She asked how the spoon got into his pocket. Uncle Silas said he did not know. He said he was reading the Bible before breakfast. He thought he put the spoon in his pocket by mistake.
Aunt Sally told everyone to leave her alone. She wanted to be quiet and calm. As they left the room, Uncle Silas took his hat. The nail fell out of his hat and onto the floor. Uncle Silas picked it up and put it on a shelf. He did not say anything.
Tom Sawyer said they could not use Uncle Silas to carry things to Jim anymore. He was not reliable. But Tom Sawyer wanted to help Uncle Silas. The boys went to the cellar and filled all the rat holes with dirt. It took them one hour to finish the job.
Then they heard Uncle Silas coming. The boys blew out their light and hid. Uncle Silas had a candle and some things to fix the holes. He looked at every hole, but they were already closed. He was very confused. He could not remember doing the work, but he was happy the holes were closed.
Tom Sawyer wanted a spoon for Jim. He and Huckleberry Finn went to the kitchen. They waited for Aunt Sally. Tom Sawyer began to count the spoons in a basket. Huckleberry Finn hid one spoon in his sleeve. Tom Sawyer told Aunt Sally there were only nine spoons.
Aunt Sally said there were ten spoons. She counted them herself. But when she counted them again, she only found nine. Then Huckleberry Finn put the spoon back. Aunt Sally counted again and found ten. This made her very angry and confused.
Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer did this many times. Sometimes there were nine spoons and sometimes there were ten. Aunt Sally became very mad. She threw the basket across the room and told the boys to go away. Now the boys had a spoon for Jim. They put it in Aunt Sally’s pocket, and Jim got it later.
The boys did the same thing with the sheets. They stole a sheet and then put it back. They did this for two days. Finally, Aunt Sally did not know how many sheets she had. She was tired of counting. She did not care about the sheets anymore.
The boys had a lot of trouble with the pie. They made it in the woods. They had to use a lot of flour. They got smoke in their eyes and they burned their hands. They wanted to hide a rope-ladder (a ladder made of rope) inside the pie.
They made the ladder from a sheet. They tore the sheet into long pieces and twisted them together. The rope was very long. They used a warming-pan (a metal pan with a long handle used to warm a bed) to bake the pie. They put the rope-ladder inside and covered it with dough.
The pie looked very good after fifteen minutes. Nat did not look when the boys put the pie in Jim's pan. They also put three tin plates under the food. Jim was alone when he opened the pie. He found the rope-ladder and hid it in his bed. He wrote on a tin plate and threw it out of the window.