Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Chapter 37 Summary & Analysis

Tom and Huck get what they need to bake the witch-pie. Afterwards, the boys go down to breakfast, hiding a spoon for Jim to write with in Uncle Silas’s pocket and nails in his hat, only to find Aunt Sally livid that things in the house are going missing. Uncle Silas suggests ways things could go missing, like rats getting them, but Aunt Sally dismisses them all. She is irritated and suspicious. Uncle Silas goes on to sheepishly produce the spoon hidden in his pocket by Huck and Tom. Aunt Sally hotly dismisses everyone from the kitchen so she can calm down.

Uncle Silas finds the nail in his hat but doesn’t mention it. Tom recognizes that Uncle Silas has helped him and Huck conceal their plan to help Jim by producing the spoon at breakfast, and so he resolves to help Uncle Silas by plugging holes in the cellar through which rats enter and exit the house. Later, Uncle Silas comes downstairs and sees that all of the holes have been plugged. He can’t remember having done that chore for the life of him.

Huck and Tom steal another spoon, but pretend that Aunt Sally miscounted how many there were to cover their tracks. Tom tells Aunt Sally that, even with the spoon Uncle Silas found, the spoon set is incomplete. Aunt Sally recounts, but Huck and Tom keep tricking her into thinking she has miscounted. Aunt Sally becomes mad and storms off. Huck and Tom hide the spoon they stole in her apron along with a nail, both of which she inadvertently delivers to Jim in his hut.

After a lot of trouble and experimentation, Tom and Huck bake the witch-pie, which is basically a crust under which is hidden a ladder. Nat delivers the pie to Jim, which Jim busts open so that he can take the ladder out and hide it in his mattress. He also scratches some marks on a tin and throws it out of his window, in accordance with Tom’s plan.