The Widow Douglas takes care of Huck and tries to teach him. She and Judge Thatcher go to court “to take [Huck] away from [Pap Finn] and let one of them be [Huck’s] guardian.” Pap Finn argues that because he is Huck’s father, he has the right to Huck’s money, and he thrashes Huck unless Huck gets a few dollars at a time from Judge Thatcher. In a desperate move, Pap Finn captures Huck and takes him across the river to Illinois, where “there warn’t no houses but an old log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn’t find it if you didn’t know where it was.”
