came out neck and neck with my friend. We scrambled
over the outer fence, and ran some dozen rods or more in the open
field, without either of us looking back. Then, however, we made the
astounding discovery, that there was nothing after us, and we both
paused to take breath, and, so far as I was concerned, to ascertain,
if possible, what had occasioned the race. I learned that my friend,
after I left him, had gone into the windfall, and was standing upon
the long trunk of a fallen tree, picking berries, when he saw, a few
rods from him towards the other end of the log on which he was
standing, a great black hand reach up and bend down a tall
blackberry-bush that was loaded with berries. This alarmed him
somewhat, for whoever the great black hand belonged to was concealed
by the thick bushes and their foliage from his view. Presently, two
great black hands were placed upon the log, and a huge black bear
clambered lazily up, and, for a second, stood in utter amazement, face
to face, and within fifty feet of my friend. Both broke at the same
instant, in affright; my friend in one direction, and the bear in the
other--my friend for the fields, and the bear for the deep woods--and
each as anxious as fear could make him to put a 'broad belt of
country' between them. My friend dropped his basket, as he leaped from
the log; it was no time to stop for a basket; a limb caught his hat
and pulled it off; he had not time to stop for his hat. The truth is,
he was in a hurry, and something more than a hat or a basket was
required to stay his progress towards home."

"The Squire's story," said Cullen, as he knocked the ashes from his
pipe, and commenced shaving a fresh supply of tobacco with his
jack-knife, and depositing it in the palm of his left hand, "the
Squire's story reminds me of an adventer Crop and I met with, over
towards St. Regis Lake, a good many year ago; and I'll state the
circumstances of the case, as the Judge would say. It was an adventer
that don't happen often--leastwise, not in the same way. It made me
understand some things that I hadn't much idea of before. Let me tell
you, Judge, if you don't want a fight with an animal that's got long
claws and sharp teeth, don't come close upon him onawares, or may be
there'll be trouble. Give him time to think, and ten to one he'll take
to his heels. Most animals have more confidence in their legs than
they have in their teeth and claws, and they'll be very likely to use