other, he to gather berries, and I, with a small fowling-piece, in
pursuit of game. Presently I saw my friend crashing through the brush
towards me, and also towards the fields, without his basket, and bare
headed, his hair standing straight up, putting in his very best jumps,
as if a thousand tigers were at his heels. Without heeding for a
moment my anxious inquiries as to what was the matter, he kept right
on, leaping the logs like a deer, looking neither to the right hand
nor the left, but with his coat tail sticking out on a dead level
behind, making a straight wake for home. Fear is said to be
contagious, and I believe in the doctrine that it is so. I caught it
bad; and without knowing what I was afraid of, I started, and if any
fourteen year old boy can make better time than I did on that
occasion, I should like to see him run. I kept possession of my
fowling-piece, and 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