Maybe you think I dropped into the excavation just to pass the time
away? Have you an idea that I dove down into the earth because I
wanted to get back to the mines? Wasn't your fault, indeed! Maybe
you think I fell in the well simply because I wanted to give an
imitation of the old oaken bucket, yes?"

I tried to tell him all about Tacks and the ghost story, but he
wouldn't stand for it.

"You should have been waiting for me on the stairs," he argued,
unreasonably, rubbing one of the bruises in his choice collection,
"Didn't you catch me early in the evening being chased from pillar
to post by everything in the neighborhood that had legs long enough
to run? When I tried to hide in the corner of a farm over there, a
bull dog came up on rubber shoes and bit his initials on some of my
personal property before I could crawl through the fence. Every
time I showed up on the pike that human accident that breathes like
a man and talks like a rabbit chased me eight miles there and back.
The first time I tried to approach the infernal house I fell over a
grindstone and signed checks in the gravel with my nose.
Hereafter, when you want a burglar, pick somebody your own size.
I'm going to hunt a hospital and get sewed together again."

I put on all steam and tried to square myself, but Bunch only shook
his head and said I was outlawed.

"You can't run on my race track," he exclaimed as he started for
the depot; "that last race was crooked and you stood in with the
dope mixer."