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.
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