“Bang I goes, slap off the trail sideways, a-plungin’ and a-clawin’ through the brush like a wild man.  By this time I was clean crazed; thought the whole country was full of bald-faces.  Next thing I knows—­whop, I comes up against something in a tangle of wild blackberry bushes.  Then that something hits me a slap and closes in on me.  Another bald-face!  And then and there I knew I was gone for sure.  But I made up to die game, and of all the rampin’ and roarin’ and rippin’ and tearin’ you ever see, that was the worst.

“‘My God!  O my wife!’ it says.  And I looked and it was a man I was hammering into kingdom come.

“‘Thought you was a bear,’ says I.

“He kind of caught his breath and looked at me.  Then he says, ’Same here.’

“Seemed as though he’d been chased by a bald-face, too, and had hid in the blackberries.  So that’s how we mistook each other.

“But by that time the racket on the trail was something terrible, and we didn’t wait to explain matters.  That afternoon we got Joe Gee and some rifles and came back loaded for bear.  Mebbe you won’t believe me, but when we got to the spot, there was the two bald-faces lyin’ dead.  You see, when I jumped out, they came together, and each refused to give trail to the other.  So they fought it out.  Talkin’ of bear.  As I was sayin’——­”

IN YEDDO BAY

Somewhere along Theater Street he had lost it.  He remembered being hustled somewhat roughly on the bridge over one of the canals that cross that busy thoroughfare.  Possibly some slant-eyed, light-fingered pickpocket was even then enjoying the fifty-odd yen his purse had contained.  And then again, he thought, he might have lost it himself, just lost it carelessly.

Hopelessly, and for the twentieth time, he searched in all his pockets for the missing purse.  It was not there.  His hand lingered in his empty hip-pocket, and he woefully regarded the voluble and vociferous restaurant-keeper, who insanely clamored:  “Twenty-five sen!  You pay now!  Twenty-five sen!”

“But my purse!” the boy said.  “I tell you I’ve lost it somewhere.”

Whereupon the restaurant-keeper lifted his arms indignantly and shrieked:  “Twenty-five sen!  Twenty-five sen!  You pay now!”

Quite a crowd had collected, and it was growing embarrassing for Alf Davis.

It was so ridiculous and petty, Alf thought.  Such a disturbance about nothing!  And, decidedly, he must be doing something.  Thoughts of diving wildly through that forest of legs, and of striking out at whomsoever opposed him, flashed through his mind; but, as though divining his purpose, one of the waiters, a short and chunky chap with an evil-looking cast in one eye, seized him by the arm.

“You pay now!  You pay now!  Twenty-five sen!” yelled the proprietor, hoarse with rage.