Part 7 (1/2)

So with hiony It see the excited gaze of the others, he glanced back and saw the carcass of the bear The sight filled him with fear He uttered a cry and would have fled, had they not restrained hialow

James J Ward is still at the head of the firer lives in the country; nor does he run of nights after the coyotes under the ht of the Mill Valley fight with the bear James J Ward is noholly Jaabond anachroniser world And so wholly is James J Ward modern, that he knows in all its bitter fullness the curse of civilized fear He is now afraid of the dark, and night in the forest is to hi of abysmal terror His city house is of the spick and span order, and he evinces a great interest in burglarproof devices His houest can scarcely breathe without setting off an alarm Also, he had invented a combination keyless door-lock that travelers may carry in their vest pockets and apply immediately and successfully under all circumstances

But his wife does not deem him a coward She knows better And, like any hero, he is content to rest on his laurels His bravery is never questioned by those friends who are aware of the Mill Valley episode

THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

CARTER WATSON, a currentabout him curiously Twenty years had elapsed since he had been on this particular street, and the changes were great and stupefying

This Western city of three hundred thousand souls had contained but thirty thousand, when, as a boy, he had been wont to ra its streets In those days the street he was now on had been a quiet residence street in the respectable workingclass quarter On this late afternoon he found that it had been subed by a vast and vicious tenderloin Chinese and japanese shops and dens abounded, all confusedly inter dens This quiet street of his youth had becohest quarter of the city

He looked at his watch It was half-past five It was the slack tiion, as he well knew, yet he was curious to see In all his score of years of wandering and studying social conditions over the world, he had carried with him the memory of his old town as a sweet and wholeso He certainly limpse the infa: Carter Watson had a keen social and civic consciousness

Independently wealthy, he had been loath to dissipate his energies in the pink teas and freak dinners of society, while actresses, race-horses, and kindred diversions had left him cold He had the ethical bee in his bonnet and was a reforh his work had been mainly in the line of contributions to the heavier reviews and quarterlies and to the publication over his na classes and the slu the twenty-seven to his credit occurred titles such as, ”If Christ Came to New Orleans,” ”The Worked-out Worker,” ”Teneland,” ”The people of the East Side,” ”Reform Versus Revolution,” ”The University Settlement as a Hot Bed of Radicalism” and ”The Cave Man of Civilization”

But Carter Watson was neither morbid nor fanatic He did not lose his head over the horrors he encountered, studied, and exposed No hair brained enthusiasm branded him His humor saved him, as did his wide experience and his conservative philosophic tee reforrow better only through the painfully slow and arduously painful processes of evolution There were no short cuts, no sudden regenerations The betterony and misery just as all past social betterments had been worked out

But on this late su he paused before a gaudy drinking place The sign above read, ”The Vendome” There were two entrances One evidently led to the bar This he did not explore The other was a narrow hallway

Passing through this he found hie room, filled with chair-encircled tables and quite deserted In the di a mental note that he would come back some time and study the class of persons that must sit and drink at those ate the room

Now, at the rear, a short hallway led off to a small kitchen, and here, at a table, alone, sat Patsy Horan, proprietor of the Vendo rush of business Also, Patsy Horan was angry with the world He had got out of the wrong side of bed that ht all day Had his barkeepers been asked, they would have described his rouch But Carter Watson did not know this As he passed the little hallway, Patsy Horan's sullen eyes lighted on the azine he carried under his arm

Patsy did not know Carter Watson, nor did he know that what he carried under his arrouch, decided that this stranger was one of those pests whoup or pasting up advertiseazine convinced hian Knife and fork in hand, Patsy leaped for Carter Watson

”Out wid yeh!” Patsy bellowed ”I know yer game!”

Carter Watson was startled The man had come upon him like the eruption of a jack-in-the-box

”A defacin'of vivid and vile, rather than virile, epithets of opprobriuiven any offense I did not ot Patsy interrupted

”Get out wid yeh; yeh talk toohis remarks with flourishes of the knife and fork

Carter Watson caught a quick vision of that eating-fork inserted uncomfortably between his ribs, knew that it would be rash to talk further with his ht of his ed Patsy Horan, for that worthy, dropping the table ihed one hundred and eighty pounds So did Watson In this they were equal But Patsy was a rushi+ng, rough-and-tuhter, while Watson was a boxer In this the latter had the advantage, for Patsy caht in a perilous sweep All Watson had to do was to straight-left hi, and his experience in the sluht him restraint

He pivoted on his feet, and, instead of striking, ducked the other's swinging blow and went into a clinch But Patsy, charging like a bull, had theto meet him, had no momentum As a result, the pair of them went doith all their three hundred and sixty pounds of weight, in a long crashi+ng fall, Watson underneath He lay with his head touching the rear wall of the large room The street was a hundred and fifty feet away, and he did soht was to avoid trouble He had no wish to get into the papers of this, his childhood tohere many of his relatives and family friends still lived

So it was that he locked his arms around the man on top of him, held him close, and waited for the help to come that must come in response to the crash of the fall The help came--that is, six men ran in from the bar and formed about in a semi-circle

”Take him off, fellows,” Watson said ”I haven't struck hiht”