Welcome back, everyone to one thousand one classic short stories and tales.

This is your host, John Haggardorn, two Stephen Crane stories for you today,

beginning with a comedy called A Tent in Agony. A Tent in Agony was written in 1892. It's a comic

sketch about a camper who meets a bear in the Sullivan County wilderness and discovers that

probato, not bravery, is what separates a coward from a

hero. And now our story. A Sullivan County Tale. Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless

forest to fish. They pitched their tent fair upon the brow of a pine-clothed ridge of riven rocks

once a boulder could be made to crash through the brush and whirl past

the trees to the lake below. On fragrant hemlocked boughs, they slept asleep of unsuccessful fishermen,

for upon the lake, alternately, the sun made them lazy, and the rain made them wet. Finally, they ate the

last bit of bacon and smoked and burned the last wonderful hoe cake.

Immediately a little man volunteered to stay and hold the camp while the remaining three should go to Sullivan County to a farmhouse for supplies.

They gazed at him dismally.

There's only one of you.

The devil make a twin, they said in parting malediction,

and disappeared down the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin.

When it came night and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned.

The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs.

He puffed fiercely at a heavy-built briar and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rusting

the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to fit his back,

his pipe dropped from his mouth, his knees smote each other.

Ha! he bellowed hoarsely and menace. A growl replied, and a bear paced into the light of the fire. The little man supported himself upon a sapling, and regarded his visitor. The bear was evidently

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