The path of a samurai, they say, leads to enlightenment and often ends in the ritual of hara-kiri; the path of a fool leads to a precipice and usually ends with a brief, frightened scream. It seems our hero manages to follow both routes at once: what can you take from a rare bird.
And here is the result of his machinations: good Sir Max—dead Sir Max. Alive or dead, he continues to tell entertaining stories, and the listeners pay for the fun by dropping small, invisible shards of their own hearts into his perpetually empty hat.