ield. The situation, whatever it was, was up to her.

For a minute the girl leaned weakly against the wall. Cows--there were
thirty in the herd--and she loathed cows! She was afraid of cows. She
knew nothing about cows. She was never in the slightest degree sure of
what the creatures might take it into their heads to do. For a minute
she stood irresolute. Then something stirred in the girl, something
self-reliant and strong. Never in her life had Elliott Cameron had to
do alone anything that she didn't already know how to do. Now for the
first time she faced an emergency on none but her own resources, an
emergency that was quite out of her line.

Her brain worked swiftly as her feet moved to the door. In reality,
she had wavered only a second. When Tom went for the cows, didn't he
take old Prince? There was just a chance that Prince wasn't in the
hay-field. She ran down the steps calling, "Prince! Prince!" The old
dog rose deliberately from his place on the shady side of the barn and
trotted toward her, wagging his tail. "Come, Prince!" cried Elliott,
and ran out of the yard.

Luckily, berrying had that very morning taken her by a short cut to
the vicinity of the upper meadow. She knew the way. But what was
likely to happen? Town-bred girl that she was, she had no idea. A
recollection of the smooth, upstanding expanse of the upper meadow
gave her a clue. If the cows got into that even erectness-- She began
to run, Prince bounding beside her, his brown tail a waving plume.

She could see the meadow now, a smooth green sea ruffled by nothing
heavier than the light feet of the summer breeze. She could see the
great gate invitingly open to the road and oh!--her heart stopped
beating, then pounded on at a suffocating pace--she could see the
cows! There they came, down the hill, quite filling the narrow roadway
with their horrid bulk, making it look like a moving river of broad
backs and tossing heads. What could she do, the girl wondered; what
could she do against so many? She tried to run faster. Somehow she
must reach the gate first. There was nothing even then, so far as she
knew, to prevent their trampling her down and rushing over her into
the waving greenness, unless she could slam the gate in their faces.
You can see that she really did not know much about cows.

But Prince knew them. Prince understood now why his master's guest had
summoned him to this hot run in the sunshine. The prospect did not
daunt Prince.