say how much I thanked him,
and how much I hoped that he himself would meet me there, if his time
allowed. For he had been too delicate to say a word of that; but I felt
that he had a good right to be there, and, knowing him now, I was not
afraid.

Nearly every thing came about as well as could be wished almost. Master
Withypool took the precaution, early in the morning, to set his great
fierce bull at large, who always stopped the foot-path. This bull knew
well the powers of a valley in conducting sound; and he loved to stand,
as if at the mouth of a funnel, and roar down it to another bull a mile
below him, belonging to his master's brother-in-law. And when he did
this, there was scarcely a boy, much less a man or woman, with
any desire to assert against him the public right of thoroughfare.
Throughout that forenoon, then, this bull bellowed nobly, still finding
many very wicked flies about, so that two mitching boys, who meant to
fish for minnows with a pin, were obliged to run away again.

However, I was in the dark about him, and as much afraid of him as any
body, when he broke into sight of me round a corner, without any tokens
of amity. I had seen a great many great bulls before, including Uncle
Sam's good black one, who might not have meant any mischief at all, and
atoned for it--if he did--by being washed away so.

And therefore my courage soon returned, when it became quite clear that
this animal now had been fastened with a rope, and could come no nearer.
For some little time, then, I waited all alone, as near that bridge as I
could bring myself to stand, for Mrs. Busk, my landlady, could not leave
the house yet, on account of the mid-day letters. Moreover, she thought
that she had better stay away, as our object was to do things as quietly
as could be.

Much as I had watched this bridge from a distance, or from my
sheltering-place, I had never been able to bring myself to make any kind
of sketch of it, or even to insert it in a landscape, although it
was very well suited and expressive, from its crooked and antique
simplicity. The overhanging, also, of the hawthorn-tree (not ruddy yet,
but russety with its coloring crop of coral), and the shaggy freaks of
ivy above the twisted trunk, and the curve of the meadows and bold elbow
of the brook, were such as an artist would have pitched his tent for,
and tantalized poor London people with a dream of cool repose.

As yet the little river showed no signs of d