and slippery
crags upon his hunters. If he had conceited that the rockiness of the
ground had secured his repose, the foolish bull is soon undeceived;
the horsemen, scarcely relaxing their speed, charge up the hill, and
speedily gaining the rear of the bull, drive him at a gallop over the
worst part of that impracticable ground down into the level ground
below. At this point of time the stranger perceives by the increasing
light of the morning that the hunters are armed with immense spears
fourteen feet long. With these the bull is soon dislodged, and
scouring down to the plain below, he and the hunters at his tail take
to the common at the head of the lake, and all, in the madness of the
chase, are soon half engulfed in the swamps of the morass. After
plunging together for ten or fifteen minutes, all suddenly regain the
_terra firma_, and the bull again makes for the rocks. Up to this
moment there had been the silence of ghosts; and the stranger had
doubted whether the spectacle were not a pageant of aerial spectres,
ghostly huntsmen; ghostly lances, and a ghostly bull. But just at this
crisis--a voice (it was the voice of Mr. Wilson) shouted aloud, 'Turn
the villain; turn that villain; or he will take to Cumberland.' The
young stranger did the service required of him; the villain was turned
and fled southwards; the hunters, lance in rest, rushed after him; all
bowed their thanks as they fled past him; the fleet cavalcade again
took the high road; they doubled the cape which shut them out of
sight; and in a moment all had disappeared and left the quiet valley
to its original silence, whilst the young stranger and two grave
Westmoreland statesmen (who by this time had come into sight upon some
accident or other) stood wondering in silence, and saying to
themselves, perhaps,--

'The earth hath bubbles as the water hath;
And these are of them!'

But they were no bubbles; the bull was a substantial bull; and took no
harm at all from being turned out occasionally at midnight for a chase
of fifteen or eighteen miles. The bull, no doubt, used to wonder at
this nightly visitation; and the owner of the bull must sometimes have
pondered a little on the draggled state in which the swamps would now
and then leave his beast; but no other harm came of it. And so it
happened, and in the very hurly burly of such an unheard-of chase,
that my friend was fortunate enough, by a little service, to recommend
himself to the notice