arched its back, curved its tail, executed a clumsy
gambol, turned, and fled, the rest taking their cues from this, the most
timid in the herd, and going off in a lumbering gallop, their heads now
down, and their tails rigid, excepting a few inches, and the hairy tuft
at the end.

But the leader stood fast, and shaking its head, bellowed, looked
threatening, and lowering one of its long horns, thrust it into the
earth, and began to plough up the soft, moist soil.

"Oh, you would, would you?" cried Dexter, who did not feel in the
slightest degree alarmed, from ignorance probably more than bravery;
and, dashing in, he struck out with the ebony stick so heavy a blow upon
the end of the horn raised in the air that the ebony snapped in two, and
the bullock, uttering a roar of astonishment and pain, swung round, and
galloped after its companions, which were now facing round at the top of
the field.

"Broke his old stick," said Dexter, as he bent over Edgar. "Here, I
say; get up. They're gone now. You ain't hurt."

Hurt or no, Edgar did not hear him, but lay there with his clothes
soiled, and his tall hat trampled on by the drove, and crushed out of
shape.

"I say," said Dexter, shaking him; "why don't you get up?"

Poor Edgar made no reply, for he was perfectly insensible and cadaverous
of hue.

"Here! Hi! Come here!" cried Dexter, rising and waving his hands,
first to Helen, and then to Sir James. "They won't hurt you. Come on."

The effect of the boy's shout was to make the spot where he now knelt
down by Edgar Danby the centre upon which the spectators sought to
gather. Helen set off first; Sir James, feeling very nervous, followed
her example; and the drove of bullocks, with quivering tails and
moistening nostrils, also began to trot back, while Dexter got one arm
beneath the insensible boy, and tried hard to lift him, and carry him to
the stile nearest the town.

But the Union diet had not supplied him with sufficient muscle, and
after getting the boy well on his shoulder, and staggering along a few
paces, he stopped.

"Oh, I say," he muttered; "ain't he jolly heavy?"

A bellow from the leader of the bullocks made Dexter look round, and
take in the position, which was that the drove were again approaching,
and that this combined movement had had the effect of making Helen and
Sir James both stop some forty yards away.

"Here, come on!" cried Dexter. "I'll see as they don't hurt you." And
Helen o