eked Jennie, and turned to do so.

She bumped into Mercy and Helen, who clung to her and really retarded
the plump girl's escape. But plowing right on to the shelter of the
automobile, Jennie actually swept her two friends with her.

Their cries and evident fright attracted the notice of the farmer before
he really knew what was happening. Then he saw the bull and gave tongue
to his own immediate excitement:

"Look at that critter! He's broke out of the barnyard--drat him! Don't
let him see you, gals, for he's as vicious as sin!"

He started forward with a stick in his hand to attack the enraged bull.
But the animal paid no attention to him. It had set its eyes upon
something which excited its rage--Ruth Fielding's red sweater!

"Oh, Ruth! Ruth!" shrieked Helen, suddenly seeing her chum cornered on
the other side of the car.

Ruth tried to open the car door again. But it stuck. Nor was there time
for the girl of the Red Mill to vault the door and so escape the charge
of the maddened bull. The brute was upon her.

CHAPTER II

A PERFECT SHOT

One may endure dangers of divers kinds (and Ruth Fielding had done so by
land and sea) and be struck down unhappily by an apparently ordinary
peril. The threat of that black bull's charge was as poignant as
anything that had heretofore happened to the girl of the Red Mill.

After that first outcry, Ruth did not raise her voice at all. She tugged
at the fouled handle of the automobile door, looking back over her
shoulder at the forefront of the bull. He bellowed, and the very sound
seemed to weaken her knees. Had she not been clinging to that handle she
must have dropped to the earth.

And then, Crack! It was unmistakably a rifle shot.

The bull plowed up several yards of sod, swerved, shook his great head,
bellowing again, and then started off at a tangent across the field with
the farmer, brandishing a stick, close on his heels.

Saved, Ruth Fielding did sink to the earth now, and when the other girls
ran clamorously around the motor-car she was scarcely possessed of her
senses. Truly, however, she had been through too many exciting events to
be long overcome by this one.

Many queer experiences and perilous adventures had come into Ruth
Fielding's life since the time when, as an orphan of twelve years, she
had come to the Red Mill, just outside the town of Cheslow, to live with
her Great Uncle Jabez and his queer little old housekeeper, Aunt
Alvirah.

The