and vanished overnight, and
wandered into the sacred precincts of the _villosi terga bisontes_, the
still-wild denizens of the last league of the British woodlands Caesar
found; and _Bos Taurus_ had risen in his wrath, and showed that an
ancient race was not to be trifled with, with impunity. Even Jones's
Bull went down in the end--though, mind you, evidence went to show that
he made an hour's stand!--before the overwhelming rush and the terrible
horns of the forest monarch. And the victor only gave back before a wall
of brandished torch and blazing ferns, that the unsportsmanlike spirit
of the keepers did not scruple to resort to. No--she would not admit
that Dave's bull had ever met his match. She would say how he had killed
a man, which Gwen had told her also; but to save the boy from too much
commiseration for this man, she would lay stress upon the brutality of
the latter to his wife, and even point out that Farmer Jones's Bull
might be honestly unconscious of the consequences that too often result
when one gores or tramples on an object of one's righteous indignation.

Strides Cottage played a very small part in the memories of the day.
Some interest certainly attached to the older woman who had emerged from
it to interview the carriage, but it was an interest apt to die down
when once its object had been ascertained to resemble any other handsome
old village octogenarian. Any peculiarity or deformity might have
intensified it, or at least kept it alive; mere good looks and upright
carriage, and strict conformity with the part of an ancient dependent of
a great local potentate, neither fed nor quenched the mild fires of her
rival granny's jealousy. Old Mrs. Picture had looked upon Granny
Marrable, and was none the wiser. That Granny had at least seen her way
to moralising on the way appearances might dupe us, and how sad it would
be if, after all, such a respectable-looking old person should be an
associate oL thieves, a misleader of youth, and a fraud. But Mrs.
Picture found little to say to herself, and nothing to say to anybody
else, about Strides Cottage.

Rather, she fell back, as soon as Jones's Bull flagged, on her long
record of an unforgotten past. That wind that was growing with the
nightfall no longer moaned for her in the chimney, five centuries old,
of the strange great house strange Fate had brought her to, but through
the shrouds of a ship on the watch for what the light of sunrise might
show at an