Lettie said this with her very best grown-up air. But it pleased Hiram a great deal. His interest in his employer's daughter was very deep and very serious. Lettie Bronson was the most interesting girl he had ever met. The dancing floor was now well filled every time the orchestra played, and the chairs and settees around the edge of the floor were crowded. It was a lively scene, and the lanterns furnished all the light necessary. At the openings for the windows that were not yet, of course, framed in, men and boys who did not dance stood and talked or smoked. The crowd increased both on the floor and outside the new house. Now and then Hiram went out to see what was going on. There was some shouting and ribald laughter at a distance, but the rowdy element seemed to keep away from the vicinity of the dance. "I hear you finally took my advice about Ad Banks," Mr. Bronson said to Hiram, chuckling, "and ran him off the place." "Folks are making too much of it," the young fellow replied. "Hullo! What is this coming?" There was a wood road through the burned-over patch belonging to Miss Pringle, and there was light enough from the moon and stars to show Hiram and those who stood with him on the front porch of the new house a crowd of men and boys approaching along this rough way. "There's Ad Banks now!" exclaimed one man. "You are going to have trouble with him, Bronson." "Not me," declared the farm owner. "It's all in Hiram's hands, and I have confidence that he can handle anything Banks can start." Hiram had already started for the road. A sharp cry arose in front: "Look out, there! That bull is as mad as he can be. Look out!" A huge, plunging shape came out of the wood path with two men, or boys, hanging on to the ropes hitched to the monster. The latter headed right across the road and those in the way scattered like chaff before a wind. "That's Turner's bull!" shouted somebody behind Hiram. "He is as savage as a lion." At that the two men clinging to the maddened animal let go of the ropes. With head down, and uttering a reverberating bellow, the creature came toward the new house on the floor of which the girls and boys were dancing. CHAPTER XVII WHEAT HARVEST There had been two powerful lamps lifted from automobiles and placed so that they would light the veranda. Therefore the front of the partially built house and the yard were well illuminated. As the bull charged through the gap in the fence his coming cleared the yard in a hurry. The only person who stood his ground was Hiram, and he did not do so from any choice of his own. It seemed that the mad bull was aiming directly for the steps to the veranda, and the young farm manager stood directly in his path. The youth was not fear-paralyzed, but his mind was quite as empty of ideas at the moment as the others who had run in all directions. His single thought was: "If I only had a club!"