“First kill the cow, and then----,” said the earl with a smile; and Shakespeare had the echo of this speech in his ear, when he began the fifth act of his Othello. Now Guy was not easily daunted. If I cared to make a pun, I might easily have said “cowed,” but in a grave and edifying narrative this loose method of writing would be extremely improper. Guy, then, was not a coward--nay, nothing is hidden under the epithet. He tossed a little in bed that night as he thought the matter over, and the next morning made sheets of paper as crumpled as the cow’s horns, as he rejected the plans of assault he had designed upon them, and sat uncertain as to what he should do in behoof of his own fortune. He at length determined to go and visit the terrible animal “incognito.” It is the very word used by one of the biographers of Guy, an anonymous Northumbrian, who published the life on a broad sheet, with a picture of Master Guy which might have frightened the cow, and which is infinitely more ugly. Neither the black-letter poem, the old play, nor the pamphlets or ballads, use the term _incognito_, but all declare that Guy proceeded with much caution, and a steel cuirass over his jerkin. I mention these things, because without correctness my narrative would be worthless. I am not imaginative, and would not embroider a plain suit of fact upon any account. Guy’s carefulness is to be proved. Here was a cow that had been more destructive than ever Red Riding Hood’s Wolf was--that Count Wolf, who used to snap up young maidens, and lived as careless of respectability as was to be expected of a man once attached to a “marching regiment,” and who turned monk. The cow was twelve feet high, from the hoof to the shoulder, and eighteen feet long, from the neck to the root of the tail. All the dragons ever heard of had never been guilty of such devastation to life and property as this terrible cow. Guy looked at her and did not like her. The cow detected him and rushed at her prey. Guy was active, attacked her in front and rear, as the allies did the forts of Bomarsund; very considerably confused her by burying his battle-axe in her skull; hung on by her tail as she attempted to fly; and finally gave her the _coup de grace_ by passing his rapier rapidly and repeatedly through her especially vulnerable point behind the ear. In proof of the fact, the scene of the conflict still bears the name of Dunsmore Heath, and that is a wider basis of proof than many “facts” stand upon, to which we are required by plodding teachers to give assent.