“No, I don’t; you can leave him to me,” the maiden answered; “I won’t have no living soul come between me an’ Nicholas Yelland now. He’ll be sorry as he was born afore his dinnertime, if I’ve got a tongue in my head; an’ he shall have all Postbridge hooting at him in the open street—an’ Widecombe too—come to-morrow. But ’tis your part to shutt thicky beastly bull wi’ a gun; an’ if you love me, you’ll do it. He shan’t take no more prizes, if I can stop him.” “As to shooting the bull, they’d put me in prison for it,—not that I’d mind that if you’d have me when I comed out,” said Ben, very eager like. “But,” he added as an after-thought, “the dashed luck of it is, I haven’t got a gun.” Her black eyes flashed an’ her gipsy-dark face growed darker still. She still panted an’ puffed a bit. But Ben confessed arter that she never looked so lovely afore or since as she did when he pulled her out of the brambles in the hedge an’ comforted her. “You’d best to borrow a gun, then,” she told him. “Anyway, I won’t marry you while that bull’s alive; an’ if you was a man, you’d never sleep again till you’d put a bullet through it.” Same afternoon she went up with her mother to Cator Court an’ gave Nicholas Yelland the whole law an’ the prophets, by all accounts. I seem his ears must have tingled to hear her; but he was a pretty cool hand; an’ when she’d talked herself out of breath an’ falled back on torrents an’ oceans of tears; an’ when her mother had also said what she comed to say, which was mere tinkling brass after Mary Jane, Nick popped in a word or two edgeways. “If you’ll be so very kind as to hold your noise a minute,—the pair of you,—I’ll tell you how the bull got in the field,” he said. “’Twasn’t my idea at all. Ben Pearn put me up to it. So you’ve got to thank him, not me. I didn’t know as you was coming that way to-day, God’s my Judge, or I’d have been at the stile to meet you an’ see you over the meadow safe; but Pearn knowed you was coming, an’ any fool can see that he wanted to kill you.” “He axed me to come,” said Mary Jane. “Did he? Then ’tis him you’ve got to thank, not me. ’Tis only by the mercy of Heaven he ban’t a murderer.” “You’d better look after him, then,” said Mary Jane, thoughtful like, “for I’ve told un to kill your bull.” “Let un,” answered Nicholas, very cunning. “I’ve a good mind to shoot the old devil myself for daring to run after you.” Then Mrs. Arscott struck the iron while it was hot, an’ afore she left that farm parlour, Mary Jane had named the day! ’Twas rather a funny case of a chap over-reaching himself in a love affair. You see, Ben Pearn was so blessed soft-headed, that he couldn’t look on to the end of the game like any cleverer man might. He said to his silly self, ‘I’ll make her hate the chap, so she’d like to scratch his eyes out’; but he never seed that the end must be differ’nt; he never remembered that Nicholas Yelland had a tongue in his head same as other people.