Needless to say that in the next chapter the young girl fell in love with a strapping young fellow, who immediately proposed that they take a walk. How well I knew, though they did not, where that walk would lead them! The mad bull--in this case it was mad, although any old bull will do, mad or not--was rampant in a lot a mile south of the young girl’s house, and they started to walk due north; but I knew full well that they would need to cross that particular pasture before they got home, and a few pages later found them climbing over a stone wall into the bull’s domain, and then they walked along, intent only on their new-found happiness. The day was chilly,--in the middle of a particularly hot July,--so that the girl could have an excuse to wear her red shawl. Now, having brought two of the actors upon the stage, the cue was soon given to the bull; and in a moment the happy lovers, feeling the ground tremble beneath their feet, turned and saw Hector, his horns gyrating with rage, his eyes bulging out, and his head lowered as he thundered along straight for the pongee bequest. To take her under his strong arm and to rush forward were the only things for the young man to do, and he did them; and then the rest ran as per schedule. I believe that in this case the young man threw the girl into a tree and then plunged down a woodchuck’s hole. At any rate, the girl was unharmed. That is the one unalterable formula in constructing these bull stories: save the girl unharmed. You may break the young man’s leg or arm, and you may do what you will with the bull, but the young girl must come through unscathed. It was years before this moving incident ceased to hold me, and in that time how many changes were rung on it! Once only was the red shawl absent, and I wondered how in the world the bull was to be infuriated, as he was a singularly mild beast in the earlier chapters, and on Maydays had been festooned with garlands. Then, too, the girl was in deep mourning--for her lover! But the ten-acre lot was all right, and as the author was a clever man, I felt that he would find a way to run the act with a small cast and no properties. So I read on, and after wondering, together with the girl herself, what could have caused the peaceful old bovine to chase her, tail up and head down, the full length of a particularly long pasture, she and I found out when she realized that, the day being sunny, she had picked up her cousin’s parasol, which was necessarily of a brilliant scarlet. She had no lover, for, as I say, he had died--two chapters before the book was begun; but she did have presence of mind, and so she inserted the point of the parasol in the bull’s mouth, and then opened it, and while he was extracting it with his fore paws, she reached the fence and vaulted it in the usual way.