Obedient to her father's wishes, Miss Lucy shrinkingly pushed the kettle under the dividing pole, and poured the water into it, while Mr. Brock, with prudent forethought, picked up a thick stick and took a position in the doorway. Suddenly the animal, hearing the splash of water, turned and unexpectedly lunged at the kettle. The dividing pole cracked under her onslaught. Miss Lucy started back with a scream, and fell violently. Mr. Brock thrust strongly at the cow as she rushed forward again, and the creature reeled back on her haunches. Before she could recover herself for another plunge, he had lifted Miss Lucy over the sill, and together, Miss Nancy and Mrs. Doggett had slammed the door, and thrust its iron bar in place. "Lord!" shuddered Mrs. Doggett, "that wuz a narrer call!" "Open the gate for me," wheezed the breathless Mr. Brock, staggering along with his limp burden on whose forehead appeared a little blood, trickling from a slight cut. "We'd better git her to the house quick!" Miss Lucy, laid on the sitting-room lounge, presently revived and feebly murmured her distress at causing so much of trouble. "Don't you thenk we'd better go back and doctor on the cow, Mr. Brock--give her them bitters, er somethin'?" The old man's mind, his anxiety for his daughter relieved, presently turned again to his barn-yard patient. "I'm afraid she's about past medicine," Mr. Brock regretted, placidly seating himself. "If you wish it, though, I'll stay and take a look at her ever' once and a while, and if there's no change by three o'clock, and you wish it, I'll send home for my rifle to shoot the poor creature." Mrs. Doggett bent reluctant eyes on the clock. "I'm bound to go," she declared,--"them hungry men--" "Mrs. Doggett, don't you want some cabbage plants? Pa said we was done settin' yesterday," proffered Miss Lucy. Miss Nancy scowled. "You've surely forgot about Miss Maude Floss engagin' some last week, Lucy," she reminded her. "But maybe she won't take 'em all," she conciliated. "Cabbage!" Mrs. Doggett's voice rang out shrilly. "Miss Lucy, don't say _cabbage_ to me! I hain't raised a stalk o' cabbage sence the summer Jim and Henrietty married. That year the cabbage snake come a one o' killin' us all! But hit shore wuz the cause o' Jim and Henrietty a marryin'." "Was hit?" asked Miss Lucy, innocently, while Mr. Brock smiled at her over his former parent-in-law's head. Mrs. Doggett resumed her seat. "Hit wuz one them awful hot days in June, and Henrietty wuz a visitin' my Hattie that day. Our cabbage wuz jest a comin' in, and late Meriller cherries wuz turnin'--jest ripe enough to taste good, and we all et a right smart o' cherries before dinner and we wuz all a talkin' about the cabbage snake skeer, and about hit a sickenin' people nigh to death when one got accidentally cooked with the cabbage. Eph, he didn't believe thar wuz no pizen snake on cabbage, but I wuz sorter oneasy when I put hit on the table,--the first mess we'd had.