Then her hands closed upon a post. And not caring how she managed it, nor what might be the exposé, she sprang somehow--and fell--and got across just as the bull came crashing into the panel. Then she collapsed in a heap on the ground, while the huge beast roared and foamed in baffled rage a few feet distant. As Porshinger vaulted the fence farther down, Stephanie recovered herself and, pushing down her skirts, sat up. "You're not hurt?" he cried breathlessly. "Not hurt--except in my vanity!" she laughed. "_It's_ punctured badly." "Just so _you_ aren't punctured," he returned. "It was a close call! You and the bull were right together at the fence--I couldn't tell whether _he_ tossed you over, or whether you jumped. You looked as though----" "Please forget how I looked!" she smiled. "And hand me my hat. Now if you will you may help me up.--Thank you, Mr. Porshinger." She was seriously shaken, and he saw it. "Come over and sit down," he said, leading her toward a rock near by. "You will feel better for a moment's rest." "No--I'm all right," she answered;--"but I _will_ sit down until I've put on my hat. It's a fortunate thing the fence held. Ough!" she shivered, with a glance at the bull, who was still pawing the ground in baffled rage, and frothing at the mouth. "It was a fearful feeling with those awful horns just behind me, and expecting every instant to be gored and tossed." "It must have been fearful," he sympathized. "Why is it," she said with a quizzical smile, "that a woman is always afraid of a bull and a mouse?" "They wish to be extreme, I fancy!" he laughed. "Also there is a lot between a bull and a mouse that they are afraid of!" she added. "Animate or inanimate?" he asked. "Both," she answered. Her hair was awry and she straightened it as best she could, removing her gloves to do it the better. He remarked the long, slender fingers, with the filbert nails and the crescents shining at their base--and he stole a look at his own ill-shaped hand, with its thick, formless, heavy-pointed fingers and hairy back. For the first time he regretted the difference. Her hair temporarily put to rights, she stuck the pins--which were scattered on the ground and which Porshinger collected for her--in her cocked hat, and fastened it into place. Then she got up, suffered him to brush the dust and dirt from her clothes--she helping--and they resumed the walk. "Adieu, your Taurus Majesty!" she called, with a farewell wave of her hand toward the still indignant and frowning bull. "I'll see that he is killed to-day," Porshinger volunteered. "Indeed, you'll not," she said. "He was defending his own pasture and his own kind. You would have done the same if you were a bull." Porshinger winced despite himself. There was something distinctly unpleasant in the comparison. She had not called him a bull. Yet that, doubtless, was what she considered him--uncouth and untamed, not broken to polite society.