She gave me the violets to hold, with some injunction as to the correct manner of holding them, for my handling of them was much too crude to please her, and ran away again to fetch the pretty yellow flowers. All sorts of things she gathered for our nosegays, lady-smocks all silver white from the meadow, and daisies pied and violets blue, cowslips and even a blue-bell. Nothing would content her but that we should make them up into posies there and then; which we did, and bound them round with grasses. But hardly had we finished this pastoral employment and continued on our way, when we became the victims of a singular diversion. We passed out of one meadow over a stile into another of a similar kind. But in the second a few cows were browsing. To these we paid no heed, but walked jauntily enough through the pasture, apprehending no danger; but by the time we had come perhaps to the middle of the field we were startled by a commotion behind us. Turning round to discover whence it arose, we were horrified to find what the source of it was. A young bull with its head grounded and its tail in the air was charging down upon us. A single exclamation and a frightened instant of hesitation in which to take our bearings, and evolve a mode of escape, was all we had time for. The bull was coming so furiously that it was almost upon us, yet we were stranded full in the middle of the field, with no chance whatever of taking refuge in flight. But happily my eye lit on a tree, a sturdy young sapling a yard or two off. Thither I pushed the terrified Cynthia, and literally lifted her into one of the lower branches, whilst she, with an admirable conception of the case and how to act in it, scrambled with a mighty rending of her garments into the boughs above. I clambered after her madly, not a second too soon. The vigorous snorting young bull crashed his horns against the tree with great force. He was so near to my leg that I instinctively felt it to be gashed wide open; whilst such a mighty shake did its impact give to our place of refuge that it was indeed a mercy we were not both of us thrown on to the ground to be gored and trampled on. But despite our fright we were able to cling to the branches; and when at last I was able to get a glimpse of my leg, I found to my relief that I had been the victim of my imagination.