Under a cart-shed at the end of the market-place stands a huddled group of men. They await the end. Suddenly a little child, about two years old, runs out of a wood-chopper’s house and starts across the road along which a part of the herd is still rushing like a whirlwind. “He will be killed!” yelled some one, as a young heifer racing forward just overleaps the boy. But a special providence seems to protect children, and for the nonce the little fellow escapes. He miraculously reaches the shed unharmed. There is not a man in the cart-shed who is not thrilled with the desire to go and save other little ones from certain death. To be sure, many sit rooted to the spot, lacking the courage to move; but not all of them are cowards. Just as a young girl ventures to cross the road, an enormous bull comes thundering along. She is in imminent peril. Who will attempt an heroic act of rescue? A sickening fear seizes the spectators. Onward course the foaming animals, following in the dusty wake of their formidable leader. Not an instant too soon some one rushes out of a neighboring cottage and, clasping the young girl in his arms, prepares to shield her from the oncoming cattle. His presence of mind is remarkable; but no time is left for escape, for the herd is upon him. He makes one more effective move--he hurls the little maid into a clump of rushes, where she falls heavily, but beyond the pale of danger. He rolls under the trampling hoofs, and the whole battalion of beasts passes over the body of one who has attempted the impossible. What a terrible sight! He is crushed and bruised, but they expect to find him a shapeless mass. “Who is he?” shout a hundred or more people nearly in unison. “I believe he is Bruno Volane,” answers a peasant of Trinquelin. “It’s just like him,” observes an old woman, “to rush to certain death. Ah! but he is brave.” By this time the people, too, are in a panic. Husbands and wives and parents and children have become separated, and terrible havoc has been made by the cattle along the roads, and valuable beasts are lost or killed. The adjacent country looks not unlike a battle-field. Here and there the wounded beasts lie bleeding upon the ground. The market-place shows traces of an unusual struggle and of hard usage; the cottages are battered, windows knocked out and doors unhinged. This stampede surpasses anything in the way of a calamity ever known in the annals of St. Benoit. At length, a man armed with a cudgel strides forth as if to encounter the foe. Each advancing bull is driven into the ring by the man Andoche calls “the Bear.” He is a singular-looking figure as he stands there, with his unkempt beard and hair fluttering in the breeze. Rushing to the spot where Bruno has fallen, L’Ours (“the Bear”) takes a guarded attitude and then strikes out in every direction, beating down the cattle right and left.