and strength, if we are to
judge from the accounts of old chronicles, and from the formidable
remains frequently discovered in bogs and morasses when drained and laid
open. The bull had lost the shaggy honours of his mane, and the race was
small and light made, in colour a dingy white, or rather a pale yellow,
with black horns and hoofs. They retained, however, in some measure,
the ferocity of their ancestry, could not be domesticated on account
of their antipathy to the human race, and were often dangerous if
approached unguardedly, or wantonly disturbed. It was this last reason
which has occasioned their being extirpated at the places we have
mentioned, where probably they would otherwise have been retained as
appropriate inhabitants of a Scottish woodland, and fit tenants for
a baronial forest. A few, if I mistake not, are still preserved
at Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland, the seat of the Earl of
Tankerville.

It was to her finding herself in the vicinity of a group of three or
four of these animals, that Lucy thought proper to impute those signs of
fear which had arisen in her countenance for a different reason. For she
had been familiarised with the appearance of the wil cattle during her
walks in the chase; and it was not then, as it may be now, a necessary
part of a young lady's demeanour to indulge in causeless tremors of the
nerves. On the present occasion, however, she speedily found cause for
real terror.

Lucy had scarcely replied to her father in the words we have mentioned,
and he was just about to rebuke her supposed timidity, when a bull,
stimulated either by the scarlet colour of Miss Ashton's mantle, or by
one of those fits of capricious ferocity to which their dispositions are
liable, detached himself suddenly from the group which was feeding at
the upper extremity of a grassy glade, that seemed to lose itself among
the crossing and entangled boughs. The animal approached the intruders
on his pasture ground, at first slowly, pawing the ground with his hoof,
bellowing from time to time, and tearing up the sand with his horns, as
if to lash himself up to rage and violence.

The Lord Keeper, who observed the animal's demeanour, was aware that he
was about to become mischievous, and, drawing his daughter's arm under
his own, began to walk fast along the avenue, in hopes to get out of his
sight and his reach. This was the most injudicious course he could have
adopted, for, encouraged by the appea