er, but the tall hedges hid it from
sight.

Jean and Piers turned hurriedly back; Miggles and the boys hurried
forward to where Vanna and Gloucester stood, the centre of the group.
The two men exchanged swift, anxious glances, divining, without
consultation, the nature of the danger--a bull, escaped from its chain,
rushing towards them. What could be done?

The towering hedges gave no chance of escape, and so far as the eye
could reach there was neither gate nor entrance into the fields. Before
there was time to consult or to issue directions, the danger was upon
them. With incredible swiftness, within as it seemed one moment from
the time when the first cry had burst upon their ears, the danger was at
hand.

Round a corner of the road the huge beast rushed into view; a terrible,
nerve-shattering sight, filling up, as it seemed, the whole space of the
narrow path, pawing the earth, sending up clouds of dust, bellowing with
rage and fear. Breathless with horror, they stood and watched it come.

And then a strange thing happened. At that moment of strain and terror
the thoughts of the four elders of the little party flew instinctively
towards Jean. Danger and Jean! Death and Jean! The idea was
insupportable. Jean, who was in herself the embodiment of youth, of
health, of joy. The woman who had been to her as a second mother; the
girl who was her lifelong friend; the man who until now had been the
most favoured of her admirers, turned with a common impulse to succour
Jean, and Jean, white-faced, trembling, primitive woman, stripped in one
moment of conventions and pretence, indifferent, oblivious of them all,
leapt forward into Gloucester's arms.

They closed round her; she clung to him, hiding her head on his breast;
he pressed a hand on her hair, screening her eyes till the danger should
have passed. In another moment it was upon them. An agonised gasp of
fear passed from one to another. The danger was past!

The great brute went plunging down the lane, his head bent low, his
small eyes blinking, foam upon his lips; in his anxiety to escape his
pursuers, taking no heed of the figures flattened against the hedge.
With shouts and oaths, brandished sticks and panting breath, the farm
hands galloped in his rear. They passed out of sight, and the quiet
lane, sunk beneath its flowering hedges, regained its wonted peace.

Not so the human beings for whom that moment had been fraught with such
startling emo