t that
moment. Amongst the shrubs of the little reedy island opposite he had
made his lair; there you could see him crouching down. All night long he
would be roaring and bellowing there, only in the daytime was he silent.

First of all, however, you must know what sort of a character the beast
known as an "errant bull" really is.

When there are two bulls in a herd, especially if one of them be only a
growing calf, they are quiet enough, and even timid all through the
winter. If they meet each other they stand face to face, rubbing
foreheads, lowing and walking round and round each other; but if the
herdsman flings his cudgel between them they trot off in opposite
directions. But when the spring expands, when the spicy flowers put
fresh vigour and warmer blood into every grass-eating beast, then the
young bulls begin to carry their horned heads higher, roar at each other
from afar, and it is the chief business of the _gulyas_ to prevent them
from coming together. If, however, on a warm spring day, when the
herdsmen are sleeping beneath their _gubas_, the two hostile chiefs
should encounter each other, a terrible fight ensues between them, which
regularly ends with the fall or the flight of one of them. At such a
time it is vain for the herdsman to attempt to separate them. The
infuriated animals neither see nor hear him; all their faculties are
devoted to the destruction of each other. Sometimes the struggle lasts
for hours on a plot of meadow, which they denude of its grass as cleanly
as if it had been ploughed. Finally, the beast who is getting the worst
of it, feeling that his rival is the stronger, begins with a terrific
roar to fly away through the herd, and runs wild on the _puszta_; with
blood-red eyes, with blood-red lolling tongue, he wanders up and down
the fields and meadows, frequently returning to the scene of his
humiliation; but he mingles no longer with the herd, and woe betide
every living animal he encounters! He begins to pursue whatever meets
his eye in the distance, and he has been known to watch for days the
tree in which a wayfarer has taken refuge, until casually passing
_csikoses_ have come up and driven the beast away.

From the information given by the _gulyases_, it was easy to trace the
lair of the bull. Two distinct paths led to it among the tall reeds, and
the two youths, separating, chose each of them his path, and waded into
the thicket in search of the furious beast. Meanwhile, the h