t noise?"

"It's the bull! Run, run! There it comes down the hill!" shrieked
Cherry, standing as if rooted to the spot, and staring with horror at
the angry animal tearing across the pasture toward them.

"Run yourself, you ninny!" screamed Peace, giving the older girl a push,
and then scrambling for the fence with Allee dragging by one arm behind
her.

There was no time to climb over, and the lower rail was too close to the
ground for them to crawl under, but Peace did not linger to discuss the
question. Grabbing the frightened baby by the heels, she thrust her
between the slats, and gave her a shove that pitched her head first into
a stagnant mudhole just outside the fence. Then pausing only long enough
to see that Cherry was safely through, she followed, still clutching her
now empty pail, and landing beside Allee in the mud.

"Whew! What a smell!" she spluttered, righting herself and trying to dig
her sister out of the pool. "And all on account of that miserable,
cowardly bull! Why don't you take someone your own size to fight?" She
shook her fist defiantly at the pawing, bellowing brute by the fence,
and not satisfied with that method of expressing her anger, she flung
the empty bucket at his head, crying in frenzy, "Take that, you old
sinner! It b'longs to the berries you've already got."

Her aim was truer than she had anticipated, and the pail fell with a
rattling clatter over the beast's ugly-looking horns, frightening him so
that for a brief moment he stood perfectly still. Then, with a snort of
fear and fury, he set off across the field at a mad gallop, with the
bucket still tossing on his head.

Peace glared angrily after the retreating enemy, too indignant over her
loss to think of their peril until Cherry quavered, "Hadn't we better
run while we have a chance? Suppose he should batter the fence down."

"No danger," Peace muttered shortly; but she picked herself up from the
ground, where she was trying to scrape the ill-smelling mud off her
shoes, and marched majestically up the road, trundling the cart behind
her.

"Where are you going?" cried Cherry, when they reached the first cross
street. "Here's where we turn."

"Turn, then! I'm going on to old Skinflint's house and tell him to keep
that ugly bull out of Hartman's pasture until we get those raspberries
picked."

"With that nasty mud all over you?"

"Mud and all," was the stubborn answer, and from force of habit, Cherry
fell into step bes