ide her again, tramping along in silence until the
Skinner place was reached.

It just happened that the old man himself was hurrying up the path from
the barn as they approached, and Peace stopped him with an imperious
wave of her hand, speaking straight to the point before he could even
ask her what she wanted.

"Your bull won't let us pick raspberries in the lower pasture. Mr.
Hartman said we might, but just when we got our pails 'most full, that
old thing had to come along and bunt at us. We skipped, but he made us
lose all our berries. We'd like to have you tie him up or take him out
until we can get those berries picked."

The grouchy old fellow stood with open mouth, glaring at the
mud-bespattered figures, as if he doubted his senses, and as Peace
finished her speech, he laughed mirthlessly, screeching in his harsh,
cracked, rasping voice, "I put that bull in pasture myself, and there he
stays! I don't do any tying up, either. I rented that field and it's the
same as mine for as long as I hire it. You can't have them berries at
all. They are mine."

"Mr. Hartman said we could have them," Peace insisted; "and I guess he
wouldn't give away what didn't b'long to him. He may have rented the
pasture to you, but he never rented the berries."

Suddenly the old man changed tactics. "You can have all the berries you
can get," he taunted, shaking a warning finger in their faces, "but that
bull stays right there in that field!"

"All right, old Skinflint!" roared Peace, forgetting everything else in
her furious passion, and shaking an emphatic finger back at him. "Just
'member that, will you? We'll get the berries in spite of your old
_animule_!"

She stamped out of the yard and down the road toward home once more,
nursing her wrath and trying to think of some way whereby she might get
the disputed fruit, for she well knew that the deacon would do all he
could to prevent her now.

Early the next morning she was at the pasture again, only to find the
vicious enemy grazing close by, watching with wicked eyes every flirt of
her dress, as if defying her to gather the luscious red berries hanging
so temptingly near.

The second day it was the same, and the third. It looked as if the enemy
had conquered; but Peace was not to be easily defeated. She had set her
heart on picking that fruit, and she meant to have it at any cost.

The fourth morning, after reconnoitering and finding the bull still in
undisputed possessio