He was still thinking of these things when he came to the first of the Guestwick pastures.  The boundary of the earl’s property was very plainly marked, for with it commenced also the shady elms along the roadside, and the broad green margin of turf, grateful equally to those who walked and to those who rode.  Eames had got himself on to the grass, but, in the fulness of his thoughts, was unconscious of the change in his path, when he was startled by a voice in the next field and the loud bellowing of a bull.  Lord De Guest’s choice cattle he knew were there, and there was one special bull which was esteemed by his lordship as of great value, and regarded as a high favourite.  The people about the place declared that the beast was vicious, but Lord De Guest had often been heard to boast that it was never vicious with him.  “The boys tease him, and the men are almost worse than the boys,” said the earl; “but he’ll never hurt any one that has not hurt him.”  Guided by faith in his own teaching the earl had taught himself to look upon his bull as a large, horned, innocent lamb of the flock.

As Eames paused on the road, he fancied that he recognised the earl’s voice, and it was the voice of one in distress.  Then the bull’s roar sounded very plain in his ear, and almost close; upon hearing which he rushed on to the gate, and, without much thinking what he was doing, vaulted over it, and advanced a few steps into the field.

“Halloo!” shouted the earl.  “There’s a man.  Come on.”  And then his continued shoutings hardly formed themselves into intelligible words; but Eames plainly understood that he was invoking assistance under great pressure and stress of circumstances.  The bull was making short runs at his owner, as though determined in each run to have a toss at his lordship; and at each run the earl would retreat quickly for a few paces, but he retreated always facing his enemy, and as the animal got near to him, would make digs at his face with the long spud which he carried in his hand.  But in thus making good his retreat he had been unable to keep in a direct line to the gate, and there seemed to be great danger lest the bull should succeed in pressing him up against the hedge.  “Come on!” shouted the earl, who was fighting his battle manfully, but was by no means anxious to carry off all the laurels of the victory himself.  “Come on, I say!” Then he stopped in his path, shouted into the bull’s face, brandished his spud, and threw about his arms, thinking that he might best dismay the beast by the display of these warlike gestures.

Johnny Eames ran on gallantly to the peer’s assistance, as he would have run to that of any peasant in the land.  He was one to whom I should be perhaps wrong to attribute at this period of his life the gift of very high courage.  He feared many things which no man should fear; but he did not fear personal mishap or injury to his own skin and bones.  When Cradell escaped out of the house in Burton Crescent,