the ferocity of their ancestry, could not be domesticated on account of their antipathy to the human race, and were often dangerous if approached unguardedly, or wantonly disturbed.  It was this last reason which has occasioned their being extirpated at the places we have mentioned, where probably they would otherwise have been retained as appropriate inhabitants of a Scottish woodland, and fit tenants for a baronial forest.  A few, if I mistake not, are still preserved at Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland, the seat of the Earl of Tankerville.

It was to her finding herself in the vicinity of a group of three or four of these animals, that Lucy thought proper to impute those signs of fear which had arisen in her countenance for a different reason.  For she had been familiarised with the appearance of the wil cattle during her walks in the chase; and it was not then, as it may be now, a necessary part of a young lady’s demeanour to indulge in causeless tremors of the nerves.  On the present occasion, however, she speedily found cause for real terror.

Lucy had scarcely replied to her father in the words we have mentioned, and he was just about to rebuke her supposed timidity, when a bull, stimulated either by the scarlet colour of Miss Ashton’s mantle, or by one of those fits of capricious ferocity to which their dispositions are liable, detached himself suddenly from the group which was feeding at the upper extremity of a grassy glade, that seemed to lose itself among the crossing and entangled boughs.  The animal approached the intruders on his pasture ground, at first slowly, pawing the ground with his hoof, bellowing from time to time, and tearing up the sand with his horns, as if to lash himself up to rage and violence.

The Lord Keeper, who observed the animal’s demeanour, was aware that he was about to become mischievous, and, drawing his daughter’s arm under his own, began to walk fast along the avenue, in hopes to get out of his sight and his reach.  This was the most injudicious course he could have adopted, for, encouraged by the appearance of flight, the bull began to pursue them at full speed.  Assailed by a danger so imminent, firmer courage than that of the Lord Keeper might have given way.  But paternal tenderness, “love strong as death,” sustained him.  He continued to support and drag onward his daughter, until her fears altogether depriving her of the power of flight, she sunk down by his side; and when he could no longer assist her to escape, he turned round and placed himself betwixt her and the raging animal, which, advancing in full career, its brutal fury enhanced by the rapidity of the pursuit, was now within a few yards of them.  The Lord Keeper had no weapons; his age and gravity dispensed even with the usual appendage of a walking sword—­could such appendage have availed him anything.