Humphrey Baskerville had sold his ponies in an hour, and was preparing to make a swift departure when accident threw him into the heart of a disturbance and opened the way to significant incidents.
The old man met Jack Head and was speaking with him, but suddenly Jack caught the other by his shoulders and pulled him aside just in time to escape being knocked over. A dozen over-driven bullocks hurtled past them with sweating flanks and dripping mouths. Behind came two drovers, and a brace of barking dogs hung upon the flanks of the weary and frightened cattle.
Suddenly, as the people parted, a big brute, dazed and maddened by the yelping dogs now at his throat, now at his heels, turned and dashed into the open gate of a cottage by the way.
The door of the dwelling stood open and before man or sheepdog had time to turn him, the reeking bullock had rushed into the house. There was a crash within, the agonised yell of a child and the scream of a woman.
Then rose terrified bellowings from the bullock, where it stood jammed in a passageway with two frantic dogs at its rear.
A crowd collected, and Mr. Baskerville amazed himself by rushing forward and shouting a direction. "Get round, somebody, and ope the back door!"
A woman appeared at the cottage window with a screaming and bloody child in her arms.
"There's no way out; there's no way out," she cried. "There's no door to the garden!"
"Get round; get round! Climb over the back wall," repeated Baskerville. Then he turned to the woman. "Ope the window and come here, you silly fool!" he said.
She obeyed, and Humphrey found the injured child was not much hurt, save for a wound on its arm. Men soon opened the rear door of the cottage and drove the bullock out of the house; then they turned him round in the garden and drove him back again through the house into the street.