On the last day of April, Ahab, the bull, loosed himself, and climbing a high hedge of stumps, which looked strong enough to hold any creature but an angel from Heaven, he set forth. Having crossed many pastures and trampled down valuable rye, he came to the banks of the River Inch, where it formed the northern boundary of the Bilby farm. The men were far away burning brush. Mrs. Bilby was at her churn in the milk-house. Doll, a shiftless wench, was loitering by the river’s edge, and there she came across the bull. He was knee-deep among the cowslips. Seeing her, he threatened playfully with his short horns, and set off as fast as he could trot with a bunch of yellow flowers dangling from his blue lips.
She knew the animal to be of great value, and that she must quickly give warning of his liberty lest he escape into the forest, and, being set upon by savages or the feræ naturæ of the place, become but meat in the stomachs of those little schooled to appreciate his worth. She ran quickly back to the house, calling that Black Ahab was loose and she had seen him head for the forest. Mrs. Hannah, rushing from the milk-house, caught the girl by the arm, shook her angrily because the cows were up and ready for milking, and she was late to her work. She would not let her run to the upland fields where the men burned brush, nor to the Thumbs’ farm so that the creature might be caught. She flung her milking-stool and her pail at her feet, and told her to be about her own business, for if she had done as she should have done—that is, if she had made cheese all the afternoon, instead of loitering about the pastures—she never would have seen Ahab or known that he had escaped. Doll sat upon her stool and bent herself silently to her work.
On his return in the evening, Mr. Bilby was angry to find that no word had been sent to his neighbour in regard to the loss of his creature. Nor did Doll tell him that it was his wife’s and not her fault. Partly because she was ashamed that he thought her responsible for the loss, and partly because she was a wild girl who loved to run about, she joined the searching party, made up of the men of the two households.
They searched the pastures and the ploughed lands, the fields, the meadows. There was no place else to search but the forest, for Ahab was utterly gone. They searched the forest until it was black night, following the snappings of twigs, blowings, stampings. Not once did they see the body of the black bull. Doll kept to her foster father’s heels. Her dress and hands were torn. Her feet soaked with wet. She often called, and in a lovely voice, ‘Ahab ... Ahab.’ As often as she cried, Titus knew her whereabouts, and took himself to her side. For on that black night it was she and not the mischievous bull that he was pursuing. He thought how heavy was the night, how awful in their majesty the woods, and how wild and small the dark goblin-child. So he prayed at the same moment that God might deliver his soul from her soul, and her body unto his.
Weary and disheartened at last, all turned towards home. But Doll had lost Mr. Bilby, who had started back with Deacon Thumb. Titus, amazed and delighted to find her alone, walked by her side. Doll bitterly reproached herself that she had not given warning in time. To comfort her Titus said it was only his and his father’s fault because they could not keep the beast in bonds. To his amazement he found that it was not with their loss she was concerned, but only with the fortunes or misfortunes of the wretched bull. He thought, has this woman a familiar, and is it that accursed Ahab? So his marrow froze in his bones.
Thinking that she was indeed no bigger than one of those little goblins that live by the hob and bring good fortune to those who are kind to them, and also how there was much about her shape to please a man of rare discernment, he would have touched her with his hands (witch or no witch) and supported her weariness through the rough dark pasture lands. If she would accept this much from him, it was possible (for the night was May night when all young men for hundreds of years have been allowed special license from their sweethearts) she would permit more and more, so that the day’s vexations might end joyously. Many times had he felt a vital spark pass from her to him, and he could not but believe that she was conscious of it as well as he. Doll seemed not to realize his intent. As in the dark he approached his hands to her, she floated from him. Before her home was reached he came to fancy she had no body, or that by some charm (strong as that charm she had worked to bind him to her) she now had made a barrier about herself which he had not the physical strength to break.
He thought of Sara and her loving demon, Asmodeus, and wondered if such a fiend might not now be protecting her. And he wished he had never heard that holy story, for Sara, according to Sacred Writ, had seven husbands and each young man in turn had been strangled upon his marriage bed by the fiend Asmodeus, who loved her.
6
A young Christian witnesses an Awful Metamorphosis and shoots a bullet, but not a silver bullet.