CHAPTER XXV.
Harry picked himself up with a rather woebegone countenance, and, as may be imagined, he received a sound rating for his temerity from Topsie, in deliberately disobeying the advice of El Toro, not to fire at the bull’s forehead.
“I never saw a nearer shave, Harry,” she concluded. “If it had not been for our dear old Shag nothing could have saved you from being impaled on the brute’s horns. It’s too horrible to think of.”
“I was a fool, Topsie!” answered her brother; “I acknowledge it. There, don’t scold any more; one lives and learns, you know. Most boys are fools till they have had experience, and this is one I shall not forget.”
“Well, dear, I do hope you will not, for the sake of others, as well as your own. Ah, Harry! what should I have done if you had been killed?” Topsie replied gently, as she laid her hand affectionately on her twin brother’s shoulder.
“God bless my dear old Topsie, and thank God, too, that I am preserved,” he remarked quietly. “But I say, old girl, that must have been a rare good shot of yours, for the brute is stone dead.”
“Thanks to Shag,” she repeated; “but for his splendid help I could not have shot the bull as I did.”
They clustered round the dead animal, and examined him curiously. Topsie’s bullet had gone right to his heart, causing instantaneous death, and thus he had fallen on the top of Shag with some violence. Chorlo, Aniwee, and El Toro had, however, at once rushed to the dog’s assistance directly they saw his perilous position, and had extracted him therefrom before Topsie and Harry came up.