The leader of these was a bulldog of the true breed, and though young, had all his teeth in their full strength. Behind him came dogs of every kind which is common in this country, and if they could do little else, they could bay and yelp, and thus puzzle and perplex the bull.
James and William, each with a stick in their hands, were behind them, urging them on, calling for help, and putting themselves to great danger for the sake of Henry. Tom was not there to see the mischief he had wrought.
Another moment, and the bull would have been up with Henry, when he found himself bitten in the flank by the sharp fangs of Fury meeting in his flesh. The animal instantly turned upon the dog; most horribly did he bellow, and poor Henry then indeed felt that his last moment was come.
The noises were becoming more dreadful every instant; the men came running from the fields, pouring into the lane from all sides: the women and girls from the house were shrieking over the low wall from the bottom of the court, so that the noise might be heard a mile distant.
Henry Fairchild never looked back, but ran on as fast as he possibly could, till, after a little while, seeing a stile on his left hand, he sprang up to it, tumbled over in his haste, fell headlong on the new-shorn grass, and would have gotten no hurt whatever, had not his nose and his upper lip made too free with a good-sized stone. Henry's nose and lip being softer than the stone, they of course had the worst of it in the encounter.
A very few minutes afterwards, but before the labourers had got the bull back into its place, which was no easy matter, one of the men, running from a distant field towards the noise, found poor Henry, took him up far more easily than he would have taken up a bag of meal,
and carried him, all bloody as he was, to the mistress, by a short cut through the garden.
Henry's nose had bled, and was still bleeding, when the man brought him to the house; but no one even thought of him till the fierce bull was safe within four walls. But it had been a dangerous affair, as the men said, "to get that job done;" nor was it done till both Fury and the bull were covered with foam and blood.
When everything was quiet in and about the yard, Mrs. Burke began to look up, not only her own children, but all the careless young people about.
"Where is Tom?" was the mother's first cry. Dick and Jane had made her know that they were not far off, by the noise they were both making.