he came within ten yards, he was plunging along at full gallop.

I have heard that a bull, when running at a person, shuts his eyes; this may be so in general, but the vicious brute in question did not give us even that poor chance; I could plainly see his red eyes as he advanced, wide open, and fixed on mine. It was a moment of absolute horror, and I fully believed it to be my last; but for Honor, I think I should have fallen down, and allowed myself to be gored, or tossed, or trampled on, as fate and the bull's idiosyncrasy might determine; but that young lady, bred in habits of self-confidence and self-protection, never for a moment lost her presence of mind, otherwise we had been inevitably lost, for in truth there was not a moment for aught but action. Taking my hand firmly in her own, she turned me towards the wet bog, and crying,

"Jump, Charlie; jump for your life; jump on to the rushes-now!"

She sprang from the pathway, twelve feet at least at a bound, and scarcely touching the patch of rushes indicated, leaped from them on to a rough balk of timber, which, black and scorched,* lay a

* Under the surface of the bog, at depths varying from three to thirty feet, are found the remains of two distinct forests, fallen and submerged at different and probably widely removed dates, but both of great antiquity. The one which furnishes the bog oak, so much used for ornament, is generally in the lowest stratum, and

few inches above the treacherous bog a yard or two further on, and which afforded a firm though slippery footing. Here she perched, like a bird on a bough ; and as she steadied me with her hand, the bull with a mighty splash that covered me all over with black mud, in a vain attempt to follow, sank helplessly in the bog, his tawny body quite covered, and only his head and the ridge of his back visible. I never saw such a change in the appearance of an animal in my life; the lurid fire in his eye was quenched as completely as that in a red-hot cinder would have been under similar circumstances; he looked terrified, cowed, almost pitiable; but there was no time for moralizing. Quick as light, Miss O'Hara placed her foot on the burly broad back of the bull, and springing from it, landed with me at her side safely on terra firma.

"Thank heaven, Charlie, we are out of that!" she said; "that's a bad bull, and if you had not jumped so well-❞

"I jumped, dearest Honor?

"Well, never mind, Charlie, we both jumped, and it will be long before our friend there will jump out, unless some one help him. And-look at those

appears, from its frequently charred appearance, and the absence of trunks, to have been destroyed by fire; the other, which furnishes the pine torches that burn so brightly, is of pine and fir, and has evidently succumbed before the wasting effects of water.

stupid old cows yonder; just now they were going to eat us, and at present I really think they are begging us to help their savage master out of the fix he has got into."

The cows' demeanour, meanwhile, was as much changed as that of the bull; they stood on the brink of the flood, lowing and muttering, and no doubt comforting the monarch in his affliction, as, just before, they had incited him to the mischief which brought it on him.

We walked home slowly and pensively; after all, an escape from sudden death makes the most giddy serious for a time, and I felt both grateful and thankful, and more than ever in love with Honor.

Mr. Blake, on hearing of our adventure, ordered the bull to be assisted out of the bog, and killed incontinently.* I think he deserved his fate, for I heard afterwards that he had long been a terror to the neighbourhood. It was not an unusual occurrence for him to take up a position opposite the great iron gates that opened from the demesne, and bar the road against all comers. There was one

* He was, no doubt, converted into "Navy beef." A noble Lord, recently deceased, was in the habit of buying up all the old bulls of the country, partially fattening, and selling them for the above purpose. I have seen upwards of a hundred turned out together.

particular pool in the river, by no means the worst, the fishing of which, if he did not enjoy, he certainly exclusively appropriated. When he stood on the bank, he would have been a bold fisherman who would have offered to throw a fly from it.

E

CHAPTER VI.

SEA FISHING.

VERY pleasantly the days passed at Bogleeze; Pat, either from fear of the threatened blunderbuss, or because he was not summoned, did not appear; and long as my stay was, I never felt-I am sure my host did not-that I was encroaching on his hospitality.

Honor was my constant companion, Larry our chaperon, a most excellent and discreet one; he was always in the way at the right moment, never when he was not wanted; never intrusive nor forward, he was always ready, pleasant, and good humoured. The lower orders of the Irish, at least, have plenty of tact in their composition, and Larry might be a pattern for chaperons, male or female.

We shot and we fished together; I had by this time learned to handle a rod passably well; we took long rambles through the mountains; we sailed or laid lines in the sea, and caught a prodigious quantity of fish by setting spillets.

The spillet is a line some hundreds of yards in