Very pale, and with eyes staring at the intruder, she arose as I bade her and slowly moved toward the tree which I had in mind.  “Now—­quick!” I said, and catching her beneath the arms I swung her up into the low branches.  Her light lawn gown caught on a knotty limb, somewhat to her perturbation, and ere I could adjust it and get her safe aloft Sir Jonas had made up his mind.  He came on with head down, in a short, savage rush, and his horn missed my trouser leg by no more than an inch as I dodged around the tree.  At this I laughed, but Miss Grace screamed, until between my hasty actions I called to her to keep quiet.

Sir Jonas seemed to have forgotten my voice, and though I commanded him to be gone, he only shook his curly front and came again with head low and short legs working very fast.  Once more he nearly caught me with a side lunge of his wicked horns as he whirled.  He tossed up his head then and bolted for the tree where Miss Grace had her refuge.  Then I saw it was the red lining of her Parisian parasol which had enraged him.  “Throw it down!” I called out to her.  She could not find it in her heart to toss it straight down to Sir Jonas, who would have trampled it at once, so she cast it sidelong toward me, and inch by inch I beat Sir Jonas in the race to it.  Then I resolved that he should not have it at all, and so tossed it into the branches of another tree as I ran.

“Come,” called the girl to me, “jump!  Get up into a tree.  He can’t catch you there.”

But I was in no mind to take to a tree, and wait for some inglorious discovery by a rescue party from the house.  I found my fighting blood rising, and became of the mind to show Sir Jonas who was his master, regardless of who might be his owner.

His youth kept him in good wind still, and he charged me again and again, keeping me hard put to it to find trees enough, even in an orchard full of trees.  Once he ripped the bark half off a big trunk as I sprang behind it, and he stood with his head still pressed there, not two feet from where I was, with my hand against the tree, braced for a sudden spring.  His front foot dug in the sod, his eyes were red, and between his grumbles his breath came in puffs and snorts of anger.  Evidently he meant me ill, and this thought offended me.

Near by me on the ground lay a ragged limb, cut from some tree by the pruners, now dry, tough and not ill-shaped for a club.  I reached back with my foot and pulled it within reach, then stooped quickly and got it in hand, breaking off a few of the lesser branches with one foot, as we still stood there eying each other.  “Now, sir,” said I to Sir Jonas at last, “I shall show you that no little bull two years old can make me a laughing stock.”  Then I sprang out and carried the war into Africa forthwith.