About two miles from Geneva, before the daylight was quite gone, they were both startled by hearing a rushing, crashing sound coming toward them in the woods.  Were their pursuers upon them after all?  Had they chosen this, the most lonely part of their road, to fall upon them?

They did not speak their thoughts to one another.  Angel struck the horse, and it galloped forward perhaps about a hundred yards, and then, of its own accord, stopped suddenly.

Upon the side of the road, pushing itself backward among the bushes, the better to gain space for its run, was a bull.  Its eyes were bloodshot, its head lowered for a long moment to measure its distance ere it made the attack.  The horse seemed palsied with terror.  It moved backward with tottering steps, trembling all over, heedless of whip or rein.

The backward movement prolonged the hesitation of the bull, which turned itself to take another aim.  The horse uttered an almost human cry.  In the moment of hearing that cry Susannah felt that she had already gone through some shocking form of death.  Halsey brought down his whip, striking the horse with all his might; it leaped forward, lifting the chaise almost into the air; then it was rushing madly on, dragging the wheels behind it with terrible velocity.

They had caught sight of the rush of the bull.  They felt the animal’s heavy side just graze the back of the chaise, and they heard behind them a bellow of rage that seemed to fill all the solitary place with diabolical echoes.

The body of the chaise was bounding upon its leather bands, jolting cruelly against the axle.  Susannah cried out that she should be thrown from her seat.  The swift-falling darkness encompassed their path.  Their hope lay in the straightness of the road, and their chief fear was that by some greater roughness of the way the chaise, which was now swaying fearfully, might be overturned.

Gradually the sound of the bull’s galloping became less distinct.  The chaise was still upright.  The horse, beginning to falter in his pace, took more kindly to the accustomed control of the rein.  It was then Susannah found that she had been clinging to Halsey for support, and that he, by bracing himself with one arm to the side of the chaise and holding her with the other, had prevented her from being thrown out.

In gathering her shawl about her she wrapped herself again in a certain amount of her former reserve, but the excitement that she had been through made her former silence impossible.

Halsey at first received her remarks in silence, then as he essayed to answer, his voice grew low and faint, and a sudden suspicion of the cause pierced through her mind.

In another moment he sank, leaning against her.  Putting her hand beneath his coat, she found to her dismay that the strain of holding her had opened his wound; his clothes were again wet with blood.

The reins slipped from his hands.  Susannah tied them loose to the front of the chaise and, putting her arms round the fainting man, drew the bandages tightly but with unskilful hands; she lessened the bleeding and caused him such acute pain that he lifted his head and spoke.