UNDESERVED WORRIES. 53 



upright posts. They did not attempt to break their 

 way through our flimsy fences; but they did what was 

 worse. They streamed up the roadway we had made 

 up the face of the bench and forced an entrance 

 through the "gate" at the top, and so began to 

 spread out over both fields, to right and to left. By 

 dint of running hard, I contrived to head off and 

 turn back most of the band, and got them well started 

 along the outside of the fence; but a few escaped me. 

 Of these, some went at full gallop all over the toma- 

 toes and clover, and you may imagine how enraptured 

 I felt when I beheld two or three athletic young steers 

 choosing out my lines of recently-planted apple trees 

 for a cinder path, a young heifer " doing the mile " 

 inside the fence, and zigzagging across the potato 

 field, with her tail high in the air; while a " bunch " 

 (to use a Canadian idiom), possessed of sedater man- 

 ners and more inquiring minds, were endeavouring to 

 sample my dynamite boxes. 



I shouted, I waved my stick, I ran till I was 

 breathless ; but no matter how far I ran or how fast, I 

 seemed to get not one bit " forrader." While I was 

 chasing animal No. 1, the rest of the bunch were 

 demonstrating the independence of their characters 

 by pursuing each a separate path. My eye would 

 light upon depredator No. 2 working irreparable 

 havoc among the green peas (just ready for cook- 

 ing, of course), and off I started after No. 2, leaving 

 No. 1 in dangerous proximity to the young carrots. 

 Then animal No. 3 wooed mv attention, and I had 

 to desert No. 2 to take up with the new beauty. They 

 kept me at this game for over half an hour, and I had 

 not beaten a single one of them, either literally or 



