After that first outcry, Ruth did not raise her voice at all. She tugged
at the fouled handle of the automobile door, looking back over her
shoulder at the forefront of the bull. He bellowed, and the very sound
seemed to weaken her knees. Had she not been clinging to that handle she
must have dropped to the earth.

And then, Crack! It was unmistakably a rifle shot.

The bull plowed up several yards of sod, swerved, shook his great head,
bellowing again, and then started off at a tangent across the field with
the farmer, brandishing a stick, close on his heels.

Saved, Ruth Fielding did sink to the earth now, and when the other girls
ran clamorously around the motor-car she was scarcely possessed of her
senses. Truly, however, she had been through too many exciting events to
be long overcome by this one.

Many queer experiences and perilous adventures had come into Ruth
Fielding's life since the time when, as an orphan of twelve years, she
had come to the Red Mill, just outside the town of Cheslow, to live with
her Great Uncle Jabez and his queer little old housekeeper, Aunt
Alvirah.

The miller was not the man generously to offer Ruth the advantages she
craved. Had it not been for her dearest friend, Helen Cameron, at first
Ruth would not have been dressed well enough to enter the local school.
But if Jabez Potter was a miser, he was a just man after his fashion.
Ruth saved him a considerable sum of money during the first few months
of her sojourn at the Red Mill, and in payment for this Uncle Jabez