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 "Honest Dad, he has been here all the time," returned Bud.

Father and son looked into each other's eyes and Mr. Holcome knew that Bud spoke the truth.

"Well," he said, "I don't see what in the dickens it was worrying the bull."

"I don't know about that," returned Bud. "But, it wasn't Scottie."

From tantalizing the big bull in the pasture to playing with Brown Buck was an easy and natural step, but it was quite a different proposition, for while the bull was slow and cumbersome Brown Buck was quick and agile, and he sprang like lightning and charged like a fury.

His favorite retreat was in the rabbits' swamp, three miles east of the den in the spruces, but Brown Buck often left this fastness and wandered along the mountainside and into the pasture, where he sometimes even mingled with the cattle. Occasionally, he had a doe with him, with a little spotted fawn following at her flank,