On getting hold of the rope Edward found that he was likely to have a difficult job. Scarcely had the man disappeared ere the bull began to snort, and kick, and jump. The brute threw up its head and bounded backward with such force, that the boy was nearly upset. Instead of holding the rope short as he had been told, he let it go, though he still held by it at the far end. Away went the bull along the road, dragging the boy after him. So long as the full stretch of rope lay between them, Edward did not care so much; but when the animal rushed into a field of corn, he let go altogether, and resumed his journey.
He had not gone far before he found, on looking back, that he was hotly pursued by the animal. Observing his danger, Edward rushed into a clump of trees standing by the roadside, and, throwing down his bundle, he proceeded to climb one of them. He had only ascended a few yards when the brute came up. The bull snorted and smelt at his bundle, threw it into the ditch with his horns, bellowed at the boy up the tree, gave a tremendous roar, then dashed out of the wood, and set off at full speed down the nearest byway. Edward was flurried and out of breath; he rested in the tree for a short time, then descended and ran along the road for some miles until he thought that he was out of reach of further danger.
This was the only adventure that he met with on his homeward journey. He passed through Bervie without molestation. But, instead of reaching Aberdeen that night, as he had intended, he rested near Stonehaven. He went through the town, and got into a corner of the toll-bar dyke, where he sat or lay until daybreak. He then got up and commenced the last stage of his journey.
On reaching the neighbourhood of Aberdeen, he went to the hole in the bank by Deeside, where he had left his week-day clothes, and found them all right. But before going home, instead of going down Deeside, he turned up by Scraphards to look at a laverock’s nest, which was still there. Then he went past Ferryhill House, by Dee village, and struck the water-side by the path now known as Affleck Street, and got home at breakfast time, after an absence of a week.
His mother was in. “Where ha’e ye been now, ye vagaboon?” “At my uncle’s.” “Where?” “At the Kettle.” “And ha’e ye been a’ the way to Fife, ye vagrant?” Tom then told his story; his mother following it up with a long and serious lecture. She reproached him for the dishonesty which he had committed, in taking the sixpence out of the box when he went away. “Weel, mother,” said he, “here’s the sixpence for the one I took.” He had saved the sixpence out of the eighteenpence his uncle had given him when he left Kettle. “No,” she replied, “the crime is the same after all, and you are sure to be punished for it yet.”