The muscular power of his arms was well known at Garthowen, and now it stood him in good stead, for calling his full strength to his aid, he succeeded by a sudden wrench in turning the bull's head aside, so that the direct force of his attack came upon the ground instead of the girl's body.
In a moment the enraged animal turned upon his assailant, and probably Will would have fared badly had not a drover arrived, who, possessing himself of the rope, gave a sudden and sharp twitch at the bull's nose, a form of punishment so agonising and alas, so familiar, that the animal was instantly subdued, and brought under comparative control, not, however, before his horn had slightly torn Will's arm.
An excited crowd of market people had now reached the spot, and while the animal, frightened into submissiveness by the blows and cries that surrounded him, was led away snorting and panting, Will looked in affright at the girl who lay white and unconscious on the ground.
"Did he toss her ?" asked one of the crowd, "or is she only frightened?
Dear! there's white she looks, there's delicate the gentry are!" "'Tis her foot, I think," said Will; "let be, I will hold her." "Yes, 'tis her foot," said another, "the bull must have trampled on it, see how dusty it is--there's a pity." It was in fact more from the pain of the crushed foot than from fright that Gwenda had fainted, for she was a brave girl.

Though fully alive to her danger she had not lost consciousness until her foot had been crushed, and even then not before she had seen Will's rush to her rescue, and his energetic twist of the animal's horns.
Two or three gentlemen now came running up the street, amongst them her uncle, Colonel Vaughan, who, standing at the door of the hotel, had witnessed the escape of the bull, and the pursuit of him by the excited throng of market people.

Remembering that his niece had but a few moments previously passed up the street, he too ran in the same direction, and arrived on the scene as promptly as his short legs and shorter breath permitted him.

In a fever of fright and flurry he approached, the crowd making way for him as he snapped out a cannonade of irrelevant questions.
"Good heavens! Gwenda! What is it?
My darling, are you hurt?
Who did it?
How very careless!" "'Tis her foot, I think, sir," said Will.

"She has not been gored, and if you will send for your carriage I will lift her in as I am already holding her." "She'd have been killed for certain," said one of the crowd, "if this young man had not rushed at the bull and saved her life.