Potential Danger. PENNY JORDAN

      ‘I’ll go and look for her. She can’t have gone far,’ Kate reassured her, knowing the breed’s penchant for stopping to eat whatever took its fancy.

      She suspected she would find the animal less than a few yards down the lane, but she discovered that she was wrong, and she had walked as far as the boundary of her father’s land with that now owned by the experimental station before she realised she was wrong.

      Surely Annabel couldn’t have strayed in there? she reflected, gazing at the high, heavy fencing that reared unattractively above the mellow stone walls that bounded the estate.

      Worn stone steps set into the wall showed where there had once been access over it, and Kate climbed up them so that she could look into the enclosed grounds.

      To her horror, she saw that the goat had indeed strayed inside the perimeter. She looked up when Kate called her name, but refused to move, simply shaking her silky white head and continuing her meal.

      How on earth had she got in? Kate wondered wryly. Agile as the creature was, she couldn’t have climbed over the wall and the perpendicular fence.

      She scrambled back down the wal, jumping the last couple of feet, and acknowledging as her muscles protested that she was slightly out of condition. Time was when she would have done that without having to soothe scraped palms of too-tender, ‘citified’ skin.

      Realising that she would have to find out where the goat had got in and get her out again, she looked to her left and right, wondering which direction to take first. Then she spotted some of the goat’s droppings, and with a faint sigh of relief turned to the right.

      A narrow, unkempt lane ran alongside the boundary wall, leading to a farm which had been empty for almost two years following the death of its owner, an incomer into the area who had tried and failed to raise prize cattle on the exposed fellsides. The farm had recently been sold, according to her father, but no one knew to whom. Her father had been slightly disgruntled by the sale, since he had wanted to purchase the land himself. Although not suitable for cattle, it could be used for sheep.

      Kate had come out in thin-soled shoes, and the sharp stones in the unmade-up road struck painfully through them. Cursing under her breath, Kate bent to rub her foot, and then straightened up, her pain forgotten as her attention was caught by bright scraps of metal among the tufts of grass. As she walked over to examine them more closely, she realised that someone had cut through the boundary fence, and recently, too, and that it was here, where there was no protective wall to support it, that the goat had broken through. Sure enough, there were tufts of her white hair clinging to the wire.

      Gingerly Kate pushed her own way through, wincing as the sharp barbs caught at her clothes, carefully pushing them to one side so that they didn’t catch on her skin.

      Even so, she couldn’t avoid one barb escaping her hold and leaving a long and very painful scratch down her arm. Blood welled freely from it and she cursed her own carelessness. Her skin stung, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her primary concern now was to retrieve her mother’s goat.

      She had purposefully brought with her a pocket full of the pig nuts that the animal apparently adored, and as she walked carefully down towards it she fished in her pocket and removed some of them, hoping that once Annabel caught the scent of them she would follow her docilely back on to their own land.

      Annabel caught the scent of them, and dutifully came trotting up to her, but Kate had forgotten the breed’s wiliness, and wasn’t prepared for the goat butting her. She lost her balance and fell over, the nuts scattering.

      By the time she had regained her balance, Annabel had eaten the lot and was standing skittishly several yards away from her.

      Unwisely, Kate lost her patience and gave chase.

      Ten minutes later, hot and out of breath, she acknowledged defeat. She was going to have to go home and get one of her father’s men to help her.

      Her body ached where she had fallen, and her arm stung, dried blood clinging to her skin. She had a blister on one heel, and all in all she felt extremely irritated and uncomfortable. Limping painfully, she headed back to the gap in the fence.

      The sound of something crashing heavily through the undergrowth behind her suddenly made her check. She looked round, saw nothing, and then her eyes widened as she focused disbelievingly on the body of the huge Alsatian launching itself at her.

      Brought up on a farm she reacted instinctively, standing her ground and calling out sharply to the animal, ‘Down!’