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"Wow! That's the time he got a headache!" cried Tom excitedly, as the professor, clinging desperately to his refuge, was almost flung from it by the shock.

"Gracious, boys, what shall I do?" he asked, looking about him from his leafy perch with a glance of despair that would have been comical had the situation not been serious, for the bull, instead of accepting his defeat, stood under the tree pawing and ramping ferociously.

"Well, here's a fine kettle of fish!" exclaimed Jack. "What are we going to do now?"

"Blessed if I know," said Dick helplessly. "By the bucking bulls of Bedlam, this is a nice mess."

"Maybe we could throw rocks at him and chase him away," suggested Tom.

"No chance; he's got his eye on the professor," returned Jack, "and if we did get out he would chase us and that wouldn't do the professor any good."

"Can't you help me, boys," inquired the professor in an agonized tone. "This tree limb is not exactly—er—comfortable."

"You're in no danger of falling, are you?" called Jack, in an alarmed voice.

"No—er—that is, I don't think so. But this is an extraordinary position. Most—er—undignified. I'm glad my sister can't see me."

"Try throwing some of the rocks out of your satchel at him," suggested Dick.

But the professor waxed indignant at this proposal.

"And cast my pearls before swine! or rather my specimens before a bull!" exclaimed the professor, in helpless indignation. "No, young gentlemen, not a pebble from this bag is wasted on that creature."

"I'd drop the whole bag on him," said Dick, "if I was in that position. It's heavy enough to knock out an elephant, let alone a bull."

"Can't you suggest anything?" wailed the professor.

"I'm trying to think of something right now," declared Jack, racking his brains for some way out of the predicament.

"I wish the farmer that owned him would come along and get his old bull out of there," said Dick.

"Yes, and then there would be fresh complications," declared Jack.

"How do you make that out?" came from Dick.

"He'll probably know how to handle him," supplemented Tom.

"Yes, he would if he's a bull-fighter," scoffed Dick, "and I never heard of there being any matadors in the vicinity of Nestorville."

"Lots of doormats, though," grinned Tom.

"Say, if you do that again I'll throw you out of the car," cried Jack at this atrocious pun.

"Sorry, couldn't help it. Just slipped out," said Tom contritely.

"Well, you'll slip out if the offense is repeated," retorted Dick. "But," he went on, "seriously, fellows, we've got to do something."

"Try blowing the horn," suggested Tom. "It has scared everything else we met. Horses shy at it, so do other autos. Maybe it will get the bull's goat."

"I'll try it, at all events," said Jack.

He pressed the button and the unearthly screech of the electric auto's siren split the air. But the bull merely cast an inquiring glance in their direction and then resumed his vigil over the professor.

"Boys," wailed the unhappy geologist, "can't you do something, anything? I can't roost in this tree all night, like a bird."

The boys couldn't help grinning at this. With his sharp nose, big spectacles and flapping black garments, the professor did look like a mammoth black crow.

"Reminds me of the fox and the crow," said Dick, in a low voice, to his companions.

"Only, in this case, the fox is a bull, and the piece of cheese is the bag of specimens," added Tom.

They looked about helplessly. There was no farmhouse in sight and the road did not appear to be much traveled.

"We'll have to go for help," declared Jack.

"The only thing to do," agreed Tom.

The professor was hailed. He had climbed to another limb with infinite difficulty, because of the encumbering bag of rocks on his back. He declared that he could manage to get along till the boys came back.

"By a merciful provision of providence," he said whimsically, "bulls can't climb trees. The situation might be worse if it was a bear."

"It would be unbearable," declared Dick to Tom.

"But just the same there's trouble a brewin'," retorted Tom. "I wish that farmer would show up."

"As I said before—I don't," responded Jack, as he prepared to start off.

"Why?"

For answer Jack waved an eloquent hand toward the gap in the stone fence.

"I guess he wouldn't be best pleased to find that his fence had been torn down," explained Jack, as the car drove off, leaving the professor marooned in his tree with the sentinel bull waiting patiently below.

Some distance down the road the boys came to a farmhouse. Several men were working in the field under the direction of a stout, red-faced man. Jack shouted to them, and when the red-faced man came up he explained the situation to him. The man was good-natured, or perhaps he rather liked the idea of a ride in such a novel-looking car. Anyhow, he called three of his hands and told them to get pitchforks.

"Never see a bull I couldn't handle," he said as the men, having returned, scrambled into the car.

"Do you know who it belongs to?" asked Jack, as he turned round and headed back to where they left the luckless professor.

"I reckon it's that big Holstein of Josh Crabtree's. He's pretty near as mean as his owner, and that's considerable."

Jack thought of the hole in the wall and hoped they would reach there before farmer Crabtree, and so avoid serious complications.

He drove at top speed, while the friendly farmer and his workmen clung to the sides of the car and looked rather scared at the rate they were going.

"There's the tree," exclaimed Jack, as they came in sight of it, "and there's the gap in the fence."

"And where's the bull?" asked Tom.

"And where's the professor?" added Dick.

Not a trace of the man of science or of the ferocious animal was to be seen.

"Are you sure you boys didn't dream all this?" asked the red-faced farmer suspiciously.

"There ain't even a cow in sight in the pasture lot," said one of the men.

"I reckon this is some sort of a fool joke," added another.

"It isn't. Indeed, it isn't," protested Jack.

"The professor is some place around," said Tom.

But a lengthy search of the vicinity failed to show anything except that the professor had vanished as if the earth had swallowed him.