"Now, here!" called Jack. "No more happenings! I beg your pardon, Belle, but we have had such a surfeit of this happening business that we intend, in the language of the poets, to cut it out." Cecilia gave Jack a grateful glance. Cora broke in promptly with a new thought--to divert attention. "And you are the girls who wanted 'No Boys!'" exclaimed Walter. "I should just like to know what you would have done without us?" "There! Didn't I tell you?" said Cora. "They are actually claiming the glory of the whole thing. I suppose, Walter, you hired the ram to do the proper thing in initiating the motor girls in the art of touring?" "Wouldn't he make a hit, though, at some of our college affairs!" exclaimed Ed. "I wonder if we could buy the beast? Here comes the owner now." The girls looked alarmed. Suppose the farmer should blame them for the disappearance of the ram! "I'll do the talking," suggested Walter. "If you say anything, Jack, there might be a row." "Humph!" said Jack. "I suppose you know just how to deal with ram owners." The farmer was quite up to them now. He was not an ill-natured-looking man, and as he approached he touched his big straw hat. "No one hurt?" he asked, much to the girls' relief. "Oh, no, thank you," said Cora, before Walter could open his mouth. "I hope you have not lost the sheep." "Lose him! Couldn't do that if you chucked him in the mill-pond and let the dam loose on him. Only yesterday the plagued thing went for my wife. Yes, sir, and he 'most knocked her down. When I seed your steam wagons comin' along I knowed there would be trouble. He's that pesky!" The man looked at the disabled machine. "Busted?" he asked. "Some," replied Walter. "But I guess we can manage. Would you like to sell that ram?" "Sell him? What for? To kill folks as try to feed him? I bought him from a fellow who always wore an overcoat, and, bless me, that ram got so used to it if I haven't had to put my ulster on the hottest days this summer to do down to the pasture where he was chewin'." The boys laughed heartily at this. Walter seemed keener than ever now on making a bargain. "Well, you see," he said, "we might use the fellow for stunts--tricks. I think we might train him--" A scream from Belle startled them. "Oh!" she yelled. "There he comes! What shall we do?" Without waiting for instructions, however, Belle, with the other girls, jumped up and started for a little cottage not far from the roadside. The ram was coming over the fields straight for the autos. "Now wait," cautioned the farmer, as the boys made ready to confront the animal. "Just keep back until he gets near that machine. Then maybe we can git him." "He's game sport, all right," said Walter. "He evidently hasn't had enough." The brush and low trees along the road made it possible for the young men to hide, while the excited animal dashed through the tall grass out into the road.