e a load of bricks, Bob."

"I was so mad that I think I would have dropped a ton of bricks on him if
I'd had them handy," replied Bob, with a grim laugh. "That was one dirty
trick--hitting Herb--when he was knocked out by that fall."

"I guess I owe you a vote of thanks for that, too," said Herb.

"I owe you one, for tripping up Buck in the neat way you did," returned
Bob. "He and Hayes would have been on top of me both together if you
hadn't."

"No thanks due; it was a pleasure," grinned Herb, although a swollen lip
made this exercise painful. "I wish he'd broken his neck while he was
about it."

"It wasn't your fault that he didn't," said Bob.

"I knew that bunch was mean," remarked Joe. "But I never thought they were
mean enough to take up stone throwing from ambush. That's the most
cowardly thing they've ever done."

"Yes, and the most dangerous," said Bob. "Any one of those stones might
have killed one of us if it had landed just right."

"Or, worse still, it might have broken our vacuum tubes," added Jimmy,
with a grin. "It's a wonder that the whole lot of them didn't get smashed.
I'll be afraid to open the package when we do get it home," he went on
more seriously.

His fears turned out to have been groundless, for when they arrived at the
Layton home, without having seen or heard anything more of the bullies on
the way, they found all their delicate apparatus unharmed. And other than
Herb's swollen lip and a few slight bruises, they had received little
damage themselves from the encounter. The bullies had not fared so well,
for little was seen of them for several days, and when they did make an
appearance in public they were decorated with strips of court plaster
here and there. They offered many ingenious excuses in explanation, but
they received little credence from the other boys of the town, who had
been apprized of the cowardly attack on the radio boys and the result of
the encounter.

The bullies soon found that nobody believed them, and wherever they went
they were pointed out and were the subject of many jeers and jokes,
although few dared to make them openly. Buck realized that he was losing
prestige rapidly, and, although he was getting secretly to fear another
encounter with the radio boys, he felt that he must soon get the better of
them if he were to regain his former reputation as a fighter. He and his
cronies spent many an hour in hatching plots against Bob and his friends,
but for a l