ed to see a
rare bit of quartz sparkling in the sun on the edge of the well-curb.
Imprudently I stood on the planking and fell in."

"Gracious, it's a lucky thing you weren't drowned, with all that
weight round your neck," declared Jack.

"It was fortunate," said the scientist mildly, as if such a thing as
drowning was an everyday occurrence. "As a matter of fact, if I hadn't
succeeded in grasping a projecting stone and held on, I might have
gone down. It was an--er--a most discomforting experience."

"Well, of all things," exclaimed the red-faced man, "to go trapesing
round the country collecting rocks!"

"Not rocks, sir--geological specimens," rejoined the professor with
immense dignity, "and--great Huxley! Under your foot, sir! Under your
foot!"

"What is it, a snake?" yelled the farmer, jumping backward as the
scientist dashed at him with a wild expression.

"No, sir, but a remarkably fine specimen of what appears to be a
granolithic substance," exclaimed the professor, and he began
energetically chipping at a rock upon which the farmer had been
standing.

"Crazy as a loon," declared the farmer, winking at his men. "Gets
nearly drowned in a well and then begins chopping at a rock as soon as
he gets out."

"Oh, this has been a lucky day for me," said the professor with huge
satisfaction, as he placed his latest acquisition in the satchel. "As
fine a specimen, boys, as ever I encountered," he declared, turning to
the boys.

"Gracious," exclaimed Tom and Dick in low tones, "does he call getting
chased by a bull and then tumbling down a well a satisfactory day?"

"I should call it a rocky time," grinned Dick.

But at this moment further conversation was cut short by the sudden
arrival of a gray-haired, short little old man with a tuft of gray
whiskers on his chin.

"Josh Crabtree!" exclaimed the red-faced farmer.

"Wow! now the music starts," declared Dick.

Josh Crabtree, his face ablaze, and his small, malignant eyes
sparkling angrily, emitted a roar like that of his Holstein that had
caused the professor so much tribulation.

"Say, be you the pesky varmints that tore down my fence and scared my
bull out'n two years' growth?" he bellowed.

"I removed some stones from your fence, sir," said the professor, "but
it was in the interests of science. You may not have been aware of it,
but embedded in your enclosing structure was a fine specimen of green
granite."

"Great hopping water-melyuns!" roare