"Children! Into the house with you--quick!" cried Mrs. Bobbsey.

"Oh! Oh!" cried Flossie. "Let me hide! Let me hide!"

"Pooh! I'm not afraid of a ram!" declared Freddie. "If I had my fire engine unpacked, I'd squirt water on him!"

"Better not try that, little fat fireman," said his father with a laugh. "Into the house with you, son. Your mother will look after you."

Nan had already started from the porch, leading Flossie, who kept looking back over her shoulder. From behind the hedge came a cry that sounded like:

"Baa! Baa! Baa!"

"There he comes!" exclaimed Nan. "Come on in, Bert and Harry," she begged the two boy cousins, who were peering eagerly down the road.

"I'm going to watch 'em catch him," said Bert.

"Better not let him see you," advised Harry, the country cousin. "That old ram is a hard hitter."

"Is there really any danger?" asked Mr. Bobbsey of his farmer-brother.

"Well, the old ram is pretty rough, I must say," answered Uncle Daniel, "and most of the men on the farm are afraid of him."

"He's coming right this way, I tell you!" exclaimed the hired man who had brought the news.

"Why should he head this way?" asked Mr. Bobbsey.

"Come along and I'll tell you," his brother promised. "You children had better go into the house," he advised. "Yes, you too, Bert and Harry," he went on, as he saw his own son and Bert following him and Mr. Bobbsey. "No telling what notions old Upsetter will take."

"Is his name Upsetter?" asked Bert.

"It is," replied his uncle. "I call him that because he upsets so many things. He used to be a pet when he was little," he continued, "and that's what makes him come to the house now, whenever he gets loose.

My wife got in the habit of feeding him salt, which all sheep like very much. I guess he must remember that. But Aunt Sarah wouldn't dare salt him now. Go back into the house, boys, and we men folks will look after the ram."

The sounds were nearer now:

"Baa! Baa! Baa!"

"Oh, he's coming!" cried Flossie, who stood with her nose pressed flat against a window near the porch.

"Had we better go in?" asked Bert of Harry.

"We really had," answered his cousin.

Uncle Daniel, Mr. Bobbsey and the hired man found some heavy sticks with which to scare the ram if he came too close. The big sheep was not yet in sight, though he could be heard bleating.

"Up this way," directed Uncle Daniel. "We can head him off and drive him into the barnyard, perhaps. Then I can shut him up until I have the fence mended that he knocked down."

"Why not get some salt for him?" suggested Mr. Bobbsey. "If he gets some to eat it may make him gentle, and then you could slip a rope around him and tie him up."

"That's a good idea!" cried the farmer. "Sam, please go to the house and get some salt," he directed.

Before the hired man returned, the ram had run into the driveway leading to the barn. Just as Uncle Daniel had said, the ram was headed for the house, which he must have remembered as a pleasant place ever since the days when he was a baby lamb. But now the ram was big and strong, and not very good-natured.

He stood for a moment, looking at Uncle Daniel, Mr. Bobbsey and the hired man. Then, pawing the ground with his fore feet, and lowering and shaking his head with its big horns, the ram started forward again.

"Oh, he's going to b.u.t.t papa!" cried Flossie, who could see, from the window, what was going on.

"Papa will get out of the way, dear," said Mrs. Bobbsey. "Don't worry."

On came the ram, and then Uncle Daniel, taking the salt from the hired man, scattered some of it on the ground in front of the big sheep.

"That will stop him, I think," said the farmer. And indeed it did.

Sheep, and all cattle, are very fond of licking up salt from the ground, and they will go a long way to find it. It keeps cattle healthy. The old ram, as soon as he smelled the salt, began licking it up with his tongue.

He paid no more attention to the men standing in front of him, though if the salt had not been there he probably would have run at them, and knocked them down with his big curved horns.

"Now's our chance!" whispered Mr. Bobbsey, as if the ram could understand what was said. "Get a rope and we can tie him up."

"I'll get one," offered the hired man, and when he came back with the clothes line Uncle Daniel made a loop in one end, such as the cowboys on the Western plains make when they la.s.so cattle.

And while the ram was busy licking up the salt, Uncle Daniel tossed the noose of the rope around the sheep's head, and, in another second, he and Mr. Bobbsey pulled it tight.

"Oh, they've caught him! They've caught him!" cried Nan, who stood near Flossie at the window.

"Come on out and look at him!" said Bert.

"No, no!" objected his mother, as the two boy cousins started from the room.

"Oh, I guess there's no danger now, if they have a rope on him," said Aunt Sarah.

"I'll go 'long with you," offered Freddie, "and I'd squirt water on that ram from my fire engine--if I had it unpacked."

"You stay right here with me," advised his mother, putting her arms around him.

Bert and Harry went out to look at the captured ram. The animal was not ugly now. Perhaps the salt made him good-natured. And he was soon led away, and tied up in a stable until his pasture fence could be mended.

"My! What a lot of excitement!" exclaimed Nan, when it was all over.

"Nothing like this happened when we were on the houseboat."

"You forget the make-believe ghost," said Harry, with a laugh, for he had helped solve that mystery.

"Oh, that's so," agreed Nan. "That was exciting for a while."

The Bobbsey twins, as well as their father and mother, to say nothing of Dinah, were so tired from their long railroad journey that they went to bed early that night. The sun was shining brightly when they awakened next morning. Harry and Bert slept in the same room, and when the country boy arose from bed he went to the window to look out.

"Oh, dear! The sun's shining!" he exclaimed.

"Well, isn't that a good thing?" Bert wanted to know.

"Maybe," admitted Harry. "But if it had been raining we might have gone fishing. As it is, I shall have to work."