They both gazed at Hubert. He chewed rhythmi cally, with a faraway, dreamy look in his deep brown eyes. He swished his tail, thumping it against the cupboard with a sound like a hollow drum. Inside the cupboard, the dishes rattled.

"Perhaps some spectacles and a mustache," Trev suggested.

"Yes, and a bagwig," Callie said curtly. "He could sit on the bench and conduct the assizes."

Trev squinted at the bull. "He does resemble some of the judges."

She pursed her lips and gave him an arch look. "No doubt you're familiar with any number of them."

"Sadly I am, and I fear I'll come to know them even better if we don't discover some way to deal with this monster." He crossed his arms, leaning his hip against the overturned table. "If you believe we can't turn him loose, we must get him well away from Shelford, Callie, in truth. And rapidly at that. Is there anyone you trust to take him?"

She frowned and clutched her gloves together, holding them to her chin. In spite of his increasingly urgent anxiety for his own skin, Trev found himself hard put to suppress a smile at the look of earnest concentration on her face.

"I have an excellent drover," she said, "but he knows Hubert very well, and I wouldn't know how to explain it all. And where would we take him?"

"Somewhere among a great number of cattle would be best. A market or such."

"We can't sell him!" she exclaimed.

"I don't mean to sell him. Only somewhere that he would blend in among a lot of others of his kind for a while."

"I don't believe Hubert will blend very well. Particularly in this color. The only black cattle that are common are the Welsh type. They aren't so large, and you don't see many of them hereabouts. I heard there were a few at the last exhibition."

"The exhibition!" Trev stood upright. "We could take him there. Cattle by the score."

Callie gasped. "Are you mad? We can't let him be seen there!"

"It's perfect. It's an exhibition, yes? You don't have to enter for a prize. He's an alien bull, just come over from… from Belgium. Kept under wraps until he's revealed at the show. New blood, all that. We could even start up a rumor claiming he's larger than Hubert. And you would publish Hubert's dimensions—slightly reduced, of course—and express your displeasure with this upstart—"

Callie's mouth fell open wider and wider. She was shaking her head.

"It's hide in plain sight, you see," Trev said. "We'll offer a challenge! A hundred guineas. While everyone scours the countryside trying to find Hubert, so that the two can be compared, he's standing right in front of them. But they won't see it."

"You're mad! Of course they would see it. I recog nized him instantly!"

"Did you?"