THE OLD HORSE WAS SLEEPY ... BUT THEY WERE READY AT LAST.
Frank "Happy" gave a start, looked at the circle intently, then gave a little nod, and winked.
Eight others of the owl committee gave a simultaneous start in answer, as though they had been unconsciously fooling around a galvanic battery. The gentleman from Havana alone was quiet; he did not yet understand, but the others did, and he was ready to follow. Texan herders say that a drove of ten thousand cattle will sometimes at night leap to their feet like a flash, without apparent cause or warning. There will be a roar of thundering hoofs, a distant rumble, and that herd will have vanished like smoke from the camp-fire, "on the stampede!" Our boys had "stampeded."
Ten or fifteen minutes later a certain wakeful teacher was pleasantly made aware of the fact that a cataract of boys, each with one of the nice white blankets belonging to Mrs. Teacher, tied across his shoulders, was streaming down the lightning-rod by his window; and stepping lightly thither, he caught a disconnected word or two about "old Brown's sugar-house."
"How shall we get her out?"
"Tie up her feet in straw!"
"But the carriage will make such a racket!"
"Well"—after a moment's thought—"we can take the cart; that's been newly greased."
There was a rumble, a slow sque-e-ak, and the cart was out without much noise. Two boys at the thills and two more pushing behind, they softly trundled it down the yard, stopping at every unusually loud squeak. It was almost as light as day; only in the yard the trees cast a slight shadow of tangled branches, leafless as they were.
There was a suppressed sense of excitement, a strained thrill of the nerves that made thumby work of their handling the buckles. The old horse was sleepy, and wouldn't "stand round" to order, and they had to push her into place; but they were ready at last, and Happy-go-Lucky whispered "Pile in!"
They piled in literally one above the other, and lay down upon the hay in the bottom of the cart. There might yet be some stray wanderer to meet and run the gauntlet of his cross-questioning. The wheel struck a stone, and there was a jounce; the bottom fellows wriggled out, what was left of them, and sat up, gasping. They had rather run the risk than try that again. But they met no one.
