“Are you in the humor for a lark, boys?” It was Dot, the very smallest and as everybody knows, the most mischievous of all the Brownies, who said it.

“We are that!” was the reply.

They were coming home from school, these Brownie boys, and dinner pails and books were thrown down at once while they crowded around Dot to hear of the prospective fun.

“You know that clover field to the right of the big stone house,” he began, “well some time ago Grimes put up a sign which read ‘Horses taken to Pasture.’ You should see the luck he has had. I guess as many as a dozen horses are running around in that pasture field. It’s bad for them to do nothing but eat all day, so I thought we would be doing a good thing for them, and for ourselves too, if to-night, you know it is moonlight, we borrow these horses and go for a ride.”

You should have heard the yells of delight with which this scheme was greeted. No body but approved, except of course Croak, he always objects to everything.

The plan was for them to meet at the school house at ten o’clock, then go together to the pasture lot. A number of the Brownies were to bring ropes which they would tie around the horses’ necks and haul them into the road.

The hour came; the Brownies met, and the work began. They had forgotten saddles, but some of them crawled through the windows in the harness maker’s shop and came back loaded with both saddles and bridles. Such a time as they had getting them on, and so many Brownies had been invited that there were not enough horses to go around so two and sometimes three saddles must be put on one horse.

All was ready at last and off they started. It was so funny to see them. Some of them actually hung on to the stirrup straps. Things went pretty smoothly at first, but Oh my! what a difference by and by. Saddles slipped, bridles came undone, and the Brownie boys and even the poor horses went over and rolled around in the mud. But the bitter must be taken with the sweet so nobody dared complain, when the ride was over and the horses and harness were put in their proper places, everybody pronounced it one of the best frolics he had ever had in his life.