abbit that ran
across the road was so astonished that it did not take breath again till
it reached its greenwood home.

"Hurrah!" said the brown colt, not because he knew what it meant but
because he had heard Dick say it. "Hurrah! maybe I'll never go back!"

Just then there came an awful screech out of a neighboring field, and,
although it was only the whistle of a threshing machine, the brown colt
was terribly frightened, and jumped over a fence into a cotton field.

[Illustration: "The gate is open, the brown colt's gone, the brindle
calf's going, and we are thinking about it, quawk! quawk!"]

"Oh!" thought he, as he tore his glossy coat on the sharp barbs of the
wire fence and cut his feet as he leaped awkwardly over, "Oh! how I wish
I could see Dick now."

But Dick was at home. He had run after the brown colt as fast as his
feet could carry him, and had called "Whoa! Whoa!" but the brown colt
would not listen; so Dick had gone home with his head hanging down, _for
he was the very one who had forgotten to shut the farmyard gate_.

Mother was at home, and she felt very sorry when she heard about it, for
she knew how dear that colt was to her careless little boy; and when
father came in from the fields, too late to look for the runaway, he
said that big boys and little boys and everybody else must take care of
the things they wanted to keep; and Dick cried, but it did no good.

The cows came home when father did, and the brindle calf was glad that
she had not gone away from the farmyard when she saw her mother come in
from the clover lot. The chickens went to roost, and the horses were
fed; but no brown colt came in sight, although Dick and Fleet went down
the lane to look, a dozen times.

"He's sorry enough," said Friend Fleet to Mrs. Muffet, as they ate their
supper; and Mrs. Muffet told Tittleback and Toddlekins all about it,
when she went back to the barn.

Poor little Dick! and poor brown colt! They thought about each other
very often that night; and early in the morning the man who owned the
cotton field, drove the brown colt out.

"I'd like to know," said the man, as he hurried him along, "what
business you have in my cotton field!" But the brown colt hung his head,
as Dick had done, and limped away.

The long pike road stretched out, hard and white, before him, and the
birds, chattering in the bushes, seemed to say:--

"Is this the same brown colt that raised such a dust yesterday?"

Oh! how lon