hat that was the strangest
path he had ever seen, for it seemed to lead to nowhere, and why it
should have a bar at the top, to keep anyone from going nowhere at
all, was more than even his lively mind could puzzle out.

In and out and about these strange wagons were as many as a dozen men,
and one boy--each of them as busy as he could be. And as for the boy,
Johnnie Green, he was busier than anybody else. He seemed to be
everywhere at once, and in everybody's way. And Frisky couldn't see
that he was doing anything at all. But he noticed that Johnnie
appeared to be having a fine time.

As Frisky Squirrel looked down upon this unusual sight from his perch
in the tree he saw that Farmer Green's wagons--the kind Frisky had
often seen before--were bringing up sheaves of wheat. And pretty
soon--and this made Frisky's eyes almost pop out of his head--he saw a
man lead a pair of horses up that short, steep walk and tie them to
the bar at the top of it.

Then the horses began to walk. Now, probably you wouldn't think there
was anything strange about that. But there was. The odd thing about
that was that although the horses walked, they didn't get anywhere at
all. So far as Frisky Squirrel could see, they just walked and walked,
and that was all there was to it. After they had walked for a long
time they still stayed right in the same place, tied fast to the
wooden bar in front of them.

Now, when the horses were walking, the other wagon began to set up a
great noise. It reminded Frisky of the time the gristmill began to
grind, when he thought the world was coming to an end. Those queer
wheels on the wagon began to turn, too. But Frisky didn't pay much
attention to them. What caught his eye and kept him puzzling was those
two horses, always walking, but never going anywhere.

Frisky Squirrel stayed in his tree as long as he could, until at last
he simply had to hurry home and beg his mother to come over to the
field with him.

As it happened, Mrs. Squirrel was not very busy that day, so she
dropped her knitting, or whatever it was that she was doing, and
pretty soon she and Frisky were up in the tree that he had climbed
before.

"Oh! they're threshing!" Mrs. Squirrel said, after she had taken
one good look at what was going on. "They're threshing out the
wheat-kernels, so the miller can grind them into flour."

"But those horses--" said Frisky. "Why is it that they don't walk right
against that bar, and break it, and