an. But strange to say, all his running took him nowhere
at all. At first he couldn't discover what was the matter. But after a
while he saw that he was inside a broad wheel, made of wire. And when
he ran the wheel simply spun 'round and 'round.

He stopped running then. For he thought of the horses that made the
horse-power go. He was in just the same fix that they were in. He
could run as fast as he pleased, but he would still stay right there
inside the wheel.

Poor Frisky Squirrel crept back into his cage. He remembered what his
mother had said, when he wished he could be a horse, and make the
tread-mill go. "You'd soon grow tired of it," she had told him.

At the time, Frisky hadn't believed her. But now he knew that his
mother was wiser than he was. And he wondered if he was ever going to
see her again.

XX

Johnnie Green Forgets Something

Although Johnnie Green took good care of Frisky Squirrel, that once
lively young chap did not like his new home in the wire cage at all.
His young master gave him plenty to eat--nuts and grain--all the things
that Frisky had always liked before. But now nothing tasted the same.
Frisky never felt really hungry. He just sat in his cage and moped and
sulked.

Once in a great while he would go out into his wheel, and run and run
until he was so tired that he was ready to drop. Whenever Johnnie
Green saw him running inside the wheel that young man would laugh
aloud--he was so pleased.

But nothing ever pleased Frisky Squirrel any more. He grew peevish and
cross and sulky. Being cooped up in that little wire prison day after
day made an entirely different squirrel of him. He longed to be free
once more--free to scamper through the tree-tops, and along the
stone-walls and the rail-fences. And at night he dreamed of hunting for
beechnuts, and chestnuts, and hickorynuts, on which he would feast to
his heart's content--in his dreams. But in the daytime, when his young
master put some of those very same nuts into his cage, Frisky would
hardly touch them. He lost his plumpness. His smooth coat grew rough.
And his tail--that beautiful tail that Jimmy Rabbit had tried to cut
off--alas! it was no longer beautiful. It was thin and ragged-looking.

At last Johnnie Green began to be worried about his pet squirrel. And
one day when Frisky refused to eat a single nut Johnnie Green thought
that he must be really ill. So he opened the door of the cage, which
he always kept carefu