vening, the Grange girls decided that, though
they wished they had cast-iron backs, the experience on the whole was
great fun. They liked the camp life, and even their hay-sack beds.

"I vote we don't sleep with our heads to the tent-pole to-night,
though," said Raymonde. "You flung out your arms, Morvyth, and gave me
such a whack across the face! I wonder I haven't a black eye. Let's
turn the other way, with our feet to the pole."

"Right you are! I'm so sleepy, I don't mind which end up I am, if I
can only shut my eyes!" conceded Katherine, yawning lustily.

"I shan't need rocking, either," agreed Morvyth.

Perched on her hay-bag, Raymonde was very soon in the land of Nod. She
was dreaming a confused jumble about Miss Gibbs and gipsies and
strawberries, when she suddenly awoke with a strong impression that
someone was pulling her hair. She sat up, feeling rather scared. The
tent was perfectly quiet. The other girls lay asleep, each on her own
sack with her feet to the central pole.

"I must have dreamt it!" thought Raymonde, settling down again.

She had scarcely closed her eyes, however, before she heard a curious
noise in the vicinity of her ear, and something unmistakably gave her
plait a violent wrench. She started up with a yell, in time to see an
enormous head withdraw itself from the tent door. A clatter of hoofs
followed.

"What's the matter?" cried the girls, waking at the disturbance; and
"What is it?" exclaimed Miss Gibbs, aroused also, and hurrying in from
the next-door tent. But Raymonde was laughing.

"I've had the fright of my life!" she announced. "I thought a bogy or
a kelpie was devouring me, but it was only Dandy, the old pony. He
stuck his head round the tent door, and mistook my hair for a mouthful
of grass, the wretch!"

"I've seen him feeding near the tents before," said Valentine.
"There's some particular sort of grass here that he specially likes.
It's rather the limit, though, to have him coming inside!"

"He oughtn't to be allowed in this field at night," declared Miss
Gibbs. "I shall speak to Mr. Cox, and ask to have him put in another
pasture. We can't close our tent doors, or we should be suffocated. I
hope we shan't have any other nocturnal visitors! It's a good thing we
have no valuables with us. I don't trust those gipsies."

Miss Gibbs's fears turned out to be only too well founded, for, on the
morning but one following, there was a hue and cry in the camp. The
larder had