The long moonbeams came down athwart the dormitory through the great
windows, and lay in broad parallelograms, bisected and quartered, upon
the floor. We got our geometry lesson out of the figures, and reeled off
a whole section of theorems, without the least effect. That ought, by
rights, to be enough to set a whole houseful of boys journeying into the
Land of Nod, but it didn't us.

Father heard us jabbering and came up to see what the matter was, but
our sudden interest in the science of planes and prisms so amused him
that he laughed all the way down-stairs; for Charlie Brown crept to the
door and heard him.

At last Frank Hapgood--"Happy-go-lucky"--sat up in desperation, flung
his pillow on the floor, got out of bed deliberately and sat down on it.
Nine other pillows, nine other white-robed figures solemnly followed
suit. Said Harry Eveleth, "Fellows, I've tried to do my duty and go to
sleep, and I can't. We _must_ do something!"

A silence, broken by a sigh from Ramon. "Ah! on nights like zis I have
gone to ze--ze zoogar houses to sleep some time, in Habana!"

[Illustration: THE OLD HORSE WAS SLEEPY ... BUT THEY WERE READY AT
LAST.]

Frank "Happy" gave a start, looked at the circle intently, then gave a
little nod, and winked.

Eight others of the owl committee gave a simultaneous start in answer,
as though they had been unconsciously fooling around a galvanic battery.
The gentleman from Havana alone was quiet; he did not yet understand,
but the others did, and he was ready to follow. Texan herders say that a
drove of ten thousand cattle will sometimes at night leap to their feet
like a flash, without apparent cause or warning. There will be a roar of
thundering hoofs, a distant rumble, and that herd will have vanished
like smoke from the camp-fire, "on the stampede!" Our boys had
"stampeded."

Ten or fifteen minutes later a certain wakeful teacher was pleasantly
made aware of the fact that a cataract of boys, each with one of the
nice white blankets belonging to _Mrs._ Teacher, tied across his
shoulders, was streaming down the lightning-rod by his window; and
stepping lightly thither, he caught a disconnected word or two about
"old Brown's sugar-house."

"How shall we get her out?"

"Tie up her feet in straw!"

"But the carriage will make such a racket!"

"Well"--after a moment's thought--"we can take the cart; that's been
newly greased."

There was a rumble, a slow sque-e-ak, and the cart was ou