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 tumble off onto the ground?"
"That's a horse-power," Mrs. Squirrel explained. "The path the horses
are treading on moves, and that's why they stay right in the same
place. The path moves 'round and 'round all the time, like a broad
chain.
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