the meadow, wearing a broad smile. Probably he had never before looked
quite so cheerful.

But he had not gone far before something happened that drove the smile
from his face, replacing it with a dark frown. He had glanced behind
him, because he wanted--quite naturally--to look at that long line of
lights twinkling through the night. And to his distress he saw that
Freddie Firefly's relations were flying helter-skelter in all
directions. They had bolted out of the line and were dancing off across
the meadow after a fashion that no torchlight procession ought to
follow.

"Stop! Stop!" Chirpy Cricket called.

Even as he spoke, as many as a dozen lights flashed past him and went
flittering on across the fields.

Really, the only ones besides Chirpy that had stayed in the line as they
should were Mehitable Moth, who still carried her banner right behind
him, and Freddie Firefly, who sat on top of the banner.

And even Freddie Firefly was becoming restless. When he saw his brothers
and cousins go dancing off in the dark he couldn't help wanting to dance
too.

"You'd better hurry!" he said to Chirpy Cricket. "Those fellows--" he
pointed to the dozen that had just passed them--"those fellows have got
ahead of you. And it looks to me very much as if you were out of line."

Chirpy Cricket stared at Freddie Firefly in astonishment.