"I'll go 'long with you," offered Freddie, "and I'd squirt water on that ram from my fire engine--if I had it unpacked." "You stay right here with me," advised his mother, putting her arms around him. Bert and Harry went out to look at the captured ram. The animal was not ugly now. Perhaps the salt made him good-natured. And he was soon led away, and tied up in a stable until his pasture fence could be mended. "My! What a lot of excitement!" exclaimed Nan, when it was all over. "Nothing like this happened when we were on the houseboat." "You forget the make-believe ghost," said Harry, with a laugh, for he had helped solve that mystery. "Oh, that's so," agreed Nan. "That was exciting for a while." The Bobbsey twins, as well as their father and mother, to say nothing of Dinah, were so tired from their long railroad journey that they went to bed early that night. The sun was shining brightly when they awakened next morning. Harry and Bert slept in the same room, and when the country boy arose from bed he went to the window to look out. "Oh, dear! The sun's shining!" he exclaimed. "Well, isn't that a good thing?" Bert wanted to know. "Maybe," admitted Harry. "But if it had been raining we might have gone fishing. As it is, I shall have to work." "What doing?" Bert wanted to know. "Help pick apples in the orchard. We are shipping them away this year, and they have to be picked, and packed in barrels." "I'll help you," offered Bert, and, after breakfast, the two boys went out to the big orchard, where Uncle Daniel and some of his men already were busy. The apples were picked by men standing on long ladders that reached up into the trees. Each filled a canvas bag with apples. These bags hung around their necks, and when one was full, the man came down the ladder with it. This was so the apples would not be bruised, for a bruised apple rots very quickly, and even one rotten apple in a barrel full, will soon make many bad ones. "Can we pick apples on a ladder?" asked Bert. "No, that's a little too dangerous for small boys," said Uncle Daniel. "But you and Harry may pick those you can reach from the ground. Some of the tree limbs are very low, and you won't have any trouble. Take some of the bags to put the apples in. Don't bruise them." Harry and Bert were soon busy, picking off as many apples as they could reach. When their bags were filled, they emptied them carefully in a wooden bin, and from that bin Uncle Daniel sorted the apples into barrels, which were "headed up" ready to be taken to the city. Nan had gone over to the home of Mabel Herold, the country girl, and Flossie and Freddie found many things to amuse them about the farm. Later on they came out to the orchard, and picked up apples from the ground. "I'll help fill Bert's bag, and you can help Harry," said Freddie to Flossie.