The Herschel 400 list is filled with boring, little open star clusters. This is one of them. NGC 381 is a 9.3 magnitude cluster located about 1.7 degrees northeast of 2.2 magnitude Gamma (27) Cassiopeiae. This guy definitely scrapes the bottom of the deep-sky barrel. My sketch captures the cluster's appearance at 129X (8.8-mm UWA eyepiece) in the 10-inch Newt. Lynga lists the cluster as 6' in diameter which would account for the central grouping of 22-30 stars. These range from 11th to 13th magnitude in brightness.