It was at the witching hour of midnight that I bade the ancestral rooftree so long, sincerely hoping that it would be so long before I beheld it again that I might forget to remember what it looked like. The discerning reader will divine by this naïve confession of my feelings at the time, that my life up to that date had not exactly been one grand, sweet song.
When I crept down the back stairs and let myself out of the Wiley tepee by the kitchen door, I took with me a more or less elaborate cuisine of extra clothing tied up in a bandanna handkerchief. I was followed by little Fido, my faithful dog. Little Fido was a cross between a Skioodle and an Angostora goat, and he weighed about three pounds and seven ounces, when trained down to fighting condition. I’ve seen him chaw up a forty-pound bulldog quicker than a woodchuck could whip a bear.
Between little Fido and myself there existed an affection that was deep and tender and touching. He was an animal of high intelligence, and I was perfectly convinced by the stealthy and syruptitious manner in which he slunk from the house at my heels that he was fully aware of the fact that I was running away, and he was determined to flee with me.
You understand, it is not difficult for a dog to flea with any one, and we had slept together many a night. Is it any wonder that I had an itching for adventure? When the time came to set forth in quest of that for which I itched I certainly came up to the scratch.
And so, behold me, gentle reader, on that dark and gloomy midnight, making my get-away with faithful little Fido gamboling at my heels. Dark it was, indeed—so dark that a load of coal that had been dumped outside the back door of the Wiley domicile looked like a snowdrift. Nevertheless, also, and likewise, I knew the lay of the land, and the points of the compass, and, having reached the highway, I hastened to hie away.
It must not be thought for a single fleeting zodiac of time that I was taking this nocturnal departure from home without feeling as much as a transient emotion of regret, for I have a naturally tender and touching nature, in proof of which I might call upon hundreds of persons whom I have touched on various occasions.
I shed tears at the thought of all I was leaving behind me—tears of sincere regret; for there were about ten or a dozen persons in that town whom I had sworn to thrash within an inch of their lives, and I was saddened by the thought that I was leaving the work unaccomplished.
Blinded by these tears, as well as the intense darkness, I came near meeting with a frightful disaster while taking a short cut across a back yard; for I fell about twenty-five feet into an old well, and landed in water that was at least umsteen feet deep. Perhaps it is not precisely accurate to say that I landed in that water; suffice it to say that I dropped into it casually up to my pompadore, and found it extremely wet.
“Ah-ha!” I exclaimed, coughing up about a gallon of aqua pura which I had thoughtlessly swallowed. “I’m in a hole now.”
I began to feel of the wet and slippery rocks around me, and I must assert that, in spite of my unpleasant predicament, I was feeling well. In vain I tried to fasten my flippers on those slippery rocks; they were smoother than a con man. I couldn’t obtain a sustaining hold anywhere, and I was compelled to tread water to keep my head above the surface.