"Oh, my! Look at this queer looking goat with three horns—don't he look fierce?"
"OH, MY! LOOK AT THIS QUEER-LOOKING GOAT WITH THREE HORNS. DON'T HE LOOK FIERCE?"
"Let's read the card on his cage and see what it says about him. It says he was caught in the mountains of Guinea and that he is very ferocious. He looks it, doesn't he? How would you like to have him hook you?" Billy heard one little boy say to another. "Isn't this funny, the card says he kills his prey with his two sharp pointed horns and then hooks the other one into his prey and carries it off."
"Is that what the card says? Well, if that isn't the biggest lie I ever heard!" thought Billy. "I'll bet the ring-master made that up, like the one about my being an astrologer. Oh, he is a dandy, he is! But when I come to think of it, I don't mind if they do fool the people, if they are so easily gulled as that; and I guess I will help them carry it out by behaving fierce and kicking around when anyone looks into my cage."
After the people had all passed into the main tent, the wind began to blow a perfect hurricane and the rain came down in sheets while one peal of thunder followed another in such quick succession that one would hardly have time to die away before another was upon it; rolling and booming like heavy pieces of artillery. The lightning was so vivid and bright that it made Billy wink at every flash.
Presently a fiercer, stronger volume of wind hit the big tent and it collapsed burying all the people under it, while the same gust swept on and picked up the tent Billy was sheltered in and carried it off, upsetting cage after cage of animals as it flew up and soared over their heads.
Billy's cage was among those upset, but before it went over the wind picked it up, carried it a few feet and then dropped it, smashing in the wooden side and setting Billy free. For once the old saying came true: "That it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." With a swish of his stubby tail Billy was off down a side street, and as he ran he could hear above the peals of the thunder and the rushing of the wind, the lions roaring and the elephants trumpeting for fear amid the confusion and excitement of the collapsed tents,—the circus that Billy had escaped from for good.