"Let 'em rip!" he muttered, "Bill's got me!"
Presently the wagons and other vehicles began to leave the ground, from one of which he caught the sound of a sweet, familiar voice. He looked just in time to get a glimpse of Mr. Hart's wagon, and in it, side by side, Bill Powell and Minny! A cloud of yellow dust soon hid them, and turning away his head, happening to glance upward, Jack saw, just disappearing in a thin white cloud, the golden disc of Le Papillon's balloon!
He immediately descended from his perch and began plodding his way home, muttering as he did so——
"Dast the luck! Ding the prize package feller! Doggone Bill Powell! Blame the old b'loon! Dern everybody!"
It was long after nightfall when he reached his father's gate. Hungry, weak, foot-sore, collapsed, he leaned his chin on the top rail of the gate and stood there for a moment while the starlight fell around him, sifted through the dusky foliage of the old beech trees, and from the far dim caverns of the night a voice smote on his ear, crying out tenderly, mockingly, persuasively——
And Jack slipped to his room and went supperless to bed, often during the night muttering, through the interstices of his sleep——"Bill's got me!"
Big Medicine.