Billy looked down once and shouted. Then he began to wish that his conveyance would travel sideways, instead of rising so steadily.
It occurred to him at last that if the man who owned the balloon were in the car, he would probably turn some "stop-cock" or other, and let himself down. However, Billy was not sure that he wanted to go down even if he could.
As he rose higher and higher, the people on the ground below him began to look like small things crawling, and the great white tent almost like a card-board house. He questioned whether or not he should meddle with any mysterious part of the balloon. He remembered, not unpleasantly, having heard some one early in the day say it would certainly collapse of itself. If collapse meant to come down, to meddle with it might be to turn on steam and send him beyond the sun and moon, where he had no desire to go. He sailed across a forest, over a river, lost sight of the fair ground, and then began to come nearer earth, slowly nearer, then faster, the car rocking in a way that threatened to dump him out.
"We are surely 'collapsing,'" thought Billy. He grew a little dizzy, the earth seemed coming to meet him, and all the houses, barns, and hay-stacks were inflated, in their turn, and getting bigger. At last a gnarled old tree that had been charging straight on the balloon ran into it, upset, tore it, and after entangling Billy in ropes and branches, tearing his clothes, scratching his hands and switching him like an old-time school-marm, let him fall roughly down to earth. He was glad to lie quiet, thinking first of the torn balloon, then of himself.
While he was thinking, the words that he had heard that afternoon as he entered the car came back to him: "Nobody owns him, and the world will be well rid of him."
Heretofore he had been proud of the fact that nobody owned him. He had never thought of himself as a nuisance to the community. Billy had not much sentiment, but to-night his heart ached as well as his limbs. He thought of all his past life as intently as a boy could think. He had begun to take care of himself when he was only eight years old. He dimly remembered his poor mother as always enveloped in the steam from hot soap suds, a practical kind of a halo, the result of her efforts to feed him with honestly earned bread. She died and left him to the care of a drunken father, who two years later followed her to the grave.
The town gave Billy a home in the poor-house, but he staid there only three days. At the end of it he resolved to start out into the world and earn his own bread. He ran away to the nearest city, where he blacked boots, sold papers, learned a certain amount of evil in the streets, and some good, in a night school. Finally he tired of city life, and started for California, but after getting ten miles on the way, his money gave out, and his courage too. He found himself in the town of Langham, and there he staid, doing odd jobs when he could get them, and at other times amusing himself as best he could.
There never was a fire that Billy was not close behind the hose-cart, or a circus that he did not ride the kicking donkey, or a county fair where he was not present looking out for anything in the way of fun that offered. His last undertaking was going up in a balloon. Now here he was, down again, and the question was, what should he do next?
A boy in a book would have decided to become a judge, or a merchant, or an artist; but Billy had another ambition. He desired to become a negro-minstrel. He knew one, a man who wore fine clothes and had plenty of money. He earned it by being funny—oh, so extremely funny.
While Billy was considering the matter, he heard a voice, and looking up saw a man following a cow. Naturally enough, the balloon, attracted the man's attention, and he came near enough to discover the boy.