illy trotted contentedly on, liking all the noise and hubbub very much but not knowing that he was the cause of it all. Blocks away he could hear their shouting, but he did not care to go back there, for all of that. He was finding a great many things to interest him in the shop windows, which were all brilliantly lighted. Before one of these low windows he suddenly stopped. There, just inside the show window, was a big, brown goat. Billy did not know it, but this was a wooden goat, poised on its hind feet and ready to make a spring to butt somebody. The Swiss woodcarvers are the finest in the world, and they carve animals so naturally that one would think they were alive. If even human beings can be fooled, there was very good excuse for Billy's believing this to be a real, live goat, particularly as it had very natural looking glass eyes; besides, its head was separate and was cunningly arranged to shake a little bit from side to side.
Now it is a deadly insult for one Billy goat to stand on his hind legs and wag his head at another one. Billy Mischief for one was not going to take such insults as that, even though the goat that gave it to him was much larger and older than himself, so he backed off into the middle of the street and gave a great run and jump. Crash! went the fine plate-glass window! The sharp edges of the glass cut Billy somewhat and stopped him so that he landed just inside the window glass. The other goat was right in front of him, still insultingly wagging its flowing beard at him so Billy gave one more spring from where he stood and knocked that goat sixteen ways for Sunday. It was the hardest headed goat that Billy had ever fought, and its sharp nose hurt his head considerably, almost stunning him, in fact, so that he stood blinking his eyes until the people in the store had come running up and surrounded the show window.
Billy was still dazed when the manager of the store, a nervous little man with a bald head, hit him a sharp crack across the nose with a board. The pain brought the tears to Billy's eyes and still further dazed him. The manager hit him another crack but this time on the horns, and that woke Billy up. He looked back at the broken window through which he had just come but the crowd had quickly gathered there. There were less people inside, so suddenly gathering his legs under him, he gave a spring and went clear over the manager, kicking him with his sharp hind hoofs upon the bald head as he went over. The place was a delicatessen store and Billy landed in a big tub of pickles. He did not care much for pickles anyhow, so he quickly scrambled out of them, knocked over three tall glass jars that stood on a low bench, and turned over big cakes of fine cheese. The manager was right after him with the board and hit him two or three thumps with it.
Billy was just about to turn around and go for the little bald-headed man when he noticed at the far end of the store a round, plump man with his back turned to him. There seemed something familiar about his figure and the cut of his short little coat, and it flashed across Billy at once that here was his old enemy Hans Zug.
Paying no attention to the manager and his little board, he dashed headlong down the store for the plump man. Just as Billy had almost reached him, the man turned around. It was not Hans Zug after all, but Billy was going too fast to stop now. Anyhow, ever since he had known Hans he had taken a dislike to all fat men, so he dashed straight ahead. The man darted behind the counter and ran up the aisle, Billy close after him.
There never was a fat man in the world who ran so fast as this one. Everybody had cleared out of the aisle behind the counter to make room for them. Nobody wanted to get in the way of that heavy man and the hard headed goat. The man stepped upon a pail of fish, overturning it, jumped upon the counter and was over in the center aisle, Billy right after him. Everybody in the store was packed in the center aisle, together with a lot who had come in from the outside when the excitement began, and they all made way for the fat man and for Billy. Women were screaming and men were shouting and laughing. The manager was still right after Billy with his little board and thumping him every now and then on the back, but Billy scarcely knew it, so interested was he in giving the fat man one for Hans Zug.
The man headed straight up the middle aisle for the door, but, looking over his shoulder, he found that Billy would overtake him before he got there, so he sprang over another counter, upsetting a pair of scales and some tall, open jars of fine olives. Billy was still right after him but this time the man fooled him by jumping back over the counter. Billy followed up that aisle to the end where he turned into the crowd, just as the fat man went out on the street. Here he upset two ladies and a policeman who was just coming in, and then took after the man who looked like Hans. He was flying down the street as fast as he could go. After Billy came the manager of the store and two of his clerks, and all of the boys that had congregated on the sidewalk.
Pell-mell they went, a howling, yelling mob, with the fat man and Billy in the lead. The man by this time was puffing like a steam engine and the sweat was pouring from his face in streams. His collar was wilted like a dish rag. He had lost his hat and one of his cuffs, and he could hardly get his breath.
Policemen, by this time, were coming running from every direction and one of them, who turned off a side street just then, thinking the fat man must be a thief, got right in his road and opened up his arms. The fat man, who had scarcely any strength left, fell right against the policeman who was also a very heavy fellow, and just at that time Billy overtook them and gave the man he was chasing all that was coming to Hans Zug. Down in a pile together went the fat man and the policeman. The policeman had not seen the goat and for a moment imagined that the fat man had jumped upon him and was trying to overpower him, so he pulled out his club and, though he was underneath, began, in a way that was comical, to try to pound the fat man.
They lay there, a struggling, wriggling mass, the policeman with his short arms trying to reach around the big round man on top of him in order to hit him some place. Billy Mischief had stopped and backed up to give his fallen enemy another bump, and was just in the air after his spring when the manager of the store caught his hind leg, and he also was dragged on top of the struggling two on the ground. The manager held to Billy's leg, however, and the crowd which had been following them closely now crowded around them. The manager scrambled to his feet, still holding the kicking Billy by the hind leg, and it would, probably have been all up with the goat if a big, strong man had not at that moment come up and putting his great arms around Billy, jerked him loose. Billy squirmed and struggled, but it was no use. The big man held him tightly and began to run. The store manager got to his feet and started after them, followed by his two clerks, but the big strong fellow who was carrying Billy darted down an alley, then through another alley, and before the pursuers could see where they had gone, the man darted through the back gate of a high board fence with Billy, closed the gate after him, ran along the side of a great building which was blazing with lights, ran down some cellar steps, opened the door, went in, closed it after him, turned on a light and set Billy down.
"There, you fool goat!" exclaimed the man. "I'll wash the blood off of you and nobody will know that you have been out."
The big man was the porter and he had brought Billy back to the little basement room under the hotel. So ended Billy's first night in a big city.
All that night, all the next day and night, and all the following day, Billy was cooped up in that little basement room with no chance to get out, and with only Frank Brown and the porter to visit him twice a day. How he did fret. The porter kept him well fed and saw that he had good bedding and plenty of water, but he gave Billy no more chances to escape and see the city. He watched carefully as he opened and closed the door that the goat should not again scramble between his legs or butt him over. On the third evening, however, the porter forgot to completely close the door which led into the other part of the basement, and you may be sure that Billy lost no time in finding out what was in there. The room next to his led up into the kitchen and it was stocked with vegetables and all sorts of kitchen stores.
Billy was not very hungry, but he nibbled at everything as he went along, pulling the vegetables out of place, upsetting a barrel half filled with flour in his attempt to see what was in it and working the faucet out of a barrel of syrup in his efforts to get at the sweet stuff which clung to it. Licking up all of the syrup that he cared for, Billy went on to investigate another barrel which lay on its side not far away, and knocked the faucet out of it. This, however, proved to be wine and he did not like the taste of it at all, so he trotted on out of the store-room into the laundry, leaving the two barrels to run to waste.
Pulling the vegetables out of place.
Everybody in the laundry had gone up into the servants' hall for their suppers, and the coast was clear for Billy. They had just finished ironing, and dainty white clothes lay everywhere. From a big pile of them that lay on a table, a lace skirt hung down, and Billy took a nibble at it just to find out what it was. The starch in it tasted pretty good, so he chewed at the lace, pulling and tugging to get it within easier reach, until at last he pulled the whole pile off the table on the dirty floor.
Hearing some steps then, he scampered out through the storeroom and into another large room where stood a big, brass-trimmed machine which he did not at all understand. It was a dynamo, which was run by a big engine in the adjoining engine-room, and it furnished the electric lights for the hotel. Two big wires ran from it, heavily coated with shellac and rubber and tightly-wound tape to keep them from touching metal things and losing their electricity. These crossed the basement room to the further wall, where they distributed the electric current to many smaller cables.
Billy sniffed at the two big cables at a point where they were very near together. They had a peculiar odor and Billy tasted them. He scarcely knew whether he liked the taste or not, but he kept on nibbling to find out, nipping and tearing with his sharp teeth until he had got down to the big copper wire on both cables; then he decided that he did not care very much for that kind of food and walked away. It was not yet dark enough for the dynamo to be started, or Billy might have had a shock that would have killed him.
Hunting further, he found over in a dark corner a nice bed which belonged to the engineer, and it looked so inviting that Billy curled up there for a sleep. When he awoke it was nearly midnight and there was a blaze of light in the basement. There was a strange whir of machinery and he could hear anxious voices. Billy, of course, did not know that he had been the cause of it but this is what had happened:
When the electric current passes through a wire, the wire becomes slightly heated and stretches a little bit. In stretching, the two cables where he had chewed them bare, came near enough together to touch each other once in a while, and that made the lights all over the big building wink, that is, almost go out for a second, and the engineer was very much worried about it.
What interested Billy more, however, was a small, wire-screened room that stood near to him. Presently a big cage, brightly lighted, came down in it with a man and a boy. It stopped when it got down into the basement, when the man and the boy stepped out, going down into the engineer's room. They were the proprietor of the hotel and his elevator boy. Billy, as curious as any boy could have been, walked into the little cage to see what it was like. The sides of it were padded with leather, there were mirrors in it that made it a place of light, and there was a seat at the back end of it. At the front side near the door a big cable passed up through it, and to this the boy who ran it had left hanging a leather pad with which he gripped the cable. Billy could barely reach it with his teeth and he pulled sharply on it. It would not come away so he hung his weight on it, and immediately the cage began to go up. Billy was in an elevator and he was taking a ride all by himself. It never stopped until it reached the top floor where a safety catch caught it. Luckily the door on the top floor had not been carefully closed, and Billy was able to slide it open with his horns and walk out into a narrow hall which had a thick velvet carpet upon it and from which opened many doors and other halls.
BILLY FELT HIS COURAGE COMING BACK.
Billy trotted along this hallway, liking the soft feel of the carpet underneath his feet. As he did so, all the lights about the building went out and everything was dark. The cables in the cellar had at last settled down so that they lay square across each other where Billy had chewed the covering off, thus making all the electric current which ran out of the machine on the one side come right back into it on the other, with the result of burning out the dynamo so that there could be no more lights from it that night. This did not worry Billy any. Light came in from the street at the far end of the hall where some white lace curtains fluttered in the breeze. It worried a great many people who were still awake in their rooms, however, and of course they opened their doors to see about it.
By this time Billy had reached the curtains and took a nibble at one of them, and, found that it was finished with the same starch, the taste of which he had liked so much in the laundry. He wanted it down where he could get a good bunch of it in his mouth, so he pulled hard, raising up on his hind feet and throwing his weight upon it. The curtain gave way at the top but it was not so convenient as he had expected, for the long, wide curtain came right down over his back. He tried to get out from under it and his horns ran through the open work. He tried to turn round and his hind feet ran through other open work places. He tried to back out of it and his forefeet got tangled in some more of it. The more he tried to get loose from his starched meal, the more tangled up he got, and at last, growing angry, he began to jump as high in the air as he could.
In the half darkness, he was a great white figure with a long trailing white robe behind him, and the first woman he met in the hall screamed like a steam calliope. Of course her screams brought others out into the hall and everybody, even the men, began to run when they saw this jumping white ghost coming toward them, every once in a while letting out a loud "baah!" Many ladies were so frightened that when they came to their doors, instead of running into their rooms, they started down the hall ahead of Billy, shrieking and screaming at the top of their voices.
The noise only confused Billy the more. The more confused he grew, the harder he jumped and struggled to get out of the curtain, until at the very end of the hall, he came to a stairway and went down it head over heels to the next floor.
Here things were even worse than they had been on the top floor, for by this time the hubbub above them had brought everybody out of their rooms, and the crowd was already there. As soon as Billy scampered to his feet after his tumble and made another jump high into the air, they too began running and screaming.
Billy now had gotten into a series of halls that ran the whole length of the building and had a stairway at each end, so now he jumped and struggled his way along until he came to a stairway, tumbled down it, jumped back through another hall full of screaming people to another stairway, and so on until he reached the ground floor. Here the stairway opened into the great, marble-paved, main corridor of the hotel. This was just now thronged with men, all wanting to know why the lights were out and what all the uproar was about. Through these men Billy dashed like a hurricane, having now torn the curtains enough to let his legs have some action. One big fellow whom he upset fell on the long trailing end of the curtain, and the shock nearly tore Billy's horns loose from his head, but the curtain pulled in two and at last Billy was free except for a few stray shreds and small pieces that still clung to his legs and horns.
Now he could see where he was going, and, darting out of the side door, he ran back to where he remembered the cellar steps into the porter's room to be. The door was wide open and inside he found his friend, the porter, with a lantern, looking for him. The porter saw at once from the shreds of curtain that Billy had been into mischief again, but as before, he was afraid to say anything about it for fear somebody would find out that he had left the door of the store-room open, so he simply took the shreds of lace curtain off of Billy to carry away with him, and fixed Billy's bed nicely for the night.
"Bet you came from the Bad Place sure, goat-beast," said the porter, shaking his head.
