an found himself not only knocked
off his legs by Billy, but bombarded by the whole nursery.

Delightful as was this recreation to juvenile limbs, it was felt to be
dangerous to the adult public. Indignant protestations were made, and
as Billy could not be kept in the house, he may be said to have at
last butted himself out of that sympathetic family and into a hard and
unfeeling world. One morning he broke his tether in the small back yard.
For several days thereafter he displayed himself in guilty freedom on
the tops of adjacent walls and outhouses. The San Francisco suburb
where his credulous protectors lived was still in a volcanic state
of disruption, caused by the grading of new streets through rocks and
sandhills. In consequence the roofs of some houses were on the level
of the doorsteps of others, and were especially adapted to Billy's
performances. One afternoon, to the admiring and perplexed eyes of the
nursery, he was discovered standing on the apex of a neighbor's new
Elizabethan chimney, on a space scarcely larger than the crown of a hat,
calmly surveying the world beneath him. High infantile voices appealed
to him in vain; baby arms were outstretched to him in hopeless
invitation; he remained exalted and obdurate, like Milton's hero,
probably by his own merit "raised to that bad eminence." Indeed, there
was already something Satanic in his budding horns and pointed mask as
the smoke curled softly around him. Then he appropriately vanished,
and San Francisco knew him no more. At the same time, however, one Owen
M'Ginnis, a neighboring sandhill squatter, also disappeared, leaving San
Francisco for the southern mines, and he was said to have taken Billy
with him,--for no conceivable reason except for companionship. Howbeit,
it was the turning-point of Billy's career; such restraint as kindness,
civilization, or even policemen had exercised upon his nature was gone.
He retained, I fear, a certain wicked intelligence, picked up in San
Francisco with the newspapers and theatrical and election posters he
had consumed. He reappeared at Rocky Canyon among the miners as an
exceedingly agile chamois, with the low cunning of a satyr. That was all
that civilization had done for him!

If Mr. M'Ginnis had fondly conceived that he would make Billy "useful,"
as well as companionable, he was singularly mistaken. Horses and mules
were scarce in Rocky Canyon, and he attempted to utilize Billy by making
him draw a small cart,