s upper jaw from his lower. Just then he heard voices,
and some one say:

"Susie, I heard a terrible crash down stairs. You had better run
down and see what it was. You may have left the kitchen door open
and the cat possibly came in and upset something."

Then he heard Susie say, "All right, Mum."

He thought that if anyone was coming down he had better get out
so he started on a run, but the door at the end of the hall had
blown shut, and the only other way of escape was up the front
stairs. As he reached the top, he saw Susie who had been
scrubbing the top of the back stairs, throw down her brush,
preparatory to going to see what the noise was. They both caught
sight of each other at the same moment, and Susie thought the
long, sinister looking, scarlet-bearded face with the horns, that
appeared at the top of the stairs, was the devil; and with a
blood-curdling scream she threw up her hands and rolled to the
foot of the stairs, upsetting the pail of suds that she had
clutched when she felt herself falling. There she lay too
frightened to move, but Billy rushed on trying to find a way out
for he commenced to feel that there would be trouble if he were
found.

Mrs. Biggs, hearing Susie scream, rushed to the door with her
mouth full of tacks, and a hammer in her hand, just in time to
get butted into by Billy, which laid her flat on her back in less
time than you can wink. As luck would have it, the shock made her
open her mouth and the tacks flew out for if she had swallowed
them she would never have gotten off her back.

Billy Whiskers gave her one look when he saw what he had done,
and turned and fled back down the stairs, and out the front door
between the legs of Mr. Biggs who was just coming in, and Billy
being a big goat, and Mr. Biggs a short, stout man, there was not
much room to go through, but it was the first daylight Billy had
seen, so he gave Mr. Biggs a boost as he straddled his back,
which helped him to fall off, over the side of the porch where he
landed in a nice soft bed of geraniums.

As Billy was a knowing goat, he decided that they would not care
for him after what had happened, nor look for him if he
disappeared, so seeing the front gate open, he ran out and
trotted down the road and that was the last that was heard of
him. His surmises were right. The Biggses never even looked for
him.

[Illustration]

_Billy at the Soda Fountain_

After Billy Whiskers had left Mr. Biggs, he