Then they cut her loose. She went up like she was shot from a gun, and as she did Doctor Kirby took a grip on a feller's arm that hadn't let loose quick enough and lifted him plumb off'n the ground. He slewed around on the trapeze bar with the feller's weight, and slipped head downward. And as he slipped he give that feller a swing and let loose of him, and then ketched himself by the crook of one knee. The feller turned over twicet in the air and landed in a little crumpled-up pile on the ground, and never made a sound. The fellers that had holt of me forgot me and stood up, and I stood up too, and looked. The balloon was rising fast. Doctor Kirby was trying to pull himself up to the trapeze bar, twisting and squirming and having a hard time of it, and shooting higher every second. I reckoned he couldn't fall complete, fur where his feet was tied would likely hold even if his knee come straight--but he would die mebby with his head filling up with blood. But finally he made a squirm and raised himself a lot and grabbed the rope at one side of the bar. And then he reached and got the rope on the other side, and set straddle of her. And jest as he done that the wind ketched the balloon good and hard, and she turned out toward Lake Erie. It was too late fur him to pull the rope that sets the parachute loose then, and drop onto the land. I rushed out of that schoolhouse yard and down the street toward the lake front, and run, stumbling along and looking up. She was getting smaller every minute. And with my head in the air looking up I was running plumb to the edge of the water before I knowed it. She was away out over the lake now, and awful high, and going fast before the wind, and the doctor was only a speck. And as I stared at that speck away up in the sky I thought this was a mean world to live in. Fur there was the only real friend I ever had, and no way fur me to help him. He had learnt me to read, and bought me good clothes, and made me know they was things in the world worth travelling around to see, and made me feel like I was something more than jest Old Hank Walters's dog. And I guessed he would be drownded and I would never see him agin now. And all of a sudden something busted loose inside of me, and I sunk down there at the edge of the water, sick at my stomach, and weak and shivering. CHAPTER X I didn't exactly faint there, but things got all mixed fur me, and when they was straightened out agin I was in a hospital. It seems I had been considerable stepped on in that fight, and three ribs was broke. I knowed I was hurting, but I was so interested in what was happening to the doctor the hull hurt never come to me till the balloon was way out over the lake. But now I was in a plaster cast, and before I got out of that I was in a fever. I was some weeks getting out of there.