"Was all out in less than a minute. A lamp exploded, but fortunately set fire to nothing else. I never saw anything more utterly ridiculous than you dragging my sister off through that crowd, and me sitting still and laughing at you. I don't know whether to look on you as a hero or a fool, Mr. Flutter." "Look on me as a blunderer," I said meekly. But the revulsion of feeling was too great; I felt myself turning sick and faint, and when I knew anything again I was home in bed. And now I owe Miss Flora a new bonnet as well as a little dog. CHAPTER XII. A LEAP FOR LIFE. It is impossible to make an ordinary person understand the chaos of mingled feelings with which I heard, two days after the circus performance in which I had so large a share, that Blue-Eyes and Company had departed for a tour of the watering-places--feelings of anguish and relief mixed in about equal proportions. I madly loved her, but I had known from the first that my love was hopeless, and the thought of meeting her, after having made myself so ridiculous, was torture. Therefore I felt relief that I was no longer in danger of encountering the mocking laughter of those blue eyes, but I lost my appetite. I moped, pined, grew pale, freckled, and listless. "What's the use of wasting harvest apples making dumplings, when you don't eat none, John?" asked my aunt, one day at dinner, after the hands had left the table. "Aunt," replied I, solemnly, "don't mock me with apple dumplings; they may be light, but my heart is heavy." "La, John, try a little east on your heart," said she, laughing--by "east" she meant yeast, I suppose. "No, aunt, not 'east,' but west. My mind is made up. I'm going out to Colorado to fight the Indians." She let the two-tined steel fork drop out of her hand. "What will your ma say to that?" she gasped. "I tell you I am going," was my firm reply, and I went. Yes, I had long sighed to be a Juan Fernandez, or a Mount Washington weatherologist, or something lonesome and sad, as my readers know. Fighting Indians would be a terrible risky business; but compared to facing the "girls of the period" it would be the merest play. I was weary of a life that was all mistakes. "Better throw it away," I thought, bitterly, "and give my scalp to dangle at a redskin's belt, than make another one of my characteristic and preposterous blunders." I had heard that Buffalo Bill was about to start for the Rocky Mountains, and I wrote to New York asking permission to join him. He answered that I could, if I was prepared to pay my own way. I immediately bade my relatives farewell, went home, borrowed two hundred dollars of father, told mother she was the only woman I wasn't afraid of, kissed her good-bye, and met Buffalo Bill at the next large town by appointment, he being already on his way West. I came home _after dark_, and left again _before daylight_, and that was the last I saw of my native village for some time.