“It is a good thing I am going to get out,” he said. “For the coal will soon cover up all my hay and grain and I would starve.”
Lightfoot waited until after dark, so no one would see him. Then he scrambled up the sloping sides of the pile of coal in the middle of the canal boat until he could jump to the edge and so to the roof of the stable cabin.
“Good-by, kind horses,” he called to Cruncher and the others. “I am sorry I can’t stop to see you, but I had better go ashore.”
“Yes, while you have the chance,” said Nibbler.
Then, with a nimble leap, Lightfoot jumped from the canal boat to the towpath. He had gone ashore.
“I wonder what adventures I’ll have next,” he said to himself as he wiggled his way into the bushes at the edge of the path.
Without stopping to look back at the canal boat from which he had escaped, Lightfoot ran on through the bushes, and soon found himself in some woods. He was afraid some one from the boat might run after him, and take him back there.
“Not that it was such a bad place,” thought the goat, as he went in and out among the trees; “but it is no fun to be in a place from which you can’t get away when you want to. If it had not been that they made a little hill of coal in the boat maybe I’d never have gotten away.
“I liked those horses, though I never saw them, and the hay and grain in the cracks was good eating. Still I had rather be out here and free.”
No one except the canal horses knew Lightfoot had been on the boat. The captain and his wife had not seen him jump down into the hold, nor had the boys picking coal. They only imagined the goat might be somewhere near the boat when they asked about him, but they really had not seen him get aboard.
Lightfoot ran on a little farther and then, thinking he was safe, hidden behind a bush, turned and looked back. He was on a side hill that ran along the canal, and he could look down on the towpath. He saw a team of horses hitched to a long rope, which, in turn, was fast to the canal boat.
“There are my kind friends, the horses,” thought Lightfoot. “But I don’t know which ones they are. I wish I could stop and speak to them, but it would not be safe. Anyhow I said good-by to them, and thanked them.”
As Lightfoot looked, the team pulling the canal boat turned around a curve in the towpath and were soon out of sight. Then, once more, the goat turned and went on into the woods.