Lightfoot ran close to this water. The boys, racing after him, saw, and one cried:
But Lightfoot was not going to do that. He was only looking for a good place to hide. Pretty soon he saw it. Floating on the water was something that looked like a little house. Smoke was coming from a stovepipe in the roof, and beyond the house, and seeming to be a part of it, were two big, long black holes.
“Those holes would make a good place to hide,” thought Lightfoot.
He ran up alongside of them and looked down. There was nothing in them, and no one was in sight. The boys chasing after him were behind some freight cars just then and could not see the goat.
“I’ll hide down there,” said Lightfoot to himself. “It isn’t as far to jump as it was from the top of the rocks to the roof of the shanty. I’ll hide there.”
Down into the dark hole, near the funny little house, leaped Lightfoot. And where do you suppose he was now?
He was down in the bottom of a canal boat, down in the big hole, in the hold, as it is called, next to the cabin, or little house. In the hold, though it was empty now, is loaded the cargo the boat carries――hay, grain or coal.
For the first time in his life Lightfoot was on a boat.
With a heart that beat hard and fast after his long run, Lightfoot, the goat, crouched down in a dark corner of the hold in the canal boat.
“My!” thought poor Lightfoot as he curled up in as small a space as he could. “I got away from them just in time. I hope they don’t find me.”
He listened with his ears pointed forward, just as a horse does when he hears or sees something strange. There was a sort of thumping noise somewhere in the canal boat, near the wooden wall or partition against which Lightfoot was resting himself.
There was a rattling of dishes and pans, and then Lightfoot heard the noise of coal being put in the stove. He knew that sound, for in the shanty of Widow Malony he had often heard it before, when Mike or his mother would make a fire to cook a meal.
And pretty soon Lightfoot smelled something cooking. He sniffed the air in the dark hold of the canal boat. It was not the smell of such food as Lightfoot cared to eat, for it was meat and potatoes being cooked. And though he did like a cold boiled potato once in a while, he did not want meat.