Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









[Illustration: Up and down the block Mike drove Lightfoot, giving the
little boy and his nurse a fine ride.]




                       _Kneetime Animal Stories_


                               LIGHTFOOT
                           THE LEAPING GOAT

                          HIS MANY ADVENTURES


                                  BY
                            RICHARD BARNUM

              Author of “Squinty, the Comical Pig,” “Tum
               Tum, the Jolly Elephant,” “Don, a Runaway
                          Dog,” “Tinkle, the
                           Trick Pony,” etc.


                            _ILLUSTRATED BY
                           WALTER S. ROGERS_


                              PUBLISHERS
                              BARSE & CO.
                  NEW YORK, N. Y.      NEWARK, N. J.




                            Copyright 1917
                                  by
                              BARSE & CO.

                     Light Foot, the Leaping Goat


               _Printed in the United States of America_




CONTENTS


 CHAPTER                            PAGE
      I  LIGHTFOOT’S BIG LEAP          7
     II  LIGHTFOOT IS HURT            19
    III  LIGHTFOOT SAVES A GIRL       30
     IV  LIGHTFOOT AND THE WAGON      36
      V  LIGHTFOOT IN THE PARK        46
     VI  LIGHTFOOT BUTTS A BOY        58
    VII  LIGHTFOOT ON A BOAT          68
   VIII  LIGHTFOOT ON A VOYAGE        77
     IX  LIGHTFOOT GOES ASHORE        85
      X  LIGHTFOOT IN THE WOODS       94
     XI  LIGHTFOOT MEETS SLICKO      101
    XII  LIGHTFOOT’S NEW HOME        110




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                  PAGE

 Up and down the block Mike drove Lightfoot, giving the little
     boy and his nurse a fine ride                     _Frontispiece_

 Lightfoot was falling down and down                                21

 Lightfoot, coming up to get some of the salt which he licked
     from Mike’s hand, did not know what his master was saying      41

 “I want to ride in this!”                                          65

 Lightfoot ran close to this water, the boys racing after him       79

 “That’s fine!” said Lightfoot. “I wish I could dance”             103

 “Mother, Mother!” he cried. “Look! Look! It――it’s
     Lightfoot――come back to us!”                                  117




LIGHTFOOT, THE LEAPING GOAT




CHAPTER I

LIGHTFOOT’S BIG LEAP


Lightfoot stamped his hoofs on the hard rocks, shook his horns, wiggled
the little bunch of whiskers that hung beneath his chin, and called to
another goat who was not far away:

“I’m going up on the high rocks!”

“Oh, you’d better not,” said Blackie. “If you go up there you may slip
and fall down here and hurt yourself, or some of the big goats may
chase you back.”

“Well, if they do I’ll just jump down again,” went on Lightfoot, as he
stood on his hind legs.

“You can’t jump that far,” said Blackie, looking up toward the high
rocks which were far above the heads of herself and Lightfoot.

For Lightfoot and Blackie were two goats, and they lived with several
others on the rocky hillside at the edge of a big city. Lightfoot and
Blackie, with four other goats, were owned by the widow, Mrs. Malony.
She and her son Mike had a small shanty on the ground in the shadow of
the big rocks. The reason they kept most of the goats was for the milk
they gave. For some goats, like cows, can be milked, and many persons
like goats’ milk better than the cows’ kind, which the milkman brings
to your door every morning, or which is brought to the house from the
stable or the lot where the cows are milked if you live in the country.

“You can never jump down that far if the big goats chase you away when
you get on top of the high rocks,” went on Blackie as she looked up.

“Well, maybe I can’t do it all in _one_ jump,” Lightfoot said slowly,
“but I can come down in two or three if the big goats chase me away.
Anyhow, maybe they won’t chase me.”

“Oh, yes, they will!” bleated Blackie in the animal talk which the
goats used among themselves.

They could understand a little man talk, but not much. But they could
talk and think among themselves.

“The big goats will never let you come up where they are,” went on
Blackie, who was called that because she was nearly all black. She
would give milk to the Widow Malony when she grew older.

“Why won’t the big goats let me go up there?” asked Lightfoot. “I know
it is nicer up there than down here, for I have heard Grandfather
Bumper, the oldest of all us goats, tell how far he can see from the
top of the rocks. And nice sweet grass grows up there. I’d like some of
that. The grass here is nearly all dried up and gone.”

Lightfoot saw, off to one side, a tomato can, and he hurried toward it.
Sometimes these cans had paper pasted on them, and the goats liked to
eat the paper. For it had a sweet taste, and the paste with which it
was fastened to the can was even sweeter.

“That’s just the reason the big goats don’t want you to go up
where they are,” said Blackie, as Lightfoot came back, looking as
disappointed as a goat can look, for there was no paper on the can.
Some one had eaten it off. “The big goats want to save the sweet grass
on the high rocks for themselves. Some of the best milk-goats are
there, and they have to eat lots of grass to make milk.”

“Well, I’m going up, anyhow,” said Lightfoot. “At least I’m going to
try. If they drive me back I’ll get down all right. I’m getting to be a
pretty good jumper. See!”

He gave a little run, and leaped lightly over a big rock not far from
the shanty of the Widow Malony.

“Oh, that was a fine jump!” exclaimed Blackie. “I’ll never be able to
jump as far as you. But I wouldn’t go up if I were you.”

“Yes, I shall,” declared Lightfoot, as he shook his horns again and
started to climb the rocks. He was very fond of having his own way, was
Lightfoot.

Lightfoot did not remember much about the time when he was a very
very small goat. He could dimly recall that he had once lived in a
green, grassy field with other goats, and then, one day, that he had
been taken for a long ride in a wagon. He went to a number of places,
finally reaching the home of the Widow Malony and her son Mike, who was
a tall, strong lad with a happy, laughing face, covered with freckles
and on his head was the reddest hair you ever saw.

Lightfoot soon made himself at home among the other goats Mrs. Malony
kept. At first these goats said very little to him, but one day, when
he was but a small kid (as little goats are called) he surprised the
other animals among the rocks by giving a big jump to get away from a
dog that ran after him.

“That goat will soon be a fine jumper,” said Grandpa Bumper, who was
called that because he could bump so hard with his horns and head
that all the other goats were afraid of him. “Yes, he’ll be a great
jumper,” went on the oldest goat of them all. “I think I shall name him
Lightfoot, for he comes down so lightly and so easily after he makes
his leap.”

And so Lightfoot was named. As far as he knew there were none of the
other goats who were any relation to him. He was a stranger among them,
but they soon became friendly with him. Among the six goats owned by
the Widow Malony there were only two who were any relation. These were
Mr. and Mrs. Sharp-horn, as we would call them, though of course goats
don’t call each other husband and wife. They have other names that mean
the same thing.

But though he had no brothers or sisters or father or mother that he
knew, Lightfoot was not unhappy. There was Blackie, with whom he played
and frisked about among the rocks. And Grandpa Bumper, when he had had
a good meal of the sweet grass that grew on top of the rocks, with,
perhaps, some sweet paste-paper from the outside of a tomato can to
finish off, would tell stories of his early life. And he would tell of
other goats, in far-off mountains, some of them nearly as big as cows,
with great, curved horns on their heads. Lightfoot loved to listen to
these stories.

There was not much for the goats to do at the home of the Widow Malony.
They had no work to do except to jump around on the rocks and to eat
when they were hungry and could find anything they liked, though some
of the goats were milked. There was more milk than the widow and her
son could use, so they used to sell some to their neighbors who did not
keep goats.

But many others besides Mike and his mother kept goats, for all the
neighbors of the Malonys were poor squatters who lived among the rocks
on the edge of the big city. They were called “squatters” because they
did not own the land whereon they built their poor shanties, some
of them being a few boards covered with sheets of tin from some old
building. These people just came along and “squatted” on the land. Some
had been there so long they thought they owned it.

Mrs. Malony and her son were very poor. Sometimes, had it not been for
the milk of the goats, they would have had nothing to eat. The widow
took in washing, and Mike earned what he could running errands. But,
for all that, the widow and Mike were cheerful and tried to be happy.
They kept their shanty clean, and were clean themselves. And they took
very good care of the goats. Mike made a little shed for them to sleep
in when Winter came; and when the grass on the rocks was scarce Mike
would get a job in the city, cutting the lawn of some big house, and he
would bring the clipped grass home to Lightfoot and the others.

“Yes, I’m going up on top of the rocks,” said Lightfoot to himself as
he began to climb upward.

The path to the top was a hard and rough one to climb. But Lightfoot
did not give up.

“I know I can do it,” he declared, still to himself. “I was nearly up
once but Mr. Sharp-horn chased me back. I was only a little goat then.”

Lightfoot knew he was much larger and stronger now, and he certainly
was a better jumper. He really did not know how far he could jump, for
he had not had much chance. On the lower rocks there were not many good
jumping places. The ground was too rough.

“Wait until I get up to the top,” thought Lightfoot to himself. “Then
I’ll do some jumping. I wonder if they’ll chase me back?”

Part way up the rocky path he stopped to look toward the top. He saw
Mr. Sharp-horn looking down at him, and Lightfoot pretended to be
looking for some grass that grew in the cracks of the rocks. As he did
this the widow came to the door of her shanty.

“Mike! Mike!” she called. “Where are you? Sure an’ I want you to be
takin’ home Mrs. Mackinson’s wash. ’Tis all finished I have it.” And
then, as she shaded her eyes from the sun, and looked up at the rocks,
Mrs. Malony saw Lightfoot half way to the top.

“Would you look at that goat now!” she called. “Come here, Mike me boy,
and see where Lightfoot is. Sure an’ it’s the illigint climber he’s
gettin’ to be altogether!”

“Yes, Lightfoot’s a good goat,” said Mike as he came around the corner
of the shanty where he had been trying to fix a broken wheel on a small
cart he had made from a soap box. “He’s a fine leaper and he’s going to
be better when he grows up. I wonder what he’s trying to do now?”

“Sure, go to the top of the rocks, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Malony.

“If he does the Sharp-horns or old Bumper will send him down quick
enough!” laughed Mike. “They don’t want the small Nannies and Billies
eatin’ the top grass. You’d better come back, Lightfoot! he called to
the climbing goat. But if Lightfoot heard and understood he gave no
sign.

“I’d like to stay and see what happens when he gets to the top,”
laughed Mike, running his fingers through his red hair.

“Ye’ve no time,” called his mother. “Be off wid this wash now, like a
good boy. Sure it’s the money from it I’ll be needin’ to get meat for
the Sunday dinner. Off wid ye now!”

“All right, Mother. Just as soon as I fix the wheel on me cart.”

The Widow Malony did not use the kind of language you, perhaps, talk.
She made what we would call “mistakes.” Mike had been to school, and he
could speak more correctly, but he, too, sometimes made mistakes in his
talk. However that did not so much matter. He intended to work hard so
he could get money to study, and his mother tried to help.

While Mike went back to fix his wagon, so he could take home the
basket of clean clothes, Lightfoot, the leaping goat, once more began
scrambling up the rocks toward the top. Mr. Sharp-horn, who had looked
over the edge to see the smaller goat climbing up, had moved back to
eat some more grass, and he forgot about Lightfoot.

“Now none of them is looking, I’ll get to the top,” thought Lightfoot.
“And when I do I’ll have some fun, and get something good to eat. I
want some long-stemmed grass. That at the foot of the rocks is dry and
sour.”

On and on he climbed. Now and then he would stop to kick up his heels,
he felt so fine, and again he would push his horns against the hard
rocks to see how strong his head and neck were getting.

“Soon I’ll be able to butt as well as Grandpa Bumper,” thought
Lightfoot.

Some neighboring children, playing in the yard of their shanty next to
that of the Malonys, saw Lightfoot kicking and butting.

“Oh look at that funny goat of Mike’s!” called a little girl.

“Sure, he’s a fine goat!” declared her brother. “I wish we had one like
that. Our Nannie is getting old,” he added.

On and on went Lightfoot, cutting up such funny capers that the little
boy and girl, watching him, laughed with glee.

At last the goat was close to the top of the rocks, where there was
a smooth level place and where sweet grass grew. Lightfoot peeped
carefully over the top. He did not want Mr. Sharp-horn or Grandpa
Bumper to rush at him the first thing and, maybe, knock him head over
heels down the rocky hill.

But, as it happened, all the other goats were away from the edge and
did not see Lightfoot. Up he scrambled and began cropping the sweet
grass.

“Oh, this is fine!” he cried.

He was eating the grass, when, all at once, Mr. Sharp-horn looked up
and saw him.

“Well, the idea!” cried that big goat. “The idea of that kid coming up
here, where only we big goats are supposed to come! He is too young
for this place, yet. I must drive him down and teach him a lesson.”
Then lowering his head, and shaking his horns, the man-goat rushed at
Lightfoot.

Mr. Sharp-horn did not mean to be unkind. But small animals are always
kept in their own places by the larger ones until they have grown big
enough to take their own part. That is one of the lessons goats and
other animals have to learn.

Lightfoot was soon to have his lesson. He was eating away at the sweet
grass, thinking how good it was, when he heard a clatter of hoofs.

Looking up quickly Lightfoot saw Mr. Sharp-horn running toward him
swiftly. Lightfoot knew what that lowered head of the older goat meant.

“Go on down out of here!” bleated Mr. Sharp-horn.

“I don’t want to,” answered Lightfoot, and stamped with his forefeet,
his hard hoofs rattling on the ground.

“But you must go down!” said the older goat. “This is no place for you
kids. It is for the older goats. Keep on the rocks below.”

“I am old enough to come up here now,” said Lightfoot. “Besides, I am
hungry.”

“That makes no difference!” cried Mr. Sharp-horn. “Get down, I say!”

He kept on running toward Lightfoot with lowered head. The boy-goat
thought the man-goat was, perhaps, only trying to scare him, and did
not turn to run. But Mr. Sharp-horn was in earnest. On and on he came,
and when Lightfoot turned to run it was almost too late.

However he did turn, and he did run, for he had no idea of being butted
with those long horns. Before him was the edge of the rocks, and then,
when it was too late, Lightfoot saw that he had run to the wrong place
on the edge. There was, here, no path down which he could scramble. The
rock went straight down, and he must either stand still and be butted
over the edge, or he must jump.

He gave a bleating cry and straight over the edge of the rocks he
jumped.




CHAPTER II

LIGHTFOOT IS HURT


Mr. Sharp-horn, the man-goat, was so surprised at what Lightfoot had
done in leaping over the edge of the cliff that, for a second, he did
not know what to do. Indeed Sharp-horn, who was running very fast,
could hardly stop in time to save himself from sliding over.

“Look out there, Lightfoot!” he called. “I didn’t mean to make you do
that. I wouldn’t have hurt you very much. Why did you jump?”

But Lightfoot could not answer now. He was falling down through the
air. Indeed he, himself, hardly knew why he had jumped. He almost
wished he had not.

Far down below he saw the shanty of the Widow Malony, and he saw the
hard rocks and ground all around it. Somewhere down there Lightfoot
would land, and he might be badly hurt. For he was not one of the kind
of goats that are said to turn somersaults in the air, when they leap,
and land on their big, curved horns.

“What’s the matter?” called Grandpa Bumper, as he heard Mr. Sharp-horn
shouting in his bleating voice.

“Lightfoot has jumped over the edge!” called the other goat.

“Oh, my! He’ll be killed!” cried Mrs. Sharp-horn. “You shouldn’t have
chased him, Sharpy,” for sometimes she called her goat-husband that.

“I――I didn’t mean to make him jump,” went on Mr. Sharp-horn. “I was
only trying to scare him away from our feeding place. He is too young
to come up here. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, what a big jump he made!” cried Grandpa Bumper, for he knew it was
about twenty-five feet from the rocky edge down to the ground below.
“If he isn’t killed or hurt it will be a wonder.”

Of course all this took place much more quickly than I can tell it.
It was only a few seconds. Lightfoot was falling down and down, or,
rather, he had jumped down.

And as he left the edge of the rocks, and looked below, he wished he
had taken the butting from Mr. Sharp-horn. But it was too late now. And
then, all of a sudden, Lightfoot did that which gained him the name of
being a very wise young goat.

[Illustration: Lightfoot was falling down and down.]

Below he saw the tin and board roof of the Malony shanty. It stood
about fifteen feet high, and Lightfoot thought if he could land on that
it would shorten his big jump. He would not have to go so far, and then
he could leap down that much more easily.

So he gave himself a shake and a twist in the air, as some acrobats do
in the circus, and as cats and goats do when they jump, and, instead of
heading straight for the hard ground, Lightfoot aimed his four feet at
the roof of the shanty.

Just then Mrs. Malony came to the door to watch her son going down the
street with the basket of clothes on his wagon.

“Look! Look, Mike!” called the widow. “Sure it’s a flyin’ goat
Lightfoot is now. He’s fallin’ down out of the sky!”

And indeed it did look so. But before Mike could answer, Lightfoot had
landed on the roof of the shanty amid a great clattering of the boards
and tin that kept out the rain. The roof was flat, and the boards were
springy, so the goat sort of bounced up and down, like the man when he
falls into the circus net, though, of course, to a less degree.

And it was this that saved the goat from being hurt. He was shaken up
a bit and jarred, but he had safely jumped from the top of the rocks
to the roof of the shanty. From there it was easy to get down, for
at one side was a shed, with a little lower roof, and when Lightfoot
had leaped to this he had no trouble in jumping to a soft place on the
ground just outside the kitchen door.

“Well, of all things!” exclaimed the Widow Malony. “You’re th’
jumpinest goat I ever had! You’re that light on your feet a clog-dancer
would admire you. Sure it’s a fine goat you are!”

“We never had any goat to jump the likes of Lightfoot!” cried Mike,
running back to see if his pet were hurt, for he loved Lightfoot better
than any of the others. He patted the shaggy coat of the animal, and,
looking at him, saw that he was not in the least harmed. Lightfoot felt
a little pain, but he could not tell Mike about it.

“Oh, how did you ever dare do it?” asked Blackie, running up to
Lightfoot with a piece of paste-paper in her mouth. “Weren’t you
afraid?”

“I――I guess I didn’t have time to be,” answered Lightfoot. “I didn’t
think they’d drive me away from up there.”

Mike went on with the washing when he found Lightfoot was not hurt, and
Mrs. Malony went back in the shanty. From the edge of the rocks above
the other goats looked down.

“Say, youngster,” called Mr. Sharp-horn to Lightfoot, “I didn’t mean to
make you do that. Are you hurt?”

“Not a bit,” answered Lightfoot, who was beginning to feel a bit proud
of himself now.

“That was a wonderful leap,” said Mrs. Sharp-horn.

“Indeed it was!” added Grandpa Bumper. “Of course I have made such
leaps as that when I was younger, but I can’t any more. For a kid that
was very good, Lightfoot.”

“He won’t be a kid much longer,” said Mrs. Sharp-horn. Then she said
something in a low baa-a to her goat-husband.

“Why, yes,” answered Mr. Sharp-horn, “I guess, after this big leap
he did to-day, Lightfoot can come up among us other goats now. You
may come up to the top of the rocks whenever you like,” he went on to
Lightfoot. “We won’t chase you away any more.”

“And may Blackie come up with me and eat the sweet grass?” asked
Lightfoot, having a kind thought for his little friend.

“Can she climb that far?” asked Grandpa Bumper.

“I’ll help her,” offered Lightfoot.

“Then you may both come,” went on the old grandfather goat who ruled
over the rest. “Your grass down there is getting pretty dry,” he went
on. “Come up whenever you want to. And, Lightfoot, don’t try any more
such risky jumps as that. You might break a leg.”

So, after all, you see, Lightfoot’s big jump turned out to be a
good thing for him and Blackie. After Lightfoot had rested a bit he
and Blackie went up to the top of the rocks, Lightfoot helping the
girl-goat over the rough places, and soon all the Widow Malony’s
animals were cropping the sweet grass on top of the high rocks.

Lightfoot’s leap was talked about among the goats for many a day after
that. The goat grew bigger and stronger, and every chance he found he
practiced jumping until he could do almost as well as Mr. Sharp-horn,
who was the best leaper of all the goats in Shanty-town, as the place
of the squatters was called.

Day after day Lightfoot would practice jumping and climbing among
the rocks, sometimes alone and sometimes with Blackie. One day, when
he had made a very hard jump from one rock to another, he heard some
boy-and-girl-talk in the road in front of the widow’s shanty. Looking
down, Lightfoot saw a small cart drawn by a pony, and seated in the
cart was a man, and with him were his two children.

“Oh, look, George!” called the little girl, “there’s that nice goat we
saw when we were going to the circus, the day we got back Tinkle, our
pony.”

“So it is, Mabel,” answered the boy. “Could we ever have a goat,
Daddy?” he asked his father as the pony cart stopped.

“Oh, I guess not,” said the man. “Tinkle is enough for you.” Then to
Mrs. Malony, who came to the front gate, he said: “That’s a fine goat
you have.”

“Sure an’ you may well say that. You’re the gintleman who went past
here a few days ago, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I was on my way to the circus, and it was there we got back my
children’s pony which had been stolen.”

“Well, I’m glad you have him back,” said the Widow Malony, with a
twinkle in her kind, Irish-blue eyes. “You should have seen Lightfoot
leap from the top of the rocks to the roof of me shanty one day.”

“Did he really do that?” asked George.

“He did,” and Mrs. Malony told about it.

Meanwhile Tinkle, the trick pony, of whom I have told you in the book
of that name, was having a little talk with Lightfoot.

“Were you really stolen?” asked Lightfoot, when Tinkle told some of his
adventures.

“Indeed I was. And did you really jump from the top of those rocks?”

“I did,” answered the leaping goat, holding his head high and feeling
very proud.

“That’s more than I could do, though I can do circus tricks,” said
Tinkle. “There’s been a book written about me and my tricks and
adventures.”

“You don’t tell me!” cried Lightfoot. “But what’s a book?”

Before Tinkle could answer Mr. Farley, the father of George and Mabel,
called good-by to the Widow Malony and drove on with the children in
the pony cart.

“Good-by!” called Tinkle to Lightfoot. “If ever you get to the circus
ask Tum Tum, the jolly elephant, or Mappo, the merry monkey, about me.”

“I will,” promised Lightfoot, “though I never expect to go to a circus.”

“Sure they were nice little children,” said Mrs. Malony, “and it was a
fine pony cart they had. How would you like to pull a stylish cart like
that, Lightfoot?” she asked as she went back in the shanty to finish
her washing.

For many days after this Lightfoot lived around the squatter’s shanty
learning to leap and do other things that goats have to do in this
world. And one day he had an adventure that was not exactly pleasant.

Lightfoot was getting to be quite a big goat now, and sometimes he
wandered away farther than he had ever gone before. Two or three
streets from where the Malony shanty was built ran an electric car
line. At first Lightfoot did not know what it was, but the other goats
told him that people rode in the queer, yellow cars which went rolling
along in such a queer way on the shiny rails, a bell clanging in front.

One afternoon Lightfoot wandered down to the trolley tracks. An ash
wagon had passed a little while before, and the goat had seen fall from
it a tin can with a big, red, tomato-paper pasted on it.

“I’ll get that paper and eat off the paste,” thought Lightfoot.

The can was in the middle of the tracks. Lightfoot began nosing it,
tearing off the paper and eating small pieces. It tasted very good to
him.

Suddenly there was the clanging of a bell, and along came a car, headed
straight for Lightfoot. The goat looked up.

“Bother!” he exclaimed to himself. “You’ll have to wait until I finish
my lunch,” he went on. “I’m not going to hurry out of the way for you.
I’m as good as you!” Lightfoot wanted his own way, you see.

But goats have no rights on a trolley track, though Lightfoot did not
know this. The motorman clanged his bell, and cried:

“Get off the tracks, you goat, or I’ll bump into you!”

Now Lightfoot knew very little indeed about trolley cars. He did not
know how strong they were. And so, as he stood between the rails,
chewing the paper from the can, and saw the big yellow car clanging its
way toward him, Lightfoot stamped his hoofs, shook his horns and said
to himself:

“Well, do as you please, but I’m not going to move until I finish
eating. I guess I can butt as hard as you!”

“Get out of there!” called the motorman again. But Lightfoot did not
understand. The car slowed up a little, but still came on.

“Bump into him, Bill!” called the conductor to the motorman, and the
next instant the fender of the street car struck Lightfoot’s lowered
horns, and tossed him to one side over into a ditch full of weeds.

“Oh, dear! I’m hurt this time, sure!” thought poor Lightfoot. “I
thought I could knock that car off the track, but, instead, it knocked
me off! Oh, dear!”




CHAPTER III

LIGHTFOOT SAVES A GIRL


For a few seconds after Lightfoot had been tossed into the ditch full
of weeds the goat could not get up or even move. The trolley car
clanged on its way down the tracks.

“What happened?” asked some of the passengers.

“Oh, a goat got on the track and the motorman had to knock him off,”
explained the conductor.

“I hope you didn’t hurt him,” said a little girl sitting in a front
seat to the motorman.

“No, I didn’t hit him very hard,” answered the motorman. “But I just
had to get him out of the way. I’d never hurt any animal, for my
children have a dog and a cat, and I love them as much as they do. The
goat really butted into me as much as I did into him.”

And this, in a way, was true. If Lightfoot had stood still, and had not
tried to hit the fender of the car with his horns, he would have been
easily pushed to one side. But he had to learn his lesson, and, like
the lessons boys and girls have to learn, all are not easy or pleasant
ones.

So poor Lightfoot lay groaning in the ditch among the weeds as the
trolley car went on. At least he groaned as much as a goat can groan,
making a sort of bleating noise.

“Oh, dear!” he thought. “Never again will I do such a thing as this! I
will stick to jumping, for I can do that and not be hurt. I wonder if
any of my legs or my horns are broken?”

Lightfoot, lying on his side in the ditch, shook his head. His horns
seemed to be all right. Then he tried to scramble to his feet. He felt
several pains and aches, but, to his delight, he found that he could
get up, though he was a bit shaky.

“Well, none of my legs is broken, anyhow,” said Lightfoot to himself.
“But I ache all over. I guess I’ll go home.” Home, to Lightfoot, meant
the rocks around the shanty of the widow and her son.

As Lightfoot limped from the ditch to the road he passed a puddle
of water. He could see himself in this, as you boys and girls can
see yourselves in a looking glass. The sight that met his eyes made
Lightfoot gasp.

“I’d never know myself!” he said sadly. Well might he say that. One
of his legs was cut, and some blood had run from it. His side was
scratched and bruised and some skin was scraped from his black nose.
“I’m a terrible looking sight,” he said.

He walked along, limping, until he came within sight of the shanty.
From behind it came Blackie.

“Why Lightfoot!” she cried in surprise. “Where in the world have you
been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why! what has happened to
you?”

“I――I tried to butt a trolley car off the tracks,” said the boy-goat.
“I was eating some pasty paper off a tomato can that fell from an
ash wagon, when the car came along. I wouldn’t get out of the way
and――well, it knocked me into the ditch. Oh, dear!”

“I’m so sorry,” said Blackie sympathetically. “Come on up to the top of
the rocks and you can roll in the soft grass. Maybe that will make you
feel better.”

“No, I don’t believe I could climb to the top of the rocks now,” said
Lightfoot. “I am too sore and stiff. I’ll just lie down here in the
shade.”

“Do,” said the kind Blackie, “and I’ll bring you some nice brown paper
I found.”

Goats love brown paper almost as much as they do the kind that has
paste on it and that comes off cans. For brown paper is made from
things that goats like to eat, though of course it is not good for
girls and boys any more than is hay or grass.

“Well, what’s the matter with you, Lightfoot?” asked Grandpa Bumper,
the old goat, as he came scrambling down the rocks a little later to
get a drink of water from the pail near the kitchen door of the Widow
Malony’s shanty. “What happened to you?”

“I got in the way of a trolley car,” said Lightfoot, and he told what
had happened.

“Well, let that be a lesson to you,” said the old goat-man. “You are a
strong goat-boy, and a fine jumper, but the strongest goat amongst us
is not able to butt against a trolley car. I once heard of an elephant
butting a locomotive with his head but he was killed. His name was
Jumbo.”

“I wonder if he was any relation to Tum Tum,” said Lightfoot, who was
beginning to feel a little better now.

“Who is Tum Tum?” asked Grandpa Bumper.

“Oh, he is a jolly elephant who lives in a circus. I met a trick pony
named Tinkle, who once was in the circus, and Tinkle told me about Tum
Tum.”

“I’m sure I don’t know about Tum Tum,” went on the old goat. “And I
never saw a circus, though I have heard of them.”

“Maybe I’ll be in one some day,” murmured Lightfoot.

“Well, whatever you do, never again try to butt a trolley car,” advised
the old goat, and Lightfoot said he never would.

In a few days he felt better, though his bruises and cuts still hurt a
little. But, with Blackie, he managed to get to the top of the rocks,
and there, eating the sweet grass and lying stretched out in the sun,
he was soon himself again and could jump as well as ever. He told the
other goats about his adventure with the trolley car, and they all said
he was brave, if he was foolish.

It was more than a month after he had been butted into the ditch by the
trolley car that Lightfoot once more wandered down that same street. He
felt hungry for some pasty paper from a tomato can, and he wanted to
see if any had fallen from an ash wagon.

Lightfoot looked up and down the street. He did not see a can but
he did see a little girl, and she was standing in the middle of the
trolley track, almost in the spot where Lightfoot had stood when he was
hurt.

“I wonder if she is going to try to knock a car off the track,” thought
Lightfoot. And just then, the little girl, who was about four years
old, turned her back and stooped to pick up her doll, which had dropped
from her arms to the ground.

As she did so, around the corner of the street, came a trolley car,
just like the one that had hit Lightfoot. The motorman happened to be
looking the other way, and did not see the little girl. She was so
taken up with her doll that she did not hear the rumble of the car, and
the motorman, still looking the other way, did not ring his bell.

“That little girl will be hurt!” cried Lightfoot “She can never knock
the car off the track if I couldn’t. I must save her! I must push her
off the rails.”

Then, with a loud “Baa-a-a-a!” Lightfoot trotted on to the tracks in
front of the car, and, as the little girl straightened up he gently
put his head against her back and slowly pushed her from the tracks,
leaping away himself just in time, as the car rolled right over the
place where the little girl had been standing.




CHAPTER IV

LIGHTFOOT AND THE WAGON


With a clang of the bell the trolley car came to a stop, the motorman
putting the brakes on hard. Then he jumped off the front platform and
ran to where the little girl had sat down in the grass at the side of
the tracks. She had sat down rather hard, for Lightfoot had pushed her
with more force than he intended. He was so anxious to get her out of
the way of one of those clanging cars that once upon a time had hurt
him so.

“What is it?”

“What’s the matter?”

“What happened?”

The passengers in the trolley car, surprised by the sudden way it
stopped, called thus to one another as they hurried out. They saw the
little girl sitting in the grass, holding her doll by one leg. They saw
Lightfoot, the goat, standing near by as though keeping guard over the
little girl, and they saw the motorman holding the shiny handle, by
which he turned on and off the electricity that made the car go.

“Oh, what’s the matter?” asked a small boy who had gotten off the car
with his mother. “Did the goat bite the little girl?”

“No, my dear. Goats don’t bite. They butt you with their horns.”

“I don’t want any goat to butt me!” and the little boy hid behind his
mother’s skirts.

Then the little girl, sitting on the grass, made up her mind to cry. Up
to now she had not quite known whether to laugh or to cry, but suddenly
she felt that she had been hurt, or scared, or something, and the next
thing, of course, was to cry.

Tears came into her pretty blue eyes, she wiped them away with the
dress of her doll and then she sobbed:

“Go away you bad goat you! Go ’way! I don’t like you! You――you tried to
bite me!”

She had heard the little boy say that. But the little boy, getting
brave as he saw that Lightfoot did not seem to want to bite, or butt
either, any one, came from behind his mother’s skirts and said:

“Goats don’t bite, little girl; they butt. My mamma says so, and if you
is hurted she’ll kiss you and make you all well.”

Some of the passengers laughed on hearing this, and the lady with the
little boy went to where the little girl was sitting on the grass,
picked her up in her arms and wiped away her tears.

“There, my dear,” she said. “You’re not hurt. See the pretty goat. He
won’t hurt you.”

“You’re right there!” exclaimed the motorman. “He saved her from being
hurt by my car, that’s what he did.”

“What do you mean?” asked the conductor.

“I mean the goat butted the little girl off the tracks, just as the
lady said goats do. She was standing on the tracks, picking up her
doll, when my car came along. I wasn’t paying much attention, and I was
almost on her when the goat saw what the trouble was and pushed her off
the tracks with his head. He didn’t really butt her, but he got her out
of the way just in time.”

“He’s a smart goat,” said one of the men who had been riding in the
trolley car.

“He is that!” exclaimed the motorman. “And now that I look at him I
remember him. He’s the goat we knocked off the track about two months
ago. Don’t you remember?” he asked, turning to the conductor.

“Sure enough he is,” agreed the conductor, and he explained to the
passengers the accident, or adventure, that had happened to Lightfoot,
as I told it to you before.

“He must have remembered how the car hurt him,” said the lady with the
little boy, “and he didn’t want the child to be hurt. He is a smart
goat!

“Does any one know where the little girl lives?” asked the lady. “She
ought not be allowed to stay here near the tracks.”

None of the passengers knew the child, nor did the motorman or
conductor. As they were wondering what to do along came Mike Malony.

“Hello, Lightfoot!” called Mike as he saw his goat. And then, as he
noticed the crowd, the stopped trolley car and the little girl, he
asked:

“What’s the matter? Is Tessie hurt?”

“No one is hurt, I’m thankful to say,” replied the motorman; “but the
little girl might have been only for the goat. Do you know her?”

“Sure, she’s Tessie Rooney. She lives near me,” explained Mike. “I’ll
take her home if you like.”

“I wish you would,” said the lady who had given Tessie a five cent
piece, which to Tessie was almost as much as a dollar. The child forgot
all about her tears and what had happened to her.

“Sure I’ll take her home,” said Mike, kindly.

“Do you know whose goat that is?” asked the lady, as her little boy
whispered something to her.

“That’s mine,” said Mike proudly. “And there’s no better jumping goat
in these parts.”

“Nor smarter goat either,” said the motorman, and Mike, to his
surprise, learned what his pet had done.

“Do you want to sell the goat?” asked the lady. “My little boy would
like him. I have an idea that I could hitch him to a cart and have him
draw my boy about. Some neighbor’s children have a little pony named
Tinkle, and they have great fun riding around with him. My boy is too
small for a pony, but a goat might be good for him. Will you sell him
to me――Lightfoot I think you said his name was?”

“Well, ma’am, not wishing to be impolite to you, but I can’t sell
Lightfoot,” said Mike slowly, and he put his hand on the goat’s head.
“You see I’ve had him ever since he was a little kid, and I like him
too much to sell him.”

The lady saw how Mike felt about it, so she said kindly:

“Well, never mind, my boy. I wouldn’t want to take your pet away from
you, any more than I’d want my little boy to lose his, if he had one.
It’s all right. But you are lucky to have so good a goat.”

[Illustration: Lightfoot, coming up to get some of the salt which he
licked from Mike’s hand, did not know what his master was saying.]

“Yes’m; I think so myself. Come on now, Tessie. I’ll take you home, and
if ever you come by yourself on the trolley tracks again I’ll never
give you another pickaback ride.”

“Oh, then I won’t ever come,” lisped Tessie, her hand in Mike’s. “And
will you give me a piggy back ride now?”

“Yes,” promised Mike; and amid the laughter of the trolley car
passengers Mike took the little girl up on his back and trotted off,
making believe he was a horse. Lightfoot ran alongside, and, seeing
him, Tessie said:

“Lightfoot pushed me so hard I sat down in the grass, Mike.”

“Well, it’s a good thing he did, Tessie, else you might have been
harder hit by the car. Now you take my advice and keep away from the
tracks or, mind――no more pickaback rides!”

A day or so after that Mike, going up to the top of the rocks to take
some salt to his mother’s goats, saw Lightfoot leaping about, kicking
up his heels and shaking his horns.

“Sure it’s a fine goat you are intirely, as my dear mother would say,”
said Mike softly. “And I wish I could do it.”

Lightfoot, coming up to get some of the salt, which he licked from
Mike’s hand, did not know what his master was saying. Even if he had
understood the words he would not have known what they referred to.

Mike went on, talking to himself.

“If I only could do it,” he said, “it would be great! I could drive
home with the washings, and then, maybe, I could earn money with you.
I wonder if I could make it myself? I could get the wheels, and a big
soap box――

“No,” went on Mike, after a moment of thought, “that wouldn’t do. It
would be all right for taking home the washings, but not to give rides
for money. I’ve got to get a regular goat harness and a wagon. How can
I do it?”

Now you know what Mike was thinking of. He had heard the lady speak of
a pony cart, and he wanted a goat wagon for Lightfoot. If he had that
he could, as he said, drive home with the big baskets of clean clothes
to his mother’s customers. Then Mike had an idea he could give rides to
children in the goat wagon, and so earn money.

“But where can I get the wagon and harness?” he asked himself over and
over again.

At last, when he had talked the matter over with his friend Timothy
Muldoon, the railroad gate-tender, in his little shanty at the foot of
the street, Mike got the idea.

“Sure why don’t ye advertise in the papers?” asked Tim, as Mike called
him. “That’s what everybody does that has anything to sell or wants to
buy. Advertise for a goat wagon and harness. Sometimes goats dies, and
the folks that owns them don’t get another, but sells the outfit.”

“But it costs money to advertise,” objected Mike.

“Sure and won’t the paper you work for trust you?” asked the gateman.

“The paper I work for?” repeated Mike, wonderingly.

“I mean the one you delivers for, nights,” for Mike had a paper route
for an evening paper, the _Journal_.

“They ought to know you there,” went on Tim. “Tell the advertising man
what you want, and that you’ll pay him when you can.”

“I’ll do it!” cried Mike, and he did. When, rather timidly, he
explained to the man at the desk in the office what he wanted, and told
him that he had delivered the _Journal_ for several years, a bargain
was made.

The man would put the advertisement in the paper for Mike, saying he
wanted to buy a second-hand goat wagon and harness. He was to pay for
the advertisement at the rate of two cents each day, for the Widow
Malony and her son were so poor that even two cents counted.

“And you can easy make up that two cents by getting two new customers
for the paper,” said Tim, when Mike told him what had happened.

“Yes. But how am I going to pay for the goat wagon and harness in case
some one has it to sell?” Mike questioned.

“Well, maybe I have a bit of a nest egg laid away,” said Tim, with
a smile. “I might lend you the money, and when you get rich you can
pay me. Or whoever sells the outfit might let your mother make up the
amount by washing. We’ll see about that.”

To Mike’s delight he had two answers to his advertisement. One was for
a very fine goat wagon and harness, but the price asked was more than
even Tim would advise paying.

“You can get that, or one like it, when you’ve made a hundred dollars
on the goat rides,” said the gate-man to Mike.

The other outfit was just about right, Tim and Mike thought, and the
man who had the wagon and harness for sale said Mrs. Malony could pay
for it by doing washing and ironing. So, after Mike had paid for the
advertisement, no more money need be paid out.

“Sure, Lightfoot, now there’ll be grand times for you!” cried Mike as
he came home one day with the wagon and harness.




CHAPTER V

LIGHTFOOT IN THE PARK


Lightfoot, the leaping goat, who was cropping the sweet grass on top of
the rocks from which he had once made his great jump, looked down in
the yard near the shanty and saw his master Mike busy over something
new.

“I wonder what that is?” thought Lightfoot to himself, for goats and
other animals wonder and are curious about things, as you can tell by
holding out something in your hand to your dog or cat. They will come
up to it and smell it, to see if it is good to eat.

And so Lightfoot wondered. Mike was good to him, and often brought him
some lumps of salt, or a bit of carrot or turnip, for though goats like
to eat grass, and even bits of paper and other queer things, they like
nice things too, like sweet vegetables.

“I guess I’ll go down and see what it is Mike has,” said Lightfoot to
himself, and so he started down the rocky path. Though he was a good
leaping goat he did not want again to try to jump on top of the widow’s
shanty. That was too dangerous.

“Where are you going, Lightfoot?” asked Blackie, the girl-goat, who
had been cropping grass near her friend, as she saw him start down the
rocky path.

“The boy Mike is down there, and he may have something good to eat,”
answered Lightfoot. “If he has I’ll give you some.”

“You are very kind,” said Blackie, and she followed down after
Lightfoot, only more slowly, for she was not so good a jumper or
rock-climber as was he.

Down near his mother’s shanty, Mike was looking at the goat wagon and
harness he had just brought home.

“It’s almost as good as new, Mother!” cried the Irish boy. “Look at the
wheels spin, would you!” and turning the wagon on one side he spun two
wheels around until they went so fast he could not see the spokes.

“Be careful now and don’t break it,” cautioned the Widow Malony.

“Oh, sure ’tis a grand strong wagon!” cried Mike. “It would hold two
baskets of clothes. And I can ride four boys or girls around in it at
once, and get pennies.”

“Well, sure an’ it’s the pennies we need,” sighed Mrs. Malony, for she
found it hard to get along on what she could earn. Mike was getting to
be a bigger boy now, and he ate more, though his mother never told him
this. She wanted him to grow strong.

“Give me a bit of salt, Mother,” said Mike. “I want to get Lightfoot
friendly, so he’ll not be afraid of the harness or wagon, for I’m going
to hitch him up soon.

“Here he comes now with Blackie,” went on Mike, as he saw the two goats
coming down the rocky path. “You’re just in time, Lightfoot, though I
don’t need Blackie to learn to pull the wagon. She wouldn’t be strong
enough. But I’ll give her some salt.”

The two goats licked the salt from Mike’s hands, and liked it very
much. Mike turned the wagon right side up, and then took up part of the
harness.

“I wonder how Lightfoot will act when I put it on him,” thought Mike.
“He’s never been harnessed.”

While the goat was chewing some sweet chopped carrots which Mrs. Malony
spread out in front of him, Mike gently slipped a part of the harness
over the goat’s back. At first Lightfoot jumped a little to one side.
But, as he saw that there were still more carrots left, and as he felt
Mike patting him, Lightfoot thought it was all right.

“I guess it’s just a new game that boy Mike is playing,” said the goat
to himself. “Well, he’s always kind to me, so I’m sure it will be all
right. Anyhow these carrots are good. Have some, Blackie.”

“I will,” said the other goat. “But what is that queer thing on your
back, Lightfoot?”

“Oh, some game that boy is playing,” answered the goat. “It won’t hurt
us, for Mike is always kind,” and he and Blackie went on eating the
carrots.

“Well, so far so good,” said Mike to himself when he had most of the
harness on his pet, and Lightfoot had stood still. “Now to get the bit
in his mouth. That’s going to be harder.”

“Better get Jack Murphy to come over and help you,” said Mrs. Malony.
“He used to keep goats in Ireland, and he knows a lot about ’em, though
I don’t know if he ever harnessed ’em to a cart.”

But Mr. Murphy had, as it happened, and, being a neighbor of the
Malonys, he soon came over when Mike called him and showed the boy
how to put the iron bit in Lightfoot’s mouth, and run the reins back
through rings fastened in a part of the harness that went around the
middle of the goat’s back.

It was not easy to do, and, several times, Lightfoot tried to break
away. But Mike and Mr. Murphy held him until the harness was in place
and tightly strapped on.

“Now see if you can drive him about,” said Mr. Murphy, when Mike had
hold of the reins and the bit was in Lightfoot’s mouth. The goat was
shaking his head about, trying to get rid of the piece of iron between
his teeth. It did not really hurt him. It just felt queer. But it was
firmly held by straps, and Lightfoot could not shake it loose.

“I can’t drive him without first hitching him to the wagon,” said Mike,
for as yet the goat had not been put between the shafts of the little
cart.

“Don’t hitch him to that yet,” advised Mr. Murphy. “Sure he might run
away and break it. Just drive him about the yard by the reins and run
after him.”

“He may run away with me,” laughed Mike.

“Well, that can’t be helped. Maybe he will. But he’ll soon get used to
the harness and behave. Lightfoot is a wise goat.”

But even wise goats don’t like it the first time they are put in
harness, and Lightfoot was no different in this way from others, though
he was such a good jumper. When Mike took hold of the reins and called
to Lightfoot to “gid-dap,” the goat, who was now big and strong,
started off with such force and suddenness that Mike was almost jerked
from his feet.

“Run!” called Mr. Murphy. “Run with him, and along after him, Mike. Try
to turn him to the right and the left so’s he’ll know how to mind the
reins when he’s fast to the wagon. Run after him!”

Mike, holding fast to the reins, ran, and the goat ran too. And, being
a good runner, Lightfoot easily kept ahead of Mike. It was all Mike
could do not to let go the reins.

“Run!” called Mr. Murphy. “Run faster, Mike!”

Mike tried but he stumbled over a stone and fell. However, he kept hold
of the reins, winding them around his wrists and as Lightfoot kept on
going he pulled Mike all about the yard.

“Bless an’ save us!” cried Mrs. Malony coming to the door of her
shanty. “What’s happenin’?”

“He’s teaching Lightfoot to pull to harness,” said Mr. Murphy.

“Hum! It looks more like Lightfoot was teachin’ _Mike_,” said the
widow. “Won’t Mike be hurt?”

“Not a bit. Many a time in th’ old country I’ve been dragged by a goat.
It’s good for one.”

Around and around the yard Lightfoot dragged Mike, the chickens and
ducks scattering in all directions, the old rooster flying up on the
fence and crowing with all his might.

At last Lightfoot, finding he could not get the iron bit out of his
mouth, and could not shake off the harness, and looking back and seeing
Mike being dragged about on the ground, thought:

“Well, I guess I’m tired. I seem to be held fast no matter what I do.
I’ll quit.”

And that is just what Mike wanted, for he was tired of being pulled
about in this fashion.

“Well, I guess he’s learned that part, anyhow,” said Mr. Murphy. “Now
we’ll hitch him to the wagon.”

While Mr. Murphy was bringing up the wagon, and Mike was holding
Lightfoot, Blackie came up and asked:

“What was all that for, Lightfoot?”

“Oh, I guess it was a new kind of game. I can’t say I like it though. I
had rather jump on the rocks,” answered Lightfoot.

“No, it was not a game,” said Grandpa Bumper, coming up just then.
“You are being taught to let yourself be harnessed up to draw a cart,
Lightfoot, and here they come with the cart now.”

“What does that mean?” asked the leaping goat. “Will it hurt?”

“No, not if you behave yourself. Once I was a cart-drawing goat, and
I worked in a nice park. I’ll tell you about it so you’ll know what to
do.”

And when the cart was brought up, and the shafts, one on each side of
Lightfoot, were being fastened with straps, the younger goat stood very
still, listening to Grandpa Bumper tell, in goat language, just what it
all meant.

“Why, he seems to like it,” said Mike as he fastened the last strap.
“He didn’t try once to get away, Mr. Murphy.”

“I guess he’s getting used to it,” said the kind Irishman.

But if he and Mike had known, it was what Grandpa Bumper had said to
Lightfoot that made the young goat stand so still and allow himself to
be hitched to the cart.

“Well,” said Lightfoot to the old goat when the harnessing was
finished, “it may not be so bad after all. I guess I’ll be good and not
run away. I’ll pull the cart nicely.”

“It will be best, I think,” said the old goat.

So, when Mike took his seat in the cart, and pulled on the reins,
calling to Lightfoot to “Gid-dap!” the goat started off, pulling the
little wagon as though he had done it all his life.

“Oh, this is great!” cried Mike. “I never thought he would learn as
easily as this.”

“He is a smart and sensible goat,” the Irishman said. “Now look out if
he gets going too fast.”

But Lightfoot did not seem to want to run away. He trotted along up and
down the street, soon learning to turn to the right or the left as Mike
pulled the reins.

Once or twice Lightfoot started to run swiftly, but Mike pulled back on
the reins, and the iron bit in his mouth, pressing on his tongue and
teeth, told Lightfoot that he must go more slowly.

In a few days he had become used to the cart and harness and Mike could
drive him anywhere. The other goats came to the top of the pile of
rocks and looked down at Lightfoot. Many of them wished they could be
harnessed up, for Lightfoot got many extra good things to eat from
Mike, who liked his driving goat very much. Lightfoot was now a driving
goat as well as a leaping one.

“And now it’s time, I guess,” said Mike one day, “to see if I can
earn money with my goat and wagon.” He had taken a number of baskets
of clean clothes home to his mother’s employers, and, no matter how
heavy the basket was, Lightfoot had no trouble in pulling it, with Mike
sitting on the front seat of the cart.

Mike made his wagon nice and clean, put a strip of old carpet in the
bottom, and started one day for a part of the city where rich folks
lived. Along the streets there, on pleasant afternoons, nurse maids
would be out walking with the children of whom they took care. When he
got to this place Mike drove his goat wagon slowly up and down.

It was not long before a little boy, well dressed, who was walking
along with his nurse, cried:

“Oh, Marie! See the wonderful goat wagon! May I have a ride in it?”

“No, no, Master Peter. It is not to ride in.”

“Yes, it is! I want a ride! Will you give me a ride, boy?” he called to
Mike.

“You must not ask for rides,” said Marie, the maid. “The boy sells
rides――that is, I think he does,” and she looked at Mike and smiled.

“Yes,” answered Mike, “my goat wagon is for hire.”

“Then I want a ride!” cried little Peter. “I want a ride, Marie!”

“But we must ask your mamma,” said the maid. “Come, she is just going
out in the car. We will ask her.”

Mike saw a richly dressed lady getting into a big automobile in front
of a fine house. Peter ran to her and said something. The lady beckoned
to Mike, who drove his wagon toward her.

“Do you hire out your goat wagon for rides?” asked the lady.

“Yes’m,” said Mike.

“And is he perfectly safe?”

“Yes’m. I drive him myself. I won’t let him run away.”

“Then I think you may have a ride up and down the block, Peter. Marie,
here is money to pay the goat-boy. But be careful, won’t you?” she
cautioned Mike.

“Oh, yes’m,” he promised. He helped Peter into the goat wagon, on to
one of the three rear seats, Marie getting in also. Then Mike started
Lightfoot off down the street at a gentle trot.

“Oh, I love this!” cried Peter. “When I grow up I’m going to drive a
goat wagon!”

“Oh, Master Peter!” cried Marie.

“Well, I am,” he said. “It’s ever so much more fun than making an
automobile go. Anybody can do that.”

Up and down the block Mike drove Lightfoot, giving the little boy and
his nurse a fine ride. Then the other children wanted rides, and their
parents or nurses, seeing how gentle the goat was, and how well Mike
managed him, let their boys and girls get in the cart. Mike was kept
busy all the afternoon giving rides to the little tots, and when he had
finished he had nearly two dollars, in ten- and five-cent pieces, for
some children took more than one ride.

“Talk about your luck!” cried Mike as he drove toward his shanty, a
happy smile on his freckled face. “I’ll soon be rich.”

“Look at that, Mother!” he cried, as he poured the money from his
pocket on to the table. “That’s what Lightfoot earned for us to-day!”

“Thanks be!” exclaimed Mrs. Malony. “Sure an’ the money will come in
handy, for I have the grocer to pay to-night. Tell me about it, Mike
darlin’.”

And Mike told, while Lightfoot, unharnessed, ate a good supper, and
then told the other goats of his new adventures.

For several weeks Mike went about the different streets of the city
giving rides to children, and hardly a day passed that he did not make
a dollar or a little more. Of course when it rained he could not do
this. And then one day Mike came home with bright eyes and a laughing
face.

“What do you think, Mother dear!” he cried. “I have a regular job with
Lightfoot!”

“What is it, Mike?”

“I’m to drive him and the goat wagon in the park, and the man is to
give me ten dollars a week. That’ll be better than going about the
streets. I’ll get paid regular. Hurray!” and Mike hugged and kissed his
mother.




CHAPTER VI

LIGHTFOOT BUTTS A BOY


When Mike had quieted his joy and happiness down a bit, he explained
to his mother how it had come about. It seemed that as he was driving
Lightfoot about, hitched to the cart, and giving a number of children a
ride on a quiet street, a man had come up to Mike.

“I have a goat stand in the park,” the man explained. “I own a number
of goats and wagons, and hire boys to drive them. Would you like to
sell me your goat and wagon? I need another.”

“But I told him I wouldn’t sell Lightfoot,” Mike explained. “Then he
wanted me to hire my outfit to him at so much a week, but I wouldn’t do
that, for I wouldn’t let anybody but myself drive my goat.”

“That’s right,” agreed Mrs. Malony, who was almost as fond of Lightfoot
as was Mike himself. “What did the man say then?”

“Well, he wanted to know if I’d come to the park and drive the goat
myself. He said he’d give me eight dollars a week, but I said I could
earn more than that working for myself. Then he raised it to ten
dollars and I took him up.”

“But how does _he_ make any money out of it?” asked Mrs. Malony.

“Oh, he keeps all I take in over ten dollars, and I guess it will be
more than that lots of times, for big crowds of children go to the park
these Summer days. Then, too, we don’t give such long rides as I’ve
been giving. They charge only five cents a ride in the park, and I
charge ten sometimes, but then I go all around a big block.

“But I think it’ll be a good thing for us, Mother. Ten dollars a week
is a lot of money. Of course I’ll have to buy the feed for Lightfoot
out of that, and a bit of lunch for myself.”

“Sure, I can put that up for you in the morning,” said the widow with a
smile. “It’s great, Mike my boy! Sure we’ve had good luck ever since we
got Lightfoot.”

The next day, bright and early, Mike drove his goat and wagon to the
big park which was in the upper part of the city, not far from where
the squatters had built their shanties on the rocks.

“Well, I see you are on time,” said the man who had the privilege of
managing the goat wagons in the park. No wagons other than those he
permitted could come in to give the children rides, so if Mike had not
accepted his offer the boy could not have done a park business on his
own account.

“Yes, Lightfoot and I are all ready,” said Mike.

In a little while the other goats were brought from the stable in the
park where they were kept, and harnessed to small wagons. The wagons
were better painted than Mike’s, but were no cleaner nor larger. And as
a friend of his mother’s had given her a strip of bright red carpet,
Mike put this in the bottom of his goat cart, so that it looked gay and
cheerful.

“Huh! Got a new boy, it seems,” said one of the small drivers, as he
noticed Lightfoot and Mike.

“Yes, an’ if he tries to take away any of my customers he’ll get in
trouble,” said another, shaking his fist at Mike.

“Here, you boys! No quarreling!” said the manager of the goat wagons,
a Mr. Marshall. “You’ll all do as I say, and I won’t have any picking
on this boy. Business isn’t any too good, and I want you all to do your
best.”

Mike said nothing to the other boys, but he was not afraid to take his
own part.

The other goats looked at Lightfoot, and one, hitched to the wagon
driven by the boy who had spoken a bit crossly to Mike, said to
Lightfoot:

“Where did you come from?”

“From the high rocks,” answered Lightfoot.

“Do you mean the mountains?” asked another goat.

“I don’t know, but it’s over that way,” said Lightfoot, and he pointed
with his horns in the direction of Mike’s home.

“Oh, he means the rocks by the squatters’ shanties!” exclaimed the goat
who had first spoken. “Why, we can’t have anything to do with goats
like that! We give rides to well born children. This goat comes from a
very poor home indeed.

“What right have you got to come here among us?” he asked Lightfoot.

“I don’t know anything about it,” said Lightfoot. “I was driven here,
and I’ll do my best to give good rides to the children. I may not have
come from the mountains, but the rocks where I live are very high and
sweet grass grows on top. Can any of you jump from the high rocks down
on top of the widow’s shanty?”

“Thank you, we don’t live near shanties,” said another goat. “We live
in the park stable.”

“Just the same that was a good jump,” remarked a quiet goat, with short
horns. “I was over that way once. I think I know the place you mean,”
he went on to Lightfoot, and Mike’s goat was glad to know he had one
friend.

“Well, he may be a good jumper but I don’t believe he can butt hard
with his horns and head,” said the ill-tempered goat, who was called
Snipper from the habit he had of snipping off leaves and flowers in the
park.

“I once nearly butted a trolley car off the tracks,” said Lightfoot,
“and I did shove a little girl out of the way of the car.”

“Pooh! That’s nothing,” sneered Snipper. “Let’s see how hard you can
butt,” and he rose up on his hind legs and aimed his head and horns at
Lightfoot.

“Look out, Lightfoot!” cried Mike. But the new goat was ready for
Snipper. Rising on his own hind legs, Lightfoot butted the other goat
so hard that he nearly fell over backward into the cart.

“Good! Well butted!” cried the kindly, short-horned goat. “That was
fine!”

“You wouldn’t say so if you felt it,” bleated Snipper.

“Well, it was your own fault. You started the quarrel,” went on the
friendly goat.

“I can butt better than he can, and I’ll show him too, next time,”
grumbled Snipper, rubbing his head against a tree.

“Say!” cried the boy who had spoken roughly to Mike, “if your goat
doesn’t leave mine alone I――I’ll do something to you!”

“Oh, no, you won’t,” said Mike. “I’m not afraid of the likes of you.”

“Here, boys, stop your quarreling,” said the man. “Get ready now, some
children and their mothers are coming. Perhaps they may want rides.”

Along the path that led to the goat stand came a number of boys and
girls. Seeing them, the boys in charge of the goats called:

“Here you are for a ride! This way for a ride! We’ve got the best goats
in the park! Only five cents a ride!”

The children stopped. Some begged their fathers or mothers to let them
have a ride. One man, with a boy and girl consented.

“Which wagon and goat do you want?” asked the father.

For a moment the tots were undecided.

“Here, take mine! It’s the best!” cried the boy whose goat had been
butted by Lightfoot. For a moment the children seemed about to get into
that wagon, then the little girl cried:

“Oh, see what a pretty red carpet is in this wagon!” and she ran over
to Mike’s. “I want to ride in this!”

“So do I,” said her brother, and they got in. Mike was pleased and
happy, but the other boy, whose name was Henry, scowled.

“I’ll fix you for that,” he muttered to Mike, but Mike did not care. He
started Lightfoot down the park road and the goat drew the delighted
children swiftly and carefully.

Thus it was that Mike and Lightfoot began their work in the park.
From then on, for several weeks, Mike would take his goat and cart to
the stand every morning, and all day long he would drive parties of
children up and down. Lightfoot was growing stronger and more used to
harness and cart, and he could soon pull as well as the best goat in
the park.

Every Saturday night Mike took home ten dollars to his mother, and this
was the best of all. Of course Mike took in more than this from the
children who paid him for their rides, but all over ten dollars went
to Mr. Marshall. Out of the ten dollars Mike paid for hay and oats for
Lightfoot, for now that he had work to do, the goat could not live on
grass alone.

The other goats accepted Lightfoot for a friend now, and even Snipper
was on good terms with him, for they all saw that Lightfoot was as
strong as any of them and could take his own part. But Henry, the boy
who drove Snipper, did not make friends with Mike.

“I’ll get even with him some day,” he said.

[Illustration: “I want to ride in this!”]

And this is how he did it――not a very fair way, I should say. One noon
Mike took the harness off Lightfoot, and, putting a rope around the
goat’s neck, tied the other end to a tree, so Lightfoot would not stray
away, as he had once or twice, meaning nothing wrong. Mike’s mother had
not had time to put up his lunch that morning, so Mike went down to a
little restaurant in the park, intending to get a glass of milk and
some sandwiches.

“Now behave yourself, Lightfoot, while I’m gone. I’ll soon be back,”
said Mike.

Lightfoot wiggled his little stubby tail. Whether he understood or not
I can not say. He went on cropping grass, after he had eaten his hay
and other fodder.

In a little while Henry came along. He saw Lightfoot tethered all by
himself, the other goats having been taken to the stable. Henry looked
about, and, seeing no signs of Mike, took up a stick, and, going toward
Lightfoot, said:

“I’ll teach you to butt my goat! You won’t do it after I am through
with you!”

Then, with the stick, he fell to beating Lightfoot. At first Mike’s
goat did not know what to make of this. He looked up and seeing that
it was one of the goat-boys, but not Mike, thought maybe it was a new
kind of game. But as the blows from the stick fell harder and harder
Lightfoot knew that it was no game.

Whack! Bang! Whack! Henry beat the stick on Lightfoot’s back.

Lightfoot tried to get away, but the rope held him. Then, suddenly the
goat became angry, and you can not blame him. He knew he had strong
horns and a strong head, given him by nature to butt with and defend
himself.

“And I’m going to butt that boy who is beating me with the stick!”
thought Lightfoot. Before Henry knew what was happening Lightfoot
rushed straight at him with lowered head, and the next thing Henry knew
he found himself falling backward head over heels in the grass. The
goat had butted him down good and hard.

For a moment Henry lay dazed, hardly knowing what had happened. Then,
all of a sudden, Lightfoot felt sorry.

“My master would not want me to do this,” he said to himself. “Maybe he
will punish me when he comes back. I know what I’ll do; I’ll run away.”

With a strong jump, and a leap, Lightfoot broke off, close to his
neck, the rope that held him. And then, before Henry could get up, off
through the bushes in the park bounded Lightfoot. He had run away.




CHAPTER VII

LIGHTFOOT ON A BOAT


The park where Lightfoot, the leaping goat, had worked with Mike for
several weeks, giving rides to children, was quite a large one. There
were many paths in it, and driveways. There were also patches of woods,
and places where the bushes grew in tangled clumps, making many hiding
places.

“I’d better hide myself for a while,” thought Lightfoot, for, though he
was a tame goat, he still had in him some of the wildness that is in
all animals, even your pussy cat; and this wildness made him want to
hide when he thought himself in danger. And the danger Lightfoot feared
was that he would be beaten with a stick for knocking over the boy who
had tormented him.

“I’ll hide under these thick bushes,” said the goat to himself, when
he had run quite a distance from the stand in the park where the small
wagons were kept.

The bushes were thick, but with his strong head and horns Lightfoot
soon poked a way for himself into the very middle of them, and there he
lay down upon the ground to rest. For he had run fast and was tired.
His heart was beating very hard.

Though he did not know it, Lightfoot had done just as a wild goat would
have done――one that lived in a far-off country who had never seen a
wagon, a harness or a squatter’s shanty. He had hidden himself away
from danger.

And, with beating heart, as he crouched under the bush, Lightfoot
wondered what he would do next.

“I can’t go back to the park and help Mike with the wagon, giving the
children rides,” thought Lightfoot. “If I do that boy with the stick
will be waiting for me. He’ll be angry at me for knocking him down.
That little girl wasn’t mad at me for knocking her off the trolley
tracks; but then that was different, I guess. And maybe Mike will be
angry with me too. I’ll be sorry for that.

“He won’t give me any more lumps of salt, nor sweet carrots. I won’t
see Blackie again, nor Grandpa Bumper. I’ll never jump around on the
rocks any more and see the Sharp-horns. Well, it can’t be helped, I
suppose. I must do the best I can. I’ll stay here for a while and see
what happens.”

So Lightfoot remained in hiding, and when Mike had finished getting his
little lunch in the restaurant he came back to reharness his goat to
the wagon, ready to give the children rides in the afternoon.

“Why, where’s Lightfoot?” asked Mike in surprise, as he came back and
saw the broken rope where he had tied his pet. “Where’s my goat?”

“How should I know?” asked Henry in a cross sort of voice. “He butted
me over on my back a little while ago.”

“You must have done something to make him do that,” quickly cried Mike.
He looked at the end of the broken rope. At first he thought Henry
might have cut it on purpose to let Lightfoot get away, but the ends of
the rope, frayed and rough, showed that it had not been cut, but broken.

“Have any of you seen Lightfoot?” asked Mike of the other boys. But
they had all been to dinner themselves and had not seen what had
happened. The other goats, too, had been taken to the stable for the
noon meal.

Only Henry had seen Lightfoot run away, and he felt so unkindly toward
the goat and Mike that he would not tell. Mike ran here and there,
asking the park policemen and other helpers if they had seen his goat,
but none had. Lightfoot had taken just the best possible time to run
away――noon, when every one was at dinner. And now the goat was safely
hidden in the bushes.

“Well, I’ve just got to find him,” said Mike to himself, as he looked
at the goat’s harness hanging on a tree, and at the wagon with its
strip of bright red carpet. “I’ve just got to find Lightfoot!”

Telling Mr. Marshall what had happened, and promising to come back with
Lightfoot as soon as he could find him, and take up again the work of
giving children rides in the park, Mike set off to find his pet.

Along the paths, cutting across the grassy lawns, looking under clumps
of bushes, asking those he met, Mike went on and on looking for
Lightfoot. Now and then he stopped, to call the goat’s name. But though
once Lightfoot, from where he was hiding, heard his master’s voice he
did not bleat in answer, as he had always done before.

“He is looking for me to whip me,” thought Lightfoot, “and I am not
going to be whipped!”

Poor Lightfoot! If he had known that Mike would not whip him, but would
have petted him, and given him something nice to eat, the goat might
have come out from the bush where he was hiding and have trotted up to
Mike. Had Lightfoot done this he would have saved himself much trouble.
But then, of course, he would not have had so many adventures about
which I will tell you.

After calling and looking for Lightfoot, even very near the bush under
which the goat was hidden, but never suspecting his pet was there, Mike
walked farther on. He had not given up the search, but now he was far
from the place where Lightfoot was hiding.

Lightfoot stayed under the bushes and listened. He did not hear any
one coming toward him, and he began to think he was now safe. He was
beginning to feel a bit hungry again, so he reached out and nibbled
some of the leaves.

“My! That tastes good!” he said to himself. “It’s better even than the
grass that grows on top of the rocks at home.”

Then, all of a sudden, Lightfoot felt homesick. He thought of the fun
he had had with Blackie and the other goats, and he wanted to go back
to them.

“I think I’ll do that,” he said. “Maybe, after all, Mike will not let
that other boy beat me. But I’ll wait until after dark.”

The sun sank down in the west. The children and their nurses went home
from the park. The goats and wagons were taken to the stable. Mike
came back from his search.

“Well, did you find your goat?” asked Mr. Marshall.

Mike shook his head sadly.

“No, I didn’t,” he answered. “But I’ll look again to-morrow.”

“If you don’t find him pretty soon,” went on the man, “I’ll have to get
another goat and wagon.”

Mike felt sadder than ever at this for he knew the money he had been
able to earn with Lightfoot was much needed at home. And it was with a
sorrowful heart that Mike told his mother what had happened.

“Never mind, Mike me darlin’,” said the good Irish woman. “Maybe
Lightfoot will come back to us some day.”

At dark Lightfoot crept out from under the bush. The lights were
sparkling in the park, and he thought he could easily find his way back
to Shanty-town. Mike had driven him from there to the park and back
many times.

But the darkness, even though there were lights here and there,
bothered Lightfoot. He soon became lost. He did not know which way
he was going. Once, as he crossed a green lawn in the park he saw,
standing under a lamp, a policeman with a club. Lightfoot did not know
what a policeman was but he knew what a club was used for――to beat
goats.

“But he sha’n’t beat me,” thought Lightfoot, so he kept in the shadows
and got safely past. On and on he wandered, trying to find his way back
to the rocks where he had spent so many happy months. But he could not
find them, and at last he became so tired that he crawled under some
bushes and went to sleep.

It was morning when Lightfoot awakened. He found he was in a strange
place. It was a place of many streets and with big cars running back
and forth on shining rails. But they did not run as did trolley cars.
Instead a big engine pushed them and pulled them. Though Lightfoot did
not know it, he was near a railroad yard.

He came out from under the bush to look for something to eat. He saw
an empty can with a piece of paper on it that he knew was covered with
paste. He wanted that paper very much. But as he crept out to get it a
boy picking up coal from the tracks saw him and cried:

“Oh, fellers! Look at de goat! Let’s chase him!”

And chase after Lightfoot they did, shouting and throwing lumps of
coal. Lightfoot had no mind to be caught, so he ran across the tracks.
The boys shouted at him, the men in the railroad yard yelled at him,
and when he crossed the tracks the engines tooted their whistles at
him. Altogether Lightfoot was very much frightened.

On and on he ran. Some of the boys were getting closer now, for
Lightfoot could not run over the shiny rails as easily as they.

“I’m going to get that goat!” cried the boy who had first seen
Lightfoot.

Lightfoot heard the boy’s shout, though he did not understand the
words. The goat knew he must run faster and faster, and he did. He came
to a place near the line of the railroad tracks where he could see
some water. He knew what water was, for he drank it, and also, when it
rained hard, there was a little pond and a stream that formed on top of
the big rocks, so he was used to seeing large puddles.

Lightfoot ran close to this water. The boys, racing after him, saw, and
one cried:

“Oh, de goat’s goin’ t’ swim!”

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.




CHAPTER VIII

LIGHTFOOT ON A VOYAGE


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.

“I wonder what is going on here?” thought the goat.

If he had known, it was the noises in the cabin-kitchen of the canal
boat――the captain’s wife was getting dinner. For on these canal boats,
of which there are not so many now as there used to be, the captain and
his family live in a little house, or cabin, where they eat and sleep
just as if the house were on land. Instead it is on a boat, and the
boat is pulled by horses and mules from one city to another, bringing
to port coal, grain or whatever else they are loaded with.

Lightfoot remained hiding in the dark hold, listening to the noises in
the kitchen cabin, and smelling the good smells. Then Lightfoot heard
voices in the cabin. It was the captain of the boat speaking to his
wife.

“We’ll soon pull out of here,” he said.

“Where are you going to voyage to now?” asked the captain’s wife.

“To Buffalo,” he answered. “I’m going there to get a load of grain and
bring it back here.”

[Illustration: Lightfoot ran close to this water, the boys racing after
him.]

“Are you going to take the boat out empty?” asked the woman, as she set
a dish of potatoes and meat on the little table in the cabin.

“No,” he answered, “we are going to travel a little way in the boat,
then we will take on a load of coal. We will carry that a hundred miles
or so, and then when we take that out the boat will be empty again,
and, after it is cleaned, we will go on to Buffalo and get the grain.
We will start soon.”

Lightfoot heard all this through the wooden wall, but he did not know
what it meant. He looked about the hold as well as he could. He could
see no one in it. It was like being in a big, empty barn.

Then Lightfoot heard the sound of some boys’ voices calling, and as
he remembered the boys, with the lumps of coal, who had chased him he
shrank farther back into a dark corner.

Lightfoot could hear the patter of running feet. He did not want the
boys to find him. He heard them calling again.

“Say, Mister, did you see a goat around here?” asked one of the boys.

“Goat? No, I didn’t see a goat.” It was the canal boat captain talking.
“Get away from here now! I’m going to start the boat soon, and if you
don’t want to be taken away on her you’d better go ashore.”

“Come on, fellers!” cried the boy who had first seen Lightfoot. “That
goat ain’t here. He must have run up along the canal,” and away ran the
boys, which was just what Lightfoot wanted.

Up above him Lightfoot could see the glimmer of daylight, for the
hatches, or covers of the hold, were off, now that it was empty. When
the boat was loaded with grain the covers would be put on, but they
were not needed for coal, since water does not harm that.

“Well, I seem to be down in a sort of big hole,” thought Lightfoot, as
he looked up. “It was easy enough to jump down, but I don’t know that
I can jump out again. However, I don’t want to do that now. I want to
stay where I am so those boys can’t get me. But I wish Mike were here
with me.”

Lightfoot was beginning to feel a little lonesome, but there was so
much that was new and strange all about him that he did not feel
homesick long. He kept on walking to the other end of the canal boat.

Then he sniffed the air. He heard noises which he knew were made by
horses, and then he caught the smell of hay, oats and straw.

“I must be near a stable,” said Lightfoot. “But I don’t understand it.
What does it mean?”

He walked on a little farther and soon he came to another wooden wall.
Behind it he could hear horses, or mules, he did not know which,
chewing their food and stamping about in their stalls. Lightfoot
thought this was queer.

But those of you who have seen canal boats know what it was. Each boat
has to carry on it several teams of horses or mules to pull the boat
along, since one pair of horses would get tired if they pulled all the
while.

A canal, you know, is a long ditch, or stream of water, going from one
city to another. Men cut the ditch through the earth and then let the
water flow in so boats will float.

Along the side of the ditch of water is a little road, called a
“towpath,” and along this the horses walk, pulling, or towing, the
canal boat by a rope that is fastened to the boat at one end and to the
collars of the horses at the other end. In fact the horses pull the
canal boat along the water much as Lightfoot pulled the goat wagon in
which the children rode.

Years ago there were many canal boats, but now, since there are so many
railroads, the canals are not so often used, for it is slower traveling
on them than on the railroad trains, which go very fast.

“Well, I certainly am in a queer place,” thought Lightfoot. “I don’t
know whether I am going to like it or not. Still it is better than
being beaten with a stick, or having boys chase after you with lumps of
coal.”

He listened to the horses stamping about in their stalls, and chewing
their food. Then there were more noises, and the sound of men calling:
“Gid-dap there!” Next came the pounding of horses’ hoofs on wooden
planks, and the voices of men shouting.

“What in the world is going on?” thought Lightfoot.

“Hello, in there, you horses. What is going on, if you please?” he
called.

He could hear that the horses stopped chewing their oats; and one said
to another:

“What is that?”

“I don’t know,” was the answer. “It sounded as if somebody were in the
hold.”

“That’s just where I am,” said Lightfoot.

“Who are you?” asked a horse.

“Lightfoot, the leaping goat,” was the answer. And then Lightfoot told
something of himself and the adventures he had had so far――of why he
ran away from the park, and, to get away from the boys, of having
jumped down into the boat.

“Well, if you’re there,” said a horse on the other side of the wall,
“you’re likely to stay for some time. It is too high for you to jump
out.”

“I see it is,” answered Lightfoot, “even though I am called the
leaping goat. But what will happen to me?”

“You are going on a voyage now,” was the answer of the horse. “That
noise you heard was the captain leading some of the horses out of our
stable, here on the boat, over a board, called a gangway, to the canal
towpath. Very soon they will begin to pull the boat along the canal,
and, after a while, it will be our turn. You are going on a voyage,
Lightfoot.”

“Is a voyage nice?” asked the goat.

“You had better wait and see,” was the answer.

“I wish I could come in your stable,” said Lightfoot. “I would not take
up much room.”

“You would be welcome,” said a horse, “but there is no way for you to
get in unless you can get out of the hold, on to the towpath and come
down the plank. Some day maybe you can do that.”

“I hope so,” said Lightfoot, who was now getting very hungry.

Just then the captain called:

“All aboard! Cast off the lines!”

And the next thing Lightfoot knew was that the boat began slowly to
move. It had started up the canal. Lightfoot was on a voyage, though
where he was going he did not know.




CHAPTER IX

LIGHTFOOT GOES ASHORE


Lightfoot, down in the hold of the canal boat, felt the craft slipping
through the water easily. He was being carried with it.

“Well, this is not so bad, for a start,” thought the goat. “It is much
easier than riding in a wagon, as I once did.”

When Lightfoot was a small goat, before he had come to live with Mike
and his mother, he remembered being taken from one place to another,
shut up in a box and carried in a wagon. The wagon jolted over the
rough road, tossing Lightfoot from side to side and hurting his side.
The motion of the canal boat was much easier, for there were no waves
in the canal, except at times when a steam canal boat might pass, and
even then the waves were not large enough to make the _Sallie Jane_ bob
about. _Sallie Jane_ was the name of the boat on which Lightfoot was
riding.

“This is a nicer ride than I had in the wagon,” thought Lightfoot,
“only I don’t know where I am going. But then,” he thought, “I didn’t
know where I was going the other time. However, I came to a nice
place――the shanty where Mike and his mother lived, and maybe I’ll go to
a nice place now. Anything is better than being beaten with a stick and
chased by boys with lumps of coal to throw at you.”

Then Lightfoot began to feel more hungry. From somewhere, though the
exact place he did not know, he could smell hay and oats.

“I guess it must be from the stable where the horses are that I was
talking to,” he said to himself. “I’m going to ask them if they can’t
hand me out something to eat. It isn’t any fun to be hungry, even if
you are on a canal boat voyage.”

So Lightfoot went to the end of the boat where the stable was, and,
tapping on the wall with his horns, waited for an answer:

“What is it, Lightfoot?” asked one of the horses, for he had told them
his name.

“If you please,” said the goat, “I am very hungry. Could you not kindly
pass me out some of the hay or oats that I smell?”

“We would be glad to do so,” said a kind horse, “only we can not. There
is no opening from our stable into the hold where you are. If you
could jump out you could get right in where we are.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Lightfoot. “It is pretty high to
jump. But I’ll try.”

Lightfoot did try to jump up, but he could not. It is easy to jump
down, but not easy, even for a goat, to jump up.

“I can’t do it!” sighed the goat. “And the smell of your hay and oats
makes me very hungry! Why is it I can smell it so plainly if there is
no opening from your stable to where I am?”

“I don’t know,” answered one horse.

“No, but I do!” whinnied another. “Don’t you remember, Stamper,” he
said to the horse in the stall next to him, “on the last voyage this
boat was loaded with hay and grain? Some of that must be left around in
the corners of the hold. That is what Lightfoot smells so plainly.”

“So it is,” said the first horse. Then he called: “Lightfoot, look and
smell all around you. Maybe you will find some wisps of hay or some
little piles of grain in the dark corners of the hold where you are. If
you do find them, eat them.”

“Thank you, I will!” called Lightfoot.

Then he began to walk around in the big hollow part of the canal boat,
sniffing here and there in corners and cracks for something to eat. He
could smell hay very plainly, and as he went toward a corner, in which
some boards were piled, the smell was very much stronger. Then, all of
a sudden, Lightfoot found what he was looking for.

“Oh, here’s a nice pile of hay!” he called, and the horses in their
stalls heard him.

“That’s good,” one of them said. “Now you will not be hungry any more,
Lightfoot.”

“No, I guess I won’t,” said the goat. “At last, after I have had some
bad luck, I am going to have some good.”

Then he began to eat the wisps of hay which had lodged in the corner
of the canal boat when the cargo had been unloaded a few days before.
There was hay enough for more goats than Lightfoot, but the men who
unloaded the canal boat did not bother to sweep up the odds and ends,
so the goat traveler had all he wanted.

After Lightfoot had eaten he felt sleepy, and, lulled by the pleasant
and easy motion of the canal boat, he cuddled up in a corner near the
horse-cabin, and, after telling his unseen friends what had happened to
him, he went to sleep.

How long he slept Lightfoot did not know, but he was suddenly awakened
by hearing a rumbling sound, like thunder.

“Hello! What’s this?” cried the goat, jumping up. “If it’s going to
rain I had better look for some shelter.”

“Oh, it isn’t going to rain,” said a voice from the horse stable.
“Those who have been pulling the boat are tired and are coming down the
plank into their stalls. We are going out to take their places. It is
our turn now.”

“Oh, I see,” returned Lightfoot. “But how do you horses get on shore?
Do you swim across the canal?”

“No, though we could do that,” said Cruncher, a horse who was called
that because he crushed his oats so finely. “You see,” he went on,
“when the captain wants to change the teams on the towpath he steers
the boat close to the shore. Then he puts a plank, with cross-pieces,
or cleats, nailed on it, so we won’t slip, down to our stable, and we
walk up, go ashore, and take our places at the end of the towline. The
tired horses come in to rest and eat.”

“Then is the boat close to the shore now?” asked Lightfoot.

“Yes, right close up against the bank,” answered Cruncher as he made
ready to go out on the towpath.

“Oh, I wish I could get ashore,” said Lightfoot. “I like you horses,
and I like this boat, because it saved me from the boys who were
chasing me, but still I had rather be out where I can see the sun.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Nibbler, who was called that because he used
to nibble the edge of his manger. “Sometimes I get tired of this dark
stable. But then, twice a day, we go out in the air to pull the boat.”

“Do you think I could get on shore?” asked Lightfoot.

“Well, if you could jump up out of the hold, where you are, you could,”
said Cruncher, his hoofs making a noise like thunder on the planks as
he walked up. “If you can do that you can go ashore.”

“I’m going to try,” said Lightfoot, and he began jumping up as high as
he could to get out of the deep hole into which he had leaped.

But, jump as he did, Lightfoot could not get out of the hold. It was
like being down in a deep well. If he had been a cat, with sharp claws
to stick in the wooden sides of the boat, or a bear, like Dido, the
dancing chap, Lightfoot might have got out. But as he was neither of
these, he could not.

Again and again he tried, but it was of no use. Then he felt the boat
moving again, and he knew it was being pulled along the canal by the
horses.

“There is no use jumping any more,” thought Lightfoot. “If I did jump
out now I would only land in the water. I must stay here until I can
find some other way to get out.”

Lightfoot found more hay and a mouthful of grain in one of the corners
of the boat, and after he had eaten he felt better. But still he was
lonesome and homesick.

Pretty soon it grew dark, and Lightfoot could see the stars shining
over head. He cuddled up in a corner, among some old bags, and went to
sleep.

For three days Lightfoot traveled on in the canal boat. All he could
see were the dark sides of the hole in which he was. He could talk to
the horses through the wooden walls of their stable, but he could not
see them.

Now and then the boat would pull up to shore, and the tired horses
would come aboard while the others would take their turn at the
towrope. All this while Lightfoot lived on the hay and grain he found
in the cracks and corners of the canal boat. Had it not been for this
the goat would have starved, for neither the captain nor his wife knew
Lightfoot was on board, and the horses, much as they wished, could not
pass the goat any of their food.

One day the boat was kept along the shore towpath for a long while.
Lightfoot tried again to jump out but could not. Then, all at once he
heard a very loud noise. It was louder than that made by the hoofs of
the horses, and the goat cried:

“Surely that is thunder!”

He saw something black tumble down into the hold at the end farthest
from him.

“No, it is not thunder,” said Cruncher. “The captain is loading the
boat with coal. Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” said Lightfoot. “Only coal is very black and dirty
stuff.”

“Yes, it is,” agreed Nibbler. “But it may be a good thing for you,
Lightfoot.”

“How?” asked the goat.

“In this way,” said Nibbler. “I have seen this boat loaded with coal
before. They fill the hold as full as they can, and they don’t put the
covers on.”

“But if they fill it full,” said Lightfoot, “they will cover me with
the coal, and then how can I get out?”

“I’ll tell you,” answered Nibbler. “They will not fill all the boat at
once. It takes about two days. And when half the boat is full the coal
is in a pile in the middle, like a hill. You can climb up the side of
the coal-hill, Lightfoot, and then you will be out of the hold. You can
scramble up on top of our stable-cabin and from there you can easily
jump to shore.”

“Oh, that will be fine!” cried the goat.

“Do you think you can walk up the hill of coal in this boat?” asked
Cruncher.

“Surely I can,” Lightfoot said. “I could climb up the rocky, rocky path
back of the cabin, and surely I can climb up the coal hill.”

All that day men with wheelbarrows dumped coal into the hold of the
canal boat. It made a black dust, and Lightfoot kept as far away from
it as he could.

“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.




CHAPTER X

LIGHTFOOT IN THE WOODS


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.

“Well, I shall not be hungry here, anyhow,” thought Lightfoot. “There
are more bushes and trees here than in the park where Mike used to
drive me about, hitched to the little wagon. I wonder if I am allowed
to eat these leaves.”

Lightfoot looked around. He saw no policemen or park guards, such as he
had seen when he was in the other place, and, as he felt a bit hungry
after his run, he nibbled some of the green leaves. They had a good
taste and he ate many of them. No one called to him to stop, and no one
hit him with a stick.

“This is a good place,” thought Lightfoot.

As with most animals, when he had eaten well, the goat felt sleepy, and
picking out a smooth grassy place beneath some trees he cuddled up, and
was soon asleep.

How long he slept Lightfoot did not know, but when he awakened he had
a feeling that he wished he was back with Mike again, drawing children
about the park. Whether Lightfoot had dreamed about his shanty home
amid the rocks I do not know. I do not know whether or not animals
dream, but I think they do.

At any rate Lightfoot felt lonesome. He missed the cheerful whistle of
the Irish boy, and he missed, too, the nice combing and rubbing-down
that his master, Mike, used to give him every morning in order to keep
his coat in good condition.

Some of the goats that lived on the rocks had coats very rough with
tangled hairs, to say nothing of the burrs and thistles that clung to
them. But Mike kept Lightfoot slick and neat, brushing him as a groom
brushes his horses.

“But I don’t look very slick now,” thought Lightfoot, as he turned his
head and saw a lot of burdock burrs on one side, while the other side
carried a tangle of a piece of a briar brush. “I must clean myself up a
bit,” thought the goat.

By twisting and turning about, using first one hind foot and then the
other, as a cat scratches her ears, Lightfoot managed to get rid of
most of the things that had clung to him as he tore his way through the
bushes. Then he walked on again, until, feeling thirsty, he began to
sniff the air for water. For goats and other animals can smell water
before they can see it, though to us clean water has no smell at all.

Lightfoot soon found a little spring in the woods, and from it ran a
brook of water, sparkling over the green, mossy stones.

As Lightfoot leaned over to get a drink from the spring he started back
in surprise.

“Why!” he exclaimed to himself. “Why! There’s another goat down there
under the water. He’s a black goat. I’m white.”

Lightfoot thought for a moment as he drew back from the edge of the
spring. Then he said to himself:

“Well, if it’s only another goat I needn’t be afraid, for we will be
friends.”

He went to the spring again and looked down into the clear water.
Again he saw the black goat, and he was just going to speak, asking
him how he felt, what his name was, where he came from and so on, when
Lightfoot happened to notice that the black goat moved in exactly
the same way, and did the same things that he, himself, did. Then he
understood.

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Lightfoot to himself. “How silly I am! That is only
my reflection in the spring, just as if it were a looking glass. But
what makes me so black on my face, I wonder?”

Then he remembered.

“It’s the black coal dust, of course!” he cried. “It must have stuck to
me all over, but I brushed some of it off when I went to sleep in the
grass. Now I must wash my face.”

He glanced once more into the spring looking glass, and saw that indeed
he was quite dirty from the coal dust. Taking a long drink of the cool
water he went below the spring to the brook, and there he waded in and
splashed around in the water until he was quite clean. This made him
feel hungry again, and he ate more leaves and grass.

“And now,” said Lightfoot, as he noticed the sun going down in the
west, and knew that it would soon be night, “it’s time for me to think
of what I’m going to do.”

Lightfoot was not afraid to stay out alone in the woods all night. He
had spent many a night on the rocks, though of course the other goats
had been with him then. But he was a bigger and older goat now, and he
was not afraid of being alone. Of course a little kid might have been,
but Lightfoot was a kid no longer.

“I’ll stay here to-night, I think,” said the goat after a while. “It
is good to be near water so you can drink when thirsty. I’ll stay here
to-night and in the morning I’ll try to find my way back to Mike.”

Lightfoot slept well that night, for it was not cold, and in the
morning, after he had eaten some leaves and grass and had drunk some
water he started out to find the Malony shanty near the rocks.

But a goat is not like a dog or a cat, some of which can find their way
home after having been taken many miles from it. So, after wandering
about in the woods, and finding no place that looked like his former
home, Lightfoot gave up.

“It’s of no use,” he said. “I guess I am lost. I must have come farther
in that canal boat than I knew. Well, the woods are a good place to
stay. I shall not be hungry here.”

Lightfoot wandered on and on for several days. Once some boys, who were
in the woods gathering flowers, saw the goat behind some bushes.

“Oh, let’s chase after him!” called one, and they ran toward Lightfoot.

But the goat leaped away and soon left the boys far behind. If one of
them had been Mike, Lightfoot would have gone to him, but Mike was not
there.

One day as Lightfoot was wandering through the woods, wishing he were
back in his home again, for he was lonesome, having no one to talk to
but the birds, he heard a noise in the bushes.

It was a smashing, crashing sort of noise, as though made by some big
animal.

“Maybe it is one of the canal horses,” thought Lightfoot. “I hope it
is. They’ll be company for me. Maybe one of them ran away.”

He looked through the underbrush and saw a big, shaggy, brown animal,
standing on its hind feet. With its front paws it was pulling berries
from a bush and eating them.

“Excuse me,” said Lightfoot in animal language. “But could you tell me
the way to the Widow Malony’s shanty?”

The big animal stopped eating berries, looked up at the goat in
surprise and asked, in a sort of growly voice:

“Who are you?”

“I am Lightfoot, the leaping goat,” was the answer. “Who are you?”

“I am Dido, the dancing bear, I am glad to meet you. Come over and have
some berries,” and Lightfoot went.




CHAPTER XI

LIGHTFOOT MEETS SLICKO


Lightfoot and Dido stood looking at one another for a few seconds. It
was the first time the goat had ever seen a bear, for though there were
wild animals in the park where Mike used to drive him, Lightfoot had
never been taken near the bear dens. But it was not the first time Dido
had seen a goat.

“Do you like raspberries?” asked Dido, pulling a branch toward him with
his big paw and stripping them off into his big red mouth.

“I don’t know,” answered the goat. “I never ate any.”

“Help yourself,” invited Dido. “Just reach out your paw and with your
long claw-nails strip off the berries into your mouth.”

“But I haven’t any paw,” said Lightfoot.

“That’s right, you haven’t,” observed Dido reflectively, scratching his
black nose. “Well, you have a mouth, anyhow, that’s one good thing.
You’ll have to pick off the berries one by one in your lips. You can do
that.”

“Yes, I think I can do that,” answered Lightfoot, and he did. At first
the briars on the berry bush stuck him, but he soon found a way to keep
clear of them. Dido did not seem to mind them in the least.

“Did you say you were a dancing bear?” asked Lightfoot of his new
friend, when they had eaten as many berries as they wanted.

“Yes, I can dance. Wait, I’ll show you,” and in a little glade in the
woods Dido began to dance slowly about.

“That’s fine!” said Lightfoot. “I wish I could dance.”

“Can you do any tricks?” asked Dido. “I can play soldier, turn
somersaults and things like that.”

“I can draw children about the park in a little cart,” said the goat,
“and I am a good jumper, I’ll show you,” and he gave a big jump from a
log to a large, flat rock.

“You _are_ a good jumper,” said Dido. “That is much farther than I
could jump. Some of the men in the circus could jump farther than that,
though.”

“What do you know about a circus?” asked Lightfoot.

[Illustration: “That’s fine!” said Lightfoot. “I wish I could dance.”]

“I used to be in one,” answered Dido. “In fact I may go back again. I
am out now, traveling around with my master who blows a brass horn to
gather together the boys and girls. And when they stand in a circle
around me I do my tricks and my master takes up the pennies in his hat.
It’s lots of fun.”

“Where is your master now?” asked Lightfoot.

“He is asleep, not far away, under a tree. He lets me wander off by
myself, for he knows I would not run away. I like him too much and I
like the circus. I want to go back to it.”

“I met some one who was in a circus,” said Lightfoot.

“Who?” the dancing bear asked.

“Tinkle, a pony,” answered the goat.

“Why, I know him!” cried Dido. “He is a jolly pony chap. He draws a
little boy and girl about in a cart.”

“That’s right,” said Lightfoot. “I did the same thing for the children
in the park. Oh, how I wish I were back with my master, Mike,” and he
told about his adventures, and the dancing bear told his, speaking of
having been put in a book, like Tinkle.

“Do you think you could tell me the way back to the shanty at the foot
of the rocks, where I made my first big jump?” asked Lightfoot of Dido,
after a while.

The bear thought for a minute.

“No,” he answered slowly, in animal talk, “I don’t believe I could,
I’m sorry to say. I have traveled about in many places, but if I have
gone past the shanty where the Widow Malony lives, I do not remember
it.”

Just then came through the woods a sound like:

“Ta-ra! Ta-ra! Ta-rattie tara!”

“What’s that?” asked Lightfoot, in surprise.

“That’s my master, blowing the brass horn to tell me to come back,”
answered Dido. “I must go. Well, I’m glad to have met you. And if you
ever get to the circus give my regards to Tum Tum, the jolly elephant,
and Mappo, the merry monkey.”

“I will,” promised Lightfoot. “I have heard Tinkle, the trick pony,
speak of both of them. Good-by!”

“Good-by!” called Dido, and, with a wave of his big paw, stained from
the berries he had pulled off to eat, he lumbered away through the
woods to his master who was blowing the horn for him.

“Well, I had a nice visit,” said Lightfoot to himself as he ate a few
more berries. “Dido would be good company, but I can not travel with
him, as I can do no tricks. I wonder if I shall ever find my own home
again.”

On and on through the woods wandered Lightfoot. Now and then he would
stop to nibble some grass or leaves, and again to get a drink from
some spring or brook. When he was tired he would stretch out under a
bush or a tree and go to sleep. Then he would wander on again.

The second night in the woods found him far from the canal, and
much farther from the park and his home near the big rocks. He was
completely lost now, and did not know where he was. But it was not so
bad as if a boy or a girl were lost. For Lightfoot could find plenty to
eat all around him. He had but to stop and nibble it. And, as it was
Summer, it was warm enough to sleep out of doors without any shelter,
such as a barn or a shed.

One day as Lightfoot was eating some blackberries in the way Dido, the
dancing bear, had taught him, he heard a noise in the bushes as though
some one were coming through.

“Oh, maybe that is the dancing bear!” exclaimed the lonesome goat. “I
hope it is.”

An animal presently jumped through the bushes out on the path and stood
looking at Lightfoot; but at first glance the leaping goat saw that it
was not Dido. It was a small white animal, with very large ears, one of
which drooped over, giving the animal a comical look.

“Hello!” exclaimed Lightfoot in a friendly voice. “I don’t believe I’ve
seen you before.”

“Maybe not,” was the answer. “But I’ve seen you, or some one like you.
A boy, in whose woodshed I once lived, had a goat like you.”

“Was his name Mike?” asked Lightfoot eagerly. And then he knew it could
not be, for he knew his Mike had no such animal as this.

“No, his name was not Mike,” was the answer. “But what is your name?”

“Lightfoot.”

“Mine’s Flop Ear, and I’m a rabbit. A funny rabbit some folks call me.
I’m in a book.”

“This is queer,” said Lightfoot. “You speak about being in a book. So
did Dido, the dancing bear.”

“Oh, did you meet Dido?” cried Flop Ear, looking at Lightfoot in a
funny way. “Isn’t he the dearest old bear that ever was?”

“I liked him,” said Lightfoot.

“And he’s almost as jolly as Tum Tum, the jolly elephant. Tum Tum is in
a book, too.”

“What’s all this about being in a book?” asked Lightfoot.

“Well, I don’t exactly understand it myself,” answered Flop Ear. “But
I know children like to read the books about us. Tell me, have you had
any adventures?”

“I should say I had!” cried Lightfoot. “I ran away, and I was on a
canal boat, and I climbed a hill of coal and――”

“That’s enough!” cried Flop Ear, raising one paw. “You’ll find
yourself in a book before you know it. Then you’ll understand without
my telling you. Would you like to have a bit of cabbage?”

“I should say I would,” cried Lightfoot. “I’ve been living on grass,
berries and leaves――”

“Well, I brought some cabbage leaves with me when I came for a walk
this morning,” said Flop Ear, “and there’s more than I want, and you
are welcome to them.” From the ground where he had dropped it Flop Ear
picked up a cabbage leaf and hopped with it over to Lightfoot. The goat
was glad to get it, and while he was chewing it he told the rabbit
of running away from the park. In his turn Flop Ear told how he had
been caught by a boy and how he had gnawed his way out with the mice,
meeting Grandma Munch in the woods.

“And so I’ve lived in the woods ever since,” said Flop Ear.

“Could you tell me how to get out of the woods and back to my home with
Mike, near the rocks?” asked Lightfoot.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t,” answered the rabbit.

The rabbit and the goat talked in animal language for some little
time longer, then Flop Ear said he must go back to his burrow, or
underground home.

“And I’ll travel on and see if I can find my home,” said Lightfoot.
“I’ve been lost long enough.”

For two or three days more Lightfoot wandered about in the woods. He
looked everywhere, but he could not find his home near the rocks. One
afternoon, as he was asleep under a tree, he was suddenly awakened by
feeling something hit him on the nose.

“I wonder if it’s going to rain?” said Lightfoot, jumping up suddenly.
Then something hit him on his left horn and bounded off. Lightfoot saw
that it was an acorn, many of which he had seen in the woods.

“I guess it fell off a tree,” he said.

“No, it didn’t. I dropped it,” said a chattering voice in the air. “I
am lonesome and I wanted some one to talk to. So I awakened you by
dropping an acorn on your pretty black nose. Excuse me.”

“But who are you and where are you?” asked Lightfoot.

“I am Slicko, the jumping squirrel,” was the answer, “and I’m perched
on a limb right over your head.”

Lightfoot looked up, and there, surely enough, was a little gray animal
with a very big tail, much larger than Lightfoot’s small one.




CHAPTER XII

LIGHTFOOT’S NEW HOME


Leaving Lightfoot and Slicko talking together in the woods, we will go
back a little while and see what is happening in the shanty near the
rocks, where Mike Malony lived with his widowed mother. Mike came in
one day, after a long search through the park. Though it was several
weeks since Lightfoot had run away the boy never gave up hope that,
some day, he would find his pet.

“Well, Mike me lad, did you hear anything of your goat?” asked Mrs.
Malony.

“No, Mother,” was the answer, “and I don’t believe I ever shall.
Lightfoot is gone forever.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Mike! He may come back. And if he doesn’t, can’t
you take one of the other goats and train it to drag a cart?”

“No,” said Mike, with a shake of his head, “I couldn’t do that. The
other goats are for giving milk, and the like of that, but they
wouldn’t be like Lightfoot for drawing the children. No goat will be
like Lightfoot to me. I’ll have to get work at something else, I
guess, Mother.”

“I’m afraid you will, Mike me boy,” said his mother, and now as she
was a bit sad, she was not smiling at her freckle-faced and red-haired
son. “Our money is almost gone, and we need more to buy something to
eat. Lucky it is we have no rent to pay. You had better look for a job,
Mike.”

Mike did, but work was not to be had. Meanwhile the money which the
Widow Malony had put away was getting less and less. Mike came in one
day, tired, and feeling very unhappy, for he had walked far looking for
work without finding it. He had even tried training one of the other
goats to draw a cart, but they did not seem able to learn, being too
old, I suppose. Blackie had been sold to bring in a little money.

“Well, maybe better luck will come to-morrow, lad. Don’t give up.
Whist!” she cried. “There’s the letter man’s whistle. Sure he can’t be
comin’ here!”

“But he is, Mother!” cried Mike. “Maybe it’s some of the men I gave me
name to, sendin’ for me to give me work.”

With trembling hands Mrs. Malony opened the letter. When she had read
it she cried:

“Th’ saints be praised, Mikey me lad. Our troubles are over now! Our
troubles are over now!”

“How?” asked Mike.

“Sure I’ve been left a farm, Mike! A farm with green grass and a house,
and cows and a place to raise hay and a horse to haul it to market.
Read!”

Mike read the letter. It was true. A cousin of his mother, who had
known her in Ireland, had died and left her his farm, as she was his
nearest relative. The letter was from the lawyers saying she could
claim the farm and live on it as soon as she pleased.

The troubles of the Widow Malony and her son were indeed over as far
as money was concerned. They sold what few things they had, even the
goats, for it would be hard to carry them along, and then, bidding
good-by to the other squatters, they moved to the farm that had been
left them. It was many miles from the big city, out in the country.

“Sure ’tis a grand farm!” cried Mike as he saw the snug house in which
he and his mother were to live. “’Tis a grand farm entirely. And would
ye look at the river right next door! I can go swimmin’ in that and
sail a boat.”

“’Tis no river, Mike, me boy,” said his mother. “That’s a canal, same
as the one that runs near the big city where we come from, though I
guess you were never over that far.”

“No,” said Mike, “I was not. A canal; eh? Sure it’s a funny thing. A
river made by men,” and he sat down to look at it.

But there were many things to do on the Malony farm, and Mike and his
mother were happy in doing them, for now they saw better times ahead of
them.

“Sure this would be a fine place for Lightfoot,” said Mike as he sat
on the steps one day and looked across the green fields. “He’d be fair
wild with th’ delight of it here,” and his face was a bit sad as he
thought of his lost pet.

It was about the time that the farm had been left to the widow and her
son that Lightfoot met Slicko the jumping squirrel in the woods as I
have told you.

“And so you were lonesome! And that’s the reason you awakened me by
dropping a nut on my nose?” asked Lightfoot of Slicko.

“Yes,” was the answer. “And I guess you are glad it wasn’t Mappo, the
merry monkey, who tried to wake you up that way.”

“Why?” asked Lightfoot.

“Because Mappo would likely have dropped a cocoanut on your nose, and
that’s bigger and heavier than an acorn.”

“Well, I guess it is,” laughed Lightfoot. “I’m glad you didn’t do that.
But why are you lonesome?”

“I am looking for a rabbit named Flop Ear to play with,” answered
Slicko. “He and I used to have jolly times together. We were both
caught, but we were both let go again, and since then we have lived in
these woods. But I haven’t seen him for some days.”

“I met him, not long ago,” said Lightfoot. “Did he have one ear that
drooped over in a queer way?”

“Yes, that was Flop Ear,” answered the squirrel. “Please tell me where
to find him. I want to have some fun. We have both had many adventures
that have been put in books, and we like to talk about them.”

“So you have been put in a book, too,” said Lightfoot. “It is getting
to be quite fashionable, as the ladies in the park used to say. I’d
like to be in a book myself.”

“Perhaps you may be,” said Slicko. “I’ll tell you how I got in after I
have some fun with Flop Ear. Please tell me where I can find him.”

“I left him over that way,” and Lightfoot pointed with his horns.

“Thank you. I’ll see you again, I hope,” and Slicko was scampering away
with a nut in her mouth when Lightfoot called after her:

“Can you tell me where to find a canal? I was carried away on a canal
boat, and I think now, if I can find the canal, I can walk along the
path beside it and get to my own home. I am tired of wandering in the
woods.”

“There is a large brook of water over that way,” said Slicko, pointing
with her front paw from the tree. “I have heard them call it a canal.
Maybe that is what you are looking for.”

“Oh, thank you. Maybe it is,” said Lightfoot. “I’ll know it as soon as
I see it again.”

Leaving the jumping squirrel to frisk her way among the tree branches,
Lightfoot set off to find the “brook” as Slicko had called the canal.
It did not take him long to find it, for it curved around in a half
circle to meet the very woods in which the leaping goat then was.

“Yes, it’s the same canal,” said Lightfoot, as he saw coming slowly
along it a boat drawn by two big-eared mules. “Now all I have to do is
to follow the towpath, and I’ll soon be at the big city again, and I
can then find my way back to the shanty on the rocks, and Mike.”

Lightfoot might have reached the city had he walked the right way along
the canal bank, but he hurried along away from the big city instead of
toward it. Day after day he wandered on, and whenever he saw any men or
boys he hid in the trees or bushes along the towpath.

“I wonder when I shall come to the city,” thought Lightfoot, who was
getting tired.

On and on he went. He did not stop to speak to any of the canal horses
or mules. When he was hungry he ate grass or leaves, and when he was
thirsty he drank from woodland brooks or from the canal, where the
banks were not too steep.

One day Lightfoot came to a place where the canal passed through a
little village. The goat could see people moving about, some on the
banks of the canal.

“This does not look like the big city,” said the goat. “I think I will
ask one of the canal horses.”

He stepped from the bushes out on the path, and was just going to
speak to a horse, one of a team that was hauling a boat loaded with
sweet-smelling hay in bales, when a boy, who was driving the team, saw
the goat and cried:

“Ha! There is a Billie! I’m going to get him!” and he raced after
Lightfoot. But the goat was not going to be caught. Along the towpath
he ran, the boy after him. Lightfoot knew he could easily get away, but
then, right in front of him, came another boy with a long whip. This
boy, too, was driving a team of horses hitched to another canal boat.

“Stop that goat!” cried the first boy.

“I will,” said the other, holding out his whip.

[Illustration: “Mother, Mother!” he cried. “Look! Look! It――it’s
Lightfoot――come back to us!”]

Lightfoot did not know what to do. He did not want to run into the
woods on one side of the path, for fear he would be lost again. Nor
could he swim if he jumped into the canal. And then he saw, right in
front of him, a bridge over the water.

“That’s my chance,” thought the goat, and lightly he leaped to one
side, getting away from both boys, and over the bridge he ran. The boys
did not dare leave their horses long enough to follow.

Over the bridge and down a country road on the other side of the canal
ran Lightfoot. He saw some cows and sheep in the fields on either side
of the road. Then he saw a little white house with green shutters. In
the front yard, picking some flowers, was a woman. Lightfoot looked at
her.

“I wonder――I wonder,” said Lightfoot slowly to himself, “where I have
seen that woman before, for I am sure I have.”

The woman kept on picking flowers. Lightfoot stood near the gate
watching her, but she did not see him. Pretty soon she called:

“Mike, bring me the watering can. The flower beds are dry.”

“All right, Mother, I will. Sure if I had Lightfoot back again I’d make
a little sprinkling cart and have him draw it. It’s a grand place for
goats――the country farm.”

Lightfoot pricked up his ears. He could not understand it. But that
name Mike――that voice――

He walked into the yard. The woman picking flowers looked up. Mike
came along with the sprinkling can, and when he saw the goat he nearly
dropped it.

“Mother, Mother!” he cried. “Look! Look! It――it’s Lightfoot――come back
to us!”

“Lightfoot?”

“Sure! Look at the likes of him as fine as ever――finer! Oh, Lightfoot,
I’m so glad!” And this time Mike did drop the watering pot, splashing
the water all about as he ran forward to throw his arms around the
goat’s neck while Mrs. Malony patted him.

And so Lightfoot came to his new home. By mistake he had gone the wrong
way, but it turned out just right. He could not tell how glad he was to
see Mike and his mother again, for he could not speak their language.
But when Lightfoot met the horses, the cows and the pigs on the farm
the widow and her son owned, the goat told them all his adventures,
just as I have written them down in this book.

“Lightfoot has come back to me! Lightfoot has come back!” sang Mike. “I
wonder how he found this place?”

But Lightfoot could not tell. All he knew was that he was with his
friends again, and on a farm, which he thought much nicer than the
park, pretty as that was.

The leaping goat soon made himself at home. He was given a little stall
to himself in the stable with the horses, who grew to like him very
much.

Mike had brought with him from the city the goat wagon, and many a fine
ride he had in it, pulled along the country road by Lightfoot, who was
bigger and stronger than before.

“I wonder what Blackie, Grandpa Bumper and the other goats would think
of me now?” said Lightfoot one day as he rolled over and over in a
green meadow where daisies and buttercups grew.

But as the other goats were not there they could say nothing. And so
Lightfoot had his many adventures, and he was put in a book, just as he
hoped to be, so I suppose he is happy now.


THE END




 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――Printer’s, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
   corrected.

 ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

 ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.






End of Project Gutenberg's Lightfoot, the Leaping Goat, by Richard Barnum