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?”