As it chanced, that road took me by the Dole farm, where little Ike lived. I saw no one about the old, unpainted house or the long, weathered barn, which with its sheds stood alongside the road. But as I hurried by I heard some hogs making a great noise—apparently under the barn. They were grunting, squealing, and "barking" gruffly, as if they were angry.
As I stopped for an instant to listen, I heard a low, faint cry, almost a moan, which seemed to come from under the barn. It was so unmistakably a cry of distress that, in spite of my haste, I went up to the barn door. Again I heard above the roars of the hogs that pitiful cry. The great door of the barn stood partly open, and entering the dark, evil-smelling old building, I walked slowly along toward that end of it from which the sounds came.
Presently I came upon a rickety trapdoor, which opened into the hogpen; the cover of the trapdoor was turned askew and hung down into the dark hole. Beside the hole lay a heap of freshly pulled turnips, with the green tops still on them.
The hogs were making a terrible noise below, but above their squealing I heard those faint moans.
"Who's down there?" I called. "What's the matter?"
From the dark, foul hole there came up the plaintive voice of a child. "Oh, oh, take me out! The hogs are eating me up! They've bit me and bit me!"
It was little Ike. Dole and his wife, I learned later, had gone away for the day on a visit, and had left the boy alone to do the chores—among other things to feed the hogs at noon; but as Ike had tugged at the heavy trapdoor to raise it, he had slipped and fallen down through the hole.
The four gaunt, savage old hogs that were in the pen were hungry and fierce. Even a grown person would have been in danger from the beasts. The pen, too, was knee-deep in soft muck and was as dark as a dungeon. In his efforts to escape the hogs, the boy had wallowed round in the muck. The hole was out of his reach, and the sty was strongly planked up to the barn floor on all sides.
At last he had got hold of a dirty piece of broken board; backing into one corner of the pen, he had tried, as the hogs came "barking" up to him, to defend himself by striking them on their noses. They had bitten his arms and almost torn his clothes off him.
The little fellow had been in the pen for almost two hours, and plainly could not hold out much longer. Prompt action was necessary.