“There he is! He’s in the loft!”
True enough. In the square doorway of the barn-loft was a medium size brown dog, peering out to catch their coming. Evidently he had heard their voices, and had howled for help.
“Now, I call that a shame!” declared Ned.
The dog howled back that indeed it was.
“Let’s rescue him,” proposed Hal, laying hold of a sapling, to keep the boat where the dog might see them, while they discussed him. “Why, he must be half starved!”
“Unless the family left him on purpose, and put some stuff in there for him to eat,” hazarded Ned.
“Then he ate it all up at once—dogs never save, like a cat,” rejoined Hal, sagely. “Besides, I don’t believe his folks did that—they simply deserted him, because they were scared.”
“But how can we get at him?” queried Ned.
Hal released his hold on the sapling, and sculled across to the barn. The dog, seeing them move toward him, whined frantically, and craned his neck to watch them.
They rasped along the gray boards of the barn until they came to a door, the upper half of which was out of water.