And Billy was right about Mr. Brown's not wanting any more goats.
The day they landed Frank Brown went to claim his goat. Billy and his mother were still together, but as Frank was about to take Billy away a woe-begone looking little fat man came rushing up.
"Those should been my goats yet!" he exclaimed.
"Your goats?" said Mr. Brown, rather angrily. "Why, man, that one with the singed spots on his back we have just brought over with us from France."
"It makes me nothing out!" exclaimed the man. "They should been my goats! I know them both like it was mine own brother and sister, yes! I know the biggest one by such a black spot on her forehead and the other one by such singed places like vat iss on his back. So! I should bring them both over from Havre, and our ship got such a wreckness in the big thunder weather, and Ach, I could cry mit weeping. My name is Hans Zug and I am a poor man. Yes! I had more as two hundred goats and these two is all what I got now, and if you take them away I don't got any. No!"
One of the sailors from the cattleship who had been taken on board with Billy's mother came up just then and said that Hans was telling the truth. Mr. Brown looked perplexed.
"It's true," he said, "that we got this goat out of the ocean. It is scarcely possible that two goats should be burned exactly alike and this one either slipped loose from our carriage in Havre or was taken away from us there by this man. I have already paid twice for it; once in Europe, once on the ocean, and now I am expected to pay for him a third time in America. Frank, get your goat and come on!"
Poor Hans did not know what to say or do. Mr. Brown was evidently rich and powerful and Hans was afraid he might get himself into trouble. He looked so miserable, however, that Mr. Brown relented, and taking out his pocket-book, handed Hans some money.
"Here," he said, "I'll buy this goat again and then I'll be tempted to hire somebody to hang it, only I'm afraid some butcher would sell it to me a fourth time for mutton."
Frank giggled at this and his father, too, cleared up his anger in a laugh. Then Billy, in spite of all his mother's bleatings, was led away from her. Within an hour he was put in a baggage car of a train for the West where the Browns lived. This time he was not crated, but was tied to a ring with a stout rope.