“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.