Skippy waited until Tully was fast asleep that night, then he crept stealthily out of the shanty with the dog skipping and sniffing at his heels. He was careful to close the door softly behind him; he wanted to be alone.

It was a different Skippy that trod those decks, a new and older Skippy, who looked about the lumbering old barge through his father’s eyes. It did not seem possible to him that Skinner could so ruthlessly order him away from the only home he had. Yet he realized that not many hours hence he would not even have that home.

He went forward and, getting to his knees, leaned far over and stared down at the trickling waters of the muddy inlet lapping against the hull. The dog, thinking him to be playing, jumped about with a soft whine to draw his master’s attention.
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Skippy tumbled him about for a while, then climbed down with him into the borrowed kicker that was anchored alongside the barge.

“We’re gonna take one last cruise out and back in the inlet again—see, Mugs? I’ve just gotta see how the Minnie M. Baxter’s gonna look when I think of her afterwards. I don’t want to forget it’s where I lived with two of the best pals I’ll ever have, outside of Pop. Gee, Mugs, maybe it’s silly to feel so over a barge,” he confided to the attentive puppy, “but I gotta feel that it’s sumpin’ I must think a lot of. Every time I’ve visited Pop, he’s asked me how was the Minnie M. Baxter. Just like as if she was a human being, he asked about her! So I love her on accounta my Pop. He’s proud of her because she was so hard to get and because he decided to quit Ol’ Flint and be honest so’s I’d have a better chance.”

He started the kicker after this long confidence and steered it with one hand, putting his free arm about the dog. And as if cherishing the whispered co............