The inside of one of those barges is not much of a place to be in. When you go down through the hatch, you see that the inside is damp, with maybe three or four inches of water in it, and a smell of tar or oakum. It is about five feet from the bottom boards to the floorboards, so a fellow can stand up there, but he can’t run much because there are criss-cross braces. Neither is the inside of a barge one big room. Two great, thick bulkheads, or wooden walls, run lengthwise of the barge and cut it into three narrow halls--as you might call them--eighty feet long and about five feet wide. These two barges were pretty well loaded with willows. One of them was loaded from the tip of its bow to the end of its stern--willows piled ten or twelve feet high. The other, the “U.S. 420,” was almost as well loaded, but not quite. So Wampus and I stood looking at the barges and we thought maybe we would climb aboard and climb on the willows and have some fun, but, when we were going to, a man we hadn’t seen sat up and looked at us. He had red hair and a scar over one eye. And that was the first we saw of the Red-Headed Bandit. CHAPTER IX THE ABDUCTION OF ROVER The Red-Headed Bandit had been lying on top of the willows, and when he sat up so sudden he gave us a scare. We did not like the looks of him. “Hello!” he said, and he looked us over. Then he said, “Where did you get that dog?” “Raised him from a pup,” I said. “What!” he exclaimed. “Don’t try to tell me anything like that, young feller. That’s my dog. A feller stole that dog from me.” Well, I began to back away. I reached down and got hold of the rope that was fastened to Rover’s collar. “He did not!” I said. “Mr. Jack Betts gave my sister this dog when he was a pup.” “Well, don’t get mad!” the man said. “It might be I am mistaken. What will you take for the dog? I’ll give you a quarter for him.” “He ain’t for sale,” I said. “I’ll give you half a dollar.” “No, he ain’t for sale.” “Give you a dollar for him,” said the man, but I didn’t wait to have any more talk with him. I started back for our cottage. Mr. Edwin Skreever was still walking up and down the porch and I sat down on the rocks. Wampus stood a minute or so, and then he reached into his pocket and took out a nail. He had a pocket half full of old, rusty nails he had knocked out of old driftwood--old iron nails, all sizes. “Look here, Mr. Skreever,” he said, “can you do this?” He took the nail, flat, between his thumb and two first fingers and threw it as hard as he could out over the river, making it spin, and it sang as it went. Whine is a better word; it whined like a guitar string when you pick it and then run your thumb up it. “Did you ever hear anybody make a nail sing like that?” Wampus asked.