re--and he sprang from his perch and ran toward the fish just as a
woolly head and a jet-black face peeped over the bank.

The pickaninny's eyes were stretched wide when he saw the strange
figure in coonskin cap and moccasins running down on him, his face
almost blanched with terror, and he loosed his hold and, with a cry of
fright, rolled back out of sight. Chad looked over the bank. A boy of
his own age was holding another pole, and, hearing the little darky
slide down, he said, sharply:

"Get that fish, I tell you!"

"Look dar, Mars' Dan, look dar!"

The boy looked around and up and stared with as much wonder as his
little body-servant, but with no fear.

"Howdye!" said Chad; but the white boy stared on silently.

"Fishin'?" said Chad.

"Yes," said Dan, shortly--he had shown enough curiosity and he turned
his eyes to his cork. "Get that fish, Snowball," he said again.

"I'll git him fer ye," Chad said; and he went to the fish and unhooked
it and came down the bank with the perch in one hand and the pole in
the other.

"Whar's yo' string?" he asked, handing the pole to the still trembling
little darky.

"I'll take it," said Dan, sticking the butt of his cane-pole in the
mud. The fish slipped through his wet fingers, when Chad passed it to
him, dropped on the bank, flopped to the edge of the creek, and the
three boys, with the same cry, scrambled for it--Snowball falling down
on it and clutching it in both his black little paws.

"Dar now!" he shrieked. "I got him!"

"Give him to me," said Dan.

"Lemme string him," said the black boy.

"Give him to me, I tell you!" And, stringing the fish, Dan took the
other pole and turned his eyes to his corks, while the pickaninny
squatted behind him and Chad climbed up and sat on the bank letting his
legs dangle over. When Dan caught a fish he would fling it with a whoop
high over the bank. After the third fish, the lad was mollified and got
over his ill-temper. He turned to Chad.

"Want to fish?"

Chad sprang down the bank quickly.

"Yes," he said, and he took the other pole out of the bank, put on a
fresh wriggling worm, and moved a little farther down the creek where
there was an eddy.

"Ketchin' any?" said a voice above the bank, and Chad looked up to see
still another lad, taller by a head than either he or Dan--evidently
the boy whom he had seen rigging a pole up at the big house on the hill.

"Oh, 'bout 'leven," said Dan, carelessly.

"Howdye!" sai