then ran down the steps, while a laugh, as joyous as the water running at his
feet, floated down the slope to his ears. He saw the negro stoop, the little
girl bound lightly to her saddle; he saw her black curls shake in the
sunlight, again the merry laugh tinkled in his ears, and then, with a white
plume nodding from her black cap, she galloped off and disappeared among the
trees; and Chad sat looking after her--thrilled, mysteriously
thrilled--mysteriously saddened, straightway. Would he ever see her again?

The tall man and the lady in black went in-doors, the negro disappeared, and
the boy at the foot of the steps kept on rigging his pole. Several times
voices sounded under the high creek bank below him, but, quick as his ears
were, Chad did not hear them. Suddenly there was a cry that startled him, and
something flashed in the sun over the edge of the bank and flopped in the
grass.

"Snowball!" an imperious young voice called below the bank, "get that fish!"

On the moment Chad was alert again--somebody was fishing down there--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!"