“Strange sort of fellow,” he mused. “Said he had a picture of my thoughts. How could he have? But then how could he know those things he told me?”
Johnny had read books about the way people think. He remembered reading something about one person being able to read another’s thoughts. Could this little man do that? Had he read his thoughts? He shuddered a little. It was so mysterious, so sort of ghost-like.
“He couldn’t have read my mind, at least not when he found out I wasn’t going to the pep meeting. I hadn’t thought of it once, at least not tonight.”
The whole affair was so baffling that he gave it up and turned his thoughts to Saturday’s baseball game.
Johnny had known for a long time that Centralia, nine miles away, and Hillcrest had been rivals, friendly rivals, but the keenest of rivals all the same. For four years, one straight after the other, Centralia had won the annual summer baseball tournament.
“Last year,” Johnny thought, “Hillcrest almost beat them in the last game. But this year we’ll win if—
“But then—” his mood changed. “He said we wouldn’t win, that little yellow man with the wrinkled face said that!” he exclaimed, half in anger. “How could he know? And yet, how could he know what I had been thinking?
“Oh well!” He stamped the ground defiantly. “What’s one game? There are others to be played. If we lose one, we’ll win in the end. And we’ll not lose this one! See if—”
He broke short off. Soft footsteps were approaching. It was the little Chinaman again.
“It’s he,” Johnny whispered. “Will I never get rid of him? He’s like a shadow, a ghost haunting a fellow in the night.”