[CHAPTER I.]
A CLASH IN BLACK AND YELLOW.
"Woosh!"
"Fo' de lan' sakes!"
Then followed a bump, a clatter of displaced stones, and sounds of a fall. When quiet once more ensued, two surprised youngsters were on hands and knees, peering at each other like a couple of hostile bantams. Between them lay a string of perch, and off to one side a hickory fishpole, and an old tomato can with a choice assortment of angleworms squirming out of it.
One of the lads was a fifteen-year-old Chinese, in fluttering blouse, wide trousers, wooden sandals and straw hat; the other was a diminutive moke, black as the ace of spades, barefooted, and wearing a "hickory" shirt and ragged trousers.
The bank of Fourth Lake, where they had come together so unexpectedly, was an admirable place for such collisions. In this place the bank was some thirty feet high, steep and rocky. A narrow path, thickly bordered with bushes, angled from top to bottom. At the foot of the path was a boathouse.
Now, if a Chinese boy, in a good deal of a hurry, went slipping and sliding downward from the top of the path, it will be readily understood that he could not put on the brakes in time to avoid an obstruction appearing suddenly in front of him as he scrambled around a bushy angle.
And if that obstruction happened to be a diminutive darky, sitting squarely in the path, sunning himself and half asleep, too drowsy to take notice of sounds above and behind him, it will also be understood that a collision was certain.