t gained a fairly good position, when
smallpox overtook him, and during a long illness he had lost it.
Recovering and working his way up again elsewhere, he had lived frugally
in order to save a competence upon which to live with his daughter in
their own country to which he wished to take her.

When his wishes seemed about to be realized the bank in which his money
had been placed, failed, and he lost all his hard earned savings.
Weakened by discouragement he again fell ill, and then he decided to
sail for the Aleutians and see his daughter at all hazards. Penniless,
ill, and discouraged, he was a man who, in middle life, had still
nothing to show for years of work and hardships.

One redeeming feature of all this dark outlook, there was with him a
friend who was apparently moved by the misfortunes of Michaelovitz, and
that was a young Russian sailor with whom he had become acquainted some
years before, and who followed him wherever he went, even at the risk of
causing a corresponding failure in his own affairs by so doing.

The young man's name was Shismakoff, and he had proven himself not only
kindly and generous, but self-sacrificing and noble. Along with these
good and somewhat unusual qualities, he possessed more than average good
looks and abundant patience. He it was who now in the hospital
faithfully attended Michaelovitz, as was his habit.

This young man had been told but little of the family history of his
friend, only knowing that his wife was dead and that a daughter lived
upon the Aleutians with her aunt.

This much he knew upon landing. At sight of Eyllen's bright eyes and
rosy cheeks the young man's heart fluttered. She was good to look upon.
Without commenting upon it even to himself he immediately proceeded to
take, as compensation for attentions to her sick father, such keen
enjoyment in her presence as only those long isolated can know in the
society of ladies. Not that he forgot his manliness. For that the young
man was too sensible; but he simply drank in every word uttered by the
young girl, as a thirsty traveler would drink fresh water in a parched
and burning desert.

The girl, herself, was unconstrained. Probably in this lay her greatest
attraction. She had other hopes and interests, and they were centered in
her father's recovery, and in her rocks a few miles away on the
hillside.

Eyllen did not immediately relate her adventures to her father. He must
recover his health before she di