m fat."

"Dead men are not fat," Opee-Kwan confessed. "Thou hast fared well, but
it is strange. No man may mate with the off-shore wind and come back on
the heels of the years."

"I have come back," Nam-Bok answered simply.

"Mayhap thou art a shadow, then, a passing shadow of the Nam-Bok that
was. Shadows come back."

"I am hungry. Shadows do not eat."

But Opee-Kwan doubted, and brushed his hand across his brow in sore
puzzlement. Nam-Bok was likewise puzzled, and as he looked up and down
the line found no welcome in the eyes of the fisherfolk. The men and
women whispered together. The children stole timidly back among their
elders, and bristling dogs fawned up to him and sniffed suspiciously.

"I bore thee, Nam-Bok, and I gave thee suck when thou wast little,"
Bask-Wah-Wan whimpered, drawing closer; "and shadow though thou be, or
no shadow, I will give thee to eat now."

Nam-Bok made to come to her, but a growl of fear and menace warned him
back. He said something angrily in a strange tongue, and added, "No
shadow am I, but a man."

"Who may know concerning the things of mystery?" Opee-Kwan demanded,
half of himself and half of his tribespeople. "We are, and in a breath
we are not. If the man may become shadow, may not the shadow become man?
Nam-Bok was, but is not. This we know, but we do not know if this be
Nam-Bok or the shadow of Nam-Bok."

Nam-Bok cleared his throat and made answer. "In the old time long ago,
thy father's father, Opee-Kwan, went away and came back on the heels of
the years. Nor was a place by the fire denied him. It is said ..." He
paused significantly, and they hung on his utterance. "It is said," he
repeated, driving his point home with deliberation, "that Sipsip, his
_klooch_, bore him two sons after he came back."

"But he had no doings with the off-shore wind," Opee-Kwan retorted. "He
went away into the heart of the land, and it is in the nature of things
that a man may go on and on into the land."

"And likewise the sea. But that is neither here nor there. It is said
... that thy father's father told strange tales of the things he saw."

"Ay, strange tales he told."

"I, too, have strange tales to tell," Nam-Bok stated insidiously. And,
as they wavered, "And presents likewise."

He pulled from the bidarka a shawl, marvelous of texture and color, and
flung it about his mother's shoulders. The women voiced a collective
sigh of admiration, and old Bask-Wah-Wan ruffled the gay