one
to fit them the more perfectly for the more important adventure.

When they reached the mysterious swimmer they were surprised to find
him a mere boy, some fourteen years of age.

"What a strange face!" whispered Marian, when they had assisted the
dripping stranger into the boat.

They studied him for a moment in silence. His hair and eyes were
black, his face brown. He wore a single garment, cleverly pieced
together till it seemed one skin, but made of many bird skins,
eiderduck, perhaps. This garment left his arms and legs free for
swimming.

He said nothing, simply stared at them as if in bewilderment.

"We must get him ashore at once," said Lucile. "He must have swum a
long way."

Fifteen minutes later, after tying up the boat, Lucile came upon Marian
picking the feathers from a duck they had shot that morning.

"Goin' to make him some broth," she explained, tossing a handful of
feathers to the wind. "Must be pretty weak."

Lucile stole a glance at the stranger's face.

"Do you think he's oriental?" she whispered.

"Might be," said Marian. "You don't have to be so careful to whisper
though; he doesn't speak our language, it seems, nor any other that I
know anything about. Very curious. I tried him out on everything I
know."

"Chinese, trying to smuggle in?"

"Maybe."

"He doesn't seem exactly oriental," said Lucile, looking closely at his
face.

With his eyes closed as if in sleep, the boy did not, indeed, seem to
resemble very closely any of the many types Lucile had chanced to meet.
There was something of the clean brown, the perfect curve of the
classic young Italian; something of the smoothness of skin native to
the Anglo-Saxon, yet there was, too, the round face, the short nose,
the slight angle at the eyes which spoke of the oriental.

"He looks like the Eskimos we have on the streets of Nome," suggested
Marian, "only he's too light-complexioned. Couldn't be, anyway."

"Not much likelihood of that," laughed Lucile. "Come two thousand
miles in a skin kiak to have his craft wrecked in a calm sea. That
couldn't happen."

"Whoever he is, he's a splendid swimmer," commented Marian. "When we
reached him he was a mile from any land, with the sea bearing
shoreward, and there wasn't a sail or steamer in sight."

The two of them now busied themselves with preparing the evening meal,
and for a time forgot their strange, uninvited guest.

When Lucile next looked his way she caugh