n at home, and then struck out boldly in his leaky canoe for
the island--a tufted, tussocky shred of the marshy promontory torn off
in some tidal storm. It was a lovely day, the bay being barely ruffled
by the afternoon "trades;" but as he neared the island he came upon the
swell from the bar and the thunders of the distant Pacific, and grew a
little frightened. The canoe, losing way, fell into the trough of the
swell, shipping salt water, still more alarming to the prairie-bred boy.
Forgetting his plan of a stealthy invasion, he shouted lustily as the
helpless and water-logged boat began to drift past the island; at which
a lithe figure emerged from the reeds, threw off a tattered blanket, and
slipped noiselessly, like some animal, into the water. It was Jim, who,
half wading, half swimming, brought the canoe and boy ashore. Master
Skinner at once gave up the idea of invasion, and concluded to join the
refugees.

This was easy in his defenceless state, and his manifest delight in
their rude encampment and gypsy life, although he had been one of Li
Tee's oppressors in the past. But that stolid pagan had a philosophical
indifference which might have passed for Christian forgiveness, and
Jim's native reticence seemed like assent. And, possibly, in the minds
of these two vagabonds there might have been a natural sympathy for this
other truant from civilization, and some delicate flattery in the fact
that Master Skinner was not driven out, but came of his own accord.
Howbeit, they fished together, gathered cranberries on the marsh, shot
a wild duck and two plovers, and when Master Skinner assisted in the
cooking of their fish in a conical basket sunk in the ground, filled
with water, heated by rolling red-hot stones from their drift-wood fire
into the buried basket, the boy's felicity was supreme. And what an
afternoon! To lie, after this feast, on their bellies in the grass,
replete like animals, hidden from everything but the sunshine above
them; so quiet that gray clouds of sandpipers settled fearlessly around
them, and a shining brown muskrat slipped from the ooze within a few
feet of their faces--was to feel themselves a part of the wild life in
earth and sky. Not that their own predatory instincts were hushed by
this divine peace; that intermitting black spot upon the water, declared
by the Indian to be a seal, the stealthy glide of a yellow fox in the
ambush of a callow brood of mallards, the momentary straying of an