it was
all made up, which only goes to prove, what I never believed before,
that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, after all."

"Yes," replied Phil; "and the strangest part of it all is the way that
fur-seal's tooth has followed us and exerted its influence in our behalf
from the beginning to the very end. Why, sir, if it hadn't been for that
tooth you wouldn't have come to Chilkat, and we shouldn't be in the
happy position we are at this very moment."

"You don't mean to say," cried Captain Matthews, "that it turned up
again after your father lost it?"

"Oh yes, sir, and it's been with us, off and on, all the time."

"Then at last I can have the pleasure of showing it to my daughter.
Would you mind letting me have it for a few minutes?"

"Unfortunately, sir--"

"Now don't tell me that you have gone and lost it again."

"Not exactly lost it," replied Phil. "At the same time, I don't know
precisely where it is nor what has become of it, only it is somewhere
back in Klukwan, where it originally came from, and I have every reason
to believe that it is in possession of the principal Chilkat Shaman."

"I declare that is too bad!" exclaimed the Captain. "If I had known that
sooner I believe I should have kept right on and shelled the village
until they gave me the tooth, so strong is my desire to get hold of it."

"And so secured to yourself the ill luck of him who steals it," laughed
Phil.

That afternoon the _Phoca_ turned sharply to the right, and began to
thread the swift-rushing and rock-strewn waters of Peril Strait, the
narrow channel that washes the northern end of Baranoff Island, on which
Sitka is situated. Now Serge stood on the bridge beside his friend, so
nervous with excitement that he could hardly speak. Every roaring tide
rip and swirling eddy of those waters, every rock with its streamers of
brown kelp, every beach and wooded point were like familiar faces to the
young Russo-American, for just beyond them lay his home, that dear home
from which he had been more than three years absent.

Suddenly he clutched Phil's arm, and pointed to a lofty snow-crowned
peak looming high above the forest and bathed in rosy sunlight. "There's
Mount Edgecumbe!" he cried; and a few minutes afterward, "There's
Verstoroi." Phil felt the nervous fingers tremble as they gripped his
arm; and when, a little later the cutter swept from a narrow passage
into an island-studded bay, he could hardly hear the hoarse wh