me another shout, a hopeless one, from the robbers.

"We beat them. We--" Marian broke short off. "Look, Lucile. Look
over there!"

To the right of them, bobbing up and down as they had seen it once
before, was the head of the strange brown boy.

"Do you suppose they did kidnap him?" said Lucile.

"We can go by where he is," said Marian. "They can't catch us now."

The boat swung round and soon they were beside the swimmer.

"Look," cried Lucile, "his feet are tied tightly together! He mustn't
have been their friend. They carried him off. They had him bound and
he rolled down to the beach to escape by swimming."

They dragged the boy on board. Then they were away again, full speed
once more.

"Well, that's done," sighed Lucile, as she settled herself at the
wheel. "They've our rowboat and we have theirs. I hope that after
this they will let us alone."

"The person who is bothering me," said Marian with a frown, "is this
little brown visitor of ours. Who is he? Where did he come from?
Where does he want to go? Where should he go? What are we going to do
with him?"

"That," said Lucile, wrinkling her brow, "is more than I know. Neither
do I know how those men came to steal him. They probably kidnapped him
from his home, wherever that is, and have been making a slave of him."

"I think you are right," said Marian, "and probably the problem will
solve itself in time."

The problem did solve itself, at least part of it, that very night; the
remaining part of the problem was to be solved months later under
conditions so strange that, had the girls been able to vision them
lying away, like a mirage on the horizon of the future, they would have
been tempted to change their plans for the year just before them.

The first question, what was to be done with the little brown stranger,
was solved that night. He solved it himself. The girls had decided
upon maintaining a watch. Lucile was on the second watch at something
like one o'clock in the morning, when she saw the brown boy stirring in
his place by the fire. She was seated far back in the shadowy depths
of the tent with a rifle across her knee. He could not see her, though
she could catch his every move in the moonlight.

With a gliding motion he carried his two blankets to a shadowy spot and
there folded each one, laying one upon the other. He then proceeded to
gather up certain articles about camp. A small ax, a knife, fishing
tackle a