st of Siberia, while they camped on
the beach there on a trading voyage in a thirty-foot skin-boat. These
sketches had come to the notice of the ethnological society. They now
wrote to her, asking that she spend a summer on the Arctic coast of
Siberia, making sketches of these natives, who so like the Eskimos are
yet so unlike them in many ways. The pay, they assured her, would be
ample; in fact, the figures fairly staggered her. Should she complete
this task in safety and to the satisfaction of the society, she would
then be prepared to pay her way through a three years' course in the
best art school of America. This had long been a cherished dream.
Marian's eyes shone with happiness.

When she had read the letter through, she went for a five-mile walk
down the beach.

Upon returning she burst in on her companion.

"Lucile," she exclaimed, "how would you like to spend the summer in
Siberia?"

"Fine! Salt mine, I suppose," laughed Lucile. "But I thought all
political prisoners had been released by the new Russian government?"

"I'm not joking," said Marian.

"Explain then."

Marian did explain. At the end of her explanation Lucile agreed to go
as Marian's traveling companion and tent-keeper. In two weeks her
school work would be finished. It would be a strange, a delightful
summer. Their enthusiasm grew as they talked about it. Long after
they should have been asleep they were still making plans for this,
their most wonderful adventure.

"But how'll we go over?" exclaimed Lucile suddenly.

"Gasoline schooner, I suppose."

"I'd hate to trust any men I know who run those crafts," said Marian
thoughtfully.

Lucile considered a moment.

"Native skin-boat, then."

"That would be rather thrilling--to cross from the new world into the
old in a skin-boat."

"And safe enough too," said Marian. "Did you ever hear of a native
boat being lost at sea?"

"One. But that one turned up at King's Island, a hundred and fifty
miles off its course."

"I guess we could risk it."

"All right, let's go."

Marian sprang to her feet, threw back the blankets to her couch, and
fifteen minutes later was dreaming of a tossing skin-boat on a wild sea
of walrus monsters and huge white bears.

Her wild dreams did not come true. When the time came to cross the
thirty-five miles of water which separates the Old World from the New,
they sailed and paddled over a sea as placid as a mill-pond. Here a
brown seal bo