His voice, as he bade them good afternoon, was singularly full and deep, and seemed to issue almost oddly from behind a heavy, blond moustache. As Henry Burns expressed it afterward, it reminded him of a ventriloquist he had seen once with a travelling show, because the man’s lips seemed hardly to move, and the muscles of his face scarcely changed as he spoke. His eyes, of a clear but cold blue, lighted up, however, in a pleasant way, as he thanked them. He wore a suit of navy blue, and a yachting-cap on his head. “This is the greatest luck in the world for me,” he said. “You see, I want to catch the train that will take me down to Bellport, and I can get it at the Landing below. This fine craft of yours will take me—” He stopped with strange abruptness. If the attention of Jack Harvey and Henry Burns had, by chance, been directed more closely to him, and less upon the handling of their yacht, they might have observed a surprised and puzzled look come over his face. They might have observed him half-start up from his seat, like a man that had suddenly come, all unwittingly, upon a thing he had not expected to see. But the two boys, intent upon their sailing, noticed only that the man had left a sentence half-finished. They turned upon him inquiringly. “What were you going to say?” asked Henry Burns. The man settled back in his seat, reached a hand calmly into an inner coat-pocket, and drew forth a cigar-case. “I dare say you don’t smoke,” he said, offering it to them. “No, well, I didn’t think so. You’re a little bit young for that. Let me see, what was I saying?—oh, yes, I was about to remark that this boat would take me down to the Landing on time. She does walk along prettily, and no mistake.” With which, he lighted the cigar and began puffing enjoyably. But his eyes darted here and there, quickly, sharply, over the boat. Through a cloud of cigar smoke, he was scrutinizing it from one end to the other. “You handle her well,” he said. “Had her long?” “Why, no,” replied Harvey. “The fact is, though we have had other boats—that is, I have—and we have handled others, this is our first sail in this one. You see, we got her in an odd way, last season—just at the close of the season, in fact; and she was not in shape for sailing then. So we had to lay her up for the winter. This is really the first trying out we have given her.” “Indeed, most interesting,” replied the stranger, arising from his seat and advancing toward the cabin bulkhead, where he stood, apparently gazing off across the river. Then, as he returned to his seat again, he added, “That’s rather an elaborate ornamenting of brass around the companionway.” “Isn’t it, though!” exclaimed Harvey, proudly. “You don’t see them much handsomer than that often, eh?” “Why, no, now you speak of it,” replied the man. “You don’t, and that’s a fact. “In fact,” he added, stealing a sidelong glance at the two boys, “it’s the only one just like it that I ever saw.