"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.