that Barry!” grumbled young Stevens. “He was crazy to try her out. And we got up this morning before sun-up. Sure, she whizzed——”

“We were watching you come down the river,” admitted Dan.

“Say! couldn’t she travel?” exclaimed Stevens.

“You bet,” agreed Billy. “How far up the Colasha did you go?”

“Went around Island Number One——”

“And we’d been all right,” snarled Barry Spink, who seemed to take an interest in affairs for the first time, “if it hadn’t been for that dummy. He put the jinx on us.”

“The jinx!” exclaimed Billy, laughing.

But Dan had noticed something else, and he repeated, curiously: “‘Dummy?’ What d’ye mean—dummy?”

They had reached the motor-truck and Billy hustled the half-drowned youths into the seat and bundled them up in the robe and blankets while Dan started the motor.

“Back to the fire house—eh, Dan?” he asked his brother, as he slid under the wheel.

“The boiler room at the shops is nearer. They’ll take ’em in and dry them,” advised the older Speedwell.

“I—I don’t care where in the world you take us as—as long’s it’s hot,” wailed Barrington Spink.

“But how about this ‘dummy’?” demanded Dan, of Monroe Stevens.

“Why, we had stopped at Island Number One and were repairing the rudder, when along come this feller who couldn’t talk.”

“Couldn’t talk?” cried Billy, waking up to the coincidence, too, and looking at Dan, amazed. “Why! there must be two of them.”

“Two what?” queried Stevens.

“You called him a dummy. Is he really dumb?”

“He mumbled something or other when we asked him to help us,” explained Monroe; “but it wasn’t anything human. And Barry declared it was bad luck to meet a dummy.”

“And so it is!” snapped young Spink. “Doesn’t this prove it?”

“Funny about there being two fellows who act like dummies being at large,” remarked Dan to Billy.

“I should say so,” agreed the younger brother. “Say, Money! where’d your dummy go to when he wouldn’t help you chaps?”

“He was comin’ across from the mainland, and he went up into the woods on Island Number One. I bet he’s stopping there,” answered Stevens.

“Nonsense! there’s nothing on that island. No hut, nor any shelter. Bet he was going right along across the river.”

“Well, he didn’t go on while we were up that way, for when we got the White Albatross fixed, we sailed around the island and come down on the far side—and the snow lay all along the edge of the island there, and there wasn’t a footprint in it. Oh! here’s the shops. My goodness! won’t it be—be go-o-od to get next to—a fire,” chattered Stevens.

When the Speedwells had seen the shivering castaways humped upon stools before the boilers, they hurried away to deliver the remainder of their bottled milk. On the way to Colonel Sudds’s Dan said:

“What do you think of this ‘dummy’ they talk about, Billy?”

“Funny. Wonder if he’s the twin of the one we’ve got at our house?”

“Question is, have we got him at our house?” returned Dan, thoughtfully.

“Pshaw! the folks wouldn’t let him leave so soon. If he was at Island Number One so early, he must have left our house soon after we did,” declared Billy. “And that isn’t troubling me,” he