“I cannot get it through my head where the boat came from,” said Abel.

“It was God’s messenger, and His way of sending us the boy,” asserted Mrs. Abel.  “He sent the boat with the boy out of the farthest mists of the sea, from the place where storms are born, and He sent the boat on a clear day, when we could see it, and He kept you near the boat when you would have gone away, until the boy cried.  God meant that we should have a child.”

“Yes,” agreed Abel.  “It was God’s way of giving us a child for our own.  But why did He send a man with the boy and a dead man, at that?”

“I do not know,” said Mrs. Abel, “but there was some reason, I suppose.  The child has a skin so white and its clothes are so fine, I am sure it must have come from Heaven.  We know it came from the Far Beyond, for you say the man was not a fisherman, and the boat is not a fisherman’s boat.”

This was an awe-inspiring solution of the mystery, and Abel and his wife accepted it with due solemnity.  A suggestion of the miraculous appealed to them, for they did not in the least believe that the days of miracles were past, as indeed they are not.  They had already, with big, hospitable hearts, accepted the child as their own.  Now, believing that it was a gift from Heaven, sent directly to them by God, as a token of particular favor, they would not have parted from it for all the riches in the world.

The afternoon was far spent when, at last, Abel, in his skiff, rowed out to the anchored derelict and brought it in again to the landing place.  Here a search of the boat discovered, in addition to the blankets which had formed the boy’s bed, the water jug, the tin cup, and biscuit bag, a quantity of loaded shotgun shells and a double-barreled shotgun.  The shotgun, which had been hidden in the bottom of the boat by the folds of a sail, called forth an exclamation of delight from Abel.  It was a marvel of workmanship, and its stock and lock were beautifully engraved.  And with the sail, which would prove useful, was a tarpaulin and a quantity of rope.

In the pockets of the dead man were a jackknife, a small notebook, a piece of pencil, and an empty wallet.  Nothing which seemed important, but all of which Abel preserved carefully as a future heritage for the boy.

There were no boards from which to fashion a coffin, so they wrapped the unknown in an old sail, and that evening, when the western sky was aglow with color buried him in the grave Abel had made.  And over the grave Abel read in Eskimo a chapter from the Testament, and said a prayer, and to the doleful accompaniment of lapping waves upon the shore he and Mrs. Abel sang, in Eskimo, one of the old hymns for, as Christians, they must needs give the stranger a Christian burial, the only service they could render him.

Abel and his wife looked upon the advent of the little boy as a Divine blessing.  They firmly believed that God had sent him to them to increase their happiness, and they lavished upon him all the love and affection of their simple hospitable natures.  They were deeply solicitous for his health, and responding to gentle care the fever quickly left him, for he was, naturally, a strong and well-developed child.