"He's a bird!" With a flip or two of his paddle, the stranger shot his canoe across the stream, and floated quietly to the landing.
Barry ran down to meet him.
"I say, that was beautifully done," he cried, taking the nose of the canoe while the man stepped ashore and stood a moment looking back at the water.
"A leetle more to the left would have been better, I think.

She took some water," he remarked in a slow voice, as if to himself.
He was a strange-looking creature.

He might have stepped out of one of Fenimore Cooper's novels.

Indeed, as Barry's eyes travelled up and down his long, bony, stooping, slouching figure, his mind leaped at once to the Pathfinder.
"Come far ?" asked Duff, approaching the stranger.
"Quite a bit," he answered, in a quiet, courteous voice, pausing a moment in his work.
"Going out ?" enquired Duff.
"Not yet," he said.

"Going up the country first to The Post." "Ah, we have just come down from there," said Duff.