"I beg pardon," he said, in a broken speech which showed his foreign birth; "but it iss so beautiful; to break it iss wrong."
Something in his appearance and speech fixed my attention. He was a tall, bent man, perhaps sixty years of age, of gray hair and beard, with the glasses and the unmistakable air of the student. His stooped shoulders, his weakened eye, his thin, blue-veined hand, the iron-gray hair standing like a ruff above his forehead, marked him not as one acquainted with a wild life, but better fitted for other days and scenes.
I pushed the trinket along the table towards him.
"'Tis of little value," I said, "and is always in the way when I would find anything in my pocket."
"But once some one hass made it; once it hass had value. Tell me where you get it?"
"North of the Platte, in our western territories," I said. "I once traded in that country."
"You are American?"
"Yes."
"So," he said thoughtfully. "So. A great country, a very great country. Me, I also live in it."
"Indeed?" I said. "In what part?"