He was speechless for a moment, for the little fellow's hair was as brown as a nut.
"I snum!" said Jim, wiping the wondering little face in a sort of fever of discovery and taking off color at every daub with the rag. "White kid—painted! Ain't an Injun by a thousand miles!"
And this was the truth. A timid little paleface, fair as dawn itself, but smeared with color that was coming away in blotches, emerged from the process of washing and gazed with his big, brown eyes at his foster-parent, in a way that made the miner weak with surprise. Such a pretty and wistful little armful of a boy he was certain had never been seen before in all the world.
"I snum! I certainly snum!" he said again. "I'll have to take you right straight down to the boys!"
At this the little fellow looked at him appealingly. His lip began to tremble.
"No-body—wants—me," he said, in baby accents, "no-body—wants—me—anywhere."
CHAPTER III
THE WAY TO MAKE A DOLL
For a moment after the quaint little pilgrim had spoken, the miner stared at him almost in awe. Had a gold nugget dropped at his feet from the sky his amazement could scarcely have been greater.
"What's that?" he said. "Nobody wants you, little boy? What's the matter with me and the pup?" And taking the tiny chap up in his arms he sat in the doorway and held him snugly to his rough, old heart and rocked back and forth, in a tumult of feeling that nothing could express.