“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.

“Little pard,” he said, “you bet me and Tintoretto want you, right here.”

For his part, Tintoretto thumped the house and the step and the miner’s shins with the clumsy tail that was wagging his whole puppy body.  Then he clambered up and pushed his awkward paws in the little youngster’s face, and licked his ear and otherwise overwhelmed him with attentions, till his master pushed him off.  At this he growled and began to chew the big, rough hand that suppressed his demonstrations.

In lieu of the ears of the rabbit to which he had clung throughout the night, the silent little man on the miner’s knee was holding now to Jim’s enormous fist, which he found conveniently supplied.  He said nothing more, and for quite a time old Jim was content to watch his baby face.

“A white little kid—­that nobody wants—­but me and Tintoretto,” he mused, aloud, but to himself.  “Where did you come from, pardner, anyhow?”

The tiny foundling made no reply.  He simply looked at the thin, kindly face of his big protector in his quaint, baby way, but kept his solemn little mouth peculiarly closed.

The miner tried a score of questions, tenderly, coaxingly, but never a thing save that confident clinging to his hand and a nod or a shake of the head resulted.

By some means, quite his own, the man appeared to realize that the grave little fellow had never prattled as children usually do, and that what he had said had been spoken with difficulties, only overcome by stress of emotion.  The mystery of whence a bit of a boy so tiny could have come, and who he was, especially after his baby statement that nobody wanted him, anywhere, remained unbroken, after all the miner’s queries.  Jim was at length obliged to give it up.