"Pierce my pearls!" exclaimed the miner, "if ever I saw a rag in my
shack before that would leave a white mark on anything! Say!" And he
took off the youngster's old fur cap.

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."