afforded.

"Wal, it's an awful dirty cloth that you can't put a little more
blackness on, I reckon," he drawled, and dipping it into the water he
rubbed it vigorously across the gasping little fellow's face.

Then, indeed, the man was astounded. A wide streak, white as milk, had
appeared on the baby countenance.

"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."

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