it," said Tom soberly.

The two men glanced at each other and laughed outright. Tom did not
quite appreciate what they were laughing at but it encouraged him to
greater boldness, and shifting from one foot to the other, he said,

"The thing I noticed specially was how his mouth went sideways when he
talked, so one side of it seemed to slant the same as his moustache,
like, and the other didn't."

The officers smiled at each other again, but the one quizzing Tom looked
at him shrewdly and seemed interested.

"I mean the two ends of his moustache that stuck up like the
Kaiser's----"

"Oh, yes."

"I mean they didn't slant the same when he talked. One was crooked."

Again the officers smiled and the one who had been speaking said
thoughtfully,

"I see."

Tom shifted back to his other foot while the officer seemed to ruminate.

"He had a breed mark, too," Tom volunteered.

"A what?"

"Breed mark--it's different from a species mark," he added naively.

The officer looked at him rather curiously. "And what do you call a
breed mark?" he asked.

Tom looked at the other man who seemed also to be watching him closely.
He shifted from one foot to the other and said,

"It's a scout sign. A man named Jeb Rushmore told me about it. All
trappers know about it. It was his ear, how it stuck out, like."

He shifted to the other foot.

"Yes, go on."

"Nothing, only that's what a breed sign is. If Jeb Rushmore saw a bear
and afterwards way off he saw another bear he could tell if the first
bear was its grandmother--most always he could.

"Hmm. I see," said the officer, plainly interested and watching Tom
curiously. "And that's what a breed sign is, eh?"

"Yes, sir. Eyes ain't breed signs, but ears are. Feet are, too, and
different ways of walking are, but ears are the best of all--that's one
sure thing."

"And you mean that relationships can be determined by these breed
signs?"

"I don't mean people just looking like each other," Tom explained,
"'cause any way animals don't look like each other in the face. But you
got to go by breed signs. Knuckles are good signs, too."

"Well, well," said the officer, "that's very fine, and news to me."

"Maybe you were never a scout," said Tom naively.

"So that if you saw your Prussian major's brother or son somewhere,
where you had reason to think he would be, you'd know him--you'd
recognize him?"

Tom hesitated and shifted again. It was getting pretty deep for him.