But his hair was blond, and his eyes
were blue, and just now they were filled with unbounded amazement. Slowly
the fork loaded with beans descended to his plate, and he said again,
barely above a whisper:
"Where in God A'mighty's name DID you come from?"
There was nothing human in the one room of his wilderness cabin to speak
of. At the first glance there was nothing alive in the room, with the
exception of Jim Falkner himself. There was not even a dog, for Jim had
lost his one dog weeks before. And yet he spoke, and his eyes glistened,
and for a full minute after that he sat as motionless as a rock. Then
something moved--at the farther end of the rough board table. It was a
mouse--a soft, brown, bright-eyed little mouse, not as large as his
thumb. It was not like the mice Jim had been accustomed to see in the
North woods, the larger, sharp-nosed, rat-like creatures which sprung his
traps now and then, and he gave a sort of gasp through his beard.
"I'm as crazy as a loon if it isn't a sure-enough down-home mouse, just
like we used to catch in the kitchen down in Ohio," he told himself. And
for the third time he asked. "Now where in God A'mighty's name DID YOU
come from?"
The mouse made no answer. It had humped itself up into a little ball, and
was eyeing Jim with the keenest of suspicion.
"You're a thousand miles from home, old man," Falkner addressed it, still
without a movement.
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