MARK TWAIN

the wagon, but neither was in sight. His body was warm
and his heart still throbbed faintly.

"I rose up to run for assistance, when an odd circum-
stance attracted my attention: he could not have lain
there the last two cold days and nights, in his feeble con-
dition, without dying—no snow had fallen during that
time to obliterate the tracks and yet there was no sign of
wheel, hoof or boot anywhere around, except my own
clearly marked footprints, winding away toward my
house! Here was a living man, lying on the snow in the
open prairie, with the smoothness of the snow around him,
totally unmarrccl except where he had turned over in it.
How did he get there without making a track? That was
the question. It was as startling as it was unaccountable."

The man is carried to the farmer's house and
restored to consciousness. The neighbors assem-
ble with many surmises as to how he came there
—among them the suggestion that he had been
brought there by spirits. When the waif is able
to speak they eagerly assemble to hear his story,
but then it is found that he speaks only in a for-
eign tongue. The schoolmaster, known to be fa-
miliar with some of the modern languages, was
sent for and in due time arrived. He at once
pronounced the man to be French.

"Can you understand him?"

"Perfectly," said the schoolmaster, who was now lion
number two.

"Then ask him how in the mischief he got there where
he was in the snow."

The Frenchman said that he would explain that cheer-
fully, but he said that the explanation would necessitate
another, and maybe he had better begin at the beginning
and tell the whole story, and let the schoolmaster trans-

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