“Prisoner,” said the Judge, with a return of official dignity, “remember that your life is in peril.  Do you refuse?”

Joe lazily laid his arm on the back of his chair with (to quote the words of an animated observer) “the air of having a Christian hope and a sequence flush in his hand,” and said:  “Well, as I reckon I’m not up yer for stealin’ a ring that another man lets on to have found, and as fur as I kin see, hez nothin’ to do with the case, I do!” And as it was here that the Sheriff of Calaveras made a precipitate entry into the room, the mystery remained unsolved.

The effect of this freshly-important ridicule on the sensitive mind of Cass might have been foretold by Blazing Star had it ever taken that sensitiveness into consideration.  He had lost the good-humor and easy pliability which had tempted him to frankness, and he had gradually become bitter and hard.  He had at first affected amusement over his own vanished day dream—­hiding his virgin disappointment in his own breast; but when he began to turn upon his feelings he turned upon his comrades also.  Cass was for a while unpopular.  There is no ingratitude so revolting to the human mind as that of the butt who refuses to be one any longer.  The man who rejects that immunity which laughter generally casts upon him and demands to be seriously considered deserves no mercy.

It was under these hard conditions that Cass Beard, convicted of overt sentimentalism, aggravated by inconsistency, stepped into the Red Chief coach that evening.  It was his habit usually to ride with the driver, but the presence of Hornsby and Miss Porter on the box seat changed his intention.  Yet he had the satisfaction of seeing that neither had noticed him, and as there was no other passenger inside, he stretched himself on the cushion of the back seat and gave way to moody reflections.  He quite determined to leave Blazing Star, to settle himself seriously to the task of money-getting, and to return to his comrades, some day, a sarcastic, cynical, successful man, and so overwhelm them with confusion.  For poor Cass had not yet reached that superiority of knowing that success would depend upon his ability to forego his past.  Indeed, part of his boyhood had been cast among these men, and he was not old enough to have learned that success was not to be gauged by their standard.  The moon lit up the dark interior of the coach with a faint poetic light.  The lazy swinging of the vehicle that was bearing him away—­albeit only for a night and a day—­the solitude, the glimpses from the window of great distances full of vague possibilities, made the abused ring potent as that of Gyges.  He dreamed with his eyes open.  From an Alnaschar vision he suddenly awoke.  The coach had stopped.  The voices of men, one in entreaty, one in expostulation, came from the box.  Cass mechanically put his hand to his pistol pocket.

“Thank you, but I insist upon getting down.”