“You kin freeze to me, Miss,” said Charley; and Miss Porter, turning her frank laugh and frankly opened palm to Cass, half returned the pressure of his hand and slipped away.

A few days after the stage-coach incident Mountain Charley drew up beside Cass on the Blazing Star turnpike, and handed him a small packet.  “I was told to give ye that by Miss Porter.  Hush—­listen!  It’s that rather old dog-goned ring o’ yours that’s bin in all the papers.  She’s bamboozled that sap-headed county judge, Boompointer, into givin’ it to her.  Take my advice and sling it away for some other feller to pick up and get looney over.  That’s all!”

“Did she say anything?” asked Cass, anxiously, as he received his lost treasure somewhat coldly.

“Well, yes!  I reckon.  She asked me to stand betwixt Hornsby and you.  So don’t you tackle him, and I’ll see he don’t tackle you,” and with a portentous wink Mountain Charley whipped up his horses and was gone.

Cass opened the packet.  It contained nothing but the ring.  Unmitigated by any word of greeting, remembrance, or even raillery, it seemed almost an insult.  Had she intended to flaunt his folly in his face, or had she believed he still mourned for it and deemed its recovery a sufficient reward for his slight service?  For an instant he felt tempted to follow Charley’s advice, and cast this symbol of folly and contempt in the dust of the mountain road.  And had she not made his humiliation complete by begging Charley’s interference between him and his enemy?  He would go home and send her back the handkerchief she had given him.  But here the unromantic reflection that although he had washed it that very afternoon in the solitude of his own cabin, he could not possibly iron it, but must send it “rough dried,” stayed his indignant feet.

Two or three days, a week, a fortnight even, of this hopeless resentment filled Cass’s breast.  Then the news of Kanaka Joe’s acquittal in the state court momentarily revived the story of the ring, and revamped a few stale jokes in the camp.  But the interest soon flagged; the fortunes of the little community of Blazing Star had been for some months failing; and with early snows in the mountain and wasted capital in fruitless schemes on the river, there was little room for the indulgence of that lazy and original humor which belonged to their lost youth and prosperity.  Blazing Star truly, in the grim figure of their slang, was “played out.”  Not dug out, worked out, or washed out, but dissipated in a year of speculation and chance.

Against this tide of fortune Cass struggled manfully, and even evoked the slow praise of his companions.  Better still, he won a certain praise for himself, in himself, in a consciousness of increased strength, health, power, and self-reliance.  He began to turn his quick imagination and perception to some practical account, and made one or two discoveries which quite startled his more experienced, but more conservative companions.  Nevertheless, Cass’s discoveries and labors were not of a kind that produced immediate pecuniary realization, and Blazing Star, which consumed so many pounds of pork and flour daily, did not unfortunately produce the daily equivalent in gold.  Blazing Star lost its credit.  Blazing Star was hungry, dirty, and ragged.  Blazing Star was beginning to set.