inscription, "May to Cass."

Like most of his fellow gold-seekers, Cass was superstitious. "Cass!"
His own name! He tried the ring. It fitted his little finger closely. It
was evidently a woman's ring. He looked up and down the highway. No one
was yet stirring. Little pools of water in the red road were beginning
to glitter and grow rosy from the far-flushing east, but there was no
trace of the owner of the shining waif. He knew that there was no woman
in camp, and among his few comrades in the settlement he remembered to
have seen none wearing an ornament like that. Again, the coincidence
of the inscription to his rather peculiar nickname would have been a
perennial source of playful comment in a camp that made no allowance
for sentimental memories. He slipped the glittering little hoop into his
pocket, and thoughtfully returned to his cabin.

Two hours later, when the long, straggling procession, which every
morning wended its way to Blazing Star Gulch,--the seat of mining
operations in the settlement,--began to move, Cass saw fit to
interrogate his fellows. "Ye didn't none on ye happen to drop anything
round yer last night?" he asked, cautiously.

"I dropped a pocketbook containing government bonds and some other
securities, with between fifty and sixty thousand dollars," responded
Peter Drummond, carelessly; "but no matter, if any man will return a few
autograph letters from foreign potentates that happened to be in it,--of
no value to anybody but the owner,--he can keep the money. Thar's
nothin' mean about me," he concluded, languidly.

This statement, bearing every evidence of the grossest mendacity, was
lightly passed over, and the men walked on with the deepest gravity.