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.
"But hev you ?" Cass presently asked of another.
"I lost my pile to Jack Hamlin at draw-poker, over at Wingdam last night," returned the other, pensively, "but I don't calkilate to find it lying round loose." Forced at last by this kind of irony into more detailed explanation, Cass confided to them his discovery, and produced his treasure.