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.