evening,
gentlemen. The day may come when some of you will be ashamed of this
day's work, that is if you've heart enough to be ashamed of anything."

So saying Monty walked slowly out, closing the door ostentatiously
behind him. His departure was greeted by a burst of laughter, and the
cheerfulness of the assembled miners having been restored by the
sacrifice of Monte Carlo, a subdued gaiety once more reigned in the
saloon.

Monty returned to his desolate cabin, and after lighting his candle
threw himself into his bunk. The man was coarse and ignorant, but he was
capable of keenly feeling the insult that had been put upon him. He knew
that he was hideously ugly, but he had never dreamed that the fact would
be made a pretext for thrusting him from the society of his kind.
Strange to say he felt little anger against his persecutors. No thoughts
of revenge came to him as he lay in the silence and loneliness of his
cabin. For the time being the sense of utter isolation crowded out all
other sensations. He felt infinitely more alone when the sound of voices
reached him from the saloon than he would have felt had he been lost in
the great North forest.

Before coming to Thompson's Flat he had lived in one of the large towns
of Michigan, where decent and civilized people had not been ashamed to
associate with him. Here, in this wretched mining camp, a gang of men,
guiltless of washing, foul in language, and brutal in instinct, had
informed him that he was unfit to associate with them. There had never
been any one among the miners for whom he had felt the slightest liking;
but it had been a comfort to exchange an occasional word with a
fellow-being. Now that he was sentenced to complete isolation he felt as
a shipwrecked man feels who has been cast alone on an uninhabited
island. If the men would only retract their sentence of banishment, and
would permit him to sit in his accustomed corner of the saloon he would
not care how coarsely they might insult him--if only he could feel that
his existence was recognized.

But no! There was no hope for him. The men hated him because of his
maimed and distorted face. They despised him, possibly because he did
not permit himself to resent their conduct with his revolver, and thus
give them an excuse for killing him. He could not leave the camp and
make his way without supplies to the nearest civilized community. There
was nothing for him to do but to work his miserable claim, and bea