veral score of hiding-places in and about the
cabin. After a concealment he would breathe freely again, perhaps for
several nights, only to collar the Man with the Gash in the very act of
unearthing the sack. Then, on awakening in the midst of the usual
struggle, he would at once get up and transfer the bag to a new and more
ingenious crypt. It was not that he was the direct victim of these
phantasms; but he believed in omens and thought-transference, and he
deemed these dream-robbers to be the astral projection of real personages
who happened at those particular moments, no matter where they were in
the flesh, to be harboring designs, in the spirit, upon his wealth. So
he continued to bleed the unfortunates who crossed his threshold, and at
the same time to add to his trouble with every ounce that went into the
sack.

As he sat sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that brought him
to his feet with a jerk. The pleasures of life had culminated in the
continual weighing and reweighing of his dust; but a shadow had been
thrown upon this pleasant avocation, which he had hitherto failed to
brush aside. His gold-scales were quite small; in fact, their maximum
was a pound and a half,--eighteen ounces,--while his hoard mounted up to
something like three and a third times that. He had never been able to
weigh it all at one operation, and hence considered himself to have been
shut out from a new and most edifying coign of contemplation. Being
denied this, half the pleasure of possession had been lost; nay, he felt
that this miserable obstacle actually minimized the fact, as it did the
strength, of possession. It was the solution of this problem flashing
across his mind that had just brought him to his feet. He searched the
trail carefully in either direction. There was nothing in sight, so he
went inside.

In a few seconds he had the table cleared away and the scales set up. On
one side he placed the stamped disks to the equivalent of fifteen ounces,
and balanced it with dust on the other. Replacing the weights with dust,
he then had thirty ounces precisely balanced. These, in turn, he placed
together on one side and again balanced with more dust. By this time the
gold was exhausted, and he was sweating liberally. He trembled with
ecstasy, ravished beyond measure. Nevertheless he dusted the sack
thoroughly, to the last least grain, till the balance was overcome and
one side of the scales sank to the tab