e way your mind would keep doing things you didn't
want it to do. As, again, this very morning when, with his silver coin
out in his hand, he had merely wished to regard it as a great deal of
silver coin, a store of plenty against famine, which indeed it looked
to be under a not-too-minute scrutiny. It looked like as much as two
dollars and fifty cents, and he would have preferred to pocket it again
with this impression. Yet that rebellious other part of his mind had
basely counted the coin even while he eyed it approvingly, and it had
persisted in shouting aloud that it was not two dollars and fifty cents
but one dollar and eighty--five cents.

The counting part of the mind made no comment on this discrepancy; it
did not say that this discovery put things in a very different light. It
merely counted, registered the result, and ceased to function, with an
air of saying that it would ascertain the facts without prejudice and
you could do what you liked about them. It didn't care.

That night a solitary guest enjoyed the quiet hospitality of the Crystal
Palace Hotel. He might have been seen--but was not--to effect a late
evening entrance to this snug inn by means of a front window which had,
it would seem, at some earlier hour of the day, been unfastened from
within. Here a not-too-luxurious but sufficing bed was contrived on the
floor of the lobby from a pile of neatly folded blankets at hand, and a
second night's repose was enjoyed by the lonely patron, who again at
an early hour of the morning, after thoughtfully refolding the blankets
that had protected him, was at some pains to leave the place as he had
entered it without attracting public notice, perchance of unpleasant
character.

On this day it would not have been possible for any part of the mind
whatsoever to misvalue the remaining treasure of silver coin. It had
become inconsiderable, and even if kept from view could be, and was,
counted again and again by mere blind fingertips. They contracted,
indeed, a senseless habit of confining themselves in a trouser's pocket
to count the half-dollar, the quarter, and the two dimes long after the
total was too well known to its owner.

Nor did this total, unimpressive at best, long retain even these poor
dimensions. A visit to the cafeteria, in response to the imperious
demands of a familiar organic process, resulted in less labour, by two
dimes, for the stubbornly reiterative fingertips.

An ensuing visit to the Ho