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 table.  Equilibrium, however, was restored by the addition of a pennyweight and five grains to the opposite side.  He stood, head thrown back, transfixed.  The sack was empty, but the potentiality of the scales had become immeasurable.  Upon them he could weigh any amount, from the tiniest grain to pounds upon pounds.  Mammon laid hot fingers on his heart.  The sun swung on its westering way till it flashed through the open doorway, full upon the yellow-burdened scales.  The precious heaps, like the golden breasts of a bronze Cleopatra, flung back the light in a mellow glow.  Time and space were not.

“Gawd blime me! but you ‘ave the makin’ of several quid there, ’aven’t you?”

Jacob Kent wheeled about, at the same time reaching for his double-barrelled shotgun, which stood handy.  But when his eyes lit on the intruder’s face, he staggered back dizzily. It was the face of the Man with the Gash!