He knelt and groped on the stone floor to a corner clear of the
fallen rubbish. On his way his fingers encountered a coin and
clutched it--comfort, tangible proof that he had not been dreaming.
He seated himself in the corner, propping his back there, and fell to
speculating--sensing the coin in his palm, fingering it from time to
time.

The Old Doctor had always, in his lifetime, been accounted a
well-to-do man. . . . Very likely he had started this hoard in
Bonaparte's days, and had gone on adding to it in the long years of
peace. . . . It would certainly be a hundred pounds. It might be a
thousand. One thousand pounds!

But no--not so fast! Put it at a hundred only, and daylight would be
the unlikelier to bring disappointment. The scattered coins he had
seen by that one brief flash of the candle danced and multiplied
themselves before his eyes like dots of fire in the darkness.
Still he resolutely kept their numbers down to one hundred.

A hundred pounds! . . . Why, that, or even fifty, meant all the
difference in life to him. He could look Pamphlett in the face now.
He would step down to the Bank to-morrow, slap seven sovereigns down
on the counter--but not too boldly; for Pamphlett must not suspect--
and demand the change in silver, with his receipt. Full quittance--
he could see Pamphlett's face as he fetched forth the piece of paper
and made out that quittance, signing his name across a postage stamp.

Not once in the course of his vision-building did it cross
Nicky-Nan's mind that the money was--that it could be--less than