"Holloa!" cried he, leaping down. The bathing attendant, on his side, uttered
a loud cry of astonishment when he beheld in the bath, a man completely
dressed.

The other, however, retained sufficient presence of mind to whisper to him,
"'Tis a bet, and I have won it!" But the first thing he did as soon as he got
home, was to have a large blister put on his chest and back to draw out his
madness.

The next morning he had a sore chest and a bleeding back; and, excepting the
fright, that was all that he had gained by the Shoes of Fortune.


V. Metamorphosis of the Copying-Clerk

The watchman, whom we have certainly not forgotten, thought meanwhile of the
galoshes he had found and taken with him to the hospital; he now went to fetch
them; and as neither the lieutenant, nor anybody else in the street, claimed
them as his property, they were delivered over to the police-office.*

*As on the continent, in all law and police practices nothing is verbal, but
any circumstance, however trifling, is reduced to writing, the labor, as well
as the number of papers that thus accumulate, is enormous. In a
police-office, consequently, we find copying-clerks among many other scribes
of various denominations, of which, it seems, our hero was one.


"Why, I declare the Shoes look just like my own," said one of the clerks,
eying the newly-found treasure, whose hidden powers, even he, sharp as he was,