Jacob Kent was feeling particularly good that afternoon. The record had
been broken the previous night, and he had sold his hospitality to no
less than twenty-eight visitors. True, it had been quite uncomfortable,
and four had snored beneath his bunk all night; but then it had added
appreciable weight to the sack in which he kept his gold dust. That
sack, with its glittering yellow treasure, was at once the chief delight
and the chief bane of his existence. Heaven and hell lay within its
slender mouth. In the nature of things, there being no privacy to his
one-roomed dwelling, he was tortured by a constant fear of theft. It
would be very easy for these bearded, desperate-looking strangers to make
away with it. Often he dreamed that such was the case, and awoke in the
grip of nightmare. A select number of these robbers haunted him through
his dreams, and he came to know them quite well, especially the bronzed
leader with the gash on his right cheek. This fellow was the most
persistent of the lot, and, because of him, he had, in his waking
moments, constructed several 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.