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