boasted that he could make three thousand between dawn and midnight, if
absolutely necessary, yet he confessed that among the last five hundred a
few might be found in which the leaves would be too tightly rolled or too
loosely packed. Up to his limit, however, he was to be relied upon, and
not one of his hundred score of cigarettes would be found to differ in
weight from another by a single grain.

It is perhaps time to describe the outward appearance of the busy worker,
out of whose life the events of some six-and-thirty hours furnish the
subject of this little tale. The Count is thirty years old, but might be
thought older, for there are grey streaks in his smooth black hair, and
there is a grey tone in the complexion of his tired face. In figure he is
thin, broad shouldered, sinewy, well made and graceful. He moves easily
and with a certain elegance. His arms and legs are long in proportion to
his body. His head is well shaped, bony, full of energy--his nose is
finely modelled and sharply aquiline; a short, dark moustache does not
quite hide the firm, well-chiselled lips, and the clean-cut chin is
prominent and of the martial type. From under his rather heavy eyebrows a
pair of keen eyes, full of changing light and expression, look somewhat
contemptuously on the world and its inhabitants. On the whole, the Count
is a handsome man and looks a gentleman, in spite of his occupation and in
spite of his clothes, which are in the fashion of twenty years ago, but
are carefully brushed and all but spotless. There are poor men who can
wear a coat as a red Indian will ride a mustang which a white man has left
for dead, beyond the period predetermined by the nature of tailoring as
the natural term of existence allotted to earthly garments. We look upon a
centenarian as a miracle of longevity, and he is careful to tell us his
age if he have not lost the power of speech; but if the coats of poor men
could speak, how much more marvellous in our eyes would their powers of
life appear! A stranger would have taken the Count for a half-pay officer