The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-01-31
AH'M COIN MAD

AH'M GO
despair. It is difficult for starving
man to be brave for long. What could
he do? Absolutely nothing. He might
drop dead from exhaustion before he
got chance to earn meal, though ne
tramped the huge city searching for
work. The trade he knew was already
overcroWded with thousands of men
eager for the place he had been COM
PEELED TO abandon. Even the street
crossings were owned by impoverished
wretches who earned what living they
got by sweeping them. If he were pre-
scented with a crossing he had not the
money to buy a broom. Gibbons, fool
though he might be, spoke the truth
! when he said q workingman was but
cog in a large wheel; the wheel might
get a new cog, or new set of cogs,
but the cog separated from the wheel
was as useless as bit of old iron.
Langly stole softly in upon his
stricken friend, closing the door
stealthily after him, with the bearing
| of man about to commit a crime and
certain of being caught. Braunt gave
him no greeting, but glowered upon
| him from under his frowning, shaggy
J eyebrows.
There is some money here that you
are to take" said the organst timidly,
placing heap of coins on the table.
Braunt, with an angry gesture, swept
away the pile, and the silver jirgled on
the floor.
"Ah'n have none O. thy money, as
Alive told ZEE before,' he roared. "Ah
can earn ma money, if All boot get tn
chance
Langly. with no word of remon-
STRANGE, stopped and patiently collected
every scattered piece.
1t is not my money" he said on ris-
ing. 1T was sent to you, and is for
you and for no one else. It belongs to
you; I have no right to it, and this
very money you yourself have earned.
] don't know who has a better claim to
it,
Again placing the silver and gold on
the table, Langly tiptoed out of the
room in some haste before Braunt
could collect his wits and make reply.
The Yorkshireman, with curious in
consistency, had accepted without any
question the money which had saved
his child from a pauper funeral, al
though he must have known, had he
reflected, that the expenses were paid
by some one; yet charity which did not
come direct awakened no resentment
in his turbulent nature, while the bald
offer of money or food sent him in /
stantly into tempest Of anger.
He thought over the organist's words. !
HOW COuiQ the money De his. HOW ndQ
he earned the coins? His slow brain |
gradually solved the problem. The |
money evidently had come from Hope |
or MOnkton, or perhaps from Sartwell. !
He cursed the three of them, together /
and separate, and in his rage once (
more scattered the heap to the floor.
The coins whirled hitler and thither,
at last spinning to rest on the bare
boards. Braunt watched them as they
law fhnra o1iftnrino in tho dim liohr
his mind ceasing TO cogitate on the
respective culpability of employers or
employed for the. state of things under
which he suffered. He had formerly
thought of Monkton and Hope as purse
proud, naughty capitalists. until he
saw their cringing, frightened de-
meanor when escorted out of the works
by the policemen, and since that time
he had been endeavoring to recon-
struct his ideas concerning them. So,
after all, why should he refuse to take
money from them if one or the other
had sent it? He gazed at the coins
on the floor. white spiorches and yell
low points of light, hitching round his
chair the better to see them. He had
heard that a man might be hypnotized
by gazing steadily On a silver piece
held in the palm. AS Braunt watched
the coins intentlV he passed his hand
swiftly across his brow, concentrating
his gaze by half closing his eyes. He
leaned forward and downward. Surely
they were moving, edging closer to
each other, the larger heaps attracting
the various atoms of metal, as he re-
with bewildered brain, was
the case with money all the world over,
which gave a plausible cause, such as
one has in dreams, for the coins creep
ing together, although what was left
Of his reason told him that it was all
an illusion. The sane and insane sec
tions of his brain struggled for mas
terry, while Braunt leaned closer and
closer over the money, sitting forward
now on the very edge of his chair,
breathing hard, almost wholly absorbed
in the strange movement on the floor, !
and gradually losing interest in the
mental conflict regarding the reality of
what his strained, unwinking eyes told ;
him was going on at his feet. At last
he noticed that the heap was slowly
but imDerceDtibly sliding away from ]
him. All doubts about the genuineness
Of what he saw vanished. The money
was trying to escape. He sprang to
his feet and jumped to the door, plac-
ing his back against it,
oh, no." he shouted, you're mine,
you're NINE
Crouching down, never taking his
eyes from the coins, he got upon his {
hands and knees, crawling toward t
them craftiiy; then bounced suddenly '
On the main heap, while the isolated /
pieces scuttled back to their former ]
positions. pretending they had never
shifted their places. He laughed sneer- !
ngly at their futile attempts to de- /
ceive him, poured the heap into his f
pocket, and captured each separate c
soin that remained by springing upon |
t. He searched the whole room like '
some animal, nosing into the corners,
'rouching lower and proceeding more v