He had thrown himself half-dressed upon the bed, his monkish masquerade costume hanging over a chair near by. Turning and twisting about uneasily as the conflict in his mind became more and more earnest, the silver-pieces loose in his pocket rattled out, one rolling from the bed to the floor. He raised himself, and picked it up. It was a Mexican dollar, dated the year of his birth, and he had for years carried it as a pocket-piece. "I have half a mind," he soliloquized, tossing the coin in his hand, "to offer myself this very night. I don't think it would be so hard with this suit on as it would in my own clothes. It would be more natural to do any thing extraordinary in a mask. I've a mind to toss up for it. That is one way of settling it. It might go against me, though. However, it won't be any harm to see what it would have been if I _had_ tried it." The coin went spinning into the air. "Heads!" he called aloud. "Humph!" he commented inwardly, "It's tails. But of course I should have tried the best two in three. Heads! And heads it is, by thunder! That's one and one. Heads! Confound it, it's tails again. But then that was only to try what might have been. Here goes in earnest. Heads!" The dollar struck upon the edge of the bed, and Burleigh cried out "Bar that!" then, picking it up, found the head uppermost. "Why didn't I let that go?" he said. "Heads!" The coin spun round and round gayly. When at last it lay still, the reverse stared the lover in the face. "Plague take that dollar! it is always tails. I'll change it, and begin again. Heads now!" The new coin proved no less perverse than the old one, and turned its back toward the young man quite as resolutely as its predecessor. "Well, then, here goes,--tails! By the great horn spoon, heads it is! I'll make it the best three in five. Tails!" But neither the "best three in five" nor the "best four in seven" gave any thing of hope or comfort to the lovelorn swain. He ended by dashing the coins together between his palms with a great clash, all the combativeness in him aroused by the perverseness of fate. "I'll be hanged if I don't propose this very night," he said resolutely. "I'll not be beaten out of that by all the unlucky lucky-pennies between here and Africa. She can't do any more than refuse me, and I certainly never'll get her if I don't try." With which notable resolve burning in his heart, he adjusted his toilet, and descended to the work-a-day world. CHAPTER XXXIII. "WHEN SHE WILL, SHE WILL."