However, the moving platform quickly carried us away, and the mob dwindled, so that when we reached our destination only a nucleus remained. This, however, followed me persistently, gathering to itself other idlers, who ran beside me, peering up into my face, and fingering my tattered clothes, and pulling at the tails of my coat in half-infantile and half-simian curiosity. The building which we entered contained a single large room on the ground floor, with desks ranged around the walls. Behind each desk a clerk in blue was seated, either contemplating the scene before him or listening disdainfully to applications. I was taken to a desk near the door. One of the policemen now left me, and the other, who had contrived, without my knowledge, to possess himself of the gold watch that had been in my pocket for the last century, placed it upon the desk before the clerk, who came back slowly and resentfully from a fit of abstraction. “Committed stranger?” he inquired. “Yap,” said the policeman. “He had this.” The clerk stared at the watch, raised it, and let it fall on its face. The glass splintered, and he jumped in his seat as if a pistol had been discharged. “What is it?” he screamed. “It looks like an antique chronometer,” said the policeman, examining it curiously. “See the twelve hours on the dial.” “Well, they aren’t listed,” the clerk grumbled. “You lie, you thief,” retorted the policeman. With some reluctance, but without resentment, the clerk opened a large book in a paper cover, closely printed in fine hieroglyphics interspersed with figures. He turned from place to place until he found what he was trying not to find. “Museum chronometers, first century B.C. Listed at two hektones,” he mumbled, and began unlocking a drawer. “B. C.!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean?” He paused in the act of pulling the drawer out and glared at me. “I said ‘museum chronometer of the first century before civilization,’ you fool!” he snarled. “That’s what it is, and that’s what it’s listed at. Here!” Extracting some metal counters from the drawer, which he closed with a bang, he thrust them toward me. “What am I to do with these?” I asked. The policeman winked at him, and I caught the word “Spain.” The clerk’s amazement changed to malignant mirth. “The value of your chronometer,” he screamed in my ear, as if I were deaf. “But I don’t intend to sell it,” I retorted. A shriek of laughter at my side apprised me that the crowd had gathered about me. The space about the desk was packed with the same sneering, mirthless faces, and fifty hands were raised in mimicry or gesticulation. “What a barbarian!” murmured a young woman with a typewriter badge on her shoulder. The clerk looked at her and winked maliciously. Then he addressed me again.