When you consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead, you would understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation was just the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it took on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the surplus.

So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the king's-evil.

I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each gold coin, you see, and do its work for it.

It might strain the nickel some, but I judged it could stand it.

As a rule, I do not approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway.