count the first thousand three or four times backwards and forwards, looking at every note and then I’d set to the second thousand; I’d count that half-way through and then hold some fifty-rouble note to the light, then turn it, then hold it to the light again — to see whether it was a good one. ‘I am afraid,’ I would say, ‘a relation of mine lost twenty-five roubles the other day through a false note,’ and then I’d tell them the whole story. And after I began counting the third, ‘No, excuse me,’ I would say, ‘I fancy I made a mistake in the seventh hundred in that second thousand, I am not sure.’ And so I would give up the third thousand and go back to the second and so on to the end. And when I had finished, I’d pick out one from the fifth and one from the second thousand and