I know the value exactly because when he found the miser’s hoard, honest Sam made two telephone calls immediately, the first to Bob Parsons, and the other to my editor at The Chronicle. I was sent over to check out the story, which I’m sure you read the next day. He left things just as he had found them, in a leather wallet inside an old rusting tin box behind the dry wall, lid opened to show the leather wallet inside.

When I drove up to the house, Bob and Sarah Parsons had just arrived. “Let’s count it,” I said. I did, with the other three looking on. That’s how I knew there was exactly $820, in tens and twenties, with one fifty-dollar bill at the end of the roll of bills.