He piles them up on the table and tries to count them, but finds to his astonishment that this is impossible. The disks seem to multiply, so that when he tries to separate one from all the rest, it becomes many. No matter how many times he repeats this experiment, the "obscene miracle" keeps recurring; and finding himself seized by a sort of terror, he scoops them all up at once and throws them out the window, somehow realizing in the process that their number has dwindled again. The villagers soon discover the stones, of whose existence they were aware (they call them "the stones that spawn"), and realize where Craigie has been. Some of them are superstitiously terrified, but others are curious, and for a time he shows them off, demonstrating how their numbers mysteriously multiply and dwindle. Soon, however, he too feels a sort of revulsion and ceases the demonstration, returning to his hut. The more time passes, the more he becomes obsessed, consumed with what he describes as the monstrousness of these stones that cannot be counted. He begins to wish that he was mad, since he feels that would be preferable to the discovery that the universe itself can tolerate this sort of irrationality. Becoming fearful that the villagers may try to murder him for having profaned their secret, Craigie returns to Lahore, but finds no relief from his growing obsession with the blue stones, which begin to haunt his dreams as well as his days. He performs experiments that involve marking the stones by cutting holes or lines in them; the marked stones vanish when the quantity changes, sometimes reappearing later, sometimes disappearing forever. He performs countless experiments, dividing the stones into groups and trying to determine some pattern in the way their numbers vary, but his efforts are fruitless; there is no order to them that he can determine. After a month he abandons his efforts, and during a sleepless night and dawn he walks through the gates of a mosque. Not knowing why, he dips his hands in the fountain and prays to be freed from his burden. He hears no footsteps, but suddenly a beggar is there, a blind man who asks for alms. Craigie says that he has no coins, but the beggar insists that he has many. Understanding, Craigie gives him the stones, and the beggar says that he will give him a gift in return: "You may keep your days and nights, and keep wisdom, habits, the world." As silently as he appeared, the beggar vanishes into the dawn, taking the stones with him.