You pick a glade. Any one of the twenty five.

You carry your gold out there yourself, set it down in the wet grass, and walk away from it. Nobody guards it. There is no lock worth the name and nowhere to hide it. The whole forest knows it's there.

That is the wager. Not a button and not a bet slip. A box in a field, and you deciding which field.

Then you go and wait for the dark.

Sixteen carts are still sitting where their owners left them.

What the Sheriff took doesn't stay with him. It comes back out to the ones still standing, dropping into their open chests from somewhere they can't see, weighted by what each of them risked.

That's the alms. It arrives like a gift and it doesn't feel like one, because you know exactly who paid for it.

Tonight it was them. It won't always be.

You pick a glade. Any one of the twenty five.

You carry your gold out there yourself, set it down in the wet grass, and walk away from it. Nobody guards it. There is no lock worth the name and nowhere to hide it. The whole forest knows it's there.

That is the wager. Not a button and not a bet slip. A box in a field, and you deciding which field.

Then you go and wait for the dark.

Sixteen carts are still sitting where their owners left them.

What the Sheriff took doesn't stay with him. It comes back out to the ones still standing, dropping into their open chests from somewhere they can't see, weighted by what each of them risked.

That's the alms. It arrives like a gift and it doesn't feel like one, because you know exactly who paid for it.

Tonight it was them. It won't always be.

You pick a glade. Any one of the twenty five.

You carry your gold out there yourself, set it down in the wet grass, and walk away from it. Nobody guards it. There is no lock worth the name and nowhere to hide it. The whole forest knows it's there.

That is the wager. Not a button and not a bet slip. A box in a field, and you deciding which field.

Then you go and wait for the dark.

Sixteen carts are still sitting where their owners left them.

What the Sheriff took doesn't stay with him. It comes back out to the ones still standing, dropping into their open chests from somewhere they can't see, weighted by what each of them risked.

That's the alms. It arrives like a gift and it doesn't feel like one, because you know exactly who paid for it.

Tonight it was them. It won't always be.