www.sitemeter.com provides basic stats for free and you can make their small logo which appears on your site appear as a counter which will display the actual count for your site, which you can set to start off at any number that you want to. You can also choose to have them automatically e-mail you the stats once a week.
also if you want to hide the logos that free statistics companies put on your page you can use
enter webtracking code here
although this is likely to be against most stat company's TOS and could get your account closed if they notice, so make sure before you do it.
Not encouraging it, just showing you that it can be done ;)