“Or one of the pieces for which Judas betrayed the Master,” suggested Barwood.

Megilp looked startled, and involuntarily pushed the money away from him.  “That is a singular fancy of yours.”

“It came to me quite spontaneously this moment,” said Barwood.  “I don’t know but it is, and yet it was a very natural sequence from what preceded.”

Both were abstracted for some moments, and contemplated in silence the bubbles twisting up the stems of the delicate wine-glasses.

“Do you suppose,” finally said Barwood, “that those coins, if extant, carry with them an enduring curse?”

“There’s no good in them, you may depend,” said the other.  By this time both bottle and plates were empty.  The train of thought they had been pursuing seemed to have found its climax in the turn given it by Barwood.  Over their coffee and dessert they discussed more cheerful topics.

“Come around to my place before you leave town,” said Megilp, as they shook hands at parting.  “I have a one-legged bronze Hercules from Pompeii.  I think ye’ll enjoy it.”

As he hobbled away he muttered to himself more than once, “It’s the divil’s own fancy, so it is.”

* * * * *

II.

ETHEREAL CLAIMS.

The business of the Bureau of Ethereal Claims at Washington was conducted by a moderate force of clerks, under the direction of General Bellwether.  The general had been a little of everything in his time.  At the outbreak of the war he abandoned an unprofitable insurance agency to raise a company.  He displayed considerable courage and strategic talent in his campaigning, came out a brevet brigadier, and had been making a good thing of it ever since in the government service.  The office bristled with military titles.  Everybody except Barwood and Judge Montane was either colonel, major, or captain.  As to the judge, a middle-aged, uncommunicative man who was known to be supporting a large family, he confessed one day over a bottle, ordered in by the bureau during the general’s absence, that his title was chiefly honorary.

“What court did you used to be judge of, Montane?” inquired young Mars Brown.

“I’ll tell you, boys,” replied the judge, yielding to the genial influences of the occasion; “I’m just no judge at all, do you see, except may be as I’d be a good judge of whiskey or the like.”

It was doubtful whether the claims of some others of the number could have been much better established.

Mars Brown, son of the senator of that name,—­a man whose influence few generals or bureaus of claims could afford to disregard,—­was naturally the most privileged character in the office.  He chatted familiarly with the general when that irregular chief was present, absented himself for several days at a time with perfect unconcern, came late in the morning, and went early, as he explained, to make