Mr. Hopper alights from the car with complacency.  He stands for a while on a corner, against the hot building, surveying the busy scene, unnoticed.  Mules!  Was it not a prophecy,—­that drove which sent him into Mr. Carvel’s store?

Presently a man with a gnawed yellow mustache and a shifty eye walks out of one of the offices, and perceives our friend.

“Howdy, Mr. Hopper?” says he.

Eliphalet extends a hand to be squeezed and returned.  “Got them vouchers?” he asks.  He is less careful of his English here.

“Wal, I jest reckon,” is the answer:  The fellow was interrupted by the appearance of a smart young man in a smart uniform, who wore an air of genteel importance.  He could not have been more than two and twenty, and his face and manners were those of a clerk.  The tan of field service was lacking on his cheek, and he was black under the eyes.

“Hullo, Ford,” he said, jocularly.

“Howdy, Cap,” retorted the other.  “Wal, suh, that last lot was an extry, fo’ sure.  As clean a lot as ever I seed.  Not a lump on ’em.  Gov’ment ain’t cheated much on them there at one-eighty a head, I reckon.”

Mr. Ford said this with such an air of conviction and such a sober face that the Captain smiled.  And at the same time he glanced down nervously at the new line of buttons on his chest.

“I guess I know a mule from a Newfoundland dog by this time,” said he.

“Wal, I jest reckon,” asserted Mr. Ford, with a loud laugh.  “Cap’n Wentworth, allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Hopper.  Mr. Hopper, Cap’n Wentworth.”

The Captain squeezed Mr. Hoppers hand with fervor.  “You interested in mules, Mr. Hopper?” asked the military man.

“I don’t cal’late to be,” said.  Mr. Hopper.  Let us hope that our worthy has not been presented as being wholly without a sense of humor.  He grinned as he looked upon this lamb in the uniform of Mars, and added, “I’m just naturally patriotic, I guess.  Cap’n, ’ll you have a drink?”

“And a segar,” added Mr. Ford.

“Just one,” says the Captain.  “It’s d—­d tiresome lookin’ at mules all day in the sun.”

Well for Mr. Davitt that his mission work does not extend to Bremen, that the good man’s charity keeps him at the improvised hospital down town.  Mr. Hopper has resigned the superintendency of his Sunday School, it is true, but he is still a pillar of the church.

The young officer leans against the bar, and listens to stories by Mr. Ford, which it behooves no church members to hear.  He smokes Mr. Hopper’s cigar and drinks his whiskey.  And Eliphalet understands that the good Lord put some fools into the world in order to give the smart people a chance to practise their talents.  Mr. Hopper neither drinks nor smokes, but he uses the spittoon with more freedom in this atmosphere.

When at length the Captain has marched out, with a conscious but manly air, Mr. Hopper turns to Ford—­ “Don’t lose no time in presenting them vouchers at headquarters,” says he.  “Money is worth something now.  And there’s grumbling about this Department in the Eastern papers, If we have an investigation, we’ll whistle.  How much to-day?”