hands then he began thrusting packages of cigars; packages
containing a dozen boxes each, until the cockpit looked like moving day
in a tobacco shop. Behind the last of these, he came.

"Oh, _la la_," Tommy's jaw dropped. "Where did you tie up with this
stuff? We've been together all the time!"

"Not all the time," the professor chuckled. "Before you were awake this
morning I was in town for camera supplies, and brought back, also, much
of that most genial and ameliorating of influences exerted upon us in
life--cigars! How much do I pay?"

"How many have you?"

"Ten thousand."

"Ten thousand cigars!" We stared at him.

"That's a lot of ameliorating influence," one of the officers laughed.
"But, in spite of it, I'll have to charge you on nine thousand, nine
hundred--unless a hundred belong to each of your friends. Everyone's
entitled to bring in a hundred free."

"A hundred are mine," Tommy spoke up at once. "I haven't won cigars so
fast, ever! Jack, you for a hundred. Gates, you, too. Colonel," he
turned to the officer--out of the Army he scattered the titles of
Colonel, Judge, Governor and Parson with a free hand--"suppose you all
take a hundred each. It'll be a whole lot cheaper for Sir Walter, here!"

The professor was giggling.

"They have cost me nothing," he cried, "for last night I have won almost
a thousand dollars at that wretched place--see, here is plenty with
which to pay!"

And a fortunate thing it was that he had, being called on for something
in the neighborhood of three hundred dollars.

The officer--Hardwick, by name--and his associate were good fellows, as
I have said. They had greeted us as congenial spirits and, probably on
this account, I noticed some embarrassment on his part when he leaned
into the light and slowly looked over the money Monsieur had given him.
The rest of us were conversing in a more or less distrait fashion till
this unpleasant duty should be finished, when he took an electric torch
from his pocket and flashed it on one of the bills; then on another, and
so through the lot. Hesitatingly he touched Monsieur's arm, asking:

"Is this the money you won last night?"

"That? It is just as they paid me."

A moment of silence, then:

"I'm sorry to tell you, but these two fifty-dollar bills are
counterfeits."

There ensued an absolute hush, and before my eyes arose the vision of
Sylvia's father paying his supper check with a crisp fifty.

"Counterfeit," the professo