ary married?"

"Unfortunately, he is not."

There was an adjoining room to which the men were permitted to retire
for a smoke if the spirit moved them, and when Prescott entered it for
the first time he found it already filled, General Markham himself
presiding. The General was a middle-aged man, heavy and slow of speech,
who usually found the talk of the Mosaic Club too nimble for his wits
and began his devotions to tobacco at an early hour.

"Have a cigar, Prescott," he said, holding up a box.

"That looks like a Havana label on the box," replied Prescott. "Are they
genuine?"

"They ought to be genuine Havanas," replied the General. "They cost me
five dollars apiece."

"Confederate money," added a colonel, Stormont; "and you'll be lucky if
you get 'em next year for ten dollars apiece."

Colonel Stormont's eyes followed Prescott's round the room and he
laughed.

"Yes, Captain Prescott," he said, "we are a somewhat peculiar company.
There are now fourteen men in this room, but we can muster among us only
twenty-one arms and twenty-four legs. It's a sort of general assembly,
and I suppose we ought to send out a sergeant-at-arms for the missing
members."

The Colonel touched his own empty left sleeve and added: "But, thank
God, I've got my right arm yet, and it's still at the service of the
Confederacy."

The Member of Congress, Redfield, came into the room at this moment and
lighted a pipe, remarking:

"There will be no Confederacy, Colonel, unless Lee moves out and attacks
the enemy."

He said this in a belligerent manner, his eyes half closed and his chin
thrust forward as he puffed at his pipe.

An indignant flush swept over the veteran's face.

"Is this just a case of thumbs up and thumbs down?" he asked. "Is the
Government to have a victory whenever it asks for it, merely because it
does ask for it?"

Redfield still puffed slowly and deliberately at his pipe, and did not
lower his chin a fraction from its aggravating height.

"General Lee overestimates the enemy," he said, "and has communicated
the same tendency to all his men. It's a fatal mistake in war; it's a
fatal mistake, I tell you, sir. The Yankees fight poorly."

The flush on the face of the Confederate colonel deepened. He tapped his
empty sleeve and looked around at what he called the "missing members."

"You are in Congress, Mr. Redfield," he said, "and you have not seen the
Yankees in battle. Only those who have not met them on t