iged to fight like that
on two meals a week, the meals consisting of boiled horse and mouldy
crackers, drinking the same swamp water you have been standing in all
day! And I suppose you think that our regiment lost heavily, Colonel?
Eh? Well, you are mistaken! We had the crack regiment and scarcely
suffered at all, in comparison with some of the others. They took a
tally the day before I left, and found eight sound eyes, twelve legs
that were good for anything, and six usable arms, in the whole
division."

"Oh good Lord! he will kill me!" cried the Colonel, starting at last to
his feet and utterly unable to endure such torture one moment longer.

By this time Frank Wallace, carried away by the excitement of the lies
he had already vented, and observing how horrified he had succeeded in
making his auditor, began to get a little reckless, and concluded that
it was time to play the indignant. The ladies had been in conversation
on the opposite side of the room, the elder members delighted with the
new acquaintance to whom Emily had introduced them in Josephine; and
though it may be supposed that at least two of them kept their regards
pretty closely directed to the "military" corner of the room, much of
the past conversation had been carried on in so subdued a tone as to be
drowned by their own. What followed, however, they could not very well
avoid hearing.

As the Colonel staggered to his feet and attempted to get away, the
pseudo-Captain managed to crutch-and-cane himself to a standing position
and confronted his superior.

"That last remark was offensive!" he said, speaking so that all in the
room could hear him.

"What is offensive? What do you mean, sir?" asked the poor Colonel, now
having thorough surprise added to his other emotions.

"Why this, sir?" cried the Captain, letting his big cane come down on
the floor with such a thump as he had observed at the hands of enraged
East Indian uncles and heavy fathers in old comedies. "You said in so
many words, sir, that I was a bore and a humbug, and I do not take that
from any man, sir!"

"I said nothing of the kind!" disclaimed the Colonel, who certainly had
not used any such expression.

"What did you mean, then, sir, by the offensive expression: 'Good Lord!
he will kill me!' I have not fought for nothing, sir! _I_ know what
such words mean, and I would fight any man who used them, if I had only
one arm and no leg to stand on!"

"Captain Slivers," said the