I thought from the first that you were a young man of
sense. I'm glad to see that you didn't get yourself killed."

"A great many good men did."

"That's so, and a great many more will go the same way. You just listen
to me. I don't wear any uniform, but I've got eyes to see and ears to
hear. I suppose that more monumental foolishness has been hidden under
cocked hats and gold lace than under anything else, since the world
began. Easy now, I don't say that fools are not more numerous outside
armies than in them--there are more people outside--but the mistakes of
generals are more costly."

"I suppose our generals are doing the best they can. You will let me
speak plainly, will you, Mr. Watson?"

"Of course, young man. Go ahead."

"Perhaps you feel badly over a disaster of your own. I saw the smoking
fires at Bristoe Station. The rebels burned there several million
dollars worth of stores belonging to us. Maybe a large part of them were
your own goods."

The contractor rubbed his huge knee with one hand, took his cigar out
of his mouth with the other hand, blew several rings of fine blue smoke
from his nose, and watched them break against the ceiling.

"Young man," he said, "you're a good guesser, but you don't guess all.
More than a million dollars worth of material that I supplied was
burned or looted at Bristoe Station. But it had all been paid for by a
perfectly solvent Union government. So, if I were to consider it from
the purely material standpoint, which you imagine to be the only one I
have, I should rejoice over the raids of the rebels because they make
trade for contractors. I'm a patriot, even if I do not fight at the
front. Besides my feelings have been hurt."

"In what way?"

The contractor drew from his pocket a coarse brown envelope, and he took
from the envelope a letter, written on paper equally coarse and brown.

"I received this letter last night," he said. "It was addressed simply
'John Watson, Washington, D. C.,' and the post office people gave it to
me at once. It came from somebody within the Confederate lines. You know
how the Northern and Southern pickets exchange tobacco, newspapers and
such things, when they're not fighting. I suppose the letter was passed
on to me in that way. Listen."

"John Watson, Washington, D. C.

"My dear sir: I have never met you, but certain circumstances have made
me acquainted with your name. Believing therefore that you are a man
of judgment a