"What did th' gov'nment give it t' me for? ye mean," said the sergeant, allowing himself a smile at the fun he had had with us. "Wal, 'taint goin' t' sound like much, but I'd jus' 's lives tell ye. Hello!" he interjected, "this cigar seems t' be unravellin'."
"Throw it away, then," said the colonel. "Here's another."
"Oh, no! wouldn't do that, would ye?" said the old soldier. "'Twould seem kind o' wasteful, wouldn't it? I kin tinker this one so's it'll be all right. Jes' watch me"—and with this he applied his tongue to the loosened and uncoiling wrapper, and then smoothed the well-moistened leaf securely into place, remarking, "There! she smokes as good 's new—an' there's five cents saved."
"Just about," said I, grinning, for an occasional whiff of the smoke had come my way. "How did you know?"
"Oh, I kin tell a good cigar, every time," remarked the veteran, liberating a prodigious puff of smoke and sniffing at it with the air of an expert judge of tobacco. "Smokin' a pipe so much haint hurt my taste for cigars a mite."
"Glad you like them," said the colonel, turning upon me an ominous frown which checked any inclination I might have had to go more deeply into the subject. "Now, about that medal?"
"Oh, yis, 'bout th' medal," said Farwell, with just one look at his cigar to see how his repairs held out. "Wal, ye mus'n't think I'm boastin'—'cause I aint. What I done warn't no more than I've seen done time an' time agin—an' you, too, 'f you was four years with th' —th Massachusetts—an' I never'd have thought twice 'bout it 'f Cap'n Burdett hadn't kep' urgin' me on t' apply for th' medal. Pooh! 'taint nothin' but a trinket, anyway, an' it's no earthly use t' me nor anyone."
"Don't apologize. Go ahead with the story," I put in, recognizing the chance of an interesting half hour. "You didn't volunteer to tell us, you know. We asked you."
"Yes, go ahead," said the colonel, lighting a cigar, which, by the way, he took from his leather case, and not from the paper of weeds he had brought from the hotel. "I should say that things had come to a funny pass when one of the old 19th's boys is bashful about yarning to another."