"I think it is needed," answered the Lieutenant tartly.
"Let me see, Steigermeyer," said the Major, adjusting another chew of tobacco to his mouth, and balancing the knife with which he had cut it off, judicially in his fingers, a favorite position of his when, as a lawyer, he was putting a witness through a cross-examination. "How long have you been with this army? Came West with the Eleventh Corps, didn't you?"
"No; I was left behind on duty. I didn't come for several weeks after."
"So I thought. You weren't with us at Stone River, or Chickamauga, or Mission Ridge. You'd know more if you had been. Your mental horizon would have been enlarged, so to speak. Aren't you from Milwaukee?"
"I was born and brought up there, until I went to West Point," answered the Lieutenant, rather uneasily.
"So I thought. The only man of your name that I ever heard of kept a saloon in Milwaukee—a great place for politicians to hang around. I used to go there myself when I was in politics. He was a sort of a ward boss. Was he your father?"
"Yes, sir," said the Lieutenant, with reddening face; "but I don't know what this has to do with the case that I have presented to your attention."
"It has a great deal to do with this lecture with which you have favored us," answered the Major dryly. "But we'll not discuss that in open court. Are you through with the witness, Judge-Advocate? If so, call the next."
"I'll just ask the Captain a few questions for the defense," said Lieut. Bowersox. "How did you know that the prisoner was drunk?"
"How did I know it? How does any man know that another is drunk? He was boisterous, excited and yelling—that kind of a drunk."