"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: