“That's right. 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.