"Honor," pursued the Captain, coloring up, and unheeding this witty
interruption, "is the reward of a soldier. What do I care that a young
jackanapes buys his colonelcy over my head? Sir, he does not buy from
me my wounds and my services. Sir, he does not buy from me the medal I
won at Waterloo. He is a rich man, and I am a poor man; he is called--
colonel, because he paid money for the name. That pleases him; well and
good. It would not please me; I had rather remain a captain, and feel
my dignity, not in my title, but in the services by which it has been
won. A beggarly, rascally association of stock-brokers, for aught I
know, buy me a company! I don't want to be uncivil, or I would say damn
'em--Mr.--sir--Jack!"

A sort of thrill ran through the Captain's audience; even Uncle Jack
seemed touched, for he stared very hard at the grim veteran, and said
nothing. The pause was awkward; Mr. Squills broke it. "I should like,"
quoth he, "to see your Waterloo medal,--you have it not about you?"

"Mr. Squills," answered the Captain, "it lies next to my heart while I
live. It shall be buried in my coffin, and I shall rise with it, at the
word of command, on the day of the Grand Review!" So saying, the
Captain leisurely unbuttoned his coat, and detaching from a piece of
striped ribbon as ugly a specimen of the art of the silversmith (begging
its pardon) as ever rewarded merit at the expense of taste, placed the
medal on the table.

The medal passed round, without a word, from hand to hand.

"It is strange," at last said my father, "how such trifles can be made
of such value,--how in one age a man sells his life for what in the next