"Exactly. Well, you see he lost his arm fightin' for the South--lost it at Gettysburg, where I got some bullets that threw my machinery out o' gear considerable, besides one that's stuck closer'n a brother ever since. Well, he don't draw no pension,--'tain't necessary to state the reasons,--but I get a middlin' good one. He was grumblin' pretty hard one day 'bout how tough it was on a man to fight the battle o' life single-handed, an' says I to him, knowin' he drank pretty hard:-- "'It must be, when with t'other hand he loads up with stuff that cripples his head too.' "He 'lowed that that kind o' talk riled him, an' I said I was glad it did, an' we jawed along for a spell, like old soldiers can when they get goin', till all of a sudden he says:-- "'A man that gets a pension don't have to drink to keep him goin'.' "'Well, Ojam,' says I, 'if that's a fact, an' I don't say it ain't, you can stop drinkin' right now, if you want to.' "'What do you mean?' says he. "'Just what I say,' says I. 'My pension's yours, from this on, so long's you don't drink.' "'I ain't goin' to be bought over to be a Yank,' says he. "'I don't want you to be a Yank,' says I. 'You're an American, an' that's the best thing that any old vet can be. I want to buy you over to be a clear-headed man. I've got nothin' to make by it, but it'll be the makin' o' you.' "Well, he went off mad, an' he told his wife an' young ones, an' in a day or two he came back, an' says he:-- "'Caleb, I ain't a plum fool; but if you're dead sot on bein' one, why, I'll take that pension o' yourn, the way you said.' "So I shelled out the last quarter's money at once, an' then began the hardest fight One-Arm Ojam ever got into. He 'lowed afterwards that 'twas tougher than Gettysburg, an' lasted 'bout a hundred times as long. 'Fore that, when he hankered for a drink, he'd shell a bushel o' corn by hand, an' bring it in to Bustpodder's store, an' trade it for a quart, but now he had money enough to buy 'most a bar'l of the sort of stuff that he drank. There's a tough lot o' fellows up in his section,--'birds of a feather flock together,' you know,--an' they made fun o' him, an' nagged him most to death, till one day he owned up to me that he was in a new single-handed fight that was harder'n the old one. "'You idjit,' says I, 'when you got in a hot place in the war you didn't try to fight single-handed, did you? You got with a squad, or a comp'ny, or regiment, didn't you, so's to have all the help you could get, didn't you?' "''Course I did,' says he. "'Then,' says I, 'what's the matter with your j'inin' the Sons o' Temperance, an' j'inin' the church, too?' Well, ma'am, that knocked him so cold that he turned ash-colored, an' his knees rattled; but says I, 'I've got my opinion of a man that charged with Pickett at Gettysburg an' afterwards plays coward anywhere else.'