...as there; that I had never spoken to him nor he to me on any subject, and that the whole statement was a vaporing canard woven out of the spider-web stuff of a braggart's flimsy brain. The close of Colonel Corcoran 's life, as I have learned, was characteristic. In December 1863, having meanwhile been exchanged and having joined his regiment, while drunk he mounted a spirited horse near Fairfax Courthouse, and...