"I'm very sorry to hear that, Broncho. I thought you were in double harness long ago." "Well, I never does fasten somehow, though I ropes at her continuous; then one day she goes curvin' off with that ere miscreant Montana Joe, which has me plumb disgusted. I just chucks a pair o' blankets across my saddle, stuffs a wad o' notes in my war-bags, an' lights right out. Finally I makes Frisco, where I gets to drownin' dull care with nosepaint; an' I makes sech a success of that ere undertakin' that I presently finds myself as you-alls knows." "Sidelights out, hand on the look-out!" roared Black Davis from aft. "Aye, aye, sir!" came back the answer, and night began. The following evening Jack, Broncho, and the boy Jim were yarning together on the foc's'le head, when a terrific uproar broke out on the deck below them. There was a hurricane of deep-sea laughter, and the next moment the small form of the cockney disengaged itself from the crowd, and came dashing up the topgallant ladder. "Jack!" he cried, "Jack, wot's a genelman?" "Why, Jack is, er course," burst out the boy. "I mean, wot mykes a genelman?" The rest of the crowd were on his heels, and Curly, thrusting his way through, burst out hotly. "Hollins says a gentleman is a man with shiny pants and a stove-pipe hat. What do you say, Jack?" "Bedad! I on'y knoo one gintlemen," cried Pat, "an' he weren't one at all at all." "I see's a gentleman once," said Red Bill, "an' he had a bit er glass stuck in his eye." "When you-alls says gentleman," drawled Broncho, "you mean the real brand, I surmise; for there's a greevious number o' gents a-waltzin' around puttin' on frills an' bluffin' they're the thoroughbred article, which same soon bogs down in one's eestimation as plumb low an' ornery. What you-alls call gentlemen is gettin' 'most rar' as buffaloes in these here wide-spread an' high-flung times; but when you does cut their trails, you can bet a whole team you're goin' to be duly impressed tharby." "A gentleman's a cove wi' clean 'ands, 'coss he don't work," shouted Jimmy Green excitedly from the edge of the crowd. "You shut yer dirty 'ead! 'Oo asked you ter talk when able seamen's around?" roared the cockney furiously. "Give that byby-face er clout, will ye, Ben?" Jimmy Green got his clout and retired from the contest. "A gentleman's a sport who can sit down to a game o' poker an' lose his dollars smiling," asserted the gambler. "A gentleman's a tenderfoot who trails round buyin' salted claims," pronounced old Ben. "I meets a shentlemans vonce vot I yumps a bag along vor, an' he give me two bob; you bet dat's a shentleman's, my schmard fellers," grunted Muller. "A gentleman has shiny boots," put in Pinto from the background, with a nervous glance round as if he were taking a liberty. "That's wot I sye," cried the cockney approvingly; "'e's a toff wi' shiny pants an' shiny boots----" "And a boiled shirt, I hope?" interrupted Jack, laughing.