“How? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?” “Well, you’ve ruther got the bulge on me. Or may’be we’ve both got the bulge, somehow. You don’t smoke me and I don’t smoke you. You see, one of the boys has passed in his checks, and we want to give him a good send-off, and so the thing I’m on now is to roust out somebody to jerk a little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome.” “My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of facts, unencumbered with obstructive accumulations of metaphor and allegory?” Another pause, and more reflection. Then, said Scotty: “I’ll have to pass, I judge.” “How?” “You’ve raised me out, pard.” “I still fail to catch your meaning.” “Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me—that’s the idea. I can’t neither trump nor follow suit.” The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed. Scotty leaned his head on his hand and gave himself up to thought. Presently his face came up, sorrowful, but confident. “I’ve got it now, so’s you can savvy,” he said. “What we want is a gospel-sharp. See?” “A what?” “Gospel-sharp. Parson.” “Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am a clergyman—a parson.” “Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle it like a man. Put it there!”—extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister’s small hand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and fervent gratification. “Now we’re all right, pard. Let’s start fresh. Don’t you mind my shuffling a little—becuz we’re in a power of trouble. You see, one of the boys has gone up the flume——” “Gone where?” “Up the flume—throwed up the sponge, you understand.” “Thrown up the sponge?” “Yes—kicked the bucket——” “Ah—has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” “Return! I reckon not. Why, pard, he’s _dead!_” “Yes, I understand.” “Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled some more. Yes, you see he’s dead again——” “_Again!_ Why, has he ever been dead before?” “Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat? But you bet you, he’s awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I’d never seen this day. I don’t want no better friend than Buck Fanshaw. I knowed him by the back; and when I know a man and like him, I freeze to him—you hear _me_. Take him all round, pard, there never was a bullier man in the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to go back on a friend. But it’s all up, you know, it’s all up. It _ain’t_ no use. They’ve scooped him.” “Scooped him?”