"'"Is there, Sam?" I said. "You niggers seem to be gettin' up in the world." "'"Yes," he said, "and I want you to hook yo' rig and take eight of us----" "'"What! you infernal scoundrel! You come to me and ask me to----" "'"Now, don't get het up, Major! Eight niggers at fifty cents apiece is fo' dollars." "'"Yancey," I said to myself, "brace up! This is one of the great crises of yo' life. Sam, bring on yo' mokes!" "'There was fo' bucks and fo' wenches, all rigged out to kill. I put 'em in and started. "'It was a very cold night, coldest weather I'd seen in my State for years, with a light crust of snow on the ground. When we got to Barboursville--it was about eight miles--I found the ball was over a grocery store with a pair of steps goin' up on the outside to a little balcony. Well, suh, they got out and went up ahead, and I blanketed the horses and followed. When I opened the do'--you ain't familiar, suh, I reckon, with our part of the country, suh, but I tell you, suh, that with three fiddles, two red hot stoves, and eighty niggers, all dancin', the atmosphere was oppressive! I stood it as long as I could and then I went out on the balcony. Then I said to myself--"Yancey, this is a great crisis of yo' life, but you needn't get pneumonia. Go in and sit down inside." "'I hadn't been there three minutes, suh, when black Sam came up to the bench on which I was sittin'--he had two wenches on his arm--and said, "Major Yancey; would you have any objection to steppin' outside?" "'"Why?" I asked. "'"Cause some of the ladies objects to the smell of horse in yo' clo'es." "'I left the livery business that night, suh, and I am what you see--a broken-down Southern gentleman.'" Another outburst of laughter followed. Everybody agreed that Boggs had never been so happy in his delineations. The banker, who knew something of the Southern dialects, was overjoyed. The allusion to the ungentlemanly foreclosure proceedings touched his funny-bone in a peculiar manner, and set him to laughing again whenever he thought of it. Everybody had expressed some opinion both of Murphy's story and of Boggs's yarn but MacWhirter, who, strange to say, had seen nothing humorous in either narrative. During the telling he had been bending over in his chair stroking the dog's ears. "What do you think of the two yarns, Mac?" asked Marny. "Think just what Mr. Murphy thinks--that the Englishman was a snob, Ponsonby a cad, and that MacDuff should have been shown the door. The group about that Englishman's table was not of the best English society--nowhere near it. Consideration for the other man's feelings, the one below you in rank, invariably distinguishes the true English gentleman. That old story about the sergeant who got the Victoria Cross for bringing a wounded officer out under fire illustrates what I mean," continued Mac in a perfectly grave, sober voice. "Never heard it."