rturbation,
polishing the antique opal buttons of his _attila_ with his silken
handkerchief.

"What then?" cried Jock, who was beginning to get warm; "why, from this
instant you cease to be a gentleman."

"What am I then?"

"What are you, sirrah? I'll tell ye. You're a boor, a _betyar_, a
good-for-nothing rascal, a runaway ragamuffin, that's what you are! And
you'll be glad enough to kiss my hand, and beg me to make you one of my
lackeys, to save you from starvation or the gallows."

"Excuse me," replied Mike Kis, deftly twisting his moustache, "but I am
Michael Kis, Esq., proprietor of Almasfalva, which I purchased the day
before yesterday from the trustees of the estate of Kazmer Almasfalvi,
for 120,000 florins, with the full sanction of the Court, wherefore my
title thereto is unexceptionable."

Master Jock fell back in astonishment. "One hundred and twenty thousand
florins! When and where did you pick up all that money?"

"I got it honourably," said Michael Kis, smiling. "I won it at cards one
evening, when I and a few of my gentlemen friends sat down to play
together. To tell you the truth, I won a good deal more than that, but
the balance will do to build up a splendid castle on my estate, where I
can reside during the summer."

To Master Jock this part of the matter was quite intelligible; much
larger sums than this used to be lost and won during the sessions of the
Diet at Pressburg. But one thing he could not understand at all.

"Pray how did you get your diploma of gentility?" he asked; "you are not
a gentleman by birth."

"That was a very simple matter. When Whitsun Day was only a week off, I
strolled into one of the trans-Danubian counties, and there advertised
that a prodigal member of the Szabolcs branch of the noble Kis family
was in search of his relations, and if there were any noble Kises who
remembered that branch of the family, and had certificates of nobility
in their possession, which they were willing to transfer to the
undersigned in exchange for one thousand florins, would they be kind
enough to communicate with him. In a week's time fifteen members of the
Kis family remembered their Szabolcs kinsmen, and brought me all kinds
of certificates of nobility. All I then had to do was to select the one
which had the prettiest coat of arms; whereupon we kissed each other all
round, and traced out the genealogy. I paid down the thousand florins;
they recognized me as their kinsman, and advert