ing the words, and with a muttered curse at the fair
bidder shrinking behind the colonel, and blushing, as if in shame,
Harney yelled out his big price, all he had meant to give. He was mad
with rage, for he knew well for whom that fair Northern girl was
interested. He had heard much of Alice Johnson--had seen her
occasionally in the Spring Bank carriage as she stopped in Frankfort;
and once she had stopped before his store, asking, with such a pretty
grace, that the piece of goods she wished to look at might be brought to
her for inspection, that he had determined to take it himself, but
remembered his dignity as half millionaire, and sent his head clerk
instead.

Beneath Harney's coarse nature there was a strange susceptibility to
female beauty, and neither the lustrous blue of Alice's large eyes, nor
yet the singular sweetness of her voice, as she thanked the clerk for
his trouble, had been forgotten. He had heard that she was rich--how
rich he did not know--but fancied she might possibly be worth a few
paltry thousands, not more, and so, of course, she was not prepared to
compete with him, who counted his gold by hundreds of thousands. Five
hundred was all she would give for Rocket. How, then was he surprised
and chagrined when, with a coolness equal to his own, she kept steadily
on, scarcely allowing the auctioneer to repeat his bid before she
increased it, and once, womanlike, raising on her own.

"Fie, Harney! Shame to go against a girl! Better give it up, for don't
you see she's resolved to have him? She's worth half Massachusetts, too,
they say."

These and like expressions met Harney on every side, until at last, as
he paused to answer some of them, growing heated in the altercation, and
for the instant forgetting Rocket, the auctioneer brought the hammer
down with a click which made Harney leap from the ground, for by that
sound he knew that Rocket was sold to Alice Johnson for six hundred
dollars!

Meantime Alice had sought the friendly shelter of Ellen's room, where
the tension of nerve endured so long gave way, and sinking upon the sofa
she fainted, just as down the Lexington turnpike came the man looked for
so long in the earlier part of the day. She could not err, in Mr.
Liston's estimation, and Alice grew calm again, and in a hurried
consultation explained to him more definitely than her letter had done,
what her wishes were--Colonel Tiffton must not be homeless in his old
age. There were ten thous