roperty.

How many of those mahogany pieces, so ruthlessly tumbled about before the
public eye, meant a heartache! Wedding presents of long ago, dear to many
a bride with silvered hair, had been torn from the corner where the
children had played--children who now, alas, were grown and gone to war.
Yes, that was the Brussels rug that had lain before the fire, and which
the little feet had worn in the corner. Those were the chairs the little
hands had harnessed, four in a row, and fallen on its side was the
armchair--the stage coach itself. There were the books, held up to common
gaze, that a beloved parent had thumbed with affection. Yes, and here in
another part of the hall were the family horses and the family carriage
that had gone so often back and forth from church with the happy brood of
children, now scattered and gone to war.

As Stephen reached his place beside the Judge, Mr. James's effects were
being cried. And, if glances could have killed, many a bidder would have
dropped dead. The heavy dining-room table which meant so much to the
family went for a song to a young man recently come from Yankeeland,
whose open boast it was--like Eliphalet's secret one--that he would one
day grow rich enough to snap his fingers in the face of the Southern
aristocrats. Mr. James was not there. But Mr. Catherwood, his face
haggard and drawn, watched the sideboard he had given his wife on her
silver wedding being sold to a pawnbroker.

Stephen looked in vain for Colonel Carvel--for Virginia. He did not want
to see them there. He knew by heart the list of things which had been
taken from their house. He understood the feeling which had sent the
Judge here to bid them in. And Stephen honored him the more.

When the auctioneer came to the Carvel list, and the well-known name was
shouted out, the crowd responded with a stir and pressed closer to the
stand. And murmurs were plainly heard in more than one direction.

"Now, gentlemen, and ladies," said the seller, "this here is a genuine
English Rothfield piano once belonging to Colonel Carvel, and the
celebrated Judge Colfax of Kaintucky." He lingered fondly over the names,
that the impression might have time to sink deep. "This here magnificent
instrument's worth at the very least" (another pause) "twelve hundred
dollars. What am I bid?"

He struck a base note of the keys, then a treble, and they vibrated in
the heated air of the big hall. Had he hit the little C of the top
oct