gave Mrs. Marchbanks her own keys, which she had brought down
stairs. That lady opened her safe and took out her silver, which
Arthur Marchbanks and James Hobart received from her and carried away.

Mrs. Hobart herself went up the step-ladder that stood there before
the shelves, and began to hand down piles of plates, and heavy single
pieces. "Keep folks out, Elijah," she ordered to her man.

We all helped. There were a good many of us by this time,--Olivia, and
Adelaide, and the servant-girls released from below, besides the other
Marchbankses, and the Hobarts, and people who came in, until Elijah
stopped them. He shut the heavy walnut doors that led from
drawing-room and library to the hall, and turned the great keys in
their polished locks. Then he stood by the garden entrance in the
sheltered side-angle, through which we passed with our burdens, and
defended that against invasion. There was now such an absolute order
among ourselves that the moral force of it repressed the excitement
without that might else have rushed in and overborne us.

"You jest keep back; it's all right here," Elijah would say,
deliberately and authoritatively, holding the door against unlicensed
comers; and boys and men stood back as they might have done outside
the shine and splendor and privilege of an entertainment.

It lasted till we got well through; till we had gone, one by one, down
the field, across to our house, the short way, back and forth, leaving
the china, pile after pile, safe in our cellar-kitchen.

Meanwhile, without our thinking of it, Barbara had been locked out
upon the stairs. Mother had found a tall Fayal clothes-basket, and had
collected in it, carefully, little pictures and precious things that
could be easily moved, and might be as easily lost or destroyed.
Barbara mounted guard over this, watching for a right person to whom
to deliver it.

Standing there, like Casabianca, rough men rushed by her to get up to
the roof. The hall was filling with a crowd, mostly of the curious,
untrustworthy sort, for the work just then lay elsewhere.

So Barbara held by, only drawing back with the basket, into an angle
of the wide landing. Nobody must seize it heedlessly; things were only
laid in lightly, for careful handling. In it were children s
photographs, taken in days that they had grown away from; little
treasures of art and remembrance, picked up in foreign travel, or
gifts of friends; all sorts of priceless odds and e