, and
divide the proceeds among yourselves _pro rata_"

The creditors looked at each other suspiciously. A want of that
childlike trust which, in a perfect state of society should exist
between man and man, was unhappily too apparent.

Just then, when Matthew was at his wits' end, the police man who guarded
the front door entered the room, and delivered a note to Mr. Whedell.
That gentleman perused it languidly, and passed it to Matthew.

"Good news," said he. "Mr. Abernuckle, the owner of these premises, who
was intending to move in to-day, writes that he will not be able to take
possession until noon to-morrow. Therefore, I say, let the creditors
employ an auctioneer, hang out the red flag, sell, and divide, before
that period arrives."

The large creditors were silent--Quigg veiling his dissatisfaction under
a look of complete misanthropy--but the small ones, headed by Rickarts,
the shoemaker, highly commended it.

"Besides," added a butter man, who had originally been in the
mock-auction line, "don't ye see, we can all stay at the auction, and
kind o' bid on the things. Hey?" The butter man nodded at the lesser
creditors.

The idea took; only a few of the larger creditors holding out against
it.

"My friends," again observed Matthew, drawing on his stores of legal
knowledge, "you seem to forget that, if my client chose to resist your
claims, he could retain a large amount of furniture as household
articles under the law, which exempts certain necessary things. But,
with rare magnanimity, he gives up all."

The allusion to magnanimity produced some derisive laughs, which
slightly nettled Matthew.

"Auction it off," said he, "or we throw ourselves back on our reserved
rights."

At this hint, everybody gave in; and a committee, consisting of Quigg,
Rickarts, and the butter man, was appointed to make all the arrangements
for an immediate sale.

It is not pleasant to pursue this painful theme--the decline and fall
of the Whedell household--farther. Let the historian barely record, that
the sale attracted a large crowd, and that, by the ingenious side bids
of the creditors, the furniture was run up to twice its original value
(no uncommon thing at auctions); that the creditors, large and small,
were well satisfied with the results; that Mr. Whedell and daughter
moved to Boston, and became stipendiaries upon a younger brother, who
had made a fortune in the upholstery business, and whom Mr. Whedell had
alway