“Mebbe it’s paint, Samantha?” suggested the farmer to his wife.  “There’d be two gallons of it—­enough to cover the smokehouse.  Ten cents.”

“The charges are eighty-five,” explained Bart—­“can’t start it any lower.”

A blear-eyed, unsteady individual, whom Bart recognized as a member of the Sharp Corner contingent, advanced to the table.

He was thirsty-looking and eager as he poked at the box and tried to peer into it.

“A demijohn!” he muttered, his mouth watering.  “Two gallons—­probably prime old stuff.  Eighty-five cents.”

“Eighty-five—­eighty-five!” repeated Bart.

“Ninety,” said the farmer.

“Dollar!” mumbled the thirsty-looking man.

“Do I hear any more?” challenged Bart, gavel suspended, “once, twice, and sold to—­cash.”

The inebriate paid his money, chuckled and took the box to one side, hugging it like a pet child, reached over and picked up the hatchet from inside the railing, and pried open the corner of the box.

A gleesome roar of merriment interrupted Bart as he called out the second lot.

The inebriate stood disgustedly looking down at the label on the demijohn he had brought to light:  “Bubbly Spring Mineral Water.”

Lot 943 was a cardboard box.  The suggestion of millinery made the farmer’s wife a reckless bidder, and the lot brought two dollars.

Another roar went up from the crowd as she eagerly inspected her purchase.  It turned out to be a man’s silk hat.

She looked spiteful enough to throw it out of the window, but her husband, laughing at her, doffed his worn straw, coolly put on the elaborate headgear, and became thenceforward a target for the quips of the merry idlers about the door.

An oblong crate brought four dollars.  Bob Haven got this.  He did not inspect his purchase at once, but with glowing eyes whispered to his brother as he pushed it to one side that he knew it was a new bicycle.

Bart hustled the various packages up for sale and disposition with briskness and dispatch, and Darry was more than busy keeping tab on his record book and piling the cash into the tin box.

One fuming, perspiring man, looking too fat to ever get cool, found the prize he had drawn was a moth-eaten fur overcoat.

Peter Grimm, notoriously the stingiest man in Pleasantville, who raised the sourest apples in the town and spent most of his time watching the boys and picking up what fruit rolled outside of the fence, bided his time with watchful ferret eyes until a promising-looking package came along.

It was bid up pretty high, and the crowd urged him to disclose his treasure, but Grimm was not responsive to any mutual human sentiment and sat down with the package in his lap.

He began a secret inspection, however, gradually working off the paper covering at one end, and with snapping eyes worming his fingers inside the parcel.