The pictures named were all entered up by the appraiser, and then the group continued their examination.

“Here is a Sully,” remarked the trustee above alluded to, pausing before Willie’s portrait.

“But that is a portrait,” Mr. Morton said, advancing, while his heart leaped with a new and sudden fear.

“If it is, Mr. Morton, it is a valuable picture, worth every cent of two hundred dollars.  We cannot pass that, Sir.”

“What!” exclaimed Mr. Morton, “take my Willie’s portrait?  O no, you cannot do that!”

“It is no doubt a hard case, Mr. Morton,” said one of the trustees.  “But we must do our duty, however painful.  That picture is a most beautiful one, and by a favourite artist, and will bring at least two hundred dollars.  It is not a necessary article of household furniture, and is not covered by the law.  We should be censured, and justly too, if we were to pass it.”

For a few moments, Mr. Morton’s thoughts were so bewildered and his feelings so benumbed by the sudden and unexpected shock, that he could not rally his mind enough to decide what to say or how to act.  To have the unfeeling hands of creditors, under the sanction of the law, seize upon his lost Willie’s portrait, was to him so unexpected and sacrilegious a thing, that he could scarcely realize it, and he stood wrapt in painful, dreamy abstraction, until roused by the direction,

“Put it down at a hundred and fifty,” given to the appraiser, by one of the trustees.

“Are your hearts made of iron?” he asked bitterly, roused at once into a distinct consciousness of what was transpiring.

“Be composed, Mr. Morton,” was the cold, quiet reply.

“And thus might the executioner say to the victim he was torturing—­Be composed.  But surely, when I tell you that that picture is the likeness of my youngest child, now no more, you will not take it from us.  To lose that, would break his mother’s heart.  Take all the rest, and I will not murmur.  But in the name of humanity spare me the portrait of my angel boy.”

There was a brief, cold, silent pause, and the trustees continued their investigations.  Sick at heart, Mr. Morton turned from them and sought his family.  The distressed, almost agonized expression of his countenance was noticed, as he came into the chamber where they had retired.

“Is it all over?” asked Mrs. Morton.

“Not yet,” was the sad answer.

The mother and daughter knew how much their father prized his choice collection of pictures, and supposed that giving an inventory of them had produced the pain that he seemed to feel.  Of the truth, they had not the most distant idea.  For a few minutes he sat with them, and then, recovering in some degree, his self-possession, he returned and kept with the trustees, until everything in the house that could be taken, was valued.  He closed the door after them, when they left, and again returned to his family.