temerity to bid on a neighbor’s household goods.  The long hall, which ran from street to street, was packed, the people surging backward and forward, and falling roughly against the mahogany pieces; and apologizing, and scolding, and swearing all in a breath.  The Judge, holding tightly to Stephen, pushed his way fiercely to the stand, vowing over and over that the commotion was a secession trick to spoil the furniture and stampede the sale.  In truth, it was at the Judge’s suggestion that a blue provost’s guard was called in later to protect the seized property.

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 octave, the tinkle of that also might have been heard.