"Gone!" said he, "to Miss Letty Lamson. Now, ladies an' gentlemen, here's a little chair. I know that chair, an' so do you. It's the chair little Letty Lamson used to set in when she wa'n't more'n three year old, an' her mother used to keep her out under the sweet-bough tree in that little rocker whilst she was washin' or churnin'! What?"

He paused, for Miss Letty had waved a frantic hand. The tears were running down her cheeks. The others had before them the picture of little Letty Lamson swaying and singing to herself, but she saw the brown apple-stems over her head and smelled the bitter-sweetness of the blooms. She saw her mother's plump bare arms as they went up and down with the churn-dasher or in and out of the suds, and felt again the pang of love that used to tell her that mother was the most beautiful creature in the world.

"Why," said she, regardless of her listeners, "I wouldn't part with that chair for a hundred dollars. How ever come you to think I'd part with my little chair?"

The cap'n was looking at her in a frank perplexity.

"The chair," said he, "remains the property of our friend and neighbor, Miss Letty Lamson. Now, ladies an' gentlemen, here's a fire-set--tongs, shovel, an' andirons. That fire-set has been in this very settin'-room as long as I can remember. Summer-times the andirons have been trimmed up with sparrergra.s.s an' the like o' that, an' winter-times they've been shined up complete an' the fire snappin' behind 'em. What am I offered--"

Miss Letty was standing.

"Oh," she cried, "I never meant to put that fire-set in. Why, don't you remember--"

She was facing the cap'n, and the appeal of her voice and look ran straight to him over the heads of the others, like a message. It bade him recall how he and she had sat together and talked of sad things and happy ones, night after night, for many years. The talks had been mostly cheerful, for the cap'n would have it so, and whenever she felt poorly she had taken pains to put on a lively front, because she reasoned that menfolks hated squally weather. Now, with the pa.s.sing of the andirons and all they stood for, it looked to her as if a door had shut on that pleasant seclusion where they two had communed together, and there would be no more laughter in the world. "Oliver!" she said, and stopped, because the coming words had choked her.

The cap'n was looking at her over his gla.s.ses with extreme benevolence.

"Letty," said he, "I guess you better go upstairs an' sort out some o'

the bed-linen an' coverlets. I understood they wa'n't quite ready, an'

we shall get to 'em before long. If I come to anything down here I think you set by particularly an' that you can pack up as well as not, I'll bid it in for ye."

The neighbors were nodding in a kindly confirmation, and Miss Letty also understood it to be for the best. She made her way through the friendly aisle cleared for her, and Cap'n Oliver waited until he heard her on the stairs above. He drew a heavy breath.

"Now," said he, "I guess we can poke along. It ain't to be wondered at anybody should want to bid in their own things, but it's kind of distressin' to an auctioneer that wants to earn his money. Now here's this high-boy. I'll rattle it off before Miss Letty gets time to have a change of heart an' come down again. What am I offered for old Parson Lamson's high-boy, bonnet-top an' old bra.s.ses all complete?"

Timothy Fry, a bright-eyed youth in the background, started it at fifteen dollars. Timothy had hitherto, in his twenty years, shown no sign of enthusiasm more sophisticated than that of shooting birds in their season and roaming the woods in a happy vagabondage while the law was on. When he made his bid there was a great turning of heads. Some looked at him, but others fixed the cap'n with a challenging glance, because he and the cap'n were great cronies, and it had been jocosely said they were thick as thieves, and if one lied t'other would swear to it. But Timothy, in his Sunday suit, with a blue tie and an elaborate scarf-pin, looked the picture of innocence, and it was concluded that, although no one had suspected it, he was thinking of setting up housekeeping for himself. The cap'n's face had an earnest absorption.

He was evidently occupied only in being auctioneer.

"Pshaw!" he said, with a conversational ruthlessness. "Fifteen dollars!

Why, I'd give that myself an' set it up out there at the cross-roads for autos to bid on while they run. Its wuth--well, I wouldn't say what 'twas wuth. Maybe you'd laugh, an' I ain't goin' to be laughed at, if I be an auctioneer."

"Twenty-five," piped up Deacon Eli King, won by the lure of city rivalry.

"Twenty-six," Timothy offered quietly.

"Twenty-eight," trembled Hannah Bond, who lived alone and braided mats for the city trade. She had always wanted a high-boy, but the sound of her own voice made it seem as if bidding might be almost too steep a price to pay for one.

"Twenty-nine," said Timothy.

After that there was very little compet.i.tion. n.o.body wanted a high-boy except for commercial possibilities, and about the time the bidding reached thirty-five dollars a foreshadowing timidity began to overspread the a.s.sembly. An autumn wind came up and set the bare woodbine sprays to beating on the window, to the tune of nearing snow. Summer buyers seemed far away. When one considered the drifted leaves and the cold sky, it looked as if full purses and credulous minds were a midsummer dream, never to come again. So the high-boy, in this moment of commercial panic, was knocked down to Timothy Fry. Five or six chairs followed, and these also became his.

Then the crowd pressed into the west sitting-room, where there was richer treasure. Here, too, Timothy's unmoved voice beat steadily on, raising every bid, and here, too, he came out victor. In the next room also he swept the field, and now at last the crowd murmurously compared certainties, one woman darkly prophesying he never'd pay for them, because he hadn't a cent--not a cent--laid up, and a man returning that n.o.body need worry. 'Twas only a joke of Tim's; but Miss Letty'd be the one to suffer. Timothy's eyes and ears were closed to comment. His commercial onslaught continued, and when, in the early dusk, horses were unhitched and there was time for comment at the gate, it was clearly understood that, save for what Miss Letty had bid in at the start, Timothy Fry was the possessor of every stick of furniture, every cup and bowl even, and all the ornaments and articles of common usage in the house. Timothy himself had gone. The men had looked about for him, to rally him on his approaching nuptials, the women for the ruthless cross-questioning his madness had invited; but he had slipped away softly, like the wood-creatures he hunted. Even Cap'n Oliver, who might be supposed to know his inner mind, had betaken himself to the porch, and stood there, hat in hand, wiping his heated brow.

"Don't ask me," he returned to queries and conclusions in the ma.s.s. "I'm nothin' in the world but an auctioneer. Now I've learned the road, I dunno but I shall go right along auctionin' off everything I come acrost. You better be gettin' along home. Mebbe I'll sell your teams right off under your noses, if the fit comes over me."

"Timothy ain't goin' to be married, is he?" inquired aunt Belinda Soule, who sent items to the "County Star."

"S'pose so, sometime," concurred the cap'n jovially. "It's the end o'

mortals here below. Dunno but I shall be married myself, if it comes to that."

"When's he goin' to take his furniture away?" continued aunt Belinda, with the persistence of her kind.

"Don't know. Mebbe he ain't goin' to take it. Mebbe he's goin' to marry Letty. 'Pears to me I heard a kind of a rumor she was goin' to marry 'fore long."

Aunt Belinda shook her head at him.

"Don't talk so about a nice respectable woman," said she. "An' she goin'

to move away from us an' live n.o.body knows where. It's a shame."

The cap'n burst into a laugh that aunt Belinda privately thought coa.r.s.e, and turned back into the house, while she joined a group of matrons and went away home, discoursing volubly.

Cap'n Oliver stopped for a minute at the window in the empty parlor, watching their departing bulk, and then went into the hall, where the tread of many invading feet had left the moist autumn soil, with bits of gra.s.s and now and then a yellowed leaf.

"Letty!" he called roundly.

There was a light step above, and then Miss Letty's voice, a very little voice suited to the dusk and stillness, came down the stairs.

"Be they gone?" she faltered.

"Yes," said the cap'n, "they're gone, every confounded one of 'em."

"Did they take the things with 'em?" inquired Miss Letty. "I didn't dast to look. I knew I couldn't help feelin' it if I see 'em all loaded up with things I knew."

"You come down here, Letty," said the cap'n. "I want to say a word to you."

She did come, wondering, her face sodden with tears, and a miserable little ball of a wet handkerchief in her grasp. The cap'n met her at the foot of the stairs and, without warning, took her by the shoulders and shook her slightly, why, he did not know, except perhaps as a warning to put a prettier face on the matter. Then he drew her into his arms with a conclusiveness it would have been difficult to resist, and kissed her soft wet cheeks. He kissed them a good many times, and ended by touching her trembling mouth.

"There," said the cap'n, "I don't know 's I ever kissed you before, Letty, but I expect to a good many times again, off 'n' on."

"Oh, yes, you did once," said Miss Letty, with unexpected frankness and simplicity. "'Twas the eighteenth of November, thirty years ago this very fall."

The cap'n looked at her and broke into a wondering laugh.

"Letty," said he, "you're the beateree, an' I'm a nat'ral-born fool.

You're goin' to marry me right off as soon as I can get the license."

"An' live over to your house an' not go to Chicago?" inquired Miss Letty beatifically.

"Course you won't go to Chicago, unless we go together some spring or fall an' make 'em a visit an' show 'em we've got suthin' to live for as well as they have."

"Then I needn't have sold my furniture," said she, with a happy turn of logic.

"Sold your furniture? You ain't sold it. I had Tim Fry bid it all in for me, an' I was goin' to have it crated up an' tell Ellery, when he come, he'd got to let me pay it on to Chicago, whether or no. An' then when I stood up there like a rooster on a fence, auctionin' of it off, it all come over me 'twa'n't the furniture an' the house I should miss. 'Twas you. I made up my mind then an' there I'd keep ye if I had to hopple ye by the ankle like Tolman's jumpin' steer."

Miss Letty withdrew from him and took a timid step to the west-room door, where, though the dusk was gathering, she could find the familiar shapes of her beloved possessions.

"I don't see how in the world I ever made up my mind I could," she said, a happy tremor in her voice.

It sounded to Cap'n Oliver strangely like a voice out of his past, unquelled by fears and abnegations. It was the voice that used to greet him when, in his splendid blue suit and shining satin tie, he had called for Letty Lamson, some thirty years ago, to take her in his sleigh to singing-school.