illis had seen him pick them up.

"What if they did?" I asked. But I could get nothing further from him.

It was that very evening I think, after we got home, that we saw the
notice the tax collector had put in the county paper announcing the sale
at public auction of the Cranston farm on the following Thursday, for
delinquent taxes. The paper had come that night, and Theodora read the
notice aloud at supper. The announcement briefly described the farm
property, and among other values mentioned five hundred cords of
rock-maple wood ready to cut and go to market.

"That's that old sugar lot up by the big ledge, where Willis and Ben
were making syrup," said I. "Ad, whatever did you do with that pocketful
of auger chips?"

Addison glanced at me queerly. He seemed disturbed, but said nothing.
The following forenoon, when he and I were making a hot-bed for early
garden vegetables, he remarked that he meant to go to that auction.

It was not the kind of auction sale that draws a crowd of people; there
was only one piece of property to be sold, and that was an expensive
one. Not more than twenty persons came to it--mostly prosperous farmers
or lumbermen, who intended to buy the place as a speculation if it
should go at a low price. The old Squire was not there; he had gone to
Portland the day before; but Addison went over, as he had planned, and
Willis Murch and I went with him.

Hilburn, the tax collector, was there, and two of the selectmen of the
town, besides Cole, the auctioneer. At four o'clock Hilburn stood on the
house steps, read the published notice of the sale and the court warrant
for it. The town, he said, would deduct $114--the amount of unpaid
taxes--from the sum received for the farm. Otherwise the place would be
sold intact to the highest bidder.

The auctioneer then mounted the steps, read the Cranston warranty deed
of the farm, as copied from the county records, describing the premises,
lines, and corners. "A fine piece of property, which can soon be put
into good shape," he added. "How much am I offered for it?"

After a pause, Zachary Lurvey, the owner of Lurvey's Lumber Mills,
started the bidding by offering $1,000.

"One thousand dollars," repeated the auctioneer. "I am offered one
thousand dollars. Of course that isn't what this farm is really worth.
Only one thousand! Who offers more?"

"Fifteen hundred," said a man named Haines, who had arrived from the
southern part of the township while t