ed, a sullen anger
flaming up in his little eyes.

The clerk raised a shoulder and put the concertina on an upper shelf.

"You talk to the boss about that; t'ain't none of my affair. If you want
to buy it, it's eleven dollars."

The dentist had been paid off the day before and had four dollars in his
wallet at the moment. He gave the money to the clerk.

"Here, there's part of the money. You--you put that concertina aside
for me, an' I'll give you the rest in a week or so--I'll give it to you
tomorrow," he exclaimed, struck with a sudden idea.

McTeague had sadly missed his concertina. Sunday afternoons when there
was no work to be done, he was accustomed to lie flat on his back on his
springless bed in the little room in the rear of the music store,
his coat and shoes off, reading the paper, drinking steam beer from
a pitcher, and smoking his pipe. But he could no longer play his six
lugubrious airs upon his concertina, and it was a deprivation. He often
wondered where it was gone. It had been lost, no doubt, in the general
wreck of his fortunes. Once, even, the dentist had taken a concertina
from the lot kept by the music store. It was a Sunday and no one was
about. But he found he could not play upon it. The stops were arranged
upon a system he did not understand.

Now his own concertina was come back to him. He would buy it back.
He had given the clerk four dollars. He knew where he would get the
remaining seven.

The clerk had told him the concertina had been sold on Polk Street to
the second-hand store there. Trina had sold it. McTeague knew it. Trina
had sold his concertina--had stolen it and sold it--his concertina,
his beloved concertina, that he had had all his life. Why, barring
the canary, there was not one of all his belongings that McTeague had
cherished more dearly. His steel engraving of "Lorenzo de' Medici
and his Court" might be lost, his stone pug dog might go, but his
concertina!

"And she sold it--stole it from me and sold it. Just because I happened
to forget to take it along with me. Well, we'll just see about that.
You'll give me the money to buy it back, or----"

His rage loomed big within him. His hatred of Trina came back upon him
like a returning surge. He saw her small, prim mouth, her narrow blue
eyes, her black mane of hair, and up-tilted chin, and hated her the more
because of them. Aha, he'd show her; he'd make her dance. He'd get that
seven dollars from her, or he'd know the