rly
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 mass. "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 nobody knows where. It's a shame."

The cap'n burst into a laugh that aunt Belinda privately thought
coarse, 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
grass 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 h