let me have thet money till the sale was over.
I bet a dollar it wuz thet city feller. Abner says thet he met Appleby
on his way back to Montrose, and he told him thet he saw thet city
feller and the Deacon drive off tergether from front o' the bank. Oh!
nonsense, what would the son of a millionaire want of a grocery store in
a little country town like this?" and he went into his boarding house to
dinner.

A few moments after two o'clock Strout could restrain his impatience no
longer, and leaving his boarding house he walked over to the grocery
store. Quite a number of the Mason's Corner people were gathered in the
Square, for to them an auction sale was as good as a show. Quincy had
not arrived, and the Professor tried to quiet his nerves by walking up
and down the platform and smoking a cigar. The crowd gradually
increased, quite a number coming in teams from Montrose and from
Eastborough Centre. One of the teams from Montrose brought the
auctioneer, Mr. Beers, with whom Strout was acquainted. He gave the
auctioneer a cigar, and they walked up and down the platform smoking and
talking about everything else but the auction sale. It was a matter of
professional dignity with Mr. Barnabas Beers, auctioneer, not to be on
too friendly terms with bidders before an auction. He had found that it
had detracted from his importance and had lowered bids, if he allowed
would be purchasers to converse with him concerning the articles to be
sold. It was their business, he maintained in a heated argument one
evening in the hotel at Montrose, to find out by personal inspection the
condition and value of what was to be sold, and it was his business, he
said, to know as little about it as possible, for the less he knew the
less it would interfere with his descriptive powers when, hammer in
hand, he took his position on the bench. Having established a
professional standing, Barnabas Beers was not a man to step down, and
though the Professor, after a while, endeavored to extract some
information from the auctioneer as to whether there was likely to be
many bidders, he finally gave it up in despair, for he found Mr. Beers
as uncommunicative as a hitching post, as he afterwards told Abner
Stiles.

About half-past two Deacon Mason drove into the Square, and the
Professor went to meet him, and shook hands with him. In a short time
his other backers, who had agreed to endorse his notes to the amount of
two thousand dollars, arrived upon the s