very high prices at auctions. Thus it happens that a
certain historic interest attaches to the furniture of most middle-class
houses west of the Shannon. The dispensary doctor dines off a table
which once graced the parlour of a parish priest. The inspector
of police boasts of the price he paid for his easy-chair, recently
upholstered, at the auction of a departing bank manager, the same
mahogany frame having once supported the portly person of an old-time
Protestant Archdeacon. It is to be supposed that the furniture
originally imported--no one knows how--into Connaught must have been of
superlative quality. Articles whose pedigree, so to speak, can be traced
for nearly a hundred years are still in daily use, unimpaired by changes
of scene and ownership.

An auction of any importance is a public holiday. Clergy, doctors,
lawyers, and police officers gather to the scene, not unlike those
beasts of prey of whom we read that they readily devour the remains of
a fallen member of their own pack. The natives also collect
together--publicans and shopkeepers in search of bargains in china,
glass, and house-linen; farmers bent on purchasing such outdoor property
as wheelbarrows, scythes, or harness.

When Hyacinth, to use the local expression, 'called an auction' shortly
after his father's death, he was favoured with quite the usual crowd of
would-be buyers. Almost everyone with either money or credit within
a radius of twenty miles came into Carrowkeel for the occasion. The
presiding auctioneer had done his duty beforehand by advertising old Mr.
Conneally's mouldy furniture as 'magnificently upholstered suites,'
and his battered editions of the classics as 'a valuable library
of handsomely bound books.' It is not likely that anyone was really
deceived by these announcements, or expected to find in the little
rectory anything sumptuous or splendid. The people assembled mainly
because they were exceedingly curious to see the inside of a house whose
doors had never been open to them during the lifetime of the owner. It
was always possible, besides, that though the 'magnificently upholstered
suites 'existed only in the auctioneer's imagination, treasures of
silver spoons or candlesticks plated upon copper might be discovered
among the effects of a man who lived as queer a life as Mr. Conneally.
When men and women put themselves to a great deal of inconvenience to
attend an auction, they do not like to return empty-handed. A day