"Five hundred."

There was no mistaking the words, and with a muttered curse at the fair

bidder shrinking behind the colonel, and blushing, as if in shame,

Harney yelled out his big price, all he had meant to give. He was mad

with rage, for he knew well for whom that fair Northern girl was

interested. He had heard much of Alice Johnson--had seen her

occasionally in the Spring Bank carriage as she stopped in Frankfort;

and once she had stopped before his store, asking, with such a pretty

grace, that the piece of goods she wished to look at might be brought to

her for inspection, that he had determined to take it himself, but

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remembered his dignity as half millionaire, and sent his head clerk

instead.

Beneath Harney's coarse nature there was a strange susceptibility to

female beauty, and neither the lustrous blue of Alice's large eyes, nor

yet the singular sweetness of her voice, as she thanked the clerk for

his trouble, had been forgotten. He had heard that she was rich--how

rich he did not know--but fancied she might possibly be worth a few

paltry thousands, not more, and so, of course, she was not prepared to

compete with him, who counted his gold by hundreds of thousands. Five

hundred was all she would give for Rocket. How, then was he surprised

and chagrined when, with a coolness equal to his own, she kept steadily

on, scarcely allowing the auctioneer to repeat his bid before she

increased it, and once, womanlike, raising on her own.

"Fie, Harney! Shame to go against a girl! Better give it up, for don't

you see she's resolved to have him? She's worth half Massachusetts, too,

they say."

These and like expressions met Harney on every side, until at last, as

he paused to answer some of them, growing heated in the altercation, and

for the instant forgetting Rocket, the auctioneer brought the hammer

down with a click which made Harney leap from the ground, for by that

sound he knew that Rocket was sold to Alice Johnson for six hundred

dollars!

Meantime Alice had sought the friendly shelter of Ellen's room, where

the tension of nerve endured so long gave way, and sinking upon the sofa

she fainted, just as down the Lexington turnpike came the man looked for

so long in the earlier part of the day. She could not err, in Mr.

Liston's estimation, and Alice grew calm again, and in a hurried

consultation explained to him more definitely than her letter had done,

what her wishes were--Colonel Tiffton must not be homeless in his old

age. There were ten thousand dollars lying in the ---- Bank in

Massachusetts, so she would have Mosside purchased in her name for

Colonel Tiffton, not as a gift, for he would not accept it, but as a

loan, to be paid at his convenience. This was Alice's plan, and Mr.

Liston acted upon it at once. Taking his place in the motley assemblage,

he bid quietly, steadily, until at last Mosside, with its appurtenances,

belonged ostensibly to him, and the half-glad, half-disappointed people

wondered greatly who Mr. Jacob Liston could be, or from what quarter of

the globe he had suddenly dropped into their midst.




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