"Still, if anybody buys the goods, they must be delivered." "That doesn't follow. You can get a friend to bid in everything in my name. He must bid very low, so that the entire amount of sales shall not exceed three hundred dollars. After that, I will settle all with the sheriff, and you can go on as before. The sale can take place in the room back of your store, and even your wife up stairs need not know it. All you have to do will be to furnish the deputy-sheriff with a correct list of what is to be sold. You can call a whole row of shelves a lot, to be struck off at a single bid, and he will go through all the forms of a sale in a low voice, and the clerk and customers in your store will be none the wiser." "And that's the way it's done!" said Malcolm. "I have often wondered how people who were broken up root and branch managed to retain their furniture, for instance." "It is by the aid of friends, through an amicable sale." "I did not expect this act of kindness from you, Mr. Dunbar," said Malcolm, now recollecting the deep obligation under which the lawyer was placing him. "When it is in my power, I hope to make you feel that I am grateful. What is done must be done, I suppose, immediately." "Yes. For if it be not all over before judgments are obtained and executions issued by those who are suing, some trouble may be given, although the sale could not be prevented." "I am ready to have the matter as speedily arranged as possible." "Very well. If you will draw me a note on demand for three hundred dollars, I will hand you my check for that amount. To-morrow, if you will call round, the confession of judgment can be made. Things will go on smoothly enough after that. Leave it all in my hands. I can manage these underlings of the law to a nicety. In due time I will notify you how to act." The thing proposed by the lawyer was done. Malcolm was quietly sold out by the sheriff, and Dunbar got legal possession of all the goods in his store and furniture in his house. "I think I shall be able to manage him now," he said to himself, with a cold and heartless sneer, "should he prove troublesome. Harrison will hear no more from him after this suit is lost. What fools some men are!" CHAPTER XI. A BIT OF RETALIATION. AFTER the sheriff's sale had taken place, Malcolm tried to fix his mind more intently on his business, but he found this almost impossible. The argument in his suit against Harrison was to come on at the next term, only two months off, and his anxiety about the result kept his thoughts in such a continued state of excitement, that he injured rather than benefited his business by whatever was done to advance it. One day he called upon Dunbar, to ask how the matter was progressing. He found the lawyer looking very serious. "How do things look now?" he asked. "Bad, I am sorry to say." Malcolm turned pale. "What is the matter?" he asked, anxiously, "The defence has filed a demurrer to our bill." "A what?"