Burnbrae, the home of the Barings, with its productive acres fringed by vine-clad vales and hills, had by an irrevocable event passed irredeemably out of the possession of its embarrassed owner, and heart-broken the old man yielded his tenure to the new master. The mortgage debt and taxes, like omniverous caterpillars, began to eat away at its four corners at one and the same time. Mr. Baring could only await the inevitable hour with the saddest apprehensions. For himself it was a matter of little consequence, for like the sea-tossed sailor, he could discern within the length of a cable the ultimate haven, land-locked and tranquil; but for his two daughters who would survive him the stroke was almost heart-crushing. The forced sales of beautiful homesteads like Burnbrae, in the days of reconstruction were not much of an incident; when there was no halting by that unbrigaded army that was laying waste field and plantation, and scourging the land into nakedness; when by the extra judicial processes of assimilation and absorption the spoils system was budding into a vigorous life and the spoilsmen were animated, remorseless and persevering. Around this home there were memories dear and tender, trellissed in the affections of the Barings; incense came forth from chambers and bowers, and out yonder where the smooth white stones glisten in the moonlight like platoons of white-gowned maidens, the Baring generations lay in unbroken files. It is a sad thing to see a home, like a worthless chattel, under the hammer of a callous-hearted auctioneer; to hear him cry going, going, going, with as much delight as if he were parting company with a pestilence; but alas! with the owner it is like a judgment of outlawry to pass the keys, the symbolical title, to the purchaser, who is animated by no kind sentiment; who sees no tears and hears no sighs. "Going, going, going!" There slips out of the master's control the nursery where infancy was cradled, swathed in the manifolding of love and tenderness. I see in retrospection a beautiful young mother, with a redundance of soft black hair as velvety as the wing of a raven, with her foot upon the rocker smiling so sweetly upon the sleepy-eyed child, who arouses her little tired self only long enough to whisper dreamily,