People flocked to the place where these treasures were hung, and as a knowledge of pictures is born with most people, they were not slow to appreciate the fact that at last a chance had come to acquire at a merely nominal cost pictures by artists of world-wide fame. Most persons had read of the enormous prices brought by some prints after pictures by George Morland, but here were the actual pictures themselves in frames of the finest Dutch metal: no frames protected the high-priced prints in Christie's! And not merely was Morland highly represented here, but quite half a dozen exquisite _genre_ pictures by Josef Israels were to be seen in a row, and it was whispered among the cognoscenti that this painter had just died and the _Studio_ had contained an eulogistic article, with illustrations, on his work! Another chance! Of course Sidney Cooper's “Cows in Canterbury Meadows” spoke for itself. Every tyro knew that no one could ever paint cattle like Sidney Cooper. And Birket Foster--no one could ever approach Birket Foster in showing children swinging on a gate. There was the gate, sure enough, and the children, and the pet lamb--all the genuine Birket Foster properties. And “by order of the Sheriff.” It was a treat to see the _cognoscenti_ examining the pictures, subjecting individual works to the severest tests of light and magnifying glasses, and then whispering gravely together in corners on the subject of their merits. Some of them had pencils, which they had pressed to their lips while they scrutinised the masterpieces, preparatory to making notes on their catalogues--all just like a London picture sale in King Street, St. James's Street, London, W. And then some fool came into the room and laughed. He was a man who pretended to know a lot about pictures, and he was usually disposed to question the authenticity of things in the possession of everybody but himself. He glanced around the walls and went away, still laughing, after being in the place no longer than three minutes. That was a trick on his part, the _cognoscenti_ said. He wished to put them off buying and so make a haul for himself. They were confirmed in this belief when the one dealer in the town told a gentleman, who had come to him with a commission to purchase some of the pictures, that the man had just been to caution him against buying any of them on his own account. “He said that they are being hawked round from town to town, and that they are really all fakes--that there is not a genuine picture among the lot, and that the Sheriff's sale is not a _bona fide_ one, but one of the oldest tricks of picture fakers.” But the knowing person said to the dealer--“Does he mean to say that in a town like this any man would dare to put 'by order of the Sheriff' at the top of the bill if it was not _bona fide?_He would pretty soon find himself in trouble. You attend the auction and bid for the numbers that I have marked in the catalogue.”