ascendant and unrewarded Virtue." He leaned on his spade in an ironically rustic attitude to watch the Pallinder household goods go by--goods, not gods, for everything, as he observed, was of a transcendant and sparkling newness. Most of us live in unacknowledged bondage to certain kind, familiar, sooty, and begrimed, utterly useless hearthstone deities. We cling shamefaced to our rickety old relics. The pair of vases that used to stand on mother's mantelpiece--hideous things they are, too,--the little high chair that was Johnny's--he died in '87, you remember--who has not seen this pathetic lumber voyaging helplessly about from house to apartment, from town to country and back again, hobnobbing peaceably on the rear of the wagon with flower-stands and the gas-range, retiring at last to the garret, but somehow never getting as far as the junk-shop? _Sunt lacrimae rerum_--as Doctor Vardaman would have said, being somewhat given to Latin tags after the taste of an older generation. His own house was crowded with these touching reminders; the Pallinders went to the other extreme; either they sternly repressed the mushy sentimentalism that would cherish outworn sticks and stoneware for the sake of auld lang syne, or they never had had any to cherish. "They brought nothing into the town with them, and it is certain they took nothing away," said the doctor afterwards in an awful and irreverent parody. An aroma of fresh packing-stuff and varnish hung about the caravan; bright new mirrors swayed and glanced; and, since the fashions of eighty-one were more or less flamboyant, you might see from afar the roses, poppies, and what-not that bloomed upon the Pallinder rolls of new carpet, the gilt and veneered scrolls, knobs, and channellings of the Pallinder furniture, the Pallinder Tennessee-marble table-tops, carefully boxed, yet--as one may say in a figure--hallooing aloud for admiration of their size and costliness. There was one van filled with hogsheads packed with china; it was whispered that many of the things had been ordered from New York, but most of them were got in town at prices that kept the shop-keepers smiling until their bills were sent in--I am anticipating. The doctor espied the ladies in a carriage at the end, and bowed with the rather exuberant courtesy taught in his youth. Miss Pallinder returned the salutation; Mrs. Botlisch shouted a jovial "Howdy, Doc.!" Mrs. Pallinder drew back impulsively in a momentary embarrassment; she emerged almost instantly and recognised him, triumphantly gracious. But the doctor resumed his digging, inscrutably grinning at the next shovelful. The fact is, this casual passage vividly recalled his first encounter with these ladies a few weeks earlier, upon one of the occasions when they had driven out to inspect the Gwynne house, before the bargain was closed. Doctor Vardaman, in a sleeve-waistcoat, for the day was cold, was busily spading up his beds, when a carriage drew in beside the iron palings.