IT is a well-worn, yet none the less true saying that every human life is a chain of causes and effects; each effect a cause, and each cause an effect, stretching back to an unimagined and unimaginable First Cause; and on and on into endless, undreamed of vistas of the future. Yet the realization of this vague, yet tremendous fact comes but seldom even to the thoughtful mind, so busy are we forging link on link of the chain which binds us alike to past and future. Barbara Preston, stopping aimlessly to read the notice of an auction of farm stock and household furniture advertised to take place in a neighboring township, could not guess that the trivial impulse that stayed her feet by the big chestnut at the roadside linked itself with events already slowly shaping in her future. The notice was printed in bold red letters on a buff background, calculated to seize and hold the eye of the passerby, and set forth the fact that one Thomas Bellows, Auctioneer, would, on the twenty-fifth day of April, sell to the highest bidder, on the premises of the owner, four milch cows, three farm horses, and sixty-four sheep. Also one young carriage horse, well broken, sound, kind, and willing. Other items relating to household gear and poultry followed, set down in due order of their relative importance. The red letters on the buff ground passed into Barbara’s eyes—as indeed they were purposefully intended—and impressed themselves on her memory. She considered them half angrily as she pursued her way to the post-office, picturing to herself the day when Thomas Bellows or another, would noisily exploit the contents of her own well-loved home. There was little there to bring money, and the mortgage covered stock and furniture as well as the land itself. She had learned this from a curt letter addressed to her by Stephen Jarvis in reply to questions of her own as concisely put.