“The old eight-day clock comes next. Many a day that clock has seen, and it is good yet. How much am I offered for the old family clock? Start it, some one. I’ll give five dollars for it myself.” “Six,” said the old man on the door-step. “Are you going to buy that, too?” said old Susan. “I’m proper glad to hear ye bid on that. How many times I’ve heard it strike one at the family funerals, and then seen the minister rise beside the coffin and say, ‘Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.’ I used to hear it strike one at night, when I watched with my twin brother Martin, who went West, in the weeks and weeks when he laid between life and death with the typhus fever. I wish that he could be here to-day. “Stranger, do you know of what I’ve been thinkin’? Of course you don’t. I’ve just been wishing like, dreaming like, that brother Martin would come here, as you have come, and would bid off the old farm, and that I might die here at last in peace—where they all died. I’ve been dreamin’ just that dream. It comes to me. Oh, what a Thanksgiving this old heart would have, could such a dream as that come true!” “Six dollars I am offered. Six, six, six. Going, going, going. Do I hear seven?” “Seven,” bid a neighbor. “Seven—do I hear ten? Seven dollars am I offered. Yes, once eight, and nine. Do I hear ten? Ten, ten, ten—do I hear it?” “Ten,” said the old man on the step. “Ten I am offered. Do I hear the twelve? Ten, ten, ten. Going, going, going, at ten dollars. Once—do I hear it? Twice—do I hear it? Third and last call. Going at ten dollars, to—” “Cash,” said the old man. “Stranger,” said the auctioneer, “what shall we do with these things that you have bought?” The crowd gathered densely about the door-step to hear the reply. “You may leave them right where they are. I have a good use for them.” The parlor looking-glass was next offered. The old man on the step bought that also. Then the old empty parrot-cage, and he bought that. “I’m glad that you have bought the lookin’-glass,” said old Susan. “What if all the faces that have looked into it could appear again! What if I could see there my father and mother young again—and Martin! What does make me think so much of Martin of late? Seems as though sometimes he was hoverin’ around me. There, they are going to sell the Concord musket and the dinner-horn! How many times I’ve blown that old horn just at twelve o’clock, to call the folks to dinner! Martin learned me how to blow it when he was a boy. We used to blow a sea-shell at first.” The sale continued without any regard to the order of the value of the articles,—the parlor furniture, old school-books and almanacs, china and pewter mugs. The old man on the step bought them all.