At a Public Sale. 255 



hands. He looked at it with a puzzled expression, 

 and merely cried, " What is bid for this ? " His 

 ignorance was encouraging. It started at a dime, 

 and I secured it for a quarter. For a moment I 

 little wondered at the fascination of public sales. 

 The past was forgiven, for now luck had turned, 

 and I gloried in the possession of a prize. 



To seek the outer world was a perilous under- 

 taking, for fear that the triply-named knife might 

 come to grief; but I reached home at last, and, 

 hugging the precious bit, mysteriously disappeared 

 for quite an hour. No one must know of my 

 success until the mystery was cleaned, brightened, 

 and restored to pristine beauty. I rubbed the 

 gummy surface with kerosene, and then polished 

 it with flannel. Then warm water and a tooth- 

 brush were brought into play, and the oil all re- 

 moved. Then a long dry polishing, and the 

 restoration was complete. Certainly no other 

 Smalltowner had such a wooden knife ; and it was 

 indeed beautiful. Black in a cross light, red in 

 direct light, and kaleidoscopic by gas-light. Ah, 

 such a prize ! The family knew that something 

 strange was transpiring, but what, no one had an 



