all. "They are far too good to give away," he remarked to the
owner. "They've been used so little that you could easily sell them
for new at the fair."

The auction hunters had no notion as to why they kept shouting more
and more eagerly. Lars Gunnarson showed much distress for every
fresh bid; it could never have been to please him they were
bidding. Somehow they had come to regard the things he offered as
of real worth. It suddenly occurred to them that one thing or
another was needed at home and here were veritable bargains, which
they were not buying now just for the fun of it, as had been the
case when Jöns of Kisterud did the auctioning.

After this master stroke Lars Gunnarson was in great demand at all
auctions. There was never any merriment at the sales after he had
begun to wield the hammer; but he had the faculty of making folks
long to get possession of a lot of old junk and inducing a couple
of bigwigs to bid against each other on things they had no earthly
use for, simply to show that money was no object to them. And he
managed to dispose of everything at all auctions at which he
served.

Once only did it seem to go badly for Lars, and that was at Sven
Österby's, at Bergvik. There was a fine big house, with all its
furnishings up for sale. Many people had assembled, and though late
in the autumn the weather was so mild that the auction could be
held out of doors; yet the sales were almost negligible. Lars could
not make the people take any interest in the wares, or get them to
bid. It looked as though it would go no better for him than it had
gone for Jöns of Kisterud the day Lars had to take up the hammer to