"Ma says the biggest ought to bring a quarter," he returned, blushing as
Aunt Verbeny grunted again, "and the four smallest can go for twenty
cents."

But when the bargain was concluded he lingered and added shamefacedly:
"Won't you please let that red-and-black rooster live as long as you
can? I raised it."

"Why, bless my heart!" exclaimed Miss Chris, "I believe the child is
fond of the chicken."

Eugenia, who was hovering by, burst into tears and declared that the
rooster should not die.

"Twenty cents is s-o ch-ea-p for a li-fe," she sobbed. "It shan't be
killed, Aunt Chris. It shall go in my hen-h-ou-se." And she rushed off
to get her little tin bank from the top bureau drawer.

When the arrangements were concluded Nicholas started empty-handed down
the box walk, the money jingling in his pocket. At the end of the long
avenue of cedars there was a wide, unploughed common which extended for
a quarter of a mile along the roadside. In spring and summer the ground
was white with daisies and in the autumn it donned gorgeous vestments of
golden-rod and sumach. In the centre of the waste, standing alike grim
and majestic at all seasons, there was the charred skeleton of a
gigantic tree, which had been stripped naked by a bolt of lightning long
years ago. At its foot a prickly clump of briars surrounded the
blackened trunk in a decoration of green or red, and from this futile
screen the spectral limbs rose boldly and were silhouetted against the
far-off horizon like the masts of a wrecked and deserted ship. A rail