dollars. What am I bid?"

He struck a base note of the keys, then a treble, and they vibrated in
the heated air of the big hall. Had he hit the little C of the top
octave, the tinkle of that also might have been heard.

"Gentlemen and ladies, we have to begin somewheres. What am I bid?"

A menacing murmur gave place to the accusing silence. Some there were who
gazed at the Rothfield with longing eyes, but who had no intention of
committing social suicide. Suddenly a voice, the rasp of which penetrated
to St. Charles Street, came out with a bid. The owner was a seedy man
with a straw-colored, drunkard's mustache. He was leaning against the
body of Mrs. Russell's barouche (seized for sale), and those about him
shrank away as from smallpox. His hundred-dollar offer was followed by a
hiss. What followed next Stephen will always remember. When Judge Whipple
drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a warning to those that
knew him. As he doubled the bid, the words came out with the aggressive
distinctness of a man who through a long life has been used to
opposition. He with the gnawed yellow mustache pushed himself clear of
the barouche, his smouldering cigar butt dropping to the floor. But there
were no hisses now.

And this is how Judge Whipple braved public opinion once more. As he
stood there, defiant, many were the conjectures as to what he could wish
to do with the piano of his old friend. Those who knew the Judge (and
there were few who did not) pictured to themselves the dingy little
apartment where he lived, and smiled. Whatever his detractors might have
said of him, no one was ever heard to avow that he had bought or sold
anything for gain.