"Then she has--she does love another?" and Hugh's face was white as
ashes.
"I do not know that she loves him; she did not say so," Adah replied,
thinking it better for Hugh that he should know the whole. "There was a
boy or youth, who saved her life at the peril of his own, and she
remembered him so long, praying for him daily that God would bring him
to her again, so she could thank him for his kindness."
Poor Hugh. He saw clearly now how it all was. He had suffered his uncle,
who affected a dislike for "Hugh," to call him "Irving." He had also,
for no reason at all, suffered Alice to think he was a Stanley, and this
was the result.
"I can live on just as I did before," was again the mental cry of his
wrung heart.
How changed were all things now, for the certainty that Alice never
would be his had cast a pall over everything, and even the autumnal
sunshine streaming through the window seemed hateful to him.
Involuntarily his mind wandered to the sale and to Rocket, perhaps at
that very moment upon the block.
"If I could have kept him, it would have been some consolation," he
sighed, just as the sound of hoofs dashing up to the door met his ear.
It was Claib, and just as Hugh was wondering at his headlong haste, he
burst into the room, exclaiming: "Oh, Mas'r Hugh, 'tain't no use now. He'd done sold, Rocket is. I hearn
him knocked down, and then I comed to tell you, an' he looked so
handsome, too,--caperin' like a kitten. They done made me show him off,
for he wouldn't come for nobody else, but the minit he fotched a sight
of dis chile, he flung 'em right and left. I fairly cried to see how he
went on."
There was no color now in Hugh's face, and his voice trembled as he
asked: "Who bought him?"
"Harney, in course, bought him for five-fifty. I tells you they runs him
up, somebody did, and once, when he stood at four hundred and fifty, and
I thought the auction was going to say 'Gone,' I bids myself."
"You!" and Hugh stared blankly at him.
"I know it wan't manners, but it came out 'fore I thought, and Harney,
he hits me a cuff, and tells me to hush my jaw. He got paid, though, for
jes' then a voice I hadn't hearn afore, a wee voice like a girl's, calls
out five hundred, and ole Harney turn black as tar. 'Who's that?' he
said, pushin' inter the crowd, and like a mad dog yelled out five-fifty,
and then he set to cussin' who 'twas biddin' ag'in him. I hearn them
'round me say, 'That fetches it. Rocket's a goner,' when I flung the
halter in Harney's ugly face, and came off home to tell you. Poor Mas'r,
you is gwine to faint," and the well-meaning, but rather impudent Claib,
sprang forward in time to catch and hold his young master, who otherwise
might have fallen to the floor.