She was in the barn when the sound of the auctioneer's voice in the
corn-yard made her look over the half-door and listen. Gradually the
truth dawned upon her; and she burst into tears over an old rake which
she had been accustomed to call hers, because she had always dragged it
at hay-making. Then wiping her eyes hastily--for, partly from her
aunt's hardness, she never could bear to be seen crying, even when a
child--she fled to Brownie's stall, and burying herself in the manger,
began weeping afresh. After a while, the fountain of tears was for the
time exhausted, and she sat disconsolately gazing at the old cow
feeding away, as if food were everything and a _roup_ nothing at all,
when footsteps approached the _byre_, and, to her dismay, two men, whom
she did not know, came in, untied Brownie, and actually led her away
from before her eyes. She still stared at the empty space where Brownie
had stood,--stared like a creature stranded by night on the low coast
of Death, before whose eyes in the morning the sea of Life is visibly
ebbing away. At last she started up. How could she sit there without
Brownie! Sobbing so that she could not breathe, she rushed across the
yard, into the crowded and desecrated house, and up the stair to her
own little room, where she threw herself on the bed, buried her eyes in
the pillow, and, overcome with grief, fell fast asleep.
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