When a debtor came, pleading for a short delay on a payment, the old man had but one reply,-- "No, no, no! What yer got?
what yer got?
Gie me somethin', gie me somethin'.

Settle, settle, settle! Gie me any thin' yer got.

Settle, settle, settle!" The consequences of twenty years' such traffic as this can more easily be imagined than described.

The room was piled from floor to roof with its miscellaneous collections: junk-shops, pawnbrokers' cellars, and old women's garrets seemed all to have disgorged themselves here.

A huge stack of calico comforters, their tufts gray with dust and cobwebs, lay on top of two old ploughs, in one corner: kegs of nails, boxes of soap, rolls of leather, harnesses stiff and cracking with age, piles of books, chairs, bedsteads, andirons, tubs, stone ware, crockery ware, carpets, files of old newspapers, casks, feather-beds, jars of druggists' medicines, old signboards, rakes, spades, school-desks,--in short, all things that mortal man ever bought or sold,--were here, packed in piles and layers, and covered with dust as with a gray coverlid.