"Watch the battle between our leader and Rip, the Mean!" Now the bidding became slower, fifty cents at a time being offered, bids coming only when the auctioneer threatened to "knock down." "I don't want to get this confounded canoe fastened onto me," grumbled Fred Ripley to himself.

"I want to stick Prescott and his crowd for all I can, but I must look out that I don't get stung.

I know better than to want that canoe, no matter how good it _looks_!" "Sixteen," said Dick at last, feeling more desperate inwardly than his face showed.
"Sixteen-fifty," from Ripley.
"Seventeen," offered Dick, after a pause.
"Seventeen-fifty," announced Fred, after another long bait.
"Eighteen!" followed up young Prescott.

He was in a cold perspiration now, lest the fight be forced too far.
To his astonishment, Fred Ripley, an ugly sneer on his face, turned his back on the bidding.
"Are you through, gentlemen ?" demanded the auctioneer, after a keen look in the direction of the lawyer's son.
"I am," Ripley growled over his shoulder.
"I am offered eighteen! Eighteen! Eighteen! Who says nineteen?
Make it eighteen-fifty! Who says eighteen-fifty?
Eighteen and a quarter! Are you through, gentlemen?
Then going, going---gone! Sold to Master Prescott at eighteen dollars.

Young man, I congratulate you.