Mona looks at him. They go down the hill together without saying any more.
At last it has come, the day of the sale. The Commandant has permitted it to be held at the farm, although the camp is not yet entirely cleared. It is his last act before leaving, for he is going away that morning. Mona sees him driving off in his motor car, hardly recognizable in his civilian clothes. As he passes the farm-house he raises his hat to her—an English gentleman, every inch of him.
Towards eleven o’clock there is much commotion about the farmstead. The guards (they have had orders to help) are bringing the big beasts out of the houses into the “haggard” and driving the sheep and lambs into pens. There is a great deal of bleating and lowing. Mona, who is compelled to hear, but cannot bring herself to see what is going on, is indoors, trying not to look or listen.
At length there is the sound of voices. The Advocate, with the auctioneer and his clerk, are coming up the avenue, and behind them are many farmers. Long John Corlett, in his chapel clothes, is prominent among the latter, talking and laughing and hobnobbing with everybody. Mona sees the look of impudent certainty in the man’s empty face. She also sees Oskar, who is behind the barbed wire of the Third Compound, with a face that is white and fierce.
After a short period for inspection the auction begins. The Advocate reads the conditions of sale (the whole of the stock on the farm is to be sold without reserve), and then the auctioneer steps up to the top of the mounting-block, while the clerk takes his place at the foot of it, and the farmers form a circle around them. There are the usual facetiæ.
“Now, gentlemen, you’ve got the chance of your lives this morning. John Corlett, I know you’ve come to buy up everything, so get your purse-strings loosened. Mr. Lace, thou knows a good beast if anybody on the island does, and there are lashings of them here, I can tell thee.”
The first animal to be led out by the guard into the circle of the spectators is a fine milch cow, five years old. Mona remembers that she gave forty pounds for it in the middle of the war. It is knocked down for twenty.
“What name?”
“John Corlett.”
For a long half-hour there are scenes of the same kind. Every fresh beast put up is knocked down at half its value, and always, after the crack of the auctioneer’s hammer, there comes the same name—“John Corlett.”