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 eous. As the code provides, the court must in every stage of an action disregard any error or defect in the pleadings or proceedings which does not affect the substantial rights of the adverse party, and no judgment shall be reversed or affected by reason of such error or defect. Cohn v. Wyngarden, 344.

12. The plaintiff, the State of North Dakota, made application for an order to restrain the sheriff from selling a certain automobile at an execution sale on the ground that an action had been brought and was then pending for the forfeiture of said automobile, under the State Prohibition Laws, (chap. 97 Laws 1921), and that all claims relating to said automobile were properly triable in such forfeiture action. The trial court denied the application for a restraining order, but in its order provided that the execution sale should be subject to all the rights and equities of the State; that such rights and equities were to be determined in the forfeiture action; that any purchaser at the execution sale should take such automobile subject to the rights of the State as they might finally be determined in such forfeiture action; that said automobile should remain in the possession of the said sheriff to abide the final determination of the rights of the State in said action; and that at the time of, and before making, such execution sale, the sheriff should read such order of the court and announce that said sale was being made subject to the provisions thereof. Held, that the plaintiff was in no event prejudiced by such order. State v. One Buick Auto, 348.

13. When on appeal from an order denying an injunction to restrain an execution sale, it appears that the proceedings were not stayed pending appeal, and that before the appeal was submitted the execution sale has been held in accordance with the directions of the execution and the provisions of the order apealed from, the question as to whether the sale should or should not have been restrained becomes a moot one, and the appeal is subject to dismissal. State v. One Buick Auto, 348.

14. It is the duty of the lower court, on the remand of a case, to comply with the mandate of the appellate court and obey the directions therein. Hence, where the Supreme Court directs that a judgment be modified in certain particulars, and, as thus modified, affirmed, it is the duty of the court below to modify the original judgment as, and only as, directed; and it has no power to make other modifications or changes in such judgment. It is held that in the instant case the trial court correctly interpreted and carried out the mandate of the appellate court. State ex rel. Wehe v. Frazier, 381.

15. Defendant claims there is conflicting testimony with reference to the proper application of a certain sum of money, in the amount $1,710.00, which he claims he ordered to be applied on the note. The judgment has been directed to be modified, plaintiff having