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AUGUST lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is a favorite name for several towns in Austria and in

Germany, but this one especial little Hall, in the Upper Innthal, is one of the most charming OldWorld

places that I know, and August for his part did not know any other. It has the green meadows and the great

mountains all about it, and the graygreen glacierfed water rushes by it. It has paved, streets and enchanting

little shops that have all latticed panes and iron gratings to them; it has a very grand old Gothic church, that

has the noblest blendings of light and shadow, and marble tombs of dead knights, and a look of infinite

strength and repose as a church should have. Then there is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of

greenery and looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river; and there is an old schloss

which has been made into a guardhouse, with battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and colors,

and a manatarms carved in stone standing lifesize in his niche and, bearing his date 1580. A little farther

on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal woodcarved

Calvary, and beside that a small and very rich chapel: indeed, so full is the little town of the undisturbed past,

that to walk in it is like opening a missal of the Middle Ages, all emblazoned and illuminated with saints and

warriors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by reason of its monuments and its historic color, that I

marvel much no one has ever cared to sing its praises. The old pious heroic life of an age at once more restful

and more brave than ours still leaves its spirit there, and then there is the girdle of the mountains all around,

In this little town a few years ago August Strehla lived with his people in the stonepaved irregular square

He was a small boy of nine years at that time,a chubbyfaced little man with rosy cheeks, big hazel eyes,

and clusters of curls the brown of ripe nuts. His mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were many

mouths at home to feed. In this country the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped in

snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands,

was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps

there were flickered dully behind their quaint, oldfashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were

beautiful, all snowwhite under the stars that are so big in frost. Hardly any one was astir; a few good souls

wending home from vespers, a tired postboy who blew a shrill blast from his tasselled horn as he pulled up

his sledge before a hostelry, and little August hugging his jug of beer to his ragged sheepskin coat, were all

who were abroad, for the snow fell heavily and the good folks of Hall go early to their beds. He could not

run, or he would have spilled the beer; he was half frozen and a little frightened, but he kept up his courage

by saying over and over again to himself, "I shall soon be at home with dear Hirschvogel."

He went on through the streets, past the stone manatarms of the guard house, and so into the place where

the great church was, and where near it stood his father, Karl Strehla's house, with a sculptured Bethlehem

over the doorway, and the Pilgrimage of the Three Kings painted on its wall. He had been sent on a long

errand outside the gates in the afternoon, over the frozen fields and the broad white snow, and had been

belated, and had thought he had heard the wolves behind him at every step, and had reached the town in a

great state of terror, thankful with all his little panting heart to see the oillamp burning under the first

houseshrine. But he had not forgotten to call for the beer, and he carried it carefully now, though his hands

The snow outlined with white every gable and cornice of the beautiful old wooden houses; the moonlight

shone on the gilded signs, the lambs, the grapes, the eagles, and all the quaint devices that hung before the

doors; covered lamps burned before the Nativities and Crucifixions painted on the walls or let into the

woodwork; here and there, where a shutter had not been closed, a ruddy firelight lit up a homely interior,

with the noisy band of children clustering round the housemother and a big brown loaf, or some gossips

spinning and listening to the cobbler's or the barber's story of a neighbor, while the oilwicks glimmered, and

the hearthlogs blazed, and the chestnuts sputtered in their iron roastingpot. Little August saw all these

things, as he saw everything with his two big bright eyes that had such curious lights and shadows in them;

but he went heedfully on his way for the sake of the beer which a single slip of the foot would make him

spill. At his knock and call the solid oak door, four centuries old if one, flew open, and the boy darted in with

his beer, and shouted, with all the force of mirthful lungs, "Oh, dear Hirschvogel, but for the thought of you I

It was a large barren room into which he rushed with so much pleasure, and the bricks were bare and uneven.

It had a walnutwood press, handsome and very old, a broad deal table, and several wooden stools for all its

furniture; but at the top of the chamber, sending out warmth and color together as the lamp shed its rays upon

it, was a tower of porcelain, burnished with all the hues of a king's peacock and a queen's jewels, and

surmounted with armed figures, and shields, and flowers of heraldry, and a great golden crown upon the

IT was a stove of 1532, and on it were the letters H. R. H., for it was in every portion the handwork of the

great potter of Nurnberg, Augustin Hirschvogel, who put his mark thus, as all the world knows.

The stove no doubt had stood in palaces and been made for princes, had warmed the crimson stockings of

cardinals and the goldbroidered shoes of archduchesses, had glowed in presencechambers and lent its

carbon to help kindle sharp brains in anxious councils of state; no one knew what it had seen or done or been

fashioned for; but it was a right royal thing. Yet perhaps it had never been more useful than it was now in this

poor desolate room, sending down heat and comfort into the troop of children tumbled together on a

wolfskin at its feet, who received frozen August among them with loud shouts of joy.

"Oh, dear Hirschvogel, I am so cold, so cold!" said August, kissing its gilded lion's claws, "Is father not in,

Dorothea was a girl of seventeen, darkhaired and serious, and with a sweet sad face, for she had had many

cares laid on her shoulders, even whilst still a mere baby. She was the eldest of the Strehla family, and there

were ten of them in all. Next to her there came Jan and Karl and Otho, big lads, gaining a little for their own

living; and then came August, who went up in the summer to the high Alps with the farmers' cattle, but in

winter could do nothing to fill his own little platter and pot; and then all the little ones, who could only open

their mouths to be fed like young birds,Albrecht and Hilda, and Waldo and Christof, and last of all little

threeyearold Ermengilda, with eyes like forgetmenots, whose birth had cost them the life of their

They were of that mixed race, half Austrian, half Italian, so common in the Tyrol; some of the children were

white and golden as lilies, others were brown and brilliant as freshfallen chestnuts. The father was a good

man, but weak and weary with so many to find for and so little to do it with. He worked at the saltfurnaces,

and by that gained a few florins; people said he would have worked better and kept his family more easily if

he had not loved his pipe and a draught of ale too well; but this had only been said of him after his wife's

death, when trouble and perplexity had begun to dull a brain never too vigorous, and to enfeeble further a

character already too yielding. As it was, the wolf often bayed at the door of the Strehla household, without a

wolf from the mountains coming down. Dorothea was one of those maidens who almost work miracles, so far

can their industry and care and intelligence make a home sweet and wholesome and a single loaf seem to

swell into twenty. The children were always clean and happy, and the table was seldom without its big pot of

soup once a day. Still, very poor they were, and Dorothea's heart ached with shame, for she knew that their

father's debts were many for flour and meat and clothing. Of fuel to feed the big stove they had always

enough without cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold wood and fir cones and coke, and never

grudged them to his grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's improvidence and hapless, dreamy ways.

"Father says we are never to wait for him: we will have supper, now you have come home, dear," said

Dorothea, who, however she might fret her soul in secret as she knitted their hose and mended their shirts,

never let her anxieties cast a gloom on the children; only to August she did speak a little sometimes, because

he was so thoughtful and so tender of her always, and knew, as well as she did that there were troubles about

money,though these troubles were vague to them both, and the debtors were patient and kindly, being

Supper was a huge bowl of soup, with big slices of brown bread swimming in it and some onions bobbing up

and down: the bowl was soon emptied by ten wooden spoons, and then the three eldest boys slipped off to

bed, being tired with their rough bodily labor in the snow all day, and Dorothea drew her spinningwheel by

the stove and set it whirring, and the little ones got August down upon the old worn wolfskin and clamored

He had a piece of planed deal that his father had given him, and some sticks of charcoal, and he would draw a

hundred things he had seen in the day, sweeping each out with his elbow when the children had seen enough

of it and sketching another in its stead,faces and dogs' heads, and men in sledges, and old women in their

furs, and pinetrees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and thenvery reverentlya

Madonna and Child. It was all very rough, for there was no one to teach him anything. But it was all

lifelike, and kept the whole troop of children shrieking with laughter, or watching breathless, with wide

They were all so happy: what did they care for the snow outside? Their little bodies were warm, and their

hearts merry; even Dorothea, troubled about the bread for the morrow, laughed as she spun; and August, with

all his soul in his work, and little rosy Ermengilda's cheek on his shoulder, glowing after his frozen afternoon,

cried out loud, smiling, as he looked up at the stove that was shedding its heat down on them all,

"Oh, dear Hirschvogel! you are almost as great and good as the sun! No; you are greater and better, I think,

because he goes away nobody knows where all these long, dark, cold hours, and does not care how people die

for want of him; but youyou are always ready: just a little bit of wood to feed you, and you will make a

The grand old stove seemed to smile through all its iridescent surface at the praises of the child. No doubt the

stove, though it had known three centuries and more, had known but very little gratitude.

It was one of those magnificent stoves in enamelled faience which so excited the jealousy of the other potters

of Nurnberg that in a body they demanded of the magistracy that Augustin Hirschvogel should be forbidden

to make any more of them,the magistracy, happily, proving of a broader mind, and having no sympathy

It was of great height and breadth, with all the majolica lustre which Hirschvogel learned to give to his

enamels when he was making love to the young Venetian girl whom he afterwards married. There was the

statue of a king at each corner, modelled with as much force and splendor as his friend Albrecht Durer could

have given unto them on copperplate or canvas. The body of the stove itself was divided into panels, which

had the Ages of Man painted on them in polychrome; the borders of the panels had roses and holly and laurel

and other foliage, and German mottoes in black letter of odd OldWorld moralizing, such as the old Teutons,

and the Dutch after them, love to have on their chimneyplaces and their drinkingcups, their dishes and

flagons. The whole was burnished with gilding in many parts, and was radiant everywhere with that brilliant

coloring of which the Hirschvogel family, painters on glass and great in chemistry, as they were, were all

The stove was a very grand thing, as I say: possibly Hirschvogel had made it for some mighty lord of the

Tyrol at that time when he was an imperial guest at Innspruck and fashioned so many things for the Schloss

Amras and beautiful Philippine Welser, the burgher's daughter, who gained an archduke's heart by her beauty

and the right to wear his honors by her wit. Nothing was known of the stove at this latter day in Hall. The

grandfather Strehla, who had been a mastermason, had dug it up out of some ruins where he was building,

and, finding it without a flaw, had taken it home, and only thought it worth finding because it was such a

good one to burn. That was now sixty years past, and ever since then the stove had stood in the big desolate

empty room, warming three generations of the Strehla family, and having seen nothing prettier perhaps in all

its many years than the children tumbled now in a cluster like gathered flowers at its feet. For the Strehla

children, born to nothing else, were all born with beauty: white or brown, they were equally lovely to look

upon, and when they went into the church to mass, with their curling locks and their clasped hands, they

"Tell us a story, August," they cried, in chorus, when they had seen charcoal pictures till they were tired; and

August did as he did every night pretty nearly, looked up at the stove and told them what he imagined of the

many adventures and joys and sorrows of the human being who figured on the panels from his cradle to his

To the children the stove was a household god. In summer they laid a mat of fresh moss all round it, and

dressed it up with green boughs and the numberless beautiful wild flowers of the Tyrol country. In winter all

their joys centred in it, and scampering home from school over the ice and snow they were happy, knowing

that they would soon be cracking nuts or roasting chestnuts in the broad ardent glow of its noble tower, which

Once a travelling peddler had told them that the letters on it meant Augustin Hirschvogel, and that

Hirschvogel had been a great German potter and painter, like his father before him, in the artsanctified city

of Nurnberg, and had made many such stoves, that were all miracles of beauty and of workmanship, putting

all his heart and his soul and his faith into his labors, as the men of those earlier ages did, and thinking but

An old trader, too, who sold curiosities not far from the church had told August a little more about the brave

family of Hirschvogel, whose houses can be seen in Nurnberg to this day; of old Veit, the first of them, who

painted the Gothic windows of St. Sebald with the marriage of the Margravine; of his sons and of his

grandsons, potters, painters, engravers all, and chief of them great Augustin, the Luca della Robbia of the

North. And August's imagination, always quick, had made a living personage out of these few records, and

saw Hirschvogel as though he were in the flesh walking up and down the MaximilianStrass in his visit to

Innspruck, and maturing beautiful things in his brain as he stood on the bridge and gazed on the

So the stove had got to be called Hirschvogel in the family, as if it were a living creature, and little August

was very proud because he had been named after that famous old dead German who had had the genius to

make so glorious a thing. The children loved the stove, but with August the love of it was a passion; and in

his secret heart he used to say to himself, "When I am a man, I will make just such things too, and then I will

set Hirschvogel in a beautiful room in a house that I will build myself in Innspruck just outside the gates,

For August, a saltbaker's son and a little cowkeeper when he was anything, was a dreamer of dreams, and

when he was upon the high Alps with his cattle, with the stillness and the sky around him, was quite certain

that he would live for greater things than driving the herds up when the springtide came among the blue sea

of gentians, or toiling down in the town with wood and with timber as his father and grandfather did every

day of their lives. He was a strong and healthy little fellow, fed on the free mountainair, and he was very

happy, and loved his family devotedly, and was as active as a squirrel and as playful as a hare; but he kept his

thoughts to himself, and some of them went a very long way for a little boy who was only one among many,

and to whom nobody had ever paid any attention except to teach him his letters and tell him to fear God.

August in winter was only a little, hungry schoolboy, trotting to be catechised by the priest, or to bring the

loaves from the bakehouse, or to carry his father's boots to the cobbler; and in summer he was only one of

hundreds of cowboys, who drove the poor, halfblind, blinking, stumbling cattle, ringing their throatbells,

out into the sweet intoxication of the sudden sunlight, and lived up with them in the heights among the Alpine

roses, with only the clouds and the snowsummits near. But he was always thinking, thinking, thinking, for

all that; and under his little sheepskin winter coat and, his rough hempen summer shirt his heart had as much

courage in it as Hofer's ever had,great Hofer, who is a household word in all the Inl, and whom August

always reverently remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck and ran out by the foaming watermill

August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told the children stories, his own little brown face growing red

with excitement as his imagination glowed to feverheat. That human being on the panels, who was drawn

there as a baby in a cradle, as a boy playing among flowers, as a lover, sighing under a casement, as a soldier

in the midst of strife, as a father with children round him, as a weary, old, blind man on crutches, and, lastly,

as a ransomed soul raised up by angels, had always had the most intense interest for August, and he had

made, not one history for him, but a thousand; he seldom told them the same tale twice. He had never seen a

storybook in his life; his primer and his massbook were all the volumes he had. But nature had given him

Fancy, and she is a good fairy that makes up for the want of very many things! only, alas! her wings are so

"It is time for you all to go to bed, children," said Dorothea, looking up from her spinning. "Father is very late

"Oh, five minutes more, dear Dorothea!" they pleaded; and little rosy and golden Ermengilda climbed up into

her lap. "Hirschvogel is so warm, the beds are never so warm as he. Cannot you tell us another tale, August?"

"No," cried August, whose face had lost its light, now that his story had come to an end, and who sat serious,

with his hands clasped on his knees, gazing on to the luminous arabesques of the stove.

"Grandmother's big cakes!" chuckled little Christof, who was five years old, and thought Christmas meant a

"What will Santa Claus find for 'Gilda if she be good?" murmured Dorothea over the child's sunny head; for,

however hard poverty might pinch, it could never pinch so tightly that Dorothea would not find some wooden

"Father Max has promised me a big goose, because I saved the calf's life in June," said August; it was the

"And Aunt Maila will be sure to send us wine and honey and a barrel of flour; she always does," said

Albrecht. Their aunt Maila had a chalet and a little farm over on the green slopes towards Dorp Ampas.

"I shall go up into the woods and get Hirschvogel's crown," said August; they always crowned Hirschvogel

for Christmas with pine boughs and ivy and mountainberries. The heat soon withered the crown; but it was

part of the religion of the day to them, as much so as it was to cross themselves in church and raise their

And they fell chatting of all they would do on the Christnight, and one little voice piped loud against

another's, and they were as happy as though their stockings would be full of golden purses and jewelled toys,

and the big goose in the souppot seemed to them such a meal as kings would envy,

IN the midst of their chatter and laughter a blast of frozen air and a spray of driven snow struck like ice

through the room, and reached them even in the warmth of the old wolfskins and the great stove. It was the

door which had opened and let in the cold; it was their father who had come home.

The younger children ran joyous to meet him. Dorothea pushed the one wooden armchair of the room to the

stove, and August flew to set the jug of beer on a little round table, and fill a long clay pipe; for their father

was good to them all, and seldom raised his voice in anger, and they had been trained by the mother they had

Tonight Karl Strehla responded very wearily to the young ones' welcome, and came to the wooden chair

"I am well enough," he answered, dully, and sat there with his head bent, letting the lighted pipe grow cold.

"Take the children to bed," he said, suddenly, at last, and Dorothea obeyed. August stayed behind, curled

before the stove; at nine years old, and when one earns money in the summer from the farmers, one is not

August did not heed his father's silence: he was used to it. Karl Strehla was a man of few words, and, being of

weakly health, was usually too tired at the end of the day to do more than drink his beer and sleep. August lay

on the wolfskin, dreamy and comfortable, looking up through his drooping eyelids at the golden coronets on

the crest of the great stove, and wondering for the millionth time whom it had been made for, and what grand

Dorothea came down from putting the little ones in their beds; the cuckooclock in the corner struck eight;

she looked to her father and the untouched pipe, then sat down to her spinning, saying nothing. She thought

There was a long silence; the cuckoo called the quarter twice; August dropped asleep, his curls falling over

Suddenly Karl Strehla struck his hand on the table, sending the pipe on the ground.

"I have sold Hirschvogel," he said; and his voice was husky and ashamed in his throat. The spinningwheel

"Sold Hirschvogel!" If their father had dashed the holy crucifix on the floor at their feet and spat on it, they

"I have sold Hirschvogel!" said Karl Strehla, in the same husky, dogged voice. "I have sold it to a travelling

trader in such things for two hundred florins. What would you?I owe double that. He saw it this morning

August stood, half blind with sleep, staring with dazed eyes as his cattle stared at the sun when they came out

" It is true. Would you like to know what is true too?that the bread you eat, and the meat you put in this

pot, and the roof you have over your heads, are none of them paid for, have been none of them paid for for

months and months: if it had not been for your grandfather I should have been in prison all summer and

autumn, and he is out of patience and will do no more now. There is no work to be had; the masters go to

younger men: they say I work ill; it may be so. Who can keep his head above water with ten hungry children

dragging him down? When your mother lived, it was different. Boy, you stare at me as if I were a mad dog!

You have made a god of yon china thing. Wellit goes: goes tomorrow. Two hundred florins, that is

something. It will keep me out of prison for a little, and with the spring things may turn

August stood like a creature paralyzed. His eyes were wide open, fastened on his father's with terror and

incredulous horror; his face had grown as white as his sister's; his chest heaved with tearless sobs.

"It is not true! It is not true!" he echoed, stupidly. It seemed to him that the very skies must fall, and the earth

perish, if they could take away Hirschvogel. They might as soon talk of tearing down God's sun out of the

"You will find it true," said his father, doggedly, and angered because he was in his own soul bitterly

ashamed to have bartered away the heirloom and treasure of his race and the comfort and healthgiver of his

young children. "You will find it true. The dealer has paid me half the money tonight, and will pay me the

other half tomorrow when he packs it up and takes it away to Munich. No doubt it is worth a great deal

more,at least I suppose so, as he gives that,but beggars cannot be choosers. The little black stove in the

kitchen will warm you all just as well. Who would keep a gilded, painted thing in a poor house like this,

when one can make two hundred florins by it? Dorothea, you never sobbed more when your mother died.

What is it, when all is said?a bit of hardware much too grandlooking for such a room as this. If all the

Strehlas had not been born fools it would have been sold a century ago, when it was dug up out of the ground.

'It is a stove for a museum,' the trader said when he saw it. To a museum let it go."

August gave a shrill shriek like a hare's when it is caught for its death, and threw himself on his knees at his

"Oh, father, father!" he cried, convulsively, his hands closing on Strehla's knees, and his uplifted face

blanched and distorted with terror. "Oh, father, dear father, you cannot mean what you say? Send it

awayour life, our sun, our joy; our comfort? We shall all die in the dark and cold. Sell me rather. Sell me

to any trade or any pain you like; I will not mind. But Hirschvogel!it is like selling the very cross off the

altar! You must be in jest. You could not do such a thingyou could not!you who have always been

gentle and good, and who have sat in the warmth here year after year with our mother. It is not a piece of

hardware, as you say; it is a living thing, for a great man's thoughts and fancies have put life into it, and it

loves us though we are only poor little children, and we love it with all our hearts and souls, and up in heaven

I am sure the dead Hirschvogel knows! Oh, listen; I will go and try and get work tomorrow! I will ask them

to let me cut ice or make the paths through the snow. There must be something I could do, and I will beg the

people we owe money to to wait; they are all neighbors, they will be patient. But sell Hirschvogel!oh,

never! never! never! Give the florins back to the vile man. Tell him it would be like selling the shroud out of

mother's coffin, or the golden curls off Ermengilda's head! Oh, father, dear father! do hear me, for pity's

Strehla was moved by the boy's anguish. He loved his children, though he was often weary of them, and their

pain was pain to him. But besides emotion, and stronger than emotion, was the anger that August roused in

him: he hated and despised himself for the barter of the heirloom of his race, and every word of the child

"You are a little fool," he said, harshly, as they had never heard him speak. "You rave like a playactor. Get

up and go to bed. The stove is sold. There is no more to be said. Children like you have nothing to do with

such matters. The stove is sold, and goes to Munich tomorrow. What is it to you? Be thankful I can get bread

Strehla took up the jug of ale as he paused, and drained it slowly as a man who had no cares.

August sprang to his feet and threw his hair back off his face; the blood rushed into his cheeks, making them

"You dare not!" he cried, aloud, "you dare not sell it, I say! It is not yours alone; it is ours"

Strehla flung the emptied jug on the bricks with a force that shivered it to atoms, and, rising to his feet, struck

his son a blow that felled him to the floor. It was the first time in all his life that he had ever raised his band

Then he took the oillamp that stood at his elbow and stumbled off to his own chamber with a cloud before

"What has happened?" said August, a little while later, as he opened his eyes and saw Dorothea weeping

above him on the wolfskin before the stove. He had been struck backward, and his head had fallen on the

hard bricks where the wolfskin did not reach. He sat up a moment, with his face bent upon his hands.

"But, oh, dear, how could you speak so to father?" she murmured. "It was very wrong."

"No, I was right," said August, and his little mouth, that hitherto had only curled in laughter, curved

downward with a fixed and bitter seriousness. "How dare he? How dare he?" he muttered, with his head sunk

in his hands. "It is not his alone. It belongs to us all. It is as much yours and mine as it is his."

Dorothea could only sob in answer. She was too frightened to speak. The authority of their parents in the

"Are you hurt by the fall, dear August?" she murmured, at length, for he looked to her so pale and strange.

He sat up upon the wolfskin with passionate pain upon his face; all his soul was in rebellion, and he was

"It is a sin; it is a theft; it is an infamy," he said, slowly, his eyes fastened on the gilded feet of Hirschvogel.

"Oh, August, do not say such things of father!" sobbed his sister. "Whatever he does, we ought to think it

"Is it right that he should spend his money in drink?that he should let orders lie unexecutedthat he

should do his work so ill that no one cares to employ him?that he should live on grandfather's charity, and

then dare sell a thing that is ours every whit as much as it is his? To sell Hirschvogel! Oh, dear God! I would

"August!" cried Dorothea, with piteous entreaty. He terrified her, she could not recognize her little, gay,

August laughed aloud again; then all at once his laughter broke down into bitterest weeping. He threw

himself forward on the stove, covering it with kisses, and sobbing as though his heart would burst from his

"August, dear August," whispered Dorothea, piteously, and trembling all over,for she was a very gentle

girl, and fierce feeling terrified her,"August, do not lie there. Come to bed: it is quite late. In the morning

you will be calmer. It is horrible indeed, and we shall die of cold, at least the little ones; but if it be father's

"Let me alone," said August, through his teeth, striving to still the storm of sobs that shook him from head to

"Come to bed, dear," sighed his sister. "Oh, August, do not lie and look like that! you frighten me. Do come

All his childhood had gone out of him, all his gleeful, careless, sunny temper had gone with it; he spoke

sullenly and wearily, choking down the great sobs in his chest. To him it was as if the end of the world had

His sister lingered by him while striving to persuade him to go to his place in the little crowded bedchamber

with Albrecht and Waldo and Christof. But it was in vain. "I shall stay here," was all he answered her. And he

THE lamps went out; the rats came and ran across the floor; as the hours crept on through midnight and past,

the cold intensified and the air of the room grew like ice. August did not move; he lay with his face

downward on the golden and rainbowhued pedestal of the household treasure, which henceforth was to be

Whilst yet it was dark his three elder brothers came down the stairs and let themselves out, each bearing his

lantern and going to his work in stoneyard and timberyard and at the saltworks. They did not notice him;

A little later his sister came down with a light in her hand to make ready the house ere morning should break.

August raised his eyes with a wild, feverish, sullen look in them that she had never seen there. His face was

ashen white: his lips were like fire. He had not slept all night; but his passionate sobs had given way to

delirious waking dreams and numb senseless trances, which had alternated one on another all through the

"August! do you not know me?" she cried, in an agony. "I am Dorothea. Wake up, dearwake up! It is

"I will go to grandfather," he said, very low. "He is always good: perhaps he could save it."

Loud blows with the heavy iron knocker of the housedoor drowned his words. A strange voice called aloud

"Let me in! Quick!there is no time to lose! More snow like this, and the roads will all be blocked. Let me

"Who shall prevent us?" laughed a big man, who was a Bavarian, amused at the fierce little figure fronting

"Strehla," said the big man, as August's father entered the room, "you have got a little mad dog here: muzzle

One way and another they did muzzle him. He fought like a little demon and hit out right and left, and one of

his blows gave the Bavarian a black eye. But he was soon mastered by four grown men, and his father flung

him with no light hand out from the door of the back entrance, and the buyers of the stately and beautiful

When Dorothea stole out to look for August, he was nowhere in sight. She went back to little 'Gilda, who was

ailing, and sobbed over the child, whilst the others stood looking on, dimly understanding that with

Hirschvogel was going all the warmth of their bodies, all the light of their hearth.

Even their father now was sorry and ashamed; but two hundred florins seemed a big sum to him, and, after

all, he thought the children could warm themselves quite as well at the black iron stove in the kitchen.

Besides, whether he regretted it now or not, the work of the Nurnberg potter was sold irrevocably, and he had

to stand still and see the men from Munich wrap it in manifold wrappings and bear it out; into the snowy air

August had stood still for a time, leaning, sick and faint from the violence that had been used to him, against

the back wall of the house. The wall looked on a court where a well was, and the backs of other houses, and

Into the court an old neighbor hobbled for water, and, seeing the boy, said to him,

"Well, for sure he is a fool," said the neighbor. "Heaven forgive me for calling him so before his own child!

but the stove was worth a mint of money. I do remember in my young days, in old Anton's time (that was

your greatgrandfather, my lad), a stranger from Vienna saw it, and said that it was worth its weight in gold."

"I loved it! I loved it!" he moaned. "I do not care what its value was. I loved it! I loved it!"

"You little simpleton!" said the old man, kindly. "But you are wiser than your father, when all's said. If sell it

he must, he should have taken it to good Herr Steiner over at Spruz, who would have given him honest value.

But no doubt they took him over his beer,ay, ay! but if I were you I would do better than cry. I would go

"Go after it when you are bigger," said the neighbor, with a goodnatured wish to cheer him up a little. "The

world is a small thing after all: I was a travelling clockmaker once upon a time, and I know that your stove

will be safe enough whoever gets it; anything that can be sold for a round sum is always wrapped up in cotton

wool by everybody. Ay, ay, don't cry so much; you will see your stove again some day,"

Then the old man hobbled away to draw his brazen pail full of water at the well.

August remained leaning against the wall; his head was buzzing and his heart fluttering with the new idea

which had presented itself to his mind. "Go after it," had said the old man. He thought, "Why not go with it?"

He loved it better than any one, even better than Dorothea; and he shrank from the thought of meeting his

He was by this time in that state of exaltation in which the impossible looks quite natural and commonplace.

His tears were still wet on his pale cheeks, but they had ceased to fall. He ran out of the courtyard by a little

gate, and across to the huge gothic porch of the church. From there he could watch unseen his father's

housedoor, at which were always hanging some blueandgray pitchers, such as are common and so

picturesque in Austria, for a part of the house was let to a man who dealt in pottery.

He hid himself in the grand portico, which he had so often passed through to go to mass or compline within,

and presently his heart gave a great leap, for he saw the strawenwrapped stove brought out and laid with

infinite care on the bullockdray. Two of the Bavarian men mounted beside it, and the sleighwagon slowly

crept over the snow of the place,snow crisp and hard as stone. The noble old minster looked its grandest

and most solemn, with its darkgray stone and its vast archways, and its porch that was itself as big as many

a church, and its strange gargoyles and lampirons black against the snow on its roof and on the pavement;

but for once August had no eyes for it: he only watched for his old friend. Then he, a little unnoticeable figure

enough, like a score of other boys in Hall, crept, unseen by any of his brothers or sisters, out of the porch and

Its course lay towards the station of the railway, which is close to the saltworks, whose smoke at times

sullies this part of clean little Hall, though it does not do very much damage. From Hall the iron road runs

northward through glorious country to Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, Buda, and southward over the Brenner into

AUGUST had often hung about the little station, watching the trains come and go and dive into the heart of

the hills and vanish. No one said anything to him for idling about; people are kindhearted and easy of

temper in this pleasant land, and children and dogs are both happy there. He heard the Bavarians arguing and

vociferating a great deal, and learned that they meant to go too and wanted to go with the great stove itself.

But this they could not do, for neither could the stove go by a passengertrain nor they themselves go in a

goodstrain. So at length they insured their precious burden for a large sum, and consented to send it by a

luggagetrain which was to pass through Hall in half an hour. The swift trains seldom deign to notice the

existence of Hall at all. August heard, and a desperate resolve made itself up in his little mind. Where

Hirschvogel went would he go. He gave one terrible thought to Dorotheapoor, gentle Dorothea!sitting

in the cold at home, then set to work to execute his project. How he managed it he never knew very clearly

himself, but certain it is that when the goodstrain from the north, that had come all the way from Linz on the

Danube, moved out of Hall, August was hidden behind the stove in the great covered truck, and wedged,

unseen and undreamt of by any human creature, amidst the cases of woodcarving, of clocks and

clockwork, of Vienna toys, of Turkish carpets, of Russian skins, of Hungarian wines, which shared the same

abode as did his swathed and bound Hirschvogel. No doubt he was very naughty, but it never occurred to him

that he was so: his whole mind and soul were absorbed in the one entrancing idea, to follow his beloved

It was very dark in the closed truck, which had only a little window above the door; and it was crowded, and

had a strong smell in it from the Russian hides and the hams that were in it. But August was not frightened;

he was close to Hirschvogel, and presently he meant to be closer still; for he meant to do nothing less than get

inside Hirschvogel itself. Being a shrewd little boy, and having had by great luck two silver groschen in his

breechespocket, which he had earned the day before by chopping wood, be had bought some bread and

sausage at the station of a woman there who knew him, and who thought he was going out to his uncle

Joachim's chalet above Jenbach. This he had with him, and this he ate in the darkness and the lumbering,

pounding, thundering noise which made him giddy, as never had he been in a train of any kind before. Still he

ate, having had no breakfast, and being a child, and half a German, and not knowing at all how or when he

When he had eaten, not as much as he wanted, but as much as he thought was prudent (for who could say

when he would be able to buy anything more?), he set to work like a little mouse to make a hole in the withes

of straw and hay which enveloped the stove. If it had been put in a packingcase he would have been

defeated at the onset. As it was, he gnawed, and nibbled, and pulled, and pushed, just as a mouse would have

done, making his hole where he guessed that the opening of the stove was,the opening through which he

had so often thrust the big oak logs to feed it. No one disturbed him; the heavy train went lumbering on and

on, and he saw nothing at all of the beautiful mountains, and shining waters, and great forests through which

he was being carried. He was hard at work getting through the straw and hay and twisted ropes; and get

through them at last he did, and found the door of the stove, which he knew so well, and which was quite

large enough for a child of his age to slip through, and it was this which he had counted upon doing. Slip

through he did, as he had often done at home for fun, and curled himself up there to see if he could anyhow

remain during many hours. He found that he could; air came in through the brass fretwork of the stove; and

with admirable caution in such a little fellow he leaned out, drew the hay and straw together, and rearranged

the ropes, so that no one could ever have dreamed a little mouse had been at them. Then he curled himself up

again, this time more like a dormouse than anything else; and, being safe inside his dear Hirschvogel and

intensely cold, he went fast asleep as if he were in his own bed at home with Albrecht and Christof on either

side of him. The train lumbered on, stopping often and long, as the habit of goodstrains is, sweeping the

snow away with its cowswitcher, and rumbling through the deep heart of the mountains, with its lamps

The train rolled on in its heavy, slow fashion, and the child slept soundly for a long while. When he did

awake, it was quite dark outside in the land; he could not see, and of course he was in absolute darkness; and

for a while he was sorely frightened, and trembled terribly, and sobbed in a quiet heartbroken fashion,

thinking of them all at home. Poor Dorothea! how anxious she would be! How she would run over the town

and walk up to grandfather's at Dorf Ampas, and perhaps even send over to Jenbach, thinking he had taken

refuge with Uncle Joachim! His conscience smote him for the sorrow he must be even then causing to his

gentle sister; but it never occurred to him to try and go back. If he once were to lose sight of Hirschvogel how

could he ever hope to find it again? how could he ever know whither it had gone,north, south, east, or

west? The old neighbor had said that the world was small; but August knew at least that it must have a great

many places in it: that he had seen himself on the maps on his schoolhouse walls. Almost any other little boy

would, I think, have been frightened out of his wits at the position in which he found himself; but August was

brave, and he had a firm belief that God and Hirschvogel would take care of him. The masterpotter of

Nurnberg was always present to his mind, a kindly; benign, and gracious spirit, dwelling manifestly in that

A droll fancy, you say? But every child with a soul in him has quite as quaint fancies as this one was of

So he got over his terror and his sobbing both, though he was so utterly in the dark. He did not feel cramped

at all, because the stove was so large, and air he had in plenty, as it came through the fretwork running

round the top. He was hungry again, and again nibbled with prudence at his loaf and his sausage. He could

not at all tell the hour. Every time the train stopped and he heard the banging, stamping, shouting, and

jangling of chains that went on, his heart seemed to jump up into his mouth. If they should find him out!

Sometimes porters came and took away this case and the other, a sack here, a bale there, now a big bag, now

a dead chamois. Every time the men trampled near him, and swore at each other, and banged this and that to

and fro, he was so frightened that his very breath seemed to stop. When they came to lift the stove out, would

they find him? and if they did find him, would they kill him? That was what he kept thinking of all the way,

all through the dark hours, which seemed without end. The goodstrains are usually very slow, and are many

days doing what a quick train does in a few hours. This one was quicker than most, because it was bearing

goods to the King of Bavaria; still, it took all the short winter's day and the long winter's night and half

another day to go over ground that the mailtrains cover in a forenoon. It passed great armored Kuffstein

standing across the beautiful and solemn gorge, denying the right of way to all the foes of Austria. It passed

twelve hours later, after lying by in outoftheway stations, pretty Rosenheim, that marks the border of

Bavaria. And here the Nurnberg stove, with August inside it, was lifted out heedfully and set under a covered

way. When it was lifted out, the boy had hard work to keep in his screams; he was tossed to and fro as the

men lifted the huge thing, and the earthenware walls of his beloved fireking were not cushions of down.

However, though they swore and grumbled at the weight of it, they never suspected that a living child was

inside it, and they carried it out on to the platform and set it down under the roof of the goodsshed. There it

passed the rest of the night and all the next morning, and August was all the while within it.

THE winds of early winter sweep bitterly ever Rosenheim, and all the vast Bavarian plain was one white

sheet of snow. If there had not been whole armies of men at work always clearing the iron rails of the snow,

no trains could ever have run at all. Happily for August, the thick wrappings in which the stove was

enveloped and the stoutness of its own make screened him from the cold, of which, else, he must have

died,frozen. He had still some of his loaf, and a littlea very littleof his sausage. What he did begin to

suffer from was thirst; and this frightened him almost more than anything else, for Dorothea had read aloud to

them one night a story of the tortures some wrecked men had endured because they could not find any water

but the salt sea. It was many hours since he had last taken a drink from the wooden spout of their old pump,

But, fortunately for him, the stove, having been marked and registered as "fragile and valuable," was not

treated quite like a mere bale of goods, and the Rosenheim stationmaster, who knew its consignees, resolved

to send it on by a passengertrain that would leave there at daybreak. And when this train went out, in it,

among piles of luggage belonging to other travellers, to Vienna, Prague, BudaPesth, Salzburg, was August,

still undiscovered, still doubled up like a mole in the winter under the grass. Those words, "fragile and

valuable," had made the men lift Hirschvogel gently and with care. He had begun to get used to his prison,

and a little used to the incessant pounding and jumbling and rattling and shaking with which modern travel is

always accompanied, though modern invention does deem itself so mightily clever. All in the dark he was,

and he was terribly thirsty; but he kept feeling the earthenware sides of the Nurnberg giant and saying, softly,

He did not say, "Take me back;" for, now that he was fairly out in the world, he wished to see a little of it. He

began to think that they must have been all over the world in all this time that the rolling and roaring and

hissing and jangling had been about his ears; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all the tales that had

been told in Yule round the fire at his grandfather's good house at Dorf, of gnomes and elves and

subterranean terrors, and the Erl King riding on the black horse of night, andandand he began to sob and

to tremble again, and this time did scream outright. But the steam was screaming itself so loudly that no one,

had there been any one nigh, would have heard him; and in another minute or so the train stopped with a jar

Then he knew enough of geography to know that he was in the heart of Bavaria. He had had an uncle killed

in the Bayerischenwald by the Bavarian forest guards, when in the excitement of hunting a black bear he had

That fate of his kinsman, a gallant young chamoishunter who had taught him to handle a trigger and load a

"It is Bavaria! It is Bavaria!" he sobbed to the stove; but the stove said nothing to him; it had no fire in it. A

stove can no more speak without fire than a man can see without light. Give it fire, and it will sing to you, tell

"It is Bavaria!" sobbed August; for it is always a name of dread augury to the Tyroleans, by reason of those

bitter struggles and midnight shots and untimely deaths which come from those meetings of jager and hunter

in the Bayerischenwald. But the train stopped; Munich was reached, and August, hot and cold by turns, and

shaking like a little aspenleaf, felt himself once more carried out on the shoulders of men, rolled, along on a

truck, and finally set down, where he knew not, only he knew he was thirsty,so thirsty! If only he could

He thought he had been moved on this truck many miles, but in truth the stove had been only taken from the

railwaystation to a shop in the Marienplatz. Fortunately, the stove was always set upright on its four gilded

feet, an injunction to that effect having been affixed to its written label, and on its gilded feet it stood now in

"I shall not unpack it till Anton comes," he heard a man's voice say; and then he heard a key grate in a lock,

and by the unbroken stillness that ensued he concluded he was alone, and ventured to peep through the straw

and hay. What he saw was a small square room filled with pots and pans, pictures, carvings, old blue jugs, old

steel armor, shields, daggers, Chinese idols, Vienna china, Turkish rugs, and all the art lumber and fabricated

rubbish of a bricabrac dealer's. It seemed a wonderful place to him; but, oh! was there one drop of water in

it all? That was his single thought; for his tongue was parching, and his throat felt on fire, and his chest began

to be dry and choked as with dust. There was not a drop of water, but there was a lattice window grated, and

beyond the window was a wide stone ledge covered with snow. August cast one look at the locked door,

darted out of his hidingplace, ran and opened the window, crammed the snow into his mouth again and

again, and then flew back into the stove, drew the hay and straw over the place he entered by, tied the cords,

and shut the brass door down on himself. He had brought some big icicles in with him, and by them his thirst

was finally, if only temporarily, quenched. Then he sat still in the bottom of the stove, listening intently, wide

The thought of Dorothea kept nipping his heart and his conscience with a hard squeeze now and then; but he

thought to himself, "If I can take her back Hirschvogel, then how pleased she will be, and how little 'Gilda

will clap her hands!" He was not at all selfish in his love for Hirschvogel: he wanted it for them all at home

quite as much as for himself. There was at the bottom of his mind a kind of ache of shame that his

fatherhis own fathershould have stripped their hearth and sold their honor thus.

A robin had been perched upon a stone griffin sculptured on a houseeave near. August had felt for the

crumbs of his loaf in his pocket, and had thrown them to the little bird sitting so easily on the frozen snow.

In the darkness where he was he now heard a little song, made faint by the stovewall and the windowglass

that was between him and it, but still distinct and exquisitely sweet. It was the robin, singing after feeding on

the crumbs. August, as he heard, burst into tears. He thought of Dorothea, who every morning threw out some

grain or some bread on the snow before the church. "What use is it going there," she said, "if we forget the

sweetest creatures God has made?" Poor Dorothea! Poor, good, tender, muchburdened little soul! He

PRESENTLY the key turned in the lock of the door, he heard heavy footsteps and the voice of the man who

had said to his father, "You have a little mad dog; muzzle him!" The voice said, "Ay, ay, you have called me

a fool many times. Now you shall see what I have gotten for two hundred dirty florins. Potztausend! never

Then the other voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two men approached more closely, and the

heart of the child went pitapat, pitapat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top of a cheese and bears a

housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to strip the stove of its wrappings: that he could tell by the

noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soon they had stripped it wholly: that, too, he knew by the oaths

and exclamations of wonder and surprise and rapture which broke from the man who had not seen it before.

"A right royal thing! A wonderful and nevertoberivalled thing! Grander than the great stove of

So the epithets ran on in thick guttural voices, diffusing a smell of lagerbeer so strong as they spoke that it

reached August crouching in his stronghold. If they should open the door of the stove! That was his frantic

fear. If they should open it, it would be all over with him. They would drag him out; most likely they would

kill him, he thought, as his mother's young brother had been killed in the Wald.

The perspiration rolled off his forehead in his agony; but he had control enough over himself to keep quiet,

and after standing by the Nurnberg master's work for nigh an hour, praising, marvelling, expatiating in the

lengthy German tongue, the men moved to a little distance and began talking of sums of money and divided

profits, of which discourse he could make out no meaning. All he could make out was that the name of the

kingthe kingthe king came over very often in their arguments. He fancied at times they quarrelled, for

they swore lustily and their voices rose hoarse and high; but after a while they seemed to pacify each other

and agree to something, and were in great glee, and so in these merry spirits came and slapped the luminous

"Old Mumchance, you have brought us rare good luck! To think you were smoking in a silly fool of a

Then inside the stove August jumped up, with flaming cheeks and clinching hands, and was almost on the

point of shouting out to them that they were the thieves and should say no evil of' his father, when he

remembered, just in time, that to breathe a word or make a sound was to bring ruin on himself and sever him

forever from Hirschvogel. So he kept still, and the men barred the shutters of the little lattice and went out by

the door, doublelocking it after them. He had made out, from their talk that they were going to show

Hirschvogel to some great person: therefore he kept quite still and dared not move.

Muffled sounds came to him through the shutters from the streets below,the rolling of wheels, the clanging

of churchbells, and bursts of that military music which is so seldom silent in the streets of Munich. An hour

perhaps passed by; sounds of steps on the stairs kept him in perpetual apprehension. In the intensity of his

anxiety, he forgot that he was hungry and many miles away from cheerful, Old World little Hall, lying by the

Presently the door opened again sharply. He could hear the two dealers' voices murmuring unctuous words, in

which "honor," "gratitude," and many fine long noble titles played the chief parts. The voice of another

person, more clear and refined than theirs, answered them curtly, and then, close by the Nurnberg stove and

the boy's ear, ejaculated a single "Wunderschon!" August almost lost his terror for himself in his thrill of

pride at his beloved Hirschvogel being thus admired in the great city. He thought the masterpotter must be

"Wunderschon!" ejaculated the stranger a second time, and then examined the stove in all its parts, read all its

"It must have been made for the Emperor Maximilian," he said at last; and the poor little boy, meanwhile,

within, was "hugged up into nothing," as you children say, dreading that every moment he would open the

stove. And open it truly he did, and examined the brasswork of the door; but inside it was so dark that

crouching August passed unnoticed, screwed up into a ball like a hedgehog as he was. The gentleman shut to

the door at length, without having seen anything strange inside it; and then he talked long and low with the

tradesmen, and, as his accent was different from that which August was used to, the child could distinguish

little that he said, except the name of the king and the word "gulden" again and again. After awhile he went

away, one of the dealers accompanying him, one of them lingering behind to bar up the shutters. Then this

Late in the day, he thought, for to accompany the stranger they had lighted a lamp; he had heard the scratch

He would have to pass the night here, that was certain. He and Hirschvogel were locked in, but at least they

were together. If only he could have had something to eat! He thought with a pang of how at this hour at

home they ate the sweet soup, sometimes with apples in it from Aunt Maila's farm orchard, and sang

together, and listened to Dorothea's reading of little tales, and basked in the glow and delight that had beamed

"Oh, poor, poor little 'Gilda! What is she doing without the dear Hirschvogel?" he thought. Poor little 'Gilda!

she had only now the black iron stove of the ugly little kitchen. Oh, how cruel of father!

August could not bear to hear the dealers blame or laugh at his father, but he did feel that it had been so, so

cruel to sell Hirschvogel. The mere memory of all those long winter evenings, when they had all closed round

it, and roasted chestnuts or crabapples in it, and listened to the howling of the wind and the deep sound of

the churchbells, and tried very much to make each other believe that the wolves still came down from the

mountains into the streets of Hall, and were that very minute howling at the housedoor,all this memory

coming on him with the sound of the city bells, and the knowledge that night drew near upon him so

completely, being added to his hunger and his fear, so overcame him that he burst out crying for the fiftieth

time since he had been inside the stove, and felt that he would starve to death, and wondered dreamily if

Hirschvogel would care. Yes, he was sure Hirschvogel would care. Had he not decked it all summer long

with Alpine roses and edelweiss and heaths and made it sweet with thyme and honeysuckle and great

gardenlilies? Had he ever forgotten when Santa Claus came to make it its crown of holly and ivy and

"Oh, shelter me; save me; take care of me!" he prayed to the old fireking, and forgot, poor little man, that he

had come on this wildgoose chase northward to save and take care of Hirschvogel!

After a time he dropped asleep, as children can do when they weep, and little robust hillborn boys most

surely do, be they where they may. It was not very cold in this lumberroom; it was tightly shut up, and very

full of things, and at the back of it were the hot pipes of an adjacent house, where a great deal of fuel was

burnt. Moreover, August's clothes were warm ones, and his blood was young. So he was not cold, though

Munich is terribly cold in the nights of December; and he slept on and on,which was a comfort to him, for

MIDNIGHT was once more chiming from all the brazen tongues of the city when he awoke, and, all being

still around him, ventured to put his head out of the brass door of the stove to see why such a strange bright

It was a very strange and brilliant light indeed; and yet, what is perhaps still stranger, it did not frighten or

amaze him, nor did what he saw alarm him either, and yet I think it would have done you or me. For what he

A big jug, an ApostelKrug, of Kruessen, was solemnly dancing a minuet with a plump Faenza jar; a tall

Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a spindlelegged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of

Littenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing

itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered

with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping

about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had

come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little palefaced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg

china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But

nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden cups and saucers were all skipping and

waltzing; the teapots, with their broad round faces, were spinning their own lids like teetotums; the

highbacked gilded chairs were having a game of cards together; and a little Saxe poodle, with a blue ribbon

at its throat, was running from one to another, whilst a yellow cat of Cornelis Lachtleven's rode about on a

Delft horse in blue pottery of 1489. Meanwhile the brilliant light shed on the scene came from three silver

candelabra, though they had no candles set up in them; and, what is the greatest miracle of all, August looked

on at these mad freaks and felt no sensation of wonder! He only, as he heard the violin and the spinet playing,

No doubt his face said what he wished; for a lovely little lady, all in pink and gold and white, with powdered

hair, and highheeled shoes, and all made of the very finest and fairest Meissen china, tripped up to him, and

smiled, and gave him her hand, and led him out to a minuet. And he danced it perfectly,poor little August

in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his thick, clumsy sheepskin jacket, and his rough homespun linen, and his

broad Tyrolean hat! He must have danced it perfectly; this dance of kings and queens in days when crowns

were duly honored, for the lovely lady always smiled benignly and never scolded him at all, and danced so

divinely herself to the stately measures the spinet was playing that August could not take his eyes off her till,

"I am the Princess of SaxeRoyale," she said to him, with a benignant smile; "and you have got through that

"Madame my princess, could you tell me kindly why some of the figures and furniture dance and speak, and

some lie up in a corner like lumber? It does make me curious. Is it rude to ask?"

For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the bricabrac was all full of life and motion, some was quite

"My dear child," said the powdered lady, "is it possible that you do not know the reason? Why, those silent,

This she said with so much decision that she evidently considered it a condensed but complete answer.

"Of course! Lies, falsehoods, fabrications!" said the princess in pink shoes, very vivaciously. "They only

pretend to be what we are! They never wake up: how can they? No imitation ever had any soul in it yet."

"Oh!" said August, humbly, not even sure that he understood entirely yet. He looked at Hirschvogel: surely it

had a royal soul within it: would it not wake up and speak? Oh dear! how he longed to hear the voice of his

fireking! And he began to forget that he stood by a lady who sat upon a pedestal of goldandwhite china,

"What will you be when you are a man?" said the little lady, sharply, for her black eyes were quick though

her red lips were smiling. "Will you work for the Konigliche PorcellanManufactur, like my great dead

"I have never thought," said August, stammering; "at leastthat isI do wishI do hope to be a painter, as

"Bravo!" said all the real bricabrac in one breath, and the two Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry,

"Benone!"' For there is not a bit of true bricabrac in all Europe that does not know the names of the mighty

August felt quite pleased to have won so much applause, and grew as red as the lady's shoes with bashful

"I knew all the Hirschvogel, from old Veit downwards," said a fat gres de Flandre beerjug: "I myself was

made at Nurnberg." And he bowed to the great stove very politely, taking off his own silver hatI mean

lidwith a courtly, sweep that he could scarcely have learned from burgomasters. The stove, however, was

silent, and a sickening suspicion (for what is such heartbreak as a suspicion of what we love?) came through

"No, no, no, no!" he said to himself, stoutly: though Hirschvogel never stirred, never spoke, yet would he

keep all faith in it ! After all their happy years together, after all the nights of warmth and joy he owed it,

should he doubt his own friend and hero, whose gilt lion's feet he had kissed in his babyhood? No, no, no,

no!" he said, again, with so much emphasis that the Lady of Meissen looked sharply again at him.

"So," she said, with pretty disdain; "no, believe me, they may pretend forever. They can never look like us!

They imitate even our marks, but never can they look like the real thing, never, can they chassent de race."

"How should they?" said a bronze statuette of Vischer's. "They daub themselves green with verdigris, or sit

out in the rain to get rusted; but green and rust are not patina; only the ages can give that!"

"And rep imitations are all in primary colors, staring colors, hot as the colors of a hostelry's signboard!" said

"Well, there is a gres de Flandre over there, who pretends to be a Hans Kraut, as I am," said the jug with the

silver hat, pointing with his handle to a jug that lay prone on its side in a corner. "He has copied me as exactly

as it is given to moderns to copy us. Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what a difference there is !

How crude are his blues! how evidently done over the glaze are his black letters! He has tried to give himself

my very twist; but what a lamentable exaggeration of that playful deviation in my lines which in his becomes

"And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, with a contemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded

leather spread out on a table. "They will sell him cheek by jowl with me, and give him my name; but look! I

am overlaid with pure gold beaten thin as a film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy Diego de las

Gorgias, worker in leather of lovely Cordova in the blessed reign of Ferdinand the Most Christian. His

gilding is one part gold to eleven other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has been laid on him with a

brusha brushpah! of course he will be as black as a crock in a few years' time, whist I am as bright as

when I first was made, and, unless I am burnt as my Cordova burnt its heretics, I shall shine on forever."

"They carve pearwood because it is so soft, and dye it brown, and call it me!" said an old oak cabinet, with a

" That is not so painful; it does not vulgarize you so much as the cups they paint today and christen after

"Nothing can be so annoying as to see common gimcracks aping me!" interposed the princess in the pink

"They even steal my motto, though it is Scripture," said a Trauerkrug of Regensburg in blackandwhite.

"And my own dots they put on plain English china creatures!" sighed the little white maid of Nymphenburg.

"And they sell hundreds and thousands of common china plates, calling them after me, and, baking my saints

and my legends in a muffle of today; it is blasphemy!" said a stout plate of Gubbio, which in its year of birth

"That is what is so terrible in these bricabrac places," said the princess of Meissen. "It brings one in

contact with such low, imitative creatures; one really is safe nowhere nowadays unless under glass at the

"And they get even there," sighed the gres de Flandre. "A terrible thing happened to a dear friend of mine, a

terre cuite of Blasius (you know the terres cuites of Blasius date from 1560). Well, he was put under glass in

a museum that shall be nameless, and he found himself set next to his own imitation born and baked

yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you the miserable creature said to him, with a grin? Old

Pipeclay,that is what he called my friend,the fellow that bought me got just as much commission on

me as the fellow that bought you, and that was all that he thought about. You know it is only the public

money that goes!' And the horrid creature grinned again till he actually cracked himself. There is a

"Providence might have interfered before, and saved the public money," said the little Meissen lady with the

"After all, does it matter?" said a Dutch jar of Haarlem. "All the shamming in the world will not make them

"My maker, the Krabbetje," [Jan Asselyn, called Krabbetje, the Little Crab, born 1610, masterpotter of Delft

and Haarlem.] did not trouble his head about that," said the Haarlem jar, proudly. "The Krabbetje made me

for the kitchen, the bright, clean, snowwhite Dutch kitchen, wellnigh three centuries ago, and now I am

thought worthy the palace; yet I wish I were at home; yes, I wish I could see the good, Dutch vrouw, and the

"Ah! if we could all go back to our makers!" sighed the Gubbio plate, thinking of Giorgio Andreoli and the

glad and gracious days of the Renaissance: and somehow the words touched the frolicsome souls of the

dancing jars, the spinning teapots, the chairs that were playing cards; and the violin stopped its merry music

Even the little Saxe poodle howled for a master forever lost; and only the swords went on quarrelling, and

made such a clattering noise that the Japanese bonze rode at them on his monster and knocked them both

right over, and they lay straight and still, looking foolish, and the little Nymphenburg maid, though she was

All eyes turned upon Hirschvogel, and the heart of its little human comrade gave a great jump of joy.

"My friends," said that clear voice from the turret of Nurnberg faience, "I have listened to all you have said.

There is too much talking among the Mortalities whom one of themselves has called the Windbags. Let not

us be like them. I hear among men so much vain speech, so much precious breath and precious time wasted

in empty boasts, foolish anger, useless reiteration, blatant argument, ignoble mouthings, that I have learned to

deem speech a curse, laid on man to weaken and envenom all his undertakings. For over two hundred years I

have never spoken myself: you, I hear, are not so reticent. I only speak now because one of you said a

beautiful thing that touched me. If we all might but go back to our makers! Ah, yes! if we might! We were

made in days when even men were true creatures, and so we, the work of their hands, were true too. We, the

begotten of ancient days, derive all the value in us from the fact that our makers wrought at us with zeal, with

piety, with integrity, with faith,not to win fortunes or to glut a market, but to do nobly an honest thing and

create for the honor of the Arts and God. I see amidst you a little human thing who loves me, and in his own

ignorant childish way loves it. Now, I want him forever to remember this night and these words; to remember

that we are what we are, and precious in the eyes of the world, because centuries ago those who were of

single mind and of pure hand so created us, scorning sham and haste and counterfeit. Well do I recollect my

master, Augustin Hirschvogel. He led a wise and blameless life, and wrought in loyalty and love, and made

his time beautiful thereby, like one of his own rich, manycolored church casements, that told holy tales as

the sun streamed through them. Ah, yes, my friends, to go back to our masters!that would be the best that

could befall us. But they are gone, and even the perishable labors of their lives outlive them. For many, many

years I, once honored of emperors, dwelt in a humble house and warmed in successive winters three

generations of little, cold, hungry children. When I warmed them they forgot that they were hungry; they

laughed and told tales, and slept at last about my feet. Then I knew that humble as had become my lot it was

one that my master would have wished for me, and I was content. Sometimes a tired woman would creep up

to me, and smile because she was near me, and point out my golden crown or my, ruddy fruit to a baby in her

arms. That was better than to stand in a great hall of a great city, cold and empty, even though wise men came

to gaze and throngs of fools gaped, passing with flattering words. Where I go now I know not; but since I go

from that humble house where they loved me, I shall be sad and alone. They pass so soon,those fleeting

mortal lives! Only we endure,we, the things that the human brain creates. We can but bless them a little as

they glide by: if we have done that, we have done what our masters wished. So in us our masters, being dead,

Then the voice sank away in silence, and a strange golden light that had shone on the great stove faded away;

so also the light died down in the silver candelabra. A soft, pathetic melody stole gently through the room. It

Then that sad, sighing music of a by gone day died too; the clocks of the city struck six of the morning; day

was rising over the Bayerischenwald. August awoke with a great start, and found himself lying on the bare

bricks of the floor of the chamber, and all the bricabrac was lying quite still all around. The pretty Lady of

Meissen was motionless on her porcelain bracket, and the little Saxe poodle was quiet at her side.

He rose slowly to his feet. He was very cold, but he was not sensible of it or of the hunger that was gnawing

his little empty entrails. He was absorbed in the wondrous sight, in the wondrous sounds, that he had seen and

ALL was dark around him. Was it still midnight or had morning come? Morning, surely; for against the

Tramp, tramp, too, came a heavy step up the stair. He had but a moment in which to scramble back into the

interior of the great stove, when the door opened and the two dealers entered, bringing burning candles with

August was scarcely conscious of danger more than he was of cold or hunger. A marvellous sense of courage,

of security, of happiness, was about him, like strong and gentle arms enfolding him and lifting him

The dealers undid the shutters, scaring the redbreast away, and then tramped about in their heavy boots and

chattered in contented voices, and began to wrap up the stove once more in all its straw and hay and cordage.

It never once occurred to them to glance inside. Why should they look inside a stove that they had bought and

The child still did not feel afraid. A great exaltation had come to him: he was like one lifted up by his angels.

Presently the two traders called up their porters, and the stove, heedfully swathed and wrapped and tended as

though it were some sick prince going on a journey, was borne on the shoulders of six stout Bavarians down

the stairs and out of the door into the Marienplatz. Even behind all those wrappings August felt the icy bite of

the intense cold of the outer air at dawn of a winter's day in Munich. The men moved the stove with

exceeding gentleness and care, so that he had often been far more roughly shaken in his big brothers' arms

than he was in his journey now; and though both hunger and thirst made themselves felt, being foes that will

take no denial, he was still in that state of nervous exaltation which deadens all physical suffering and is at

The stout carriers tramped through the city, six of them, with the Nurnberg firecastle on their brawny

shoulders, and went right across Munich to the railwaystation, and August in the dark recognized all the

ugly, jangling, pounding, roaring, hissing railwaynoises, and thought, despite his courage and excitement,

"Will it be a very long journey?" For his stomach had at times an odd sinking sensation, and his head sadly

often felt light and swimming. If it was a very, very long journey he felt half afraid that he would be dead or

something bad before the end, and Hirschvogel would be so lonely: that was what he thought most about; not

much about himself, and not much about Dorothea and the house at home. He was "high strung to high

Whether for a long or a short journey, whether for weal or woe, the stove with August still within it was once

more hoisted up into a great van; but this time it was not all alone, and the two dealers as well as the six

He in his darkness knew that; for he heard their voices. The train glided away over the Bavarian plain

southward; and he heard the men say something of Berg and the WurmSee, but their German was strange to

The train rolled on, with all its fume and fuss, and roar of steam, and stench of oil and burning coal. It had to

go quietly and slowly on account of the snow which was falling, and which had fallen all night.

"He might have waited till he came to the city," grumbled one man to another. "What weather to stay on at

Though the men grumbled about the state of the roads and the season, they were hilarious and well content,

for they laughed often, and, when they swore, did so goodhumoredly, and promised their porters fine

presents at NewYear; and August, like a shrewd little boy as he was, who even in the secluded Innthal had

learned that money is the chief mover of men's mirth, thought to himself, with a terrible pang,

Then his heart grew faint and sick within him, for he knew very well that he must soon die, shut up without

food and water thus; and what new owner of the great firepalace would ever permit him to dwell in it?

It is but an hour and a quarter that the train usually takes to pass from Munich to the WurmSee or Lake of

Starnberg; but this morning the journey was much slower, because the way was encumbered by snow. When

it did reach Possenhofen and stop, and the Nurnberg stove was lifted out once more, August could see

through the fretwork of the brass door, as the stove stood upright facing the lake, that this WurmSee was a

calm and noble piece of water, of great width, with low wooded banks and distant mountains, a peaceful,

It was now near ten o'clock. The sun had come forth; there was a clear gray sky hereabouts; the snow was

not falling, though it lay white and smooth everywhere, down to the edge of the water, which before long

Before he had time to get more than a glimpse of the green gliding surface, the stove was again lifted up and

placed on a large boat that was in waiting,one of those very long and huge boats which the women in these

parts use as laundries, and the men as timberrafts. The stove, with much labor and much expenditure of time

and care, was hoisted into this, and August would have grown sick and giddy with the heaving and falling if

his big brothers had not long used him to such tossing about, so that he was as much at ease head, as feet,

downward. The stove once in it safely with its guardians, the big boat moved across the lake to Leoni. How a

little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got that Tuscansounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big boat

was a long time crossing: the lake here is about three miles broad, and these heavy barges are unwieldy and

"If we should be too late !" the two dealers muttered to each other, in agitation and alarm. "He said eleven

"Who was he?" thought August; "the buyer, of course, of Hirschvogel." The slow passage across the

WurmSee was accomplished at length: the lake was placid; there was a sweet calm in the air and on the

water; there was a great deal of snow in the sky, though the sun was shining and gave a solemn hush to the

atmosphere. Boats and one little steamer were going up and down; in the clear frosty light the distant

mountains of Zillerthal and the Algau Alps were visible; marketpeople, cloaked and furred, went by on the

water or on the banks; the deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor August could see

nothing of a scene that would have delighted him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old

"Now, men, for a stout mile and half! You shall drink your reward at Christmastime," said one of the

dealers to his porters, who, stout, strong men as they were, showed a disposition to grumble at their task.

Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered sullenly the Nurnberg stove, grumbling again at its

preposterous weight, but little dreaming that they carried within it a small, panting, trembling boy, for,

August began to tremble now that he was about to see the future owner of Hirschvogel.

"If he look a good, kind man," he thought, "I will beg him to let me stay with it."

THE porters began their toilsome journey, and moved off from the village pier. He could see nothing, for the

brass door was over his head, and all that gleamed through it was the clear gray sky. He had been tilted on to

his back, and if he had not been a little mountaineer, used to hanging headdownwards over crevasses, and,

moreover, seasoned to rough treatment by the hunters and guides of the hills and the saltworkers in the

town, he would have been made ill and sick by the bruising and shaking and many changes of position to

The way the men took was a mile and a half in length, but the road was heavy with snow, and the burden they

bore was heavier still. The dealers cheered them on, swore at them and praised them in one breath; besought

them and reiterated their splendid promises, for a clock was striking eleven, and they had been ordered to

reach their destination at that hour, and, though the air was so cold, the heatdrops rolled off their foreheads

as they walked, they were so frightened at being late. But the porters would not budge a foot quicker than

they chose, and as they were not poor fourfooted carriers their employers dared not thrash them, though

The road seemed terribly long to the anxious tradesmen, to the plodding porters, to the poor little man inside

the stove, as be kept sinking and rising, sinking and rising, with each of their steps.

Where they were going he had no idea, only, after a very long time he lost the sense of the fresh icy wind

blowing on his face through the brasswork above, and felt by their movements beneath him that they were

mounting steps or stairs. Then he heard a great many different voices, but he could not understand what was

being said. He felt that his bearers paused some time, then moved on and on again. Their feet went so softly

he thought they must be moving on carpet, and as he felt a warm air come to him he concluded that he was in

some heated chambers, for he was a clever little fellow, and could put two and two together, though he was

so hungry and so thirsty and his empty stomach felt so strangely. They must have gone, be thought, through

some very great number of rooms, for they walked so long on and on, on and on. At last the stove was set

What he fancied was that he was in some museum, like that which he had seen in the city of Innspruck.

The voices he heard were very hushed, and the steps seemed to go away, far away, leaving him alone with

Hirschvogel. He dared not look out, but he peeped through the brass work, and all he could see was a big

carved lion's head in ivory, with a gold crown atop. It belonged to a velvet fauteuil, but he could not see the

There was a delicious fragrance in the air,a fragrance as of flowers. "Only how can it be flowers?" thought

From afar off, as it seemed, there came a dreamy, exquisite music, as sweet as the spinet's had been, but so

much fuller, so much richer, seeming as though a chorus of angels were singing all together. August ceased to

think of the museum: he thought of heaven. "Are we gone to the Master?" he thought, remembering the

All was so still around him; there was no sound anywhere except the sound of the faroff choral music.

He did not know it, but he was in the royal castle of Berg, and the music he heard was the music of Wagner,

Presently he heard a fresh step near him, and he heard a low voice say, close behind him, "So!" An

exclamation no doubt, be thought, of admiration and wonder at the beauty of Hirschvogel.

Then the same voice said, after a long pause, during which no doubt, as August thought, this newcomer was

examining all the details of the wondrous firetower, "It was well bought; it is exceedingly beautiful! It is

Then the hand of the speaker turned the round handle of the brass door, and the fainting soul of the poor little

The handle turned, the door was slowly drawn open, some one bent down and looked in, and the same voice

that he had heard in praise of its beauty called aloud, in surprise, "What is this in it? A live child!"

Then August, terrified beyond all selfcontrol, and dominated by one masterpassion, sprang out of the body

"Oh, let me stay! Pray, meinherr, let me stay!" he sobbed. "I have come all the way with Hirschvogel!"

Some gentlemen's hands seized him, not gently by any means, and their lips angrily muttered in his ear,

They were about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if he had been some venomous, dangerous beast

come there to slay, but the voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents, "Poor little child! he is

The word of a king is law to his courtiers: so, sorely against their wish, the angry and astonished

chamberlains let August slide out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little rough sheepskin coat and his

thick, mudcovered boots, with his curling hair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber he

had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with a beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams

"My child, how came you here, hidden in this stove? Be not afraid: tell me the truth. I am the king."

August in an instinct of homage cast his great battered black hat with the tarnished gold tassels down on the

floor of the room, and folded his little brown hands in supplication. He was too intensely in earnest to be in

any way abashed; he was too lifted out of himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious of any awe

before any earthly majesty. He was only so gladso glad it was the king. Kings were always kind; so the

"Oh, dear king!" he said, with trembling entreaty in his faint little voice, "Hirschvogel was ours, and we have

loved it all our lives; and father sold it. And when I saw that it did really go from us, then I said to myself I

would go with it; and I have come all the way inside it. And last night it spoke and said beautiful things. And

I do pray you to let me live with it, and I will go out every morning and cut wood for it and you, if only you

will let me stay beside it. No one ever has fed it with fuel but me since I grew big enough, and it loves

me;it does indeed; it said so last night; and it said that it had been happier with us than if it were in any

And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little, eager, pale face to the young king's, great tears were

Now, the king likes all poetic and uncommon things, and there was that in the child's face which pleased and

"I am August Strehla. My father is Karl Strehla. We live in Hall, in the Innthal; and Hirschvogel has been

"Traders of Munich," said August, who did not know that he ought not to have spoken to the king as to a

simple citizen, and whose little brain was whirling and spinning dizzily round its one central idea.

"Two hundred florins," said August, with a great sigh of shame. "It was so much money, and he is so poor,

The king turned to his gentlemeninwaiting. "Did these dealers of Munich come with the stove."

He was answered in the affirmative. He desired them to be sought for and brought before him. As one of his

chamberlains hastened on the errand, the monarch looked at August with compassion.

The king had water and wine brought for him, and cake also; but August, though he drank eagerly, could not

"Wait a little," said the king, and asked, abruptly, "What do you wish to be when you are a man?"

"A painter. I wish to be what Hirschvogel was,I mean the master that made my Hirschvogel."

Then the two dealers were brought into their sovereign's presence. They were so terribly alarmed, not being

either so innocent or so ignorant as August was, that they were trembling as though they were being led to the

slaughter, and they were so utterly astonished too at a child having come all the way from Tyrol in the stove,

as a gentleman of the court had just told them this child had done, that they could not tell what to say or

"Did you buy this Nurnberg stove of this little boy's father for two hundred florins?" the king asked them; and

his voice was no longer soft and kind as it had been when addressing the child, but very stern.

"Two thousand ducats, your majesty," muttered the dealers, frightened out of their wits, and telling the truth

The gentleman was not present: he was a trusted counsellor in art matters of the king's, and often made

The king smiled a little, and said nothing. The gentleman had made out the price to him as eleven thousand

"You will give at once to this boy's father the two thousand gold ducats that you received, less the two

hundred Austrian florins that you paid him," said the king to his humiliated and abject subjects. "You are

He dismissed them by a sign to his courtiers, and to one of these gave the mission of making the dealers of

August heard, and felt dazzled yet miserable. Two thousand gold Bavarian ducats for his father! Why, his

father would never need to go any more to the saltbaking! And yet, whether for ducats or for florins,

Hirschvogel was sold just the same, and would the king let him stay with it?would he?

"Oh, do! oh, please do!" he murmured, joining his little brown weatherstained hands, and kneeling down

before the young monarch, who himself stood absorbed in painful thought, for the deception so basely

practised for the greedy sake of gain on him by a trusted counsellor was bitter to him.

"Rise up, my little man," he said, in a kind voice; "kneel only to your God. Will I let you stay with your

Hirschvogel? Yes, I will; you shall stay at my court, and you shall be taught to be a painter,in oils or on

porcelain as you will, and you must grow up worthily, and win all the laurels at our Schools of Art, and if

when you are twentyone years old you have done well and bravely, then I will give you your Nurnberg

stove, or, if I am no more living, then those who reign after me shall do so. And now go away with this

gentleman, and be not afraid, and you shall light a fire every morning in Hirschvogel, but you will not need to

Then he smiled and stretched out his hand; the courtiers tried to make August understand that he ought to

bow and touch it with his lips, but August could not understand that anyhow; he was too happy. He threw his

two arms about the king's knees, and kissed his feet passionately; then he lost all sense of where he was, and

As the darkness of his swoon closed in on him, he heard in his fancy the voice from Hirschvogel saying,

He is only a scholar yet, but he is a happy scholar, and promises to be a great man. Sometimes he goes back

for a few days to Hall, where the gold ducats have made his father prosperous. In the old houseroom there is

a large white porcelain stove of Munich, the king's gift to Dorothea and 'Gilda.

And August never goes home without going into the great church and saying his thanks to God, who blessed

his strange winter's journey in the Nurnberg stove. As for his dream in the dealers' room that night, he will

never admit that he did dream it; he still declares that he saw it all, and heard the voice of Hirschvogel. And

who shall say that he did not? for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which