stinct 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 glad--so
glad it was the king. Kings were always kind; so the Tyrolese
think, who love their lords.

"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 palace----"

And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little,
eager, pale face to the young king's, great tears were falling
down his cheeks.

Now, the king likes all poetic and uncommon things, and there was
that in the child's face which pleased and touched him. He
motioned to his gentlemen to leave the little boy alone.

"What is your name?" he asked him.

"I am August Strehla. My father is Karl Strehla. We live in Hall,
in the Innthal; and Hirschvogel has been ours so long,--so long!"

His lips quivered with a broken sob.

"And have you truly travelled inside this stove all the way from
Tyrol?"

"Yes," said August; "no one thought to look inside till you did."

The king laughed; then another view of the matter occurred to
him.

"Who bought the stove of your father?" he inquired.

"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.

"What sum did they pay your father, do you know?" asked the
sovereign.

"Two hundred florins," said August, with a great sigh of shame.
"It was so much money, and he is so poor, and there are so many
of us."

The king turned to his gentlemen-in-waiting. "Did these dealers
of Munich come with the stove?"