of these
gave the mission of making the dealers of the Marienplatz
disgorge their ill-gotten gains.

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 salt-baking! 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
weather-stained 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.

He looked down on the child, and as he did so smiled once more.

"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 twenty-one years old you have done well and
bravely, then I will give you your Nuernberg 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 go out and cut the wood."

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 fainted away from hunger, and tire, and emotion, and wondrous
joy.

As the darkness of his swoon closed in on him, he heard in his
fancy the voice from Hirschvogel saying,--

"Let us be worthy our maker!"

* * * * *

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
house-room 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 Nuernb