to bed, being tired with their rough bodily labor in
the snow all day, and Dorothea drew her spinning-wheel by the
stove and set it whirring, and the little ones got August down
upon the old worn wolf-skin and clamored to him for a picture or
a story. For August was the artist of the family.

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 pine-trees, and cocks and hens, and all sorts
of animals, and now and then--very reverently--a Madonna and
Child. It was all very rough, for there was no one to teach him
anything. But it was all life-like, and kept the whole troop of
children shrieking with laughter, or watching breathless, with
wide open, wondering, awed eyes.

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 you--you are
always ready: just a little bit of wood to feed you, and you will
make a summer for us all the winter through!"

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 Nuernberg 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 with
the wish of the artisans to cripple their greater fellow.

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