d August. "You shall never have it! you shall kill me
first!"

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

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
stove set to work to pack it heedfully and carry it away.

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 Nuernberg 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 to where an
ox-cart stood in waiting for it.

In another moment Hirschvogel was gone,--gone forever and aye.

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 beyond them the spire of the Muntze
Tower and the peaks of the mountains.

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

"Child, is it true your father is selling the big painted stove?"

August nodded his head, then burst into a passion of tears.

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

August's sobs went on their broken, impetuous course.

"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 y