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 over the shelving
uneven square, and followed in the wake of the dray.

Its course lay towards the station of the railway, which is close
to the salt-works, 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 Italy. Was Hirschvogel going north or south? This at least
he would soon know.

VI

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
kind-hearted 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
passenger-train nor they themselves go in a goods-train. So at
length they insured their precious burden for a large sum, and
consented to send it by a luggage-train 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 Dorothea--poor, 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 goods-train 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
wood-carving, of clocks and clock-work, 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 friend and fire-king.

It was very dark in the closed truck, which had only a little
windo