mois-hunter who had
taught him to handle a trigger and load a muzzle, made the very
name of Bavaria a terror to August.

"It is Bavaria! It is Bavaria!" he sobbed to the stove; but the
stove said nothing to him; it had no fire in it. A stove can no
more speak without fire than a man can see without light. Give it
fire, and it will sing to you, tell tales to you, offer you in
return all the sympathy you ask.

"It is Bavaria!" sobbed August; for it is always a name of dread
augury to the Tyroleans, by reason of those bitter struggles and
midnight shots and untimely deaths which come from those meetings
of jaeger and hunter in the Bayerischenwald. But the train
stopped; Munich was reached, and August, hot and cold by turns,
and shaking like a little aspen-leaf, felt himself once more
carried out on the shoulders of men, rolled along on a truck, and
finally set down, where he knew not, only he knew he was
thirsty,--so thirsty! If only he could have reached his hand out
and scooped up a little snow!

He thought he had been moved on this truck many miles, but in
truth the stove had been only taken from the railway-station to a
shop in the Marienplatz. Fortunately, the stove was always set
upright on its four gilded feet, an injunction to that effect
having been affixed to its written label, and on its gilded feet
it stood now in the small dark curiosity-shop of one Hans
Rhilfer.

"I shall not unpack it till Anton comes," he heard a man's voice
say; and then he heard a key grate in a lock, and by the unbroken
stillness that ensued he concluded he was alone, and ventured to
peep through the straw and hay. What he saw was a small square
room filled with pots and pans, pictures, carvings, old blue
jugs, old steel armor, shields, daggers, Chinese idols, Vienna
china, Turkish rugs, and all the art lumber and fabricated
rubbish of a _bric-a-brac_ dealer's. It seemed a wonderful place
to him; but, oh! was there one drop of water in it all? That was
his single thought; for his tongue was parching, and his throat
felt on fire, and his chest began to be dry and choked as with
dust. There was not a drop of water, but there was a lattice
window grated, and beyond the window was a wide stone ledge
covered with snow. August cast one look at the locked door,
darted out of his hiding-place, ran and opened the window,
crammed the snow into his mouth again and again, and then flew
back into the stove, drew the hay and straw over the pla