ce he
entered by, tied the cords, and shut the brass door down on
himself. He had brought some big icicles in with him, and by them
his thirst was finally, if only temporarily, quenched. Then he
sat still in the bottom of the stove, listening intently, wide
awake, and once more recovering his natural boldness.

[Illustration: AUGUST OPENED THE WINDOW, CRAMMED THE SNOW INTO
HIS MOUTH AGAIN AND AGAIN]

The thought of Dorothea kept nipping his heart and his conscience
with a hard squeeze now and then; but he thought to himself, "If
I can take her back Hirschvogel, then how pleased she will be,
and how little 'Gilda will clap her hands!" He was not at all
selfish in his love for Hirschvogel: he wanted it for them all at
home quite as much as for himself. There was at the bottom of his
mind a kind of ache of shame that his father--his own father--should
have stripped their hearth and sold their honor thus.

A robin had been perched upon a stone griffin sculptured on a
house-eave near. August had felt for the crumbs of his loaf in
his pocket, and had thrown them to the little bird sitting so
easily on the frozen snow.

In the darkness where he was he now heard a little song, made
faint by the stove-wall and the window-glass that was between him
and it, but still distinct and exquisitely sweet. It was the
robin, singing after feeding on the crumbs. August, as he heard,
burst into tears. He thought of Dorothea, who every morning threw
out some grain or some bread on the snow before the church. "What
use is it going _there_," she said, "if we forget the sweetest
creatures God has made?" Poor Dorothea! Poor, good, tender,
much-burdened little soul! He thought of her till his tears ran
like rain.

Yet it never once occurred to him to dream of going home.
Hirschvogel was here.

VIII

Presently the key turned in the lock of the door, he heard heavy
footsteps and the voice of the man who had said to his father,
"You have a little mad dog; muzzle him!" The voice said, "Ay, ay,
you have called me a fool many times. Now you shall see what I
have gotten for two hundred dirty florins. _Potztausend!_ never
did _you_ do such a stroke of work."

Then the other voice grumbled and swore, and the steps of the two
men approached more closely, and the heart of the child went
pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's does when it is on the top of
a cheese and hears a housemaid's broom sweeping near. They