of six
stout Bavarians down the stairs and out of the door into the
Marienplatz. Even behind all those wrappings August felt the icy
bite of the intense cold of the outer air at dawn of a winter's
day in Munich. The men moved the stove with exceeding gentleness
and care, so that he had often been far more roughly shaken in
his big brothers' arms than he was in his journey now; and though
both hunger and thirst made themselves felt, being foes that will
take no denial, he was still in that state of nervous exaltation
which deadens all physical suffering and is at once a cordial and
an opiate. He had heard Hirschvogel speak; that was enough.

The stout carriers tramped through the city, six of them, with
the Nuernberg fire-castle on their brawny shoulders, and went
right across Munich to the railway-station, and August in the
dark recognized all the ugly, jangling, pounding, roaring,
hissing railway-noises, and thought, despite his courage and
excitement, "Will it be a _very_ long journey?" For his stomach
had at times an odd sinking sensation, and his head sadly often
felt light and swimming. If it was a very, very long journey he
felt half afraid that he would be dead or something bad before
the end, and Hirschvogel would be so lonely: that was what he
thought most about; not much about himself, and not much about
Dorothea and the house at home. He was "high strung to high
emprise," and could not look behind him.

Whether for a long or a short journey, whether for weal or woe,
the stove with August still within it was once more hoisted up
into a great van; but this time it was not all alone, and the two
dealers as well as the six porters were all with it.

He in his darkness knew that; for he heard their voices. The
train glided away over the Bavarian plain southward; and he heard
the men say something of Berg and the Wurm-See, but their German
was strange to him, and he could not make out what these names
meant.

The train rolled on, with all its fume and fuss, and roar of
steam, and stench of oil and burning coal. It had to go quietly
and slowly on account of the snow which was falling, and which
had fallen all night.

"He might have waited till he came to the city," grumbled one man
to another. "What weather to stay on at Berg!"

But who he was that stayed on at Berg, August could not make out
at all.

Though the men grumbled about the state of the roads and the
season, they were hilarious and well conte