ieldy and heavy to move,
even though they are towed and tugged at from the shore.

"If we should be too late!" the two dealers muttered to each
other, in agitation and alarm. "He said eleven o'clock."

"Who was he?" thought August; "the buyer, of course, of
Hirschvogel." The slow passage across the Wurm-See was
accomplished at length: the lake was placid; there was a sweet
calm in the air and on the water; there was a great deal of snow
in the sky, though the sun was shining and gave a solemn hush to
the atmosphere. Boats and one little steamer were going up and
down; in the clear frosty light the distant mountains of
Zillerthal and the Algau Alps were visible; market-people,
cloaked and furred, went by on the water or on the banks; the
deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor
August could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted
him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old
worm-eaten wood of the huge barge.

Presently they touched the pier at Leoni.

"Now, men, for a stout mile and half! You shall drink your reward
at Christmas-time," said one of the dealers to his porters, who,
stout, strong men as they were, showed a disposition to grumble
at their task. Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered
sullenly the Nuernberg stove, grumbling again at its preposterous
weight, but little dreaming that they carried within it a small,
panting, trembling boy; for August began to tremble now that he
was about to see the future owner of Hirschvogel.

"If he look a good, kind man," he thought, "I will beg him to let
me stay with it."

XI

The porters began their toilsome journey, and moved off from the
village pier. He could see nothing, for the brass door was over
his head, and all that gleamed through it was the clear gray sky.
He had been tilted on to his back, and if he had not been a
little mountaineer, used to hanging head-downwards over
crevasses, and, moreover, seasoned to rough treatment by the
hunters and guides of the hills and the salt-workers in the town,
he would have been made ill and sick by the bruising and shaking
and many changes of position to which he had been subjected.

The way the men took was a mile and a half in length, but the
road was heavy with snow, and the burden they bore was heavier
still. The dealers cheered them on, swore at them and praised
them in one breath; besought them and reiterated their splendid