n, gray before his time, and bowed with labour.

"Take the children to bed," he said, suddenly, at last, and Dorothea
obeyed. August stayed behind, curled before the stove; at nine years
old, and when one earns money in the summer from the farmers, one is
not altogether a child any more, at least in one's own estimation.

August did not heed his father's silence: he was used to it. Karl
Strehla was a man of few words, and, being of weakly health, was
usually too tired at the end of the day to do more than drink his beer
and sleep. August lay on the wolfskin dreamy and comfortable, looking
up through his drooping eyelids at the golden coronets on the crest of
the great stove, and wondering for the millionth time whom it had been
made for, and what grand places and scenes it had known.

Dorothea came down from putting the little ones in their beds; the
cuckoo-clock in the corner struck eight; she looked to her father and
the untouched pipe, then sat down to her spinning, saying nothing. She
thought he had been drinking in some tavern; it had been often so with
him of late.

There was a long silence; the cuckoo called the quarter twice; August
dropped asleep, his curls falling over his face; Dorothea's wheel
hummed like a cat.

Suddenly Karl Strehla struck his hand on the table, sending the pipe
to the ground.

"I have sold Hirschvogel," he said; and his voice was husky and
ashamed in his throat. The spinning-wheel stopped. August sprang erect
out of his sleep.

"Sold Hirschvogel!" If their father had dashed the holy crucifix on
the floor at their feet and spat on it, they could not have shuddered
under the horror of a greater blasphemy.

"I have sold Hirschvogel!" said Karl Strehla, in the same husky,
dogged voice. "I have sold it to a travelling trader in such things
for two hundred florins. What would you?--I owe double that. He saw it
this morning when you were all out. He will pack it and take it to
Munich to-morrow."

Dorothea gave a low shrill cry:

"Oh, father?--the children--in midwinter!"

She turned white as the snow without; her words died away in her
throat.

August stood, half blind with sleep, staring with dazed eyes as his
cattle stared at the sun when they came out from their winter's
prison.

"It is not true. It is not true!" he muttered. "You are jesting,
father?"

Strehla broke into a dreary laugh.

"It is true. Would you like to know what is true too? that the bread
you eat, and t