m, set so
that his feet were downward.

What he fancied was that he was in some museum, like that which he had
seen in the city of Innspruck.

The voices he heard were very hushed, and the steps seemed to go away,
far away, leaving him alone with Hirschvogel. He dared not look out,
but he peeped through the brass-work, and all he could see was a big
carved lion's head in ivory, with a gold crown atop. It belonged to a
velvet fauteuil, but he could not see the chair, only the ivory lion.

There was a delicious fragrance in the air--a fragrance as flowers.
"Only how can it be flowers?" thought August. "It is November!"

From afar off, as it seemed, there came a dreamy, exquisite music, as
sweet as the spinet's had been, but so much fuller, so much richer,
seeming as though a chorus of angels were singing all together. August
ceased to think of the museum; he thought of heaven. "Are we gone to
the Master?" he thought, remembering the words of Hirschvogel.

All was so still around him; there was no sound anywhere except the
sound of the far-off choral music.

He did not know it, but he was in the royal castle of Berg, and the
music he heard was the music of Wagner, who was playing in a distant
room some of the motives of "Parsival."

Presently he heard a fresh step near him, and he heard a low voice
say, close behind him, "So!" An exclamation no doubt, he thought, of
admiration and wonder at the beauty of Hirschvogel.

Then the same voice said, after a long pause, during which no doubt,
as August thought, this newcomer was examining all the details of the
wondrous fire-tower, "It was well bought; it is exceedingly beautiful!
It is most undoubtedly the work of Augustin Hirschvogel."

Then the hand of the speaker turned the round handle of the brass
door, and the fainting soul of the poor little prisoner within grew
sick with fear.

The handle turned, the door was slowly drawn open, someone bent down
and looked in, and the same voice that he had heard in praise of its
beauty called aloud, in surprise, "What is this in it? A live child!"

Then August, terrified beyond all self control, and dominated by one
master-passion, sprang out of the body of the stove and fell at the
feet of the speaker.

"Oh, let me stay! Pray, meinherr, let me stay!" he sobbed. "I have
come all the way with Hirschvogel!"

Some gentlemen's hands seized him, not gently by any means, and their
lips angrily muttered in his ear, "Little knav