er 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 mid-winter!"

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 the meat you put in this pot, and the roof you
have over your heads, are none of them paid for, have been none
of them paid for for months and months: if it had not been for
your grandfather I should have been in prison all summer and
autumn, and he is out of patience and will do no more now. There
is no work to be had; the masters go to younger men: they say I
work ill; it may be so. Who can keep his head above water with
ten hungry children dragging him down? When your mother lived, it
was different. Boy, you stare at me as if I were a mad dog! You
have made a god of yon china thing. Well--it goes: goes
to-morrow. Two hundred florins, that is something. It will keep
me out of prison for a little, and with the spring things may
turn----"

August stood like a creature paralyzed. His eyes were wide open,
fastened on his father's with terror and incredulous horror; his
face had grown as white as his sister's; his chest heaved with
tearless sobs.

"It is not true! It is not true!" he echoed, stupidly. It seemed
to him that the very skies must fall, and the earth perish, if
they could take away Hirschvogel. They might as soon talk of
tearing down God's sun out of the heavens.

"You will find it true," said his father, doggedly, and angered
because he was in his own soul bitterly ashamed to have bartered
away the heirloom and treasure of his race and the comfort and
health-giver of his young children. "You will find it true. The
dealer has paid me half the money to-night, and will pay me the
other h