nt, for they laughed
often, and, when they swore, did so good-humoredly, and promised
their porters fine presents at New-Year; and August, like a
shrewd little boy as he was, who even in the secluded Innthal had
learned that money is the chief mover of men's mirth, thought to
himself, with a terrible pang,--

"They have sold Hirschvogel for some great sum. They have sold
him already!"

Then his heart grew faint and sick within him, for he knew very
well that he must soon die, shut up without food and water thus;
and what new owner of the great fire-palace would ever permit him
to dwell in it?

"Never mind; I _will_ die," thought he; "and Hirschvogel will
know it."

Perhaps you think him a very foolish little fellow; but I do
not.

It is always good to be loyal and ready to endure to the end.

It is but an hour and a quarter that the train usually takes to
pass from Munich to the Wurm-See or Lake of Starnberg; but this
morning the journey was much slower, because the way was
encumbered by snow. When it did reach Possenhofen and stop, and
the Nuernberg stove was lifted out once more, August could see
through the fret-work of the brass door, as the stove stood
upright facing the lake, that this Wurm-See was a calm and noble
piece of water, of great width, with low wooded banks and distant
mountains, a peaceful, serene place, full of rest.

It was now near ten o'clock. The sun had come forth; there was a
clear gray sky hereabouts; the snow was not falling, though it
lay white and smooth everywhere, down to the edge of the water,
which before long would itself be ice.

Before he had time to get more than a glimpse of the green
gliding surface, the stove was again lifted up and placed on a
large boat that was in waiting,--one of those very long and huge
boats which the women in these parts use as laundries, and the
men as timber-rafts. The stove, with much labor and much
expenditure of time and care, was hoisted into this, and August
would have grown sick and giddy with the heaving and falling if
his big brothers had not long used him to such tossing about, so
that he was as much at ease head, as feet, downward. The stove
once in it safely with its guardians, the big boat moved across
the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a Bavarian lake got
that Tuscan-sounding name I cannot tell; but Leoni it is. The big
boat was a long time crossing: the lake here is about three miles
broad, and these heavy barges are unw