ght, 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 new-comer 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, some one 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 knave, peace! be
quiet! hold your tongue! It is the king!"

They were about to drag him out of the august atmosphere as if he
had been some venomous, dangerous beast come there to slay, but
the voice he had heard speak of the stove said, in kind accents,
"Poor little child! he is very young. Let him go: let him speak
to me."

The word of a king is law to his courtiers: so, sorely against
their wish, the angry and astonished chamberlains let August
slide out of their grasp, and he stood there in his little rough
sheepskin coat and his thick, mud-covered boots, with his curling
hair all in a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber
he had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young man with a
beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams and fire; and the
young man said to him,--

"My child, how came you here, hidden in this stove? Be not
afraid: tell me the truth. I am the king."

August in an in