lifted face blanched and distorted with
terror. "Oh, father, dear father, you cannot mean what you say? Send
_it_ away--our life, our sun, our joy, our comfort? we shall all die
in the dark and the cold. Sell _me_ rather. Sell me to any trade or
any pain you like; I will not mind. But Hirschvogel! it is like
selling the very cross off the altar! You must be in jest. You could
not do such a thing--you could not--you who have always been gentle
and good, and who have sat in the warmth here year after year with our
mother. It is not a piece of hardware, as you say; it is a living
thing, for a great man's thoughts and fancies have put life into it,
and it loves us, though we are only poor little children, and we love
it with all our hearts and souls, and up in heaven I am sure the dead
Hirschvogel knows! Oh, listen; I will go and try and get work
to-morrow; I will ask them to let me cut ice or make the paths through
the snow. There must be something I could do, and I will beg the
people we owe money to, to wait; they are all neighbours, they will be
patient. But sell Hirschvogel! oh, never! never! never! Give the
florins back to the vile man. Tell him it would be like selling the
shroud out of mother's coffin, or the golden curls off Ermengilda's
head! Oh, father, dear father! do hear me, for pity's sake!"

Strehla was moved by the boy's anguish. He loved his children, though
he was often weary of them, and their pain was pain to him. But beside
emotion, and stronger than emotion, was the anger that August roused
in him: he hated and despised himself for the barter of the heirloom
of his race, and every word of the child stung him with a stinging
sense of shame.

And he spoke in his wrath rather than in his sorrow.

"You are a little fool," he said, harshly, as they had never heard him
speak. "You rave like a play-actor. Get up and go to bed. The stove is
sold. There is no more to be said. Children like you have nothing to
do with such matters. The stove is sold, and goes to Munich to-morrow.
What is it to you? Be thankful I can get bread for you. Get on your
legs, I say, and go to bed."

Strehla took up the jug of ale as he paused, and drained it slowly as
a man who had no cares.

August sprang to his feet and threw his hair back off his face; the
blood rushed into his cheeks, making them scarlet: his great soft eyes
flamed alight with furious passion.

"You _dare_ not!" he cried, aloud, "you dare not sell it, I say