ust, you must be frozen. August, do look up! do speak!"

August raised his eyes with a wild, feverish, sullen look in them that
she had never seen there. His face was ashen white: his lips were like
fire. He had not slept all night; but his passionate sobs had given
way to delirious waking dreams and numb senseless trances, which had
alternated one on another all through the freezing, lonely, horrible
hours.

"It will never be warm again," he muttered, "never again!"

Dorothea clasped him with trembling hands.

"August! do you not know me!" she cried, in an agony. "I am Dorothea.
Wake up, dear--wake up! It is morning, only so dark!"

August shuddered all over.

"The morning!" he echoed.

He slowly rose up on to his feet.

"I will go to grandfather," he said, very low. "He is always good:
perhaps he could save it."

Loud blows with the heavy iron knocker of the house-door drowned his
words. A strange voice called aloud through the keyhole:

"Let me in! Quick!--there is no time to lose! More snow like this, and
the roads will be all blocked. Let me in. Do you hear? I am come to
take the great stove."

August sprang erect, his fists doubled, his eyes blazing.

"You shall never touch it!" he screamed; "you shall never touch it!"

"Who shall prevent us?" laughed a big man, who was a Bavarian, amused
at the fierce little figure fronting him.

"I!" said August "You shall never have it! you shall kill me first!"

"Strehla," said the big man, as August's father entered the room,
"you have got a little mad dog here: muzzle him."

One way and another they did muzzle him. He fought like a little
demon, and hit out right and left, and one of his blows gave the
Bavarian a black eye. But he was soon mastered by four grown men, and
his father flung him with no light hand out from the door of the back
entrance, and the buyers of the stately and beautiful stove set to
work to pack it heedfully and carry it away.

When Dorothea stole out to look for August, he was nowhere in sight.
She went back to little 'Gilda, who was ailing, and sobbed over the
child, whilst the others stood looking on, dimly understanding that
with Hirschvogel was going all the warmth of their bodies, all the
light of their hearth.

Even their father now was very sorry and ashamed; but two hundred
florins seemed a big sum to him, and, after all, he thought the
children could warm themselves quite as well at the black iron stove
in the kitchen.