to lose sight of
Hirschvogel how could he ever hope to find it again? how could he ever
know whither it had gone--north, south, east or west? The old
neighbour had said that the world was small; but August knew at least
that it must have a great many places in it; that he had seen himself
on the maps on his school-house walls. Almost any other little boy
would, I think, have been frightened out of his wits at the position
in which he found himself; but August was brave, and he had a firm
belief that God and Hirschvogel would take care of him. The
master-potter of Nuernberg was always present to his mind, a kindly,
benign, and gracious spirit, dwelling manifestly in that porcelain
tower whereof he had been the maker.

A droll fancy, you say? But every child with a soul in him has quite
as quaint fancies as this one was of August's.

So he got over his terror and his sobbing both, though he was so
utterly in the dark. He did not feel cramped at all, because the stove
was so large, and air he had in plenty, as it came through the
fretwork running round the top. He was hungry again, and again nibbled
with prudence at his loaf and his sausage. He could not at all tell
the hour. Every time the train stopped and he heard the banging,
stamping, shouting, and jangling of chains that went on, his heart
seemed to jump up into his mouth. If they should find him out!
Sometimes porters came and took away this case and the other, a sack
here, a bale there, now a big bag, now a dead chamois. Every time the
men trampled near him, and swore at each other, and banged this and
that to and fro, he was so frightened that his very breath seemed to
stop. When they came to lift the stove out, would they find him? and
if they did find him, would they kill him? That was what he kept
thinking of all the way, all through the dark hours, which seemed
without end. The goods-trains are usually very slow, and are many days
doing what a quick train does in a few hours. This one was quicker
than most, because it was bearing goods to the King of Bavaria; still,
it took all the short winter's day and the long winter's night and
half another day to go over ground that the mail-trains cover in a
forenoon. It passed great armoured Kuffstein standing across the
beautiful and solemn gorge, denying the right of way to all the foes
of Austria. It passed twelve hours later, after lying by in
out-of-the-way stations, pretty Rosenheim, that marks the border of
Ba