e, 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 instinct of homage cast his great battered black hat with
the tarnished gold tassels down on the floor of the room, and folded
his little brown hands in supplication. He was too intensely in
earnest to be in any way abashed; he was too lifted out of himself by
his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious of any awe before any earthly
majesty. He was only so glad--so glad it was the king. Kings were
always kind; so the Tyrolese think, who love their lords.

"Oh, dear king!" he said, with trembling entreaty in his faint little
voice, "Hirschvogel was ours, and we have loved it all our lives; and
father sold it. And when I saw that it did really go from us, then I
said to myself I would go with it; and I have come all the way inside
it. And last night it spoke and said beautiful things. And I do pray
you to let me live with it, and I will go out every morning and cut
wood for it and you, if only you will let me stay beside it. No one
ever has fed it with fuel but me since I grew big enough, and it loves
me; it does indeed; it said so last night; and it said that it had
been happier with us than if it were in any palace--"

And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little eager,
pale face to the young king's, great tears were falling down his
cheeks.

Now, the king liked all poetic and uncommon things, and there was that
in the child's face which pleased and touched him. He motioned to his
gentlemen to leave the little boy alone.

"What is your name?" he asked him.

"I am August Strehla. My father is Hans Stre