VII
The winds of early winter sweep bitterly over Rosenheim, and allthe vast Bavarian plain was one white sheet of snow. If there hadnot been whole armies of men at work always clearing the ironrails of the snow, no trains could ever have run at all. Happilyfor August, the thick wrappings in which the stove was envelopedand the stoutness of its own make screened him from the cold, ofwhich, else, he must have died,--frozen. He had still some of hisloaf, and a little--a very little--of his sausage. What he didbegin to suffer from was thirst; and this frightened him almostmore than anything else, for Dorothea had read aloud to them onenight a story of the tortures some wrecked men had enduredbecause they could not find any water but the salt sea. It wasmany hours since he had last taken a drink from the wooden spoutof their old pump, which brought them the sparkling, ice-coldwater of the hills.
But, fortunately for him, the stove, having been marked andregistered as "fragile and valuable," was not treated quite likea mere bale of goods, and the Rosenheim station-master, who knewits consignees, resolved to send it on by a passenger-train thatwould leave there at daybreak. And when this train went out, init, among piles of luggage belonging to other travellers, toVienna, Prague, Buda-Pesth, Salzburg, was August, stillundiscovered, still doubled up like a mole in the winter underthe grass. Those words, "fragile and valuable," had made the menlift Hirschvogel gently and with care. He had begun to get usedto his prison, and a little used to the incessant pounding andjumbling and rattling and shaking with which modern travel isalways accompanied, though modern invention does deem itself somightily clever. All in the dark he was, and he was terriblythirsty; but he kept feeling the earthenware sides of theNuernberg giant and saying, softly, "Take care of me; oh, takecare of me, dear Hirschvogel!"
He did not say, "Take me back;" for, now that he was fairly outin the world, he wished to see a little of it. He began to thinkthat they must have been all over the world in all this time thatthe rolling and roaring and hissing and jangling had been abouthis ears; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all the talesthat had been told in Yule round the fire at his grandfather'sgood house at Dorf, of gnomes and elves and subterranean terrors,and the Erl King riding on the black horse of night, and--and--andhe began to sob and to tremble again, and this time did screamoutright. But the steam was screaming itself so loudly that noone, had there been any one nigh, would have heard him; and inanother minute or so the train stopped with a jar and a jerk, andhe in his cage could hear men crying aloud, "Muenchen! Muenchen!"
Then he knew enough of geography to know that he was in the heartof Bavaria. He had had an uncle killed in the Bayerischenwald bythe Bavarian forest guards, when in the excitement of hunting ablack bear he had overpassed the limits of the Tyrol frontier.
That fate of his kinsman, a gallant young chamois-hunter who hadtaught him to handle a trigger and load a muzzle, made the veryname of Bavaria a terror to August.
"It is Bavaria! It is Bavaria!" he sobbed to the stove; but thestove said nothing to him; it had no fire in it. A stove can nomore speak without fire than a man can see without light. Give itfire, and it will sing to you, tell tales to you, offer you inreturn all the sympathy you ask.
"It is Bavaria!" sobbed August; for it is always a name of dreadaugury to the Tyroleans, by reason of those bitter struggles andmidnight shots and untimely deaths which come from those meetingsof jaeger and hunter in the Bayerischenwald. But the trainstopped; Munich was reached, and August, hot and cold by turns,and shaking like a little aspen-leaf, felt himself once morecarried out on the shoulders of men, rolled along on a truck, andfinally set down, where he knew not, only he knew he wasthirsty,--so thirsty! If only he could have reached his hand outand scooped up a little snow!
He thought he had been moved on this truck many miles, but intruth the stove had been only taken from the railway-station to ashop in the Marienplatz. Fortunately, the stove was always setupright on its four gilded feet, an injunction to that effecthaving been affixed to its written label, and on its gilded feetit stood now in the small dark curiosity-shop of one HansRhilfer.
"I shall not unpack it till Anton comes," he heard a man's voicesay; and then he heard a key grate in a lock, and by the unbrokenstillness that ensued he concluded he was alone, and ventured topeep through the straw and hay. What he saw was a small squareroom filled with pots and pans, pictures, carvings, old bluejugs, old steel armor, shields, daggers, Chinese idols, Viennachina, Turkish rugs, and all the art lumber and fabricatedrubbish of a _bric-a-brac_ dealer's. It seemed a wonderful placeto him; but, oh! was there one drop of water in it all? That washis single thought; for his tongue was parching, and his throatfelt on fire, and his chest began to be dry and choked as withdust. There was not a drop of water, but there was a latticewindow grated, and beyond the window was a wide stone ledgecovered with snow. August cast one look at the locked door,darted out of his hiding-place, ran and opened the window,crammed the snow into his mouth again and again, and then flewback into the stove, drew the hay and straw over the place heentered by, tied the cords, and shut the brass door down onhimself. He had brought some big icicles in with him, and by themhis thirst was finally, if only temporarily, quenched. Then hesat still in the bottom of the stove, listening intently, wideawake, and once more recovering his natural boldness.
AUGUST OPENED THE WINDOW, CRAMMED THE SNOW INTOHIS MOUTH AGAIN AND AGAIN]
The thought of Dorothea kept nipping his heart and his consciencewith a hard squeeze now and then; but he thought to himself, "IfI can take her back Hirschvogel, then how pleased she will be,and how little 'Gilda will clap her hands!" He was not at allselfish in his love for Hirschvogel: he wanted it for them all athome quite as much as for himself. There was at the bottom of hismind a kind of ache of shame that his father--his own father--shouldhave stripped their hearth and sold their honor thus.
A robin had been perched upon a stone griffin sculptured on ahouse-eave near. August had felt for the crumbs of his loaf inhis pocket, and had thrown them to the little bird sitting soeasily on the frozen snow.
In the darkness where he was he now heard a little song, madefaint by the stove-wall and the window-glass that was between himand it, but still distinct and exquisitely sweet. It was therobin, singing after feeding on the crumbs. August, as he heard,burst into tears. He thought of Dorothea, who every morning threwout some grain or some bread on the snow before the church. "Whatuse is it going _there_," she said, "if we forget the sweetestcreatures God has made?" Poor Dorothea! Poor, good, tender,much-burdened little soul! He thought of her till his tears ranlike rain.
Yet it never once occurred to him to dream of going home.Hirschvogel was here.