and only thought it worth finding because it was such a good one
to burn. That was now sixty years past, and ever since then the
stove had stood in the big, desolate, empty room, warming three
generations of the Strehla family, and having seen nothing
prettier, perhaps, in all its many years than the children tumbled
now in a cluster like gathered flowers at its feet. For the
Strehla children, born to nothing else, were all born with beauty;
white or brown, they were equally lovely to look upon, and when
they went into the church to Mass, with their curling locks and
their clasped hands, they stood under the grim statues like
cherubs flown down off some fresco.

"Tell us a story, August," they cried in chorus, when they had
seen charcoal pictures till they were tired; and August did as he
did every night pretty nearly--looked up at the stove and told
them what he imagined of the many adventures and joys and sorrows
of the human being who figured on the panels from his cradle to
his grave.

To the children the stove was a household god. In summer they laid
a mat of fresh moss all round it, and dressed it up with green
boughs and the numberless beautiful wild flowers of the Tyrol
country. In winter all their joys centered in it, and scampering
home from school over the ice and snow they were happy, knowing
that they would soon be cracking nuts or roasting chestnuts in the
broad ardent glow of its noble tower, which rose eight feet high
above them with all its spires and pinnacles and crowns.

Once a traveling peddler had told them that the letters on it
meant Augustin Hirschvogel, and that Hirschvogel had been a great