"Sold Hirschvogel!" If their father had dashed the holy crucifix
on the floor at their feet and spat on it, they could not have
shuddered under the horror of a greater blasphemy.

"I have sold Hirschvogel!" said Karl Strehla in the same husky,
dogged voice. "I have sold it to a traveling trader in such things
for two hundred florins. What would you?--I owe double that. He
saw it this morning when you were all out. He will pack it and
take it to Munich to-morrow."

Dorothea gave a low, shrill cry:--

"Oh, father!--the children--in midwinter!"

She turned white as the snow without; her words died away in her
throat.

August stood, half blind with sleep, staring with dazed eyes as
his cattle stared at the sun when they came out from their
winter's prison.

"It is not true! It is not true!" he muttered. "You are jesting,
father?"

Strehla broke into a dreary laugh.

"It is true. Would you like to know what is true too?--that the
bread you eat, and the meat you put in this pot, and the roof you
have over your heads, are none of them paid for, have been none of
them paid for for months and months; if it had not been for your