grandfather, I should have been in prison all summer and autumn;
and he is out of patience and will do no more now. There is no
work to be had; the masters go to younger men; they say I work
ill; it may be so. Who can keep his head above water with ten
hungry children dragging him down? When your mother lived it was
different. Boy, you stare at me as if I were a mad dog! You have
made a god of yon china thing. Well--it goes; goes to-morrow. Two
hundred florins, that is something. It will keep me out of prison
for a little, and with the spring things may turn--"

August stood like a creature paralyzed. His eyes were wide open,
fastened on his father's with terror and incredulous horror; his
face had grown as white as his sister's; his chest heaved with
tearless sobs.

"It is not true! It is not true!" he echoed stupidly. It seemed to
him that the very skies must fall, and the earth perish, if they
could take away Hirschvogel. They might as soon talk of tearing
down God's sun out of the heavens.

"You will find it true," said his father doggedly, and angered
because he was in his own soul bitterly ashamed to have bartered
away the heirloom and treasure of his race and the comfort and
health-giver of his young children." You will find it true. The
dealer has paid me half the money to-night, and will pay me the
other half to-morrow, when he packs it up and takes it away to
Munich. No doubt it is worth a great deal more,--at least I
suppose so, as he gives that,--but beggars cannot be choosers. The
little black stove in the kitchen will warm you all just as well.
Who would keep a gilded, painted thing in a poor house like this,