was. I loved it! I LOVED IT!"

"You little simpleton!" said the old man, kindly. "But you are
wiser than your father, when all's said. If sell it he must, he
should have taken it to good Herr Steiner over at Spritz, who
would have given him honest value. But no doubt they took him over
his beer--ay, ay! but if I were you I would do better than cry. I
would go after it."

August raised his head, the tears raining down his cheeks.

"Go after it when you are bigger," said the neighbor, with a good-
natured wish to cheer him up a little. "The world is a small thing
after all: I was a traveling clockmaker once upon a time, and I
know that your stove will be safe enough whoever gets it; anything
that can be sold for a round sum is always wrapped up in cotton
wool by everybody. Ay, ay, don't cry so much; you will see your
stove again some day."

Then the old man hobbled away to draw his brazen pail full of
water at the well.

August remained leaning against the wall; his head was buzzing,
and his heart fluttering with the new idea which had presented
itself to his mind. "Go after it," had said the old man. He
thought, "Why not go with it?" He loved it better than any one,
even better than Dorothea; and he shrank from the thought of
meeting his father again, his father who had sold Hirschvogel.

He was by this time in that state of exaltation in which the