impossible looks quite natural and commonplace. His tears were
still wet on his pale cheeks, but they had ceased to fall. He ran
out of the courtyard by a little gate, and across to the huge
Gothic porch of the church. From there he could watch unseen his
father's house door, at which were always hanging some blue-and-
gray pitchers, such as are common and so picturesque in Austria,
for a part of the house was let to a man who dealt in pottery.

He hid himself in the grand portico, which he had so often passed
through to go to mass or complin within, and presently his heart
gave a great leap, for he saw the straw-enwrapped stove brought
out and laid with infinite care on the bullock dray. Two of the
Bavarian men mounted beside it, and the sleigh-wagon slowly crept
over the snow of the place--snow crisp and hard as stone. The
noble old minister looked its grandest and most solemn, with its
dark gray stone and its vast archways, and its porch that was
itself as big as many a church, and its strange gargoyles and
lamp-irons black against the snow on its roof and on the pavement;
but for once August had no eyes for it: he only watched for his
old friend. Then he, a little unnoticeable figure enough, like a
score of other boys in Hall, crept, unseen by any of his brothers
or sisters, out of the porch and over the shelving uneven square,
and followed in the wake of the dray.

Its course lay towards the station of the railway, which is close
to the salt works, whose smoke at times sullies this part of clean
little Hall, though it does not do very much damage. From Hall the
iron road runs northward through glorious country to Salzburg,
Vienna, Prague, Buda, and southward over the Brenner into Italy.
Was Hirschvogel going north or south? This at least he would soon