mouth again and again, and then flew back into the stove, drew the
hay and straw over the place he entered by, tied the cords, and
shut the brass door down on himself. He had brought some big
icicles in with him, and by them his thirst was finally, if only
temporarily, quenched. Then he sat still in the bottom of the
stove, listening intently, wide awake, and once more recovering
his natural boldness.

The thought of Dorothea kept nipping his heart and his conscience
with a hard squeeze now and then; but he thought to himself, "If I
can take her back Hirschvogel, then how pleased she will be, and
how little 'Gilda will clap her hands!" He was not at all selfish
in his love for Hirschvogel: he wanted it for them all at home
quite as much as for himself. There was at the bottom of his mind
a kind of ache of shame that his father--his own father--should
have stripped their hearth and sold their honor thus.

A robin had been perched upon a stone griffin sculptured on a
house eave near. August had felt for the crumbs of his loaf in his
pocket, and had thrown them to the little bird sitting so easily
on the frozen snow.

In the darkness where he was he now heard a little song, made
faint by the stove-wall and the window glass that was between him
and it, but still distinct and exquisitely sweet. It was the
robin, singing after feeding on the crumbs. August, as he heard,
burst into tears. He thought of Dorothea, who every morning threw
out some grain or some bread on the snow before the church. "What
use is it going THERE," she said, "if we forget the sweetest
creatures God has made?" Poor Dorothea! Poor, good, tender, much-