stove! That was his frantic fear. If they should open it, it would
be all over with him. They would drag him out; most likely they
would kill him, he thought, as his mother's young brother had been
killed in the Wald.

The perspiration rolled off his forehead in his agony; but he had
control enough over himself to keep quiet, and after standing by
the Nurnberg master's work for nigh an hour, praising, marveling,
expatiating in the lengthy German tongue, the men moved to a
little distance and began talking of sums of money and divided
profits, of which discourse he could make out no meaning. All he
could make out was that the name of the king--the king--the king
came over very often in their arguments. He fancied at times they
quarreled, for they swore lustily and their voices rose hoarse and
high; but after a while they seemed to pacify each other and agree
to something, and were in great glee, and so in these merry
spirits came and slapped the luminous sides of stately Hirschvogel,
and shouted to it:--

"Old Mumchance, you have brought us rare good luck! To think you
were smoking in a silly fool of a salt baker's kitchen all these
years!"

Then inside the stove August jumped up, with flaming cheeks and
clinching hands, and was almost on the point of shouting out to
them that they were the thieves and should say no evil of his
father, when he remembered, just in time, that to breathe a word
or make a sound was to bring ruin on himself and sever him forever
from Hirschvogel. So he kept quite still, and the men barred the
shutters of the little lattice and went out by the door, double-