locking it after them. He had made out from their talk that they
were going to show Hirschvogel to some great person: therefore he
kept quite still and dared not move.

Muffled sounds came to him through the shutters from the streets
below--the rolling of wheels, the clanging of church bells, and
bursts of that military music which is so seldom silent in the
streets of Munich. An hour perhaps passed by; sounds of steps on
the stairs kept him in perpetual apprehension. In the intensity of
his anxiety, he forgot that he was hungry and many miles away from
cheerful, Old World little Hall, lying by the clear gray river-
water, with the ramparts of the mountains all around.

Presently the door opened again sharply. He could hear the two
dealers' voices murmuring unctuous words, in which "honor,"
"gratitude," and many fine long noble titles played the chief
parts. The voice of another person, more clear and refined than
theirs, answered them curtly, and then, close by the Nurnberg
stove and the boy's ear, ejaculated a single "Wunderschon!" August
almost lost his terror for himself in his thrill of pride at his
beloved Hirschvogel being thus admired in the great city. He
thought the master-potter must be glad too.

"Wunderschon!" ejaculated the stranger a second time, and then
examined the stove in all its parts, read all its mottoes, gazed
long on all its devices.

"It must have been made for the Emperor Maximilian," he said at
last; and the poor little boy, meanwhile, within, was "hugged up
into nothing," as you children say, dreading that every moment he