swimming. If it was a very, very long journey, he felt half afraid
that he would be dead or something bad before the end, and
Hirschvogel would be so lonely: that was what he thought most
about; not much about himself, and not much about Dorothea and the
house at home. He was "high strung to high emprise," and could not
look behind him.

Whether for a long or a short journey, whether for weal or woe,
the stove with August still within it was once more hoisted up
into a great van; but this time it was not all alone, and the two
dealers as well as the six porters were all with it.

He in his darkness knew that; for he heard their voices. The train
glided away over the Bavarian plain southward; and he heard the
men say something of Berg and the Wurm-See, but their German was
strange to him, and he could not make out what these names meant.

The train rolled on, with all its fume and fuss, and roar of
steam, and stench of oil and burning coal. It had to go quietly
and slowly on account of the snow which was falling, and which had
fallen all night.

"He might have waited till he came to the city," grumbled one man
to another. "What weather to stay on at Berg!"

But who he was that stayed on at Berg, August could not make out
at all.

Though the men grumbled about the state of the roads and the
season, they were hilarious and well content, for they laughed