"Oh, dear king!" he said, with trembling entreaty in his faint
little voice, "Hirschvogel was ours, and we have loved it all our
lives; and father sold it. And when I saw that it did really go
from us, then I said to myself I would go with it; and I have come
all the way inside it. And last night it spoke and said beautiful
things.

"And I do pray you to let me live with it, and I will go out every
morning and cut wood for it and you, if only you will let me stay
beside it. No one ever has fed it with fuel but me since I grew
big enough, and it loves me,--it does indeed; it said so last
night; and it said that it had been happier with us than if it
were in any palace--"

And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little,
eager, pale face to the young king's, great tears were falling
down his cheeks.

Now, the king liked all poetic and uncommon things, and there was
that in the child's face which pleased and touched him. He
motioned to his gentlemen to leave the little boy alone.

"What is your name?" he asked him.

"I am August Strehla. My father is Hans Strehla. We live in Hall,
in the Innthal; and Hirschvogel has been ours so long--so long!"

His lips quivered with a broken sob.

"And have you truly traveled inside this stove all the way from