happy. He threw his two arms about the king's knees, and kissed
his feet passionately; then he lost all sense of where he was, and
fainted away from hunger, and tire, and emotion, and wondrous joy.

As the darkness of his swoon closed in on him, he heard in his
fancy the voice from Hirschvogel saying:--

"Let us be worthy our maker!"

He is only a scholar yet, but he is a happy scholar, and promises
to be a great man. Sometimes he goes back for a few days to Hall,
where the gold ducats have made his father prosperous. In the old
house room there is a large white porcelain stove of Munich, the
king's gift to Dorothea and 'Gilda.

And August never goes home without going into the great church and
saying his thanks to God, who blessed his strange winter's journey
in the Nurnberg stove. As for his dream in the dealers' room that
night, he will never admit that he did dream it; he still declares
that he saw it all, and heard the voice of Hirschvogel. And who
shall say that he did not? for what is the gift of the poet and
the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to
hear the sounds that others cannot hear?




THE AMBITIOUS ROSE TREE