yC-NRLF 
 
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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Education 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Dr. Gordon E, Hein 
 
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 ^ ' • ' 'J^J 
 
 THEN I CLAIM THH HAND OF PACinCA." 
 
 Page 159 
 
BIMBI 
 
 STORIES FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 BY 
 
 LOUISA DE LA RAME. 
 
 • (buiDA.) 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY 
 
 EDMUND H. GARRETT. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 1893. 
 
GIFT 
 
 Copyright, 1892, 
 
 BV 
 
 J. B. LippiNCOTT Company. 
 
 Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Phiiadeiphia. 
 
00l!5"TEKTS. 
 
 FAOE 
 
 The Nt*RNBERQ Stove . 9 
 
 The Ambitious Eose-Tree 76 
 
 moufflou 93 
 
 Lampblack . 124 
 
 The Child of Urbino 133 
 
 In the Apple-Country 161 
 
 FiNDELKIND • . 198 
 
 Meleagris Gallopavo 234 
 
 The liiTTLE Earl '246 
 
 ?.GVi 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 " Then I claim the Hand of Pacifica" Frontispiece. 
 
 The NiJRNBERG Stove 74 
 
 " Pretty Poll ! Oh, such a Pretty Poll !" . . 89 
 MotJFFLOu acquitted Himself ably as ever . . 101 
 "Old Deposit is going to be a Sign-Post" . . . 127 
 
 " Let us rest a little" 161 
 
 Even his Dear Sheep he hardly heeded . . . 206 
 
 " May I ASK if it be also safe?" 240 
 
 " Will y^ou be so kind as to let me know what 
 you are eating?" 261 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 August lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is 
 a favorite name for several towns in Austria and in 
 Germany; but this one especial little Hall, in the 
 Upper Innthal, is one of the most charming Old- 
 World places that I know, and August for his part 
 did not know any other. It has the green meadows 
 and the great mountains all about it, and the gray- 
 green glacier-fed water rushes by it. It has paved 
 streets and enchanting little shops that have all lat- 
 ticed panes and iron gratings to them ; it has a very 
 grand old Gothic church, that has the noblest blend- 
 ings of light and shadow, and marble tombs of dead 
 knights, and a look of infinite strength and repose as a 
 church should have. Then there is the Muntze Tower, 
 black and w^iite, rising out of greenery and looking 
 down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid 
 river; and there is an old schloss which has been made 
 into a guard-house, with battlements and frescos and 
 heraldic devices in gold and colors, and a man-at-arm? 
 carved in stone standing life-size in his niche and 
 bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but close 
 at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns 
 and tombs, and a colossal wood-carved Calvary, and 
 beside that a small and very rich chapel : indeed, so 
 
 9 
 
10 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 full is the little town of the undisturbed past, that to 
 walk in it is like opening a missal of the Middle Ages, 
 all emblazoned and illuminated with saints and war- 
 riors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by- 
 reason of its monuments and its historic color, that I 
 marvel much no one has ever cared to sing its praises. 
 The old pious heroic life of an age at once more restful 
 and more brave than ours still leaves its spirit there, 
 and then there is the girdle of the mountains all around, 
 and that alone means strength, peace, majesty. 
 
 In this little town a few years ago August Strehla 
 lived with his people in the stone-paved irregular 
 square where the grand church stands. 
 
 He was a small boy of nine years at that time, — a 
 chubby-faced little man with rosy cheeks, big hazel 
 eyes, and clusters of curls the brown of ripe nuts. His 
 mother was dead, his father was poor, and there were 
 many mouths at home to feed. In this country the 
 winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies 
 wrapped in snow for many months, and this night that 
 he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb 
 red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good 
 burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and 
 the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their 
 quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains 
 indeed were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars 
 that are so big in frost. Hardly any one was astir; 
 a few good souls wending home from vespers, a tired 
 post-boy who blew a shrill blast from his tasselled 
 horn as he pulled up his sledge before a hostelry, and 
 little August hugging his jug of beer to his ragged 
 sheepskin coat, were all who were abroad, for the snow 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. H 
 
 fell heavily and the good folks of Hall go early to 
 their beds. He could not run, or he would have 
 spilled the beer ; he was half frozen and a little fright- 
 ened, but he kept up his courage by saying over and 
 over again to himself, " I shall soon be at home with 
 dear Hirschvogel." 
 
 He went on through the streets, past the stone man- 
 at-arms of the guard-house, and so into the place where 
 the great church was, and where near it stood his father 
 Karl Strehla's house, with a sculptured Bethlehem over 
 the door-way, and the Pilgrimage of the Three Kings 
 painted on its wall. He had been sent on a long errand 
 outside the gates in the afternoon, over the frozen fields 
 and the broad white snow, and had been belated, and 
 had thought he had heard the wolves behind him at 
 every step, and had reached the town in a great state 
 of terror, thankful with all his little panting heart to 
 see the oil-lamp burning under the first house-shrine. 
 But he had not forgotten to call for the beer, and he 
 carried it carefully now, though his hands were so 
 numb that he was afraid they would let the jug down 
 every moment. 
 
 The snow outlined with white every gable and cor- 
 nice of the beautiful old wooden houses; the moonlight 
 shone on the gilded signs, the lambs, the grapes, the 
 eagles, and all the quaint devices that hung before the 
 doors ; covered lamps burned before the Nativities 
 and Crucifixions painted on the walls or let into the 
 wood- work ; here and there, where a shutter had not 
 been closed, a ruddy fire-light lit up a homely interior, 
 with the noisy band of children clustering round the 
 house-mother and a big brown loaf, or some gossips 
 
•12 THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 
 
 spinning and listening to the cobbler's or the barber's 
 story of a neighbor, while the oil-wicks glimmered, 
 and the hearth-logs blazed, and the chestnuts sputtered 
 in their iron roasting-pot. Little August saw all these 
 things, as he saw everything with his two big bright 
 eyes that had such curious lights and shadows in them ; 
 but he went heedfully on his way for the sake of the 
 beer which a single slip of the foot would make him 
 spill. At his knock and call the solid oak door, four 
 centuries old if one, flew open, and the boy darted in 
 with his beer, and shouted, with all the force of mirth- 
 ful lungs, " Oh, dear Hirschvogel, but for the thought 
 of you I should have died !" 
 
 It was a large barren room into which he rushed 
 with so much pleasure, and the bricks were bare and 
 uneven. It had a walnut-wood press, handsome and 
 very old, a broad deal table, and several wooden stools 
 for all its furniture; but at the top of the chamber, 
 sending out warmth and color together as the lamp 
 shed its rays upon it, was a tower of porcelain, bur- 
 nished with all the hues of a king's peacock and a 
 queen's jewels, and surmounted with armed figures, 
 and shields, and flowers of heraldry, and a great golden 
 crown upon the highest summit of all. 
 
 It was a stove of 1532, and on it were the letters 
 II. R. H., for it was in every portion the handwork of 
 the great potter of Niirnberg, Augustin Hirschvogel, 
 who put his mark thus, as all the world knows. 
 
 The stove no doubt had stood in palaces and been 
 made for princes, had warmed the crimson stockings of 
 cardinals and the gold-broidered shoes of archduchesses, 
 had glowed in presence-chambers and lent its carbon 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 13 
 
 to help kindle sharp brains in anxious councils of state; 
 no one knew what it had seen or done or been fashioned 
 for ; but it was a right royal thing. Yet perhaps it 
 had never been more useful than it was now in this 
 poor desolate room, sending down heat and comfort 
 into the troop of children tumbled together on a wolf- 
 skin at its feet, who received frozen August among 
 them with loud shouts of joy. 
 
 "Oh, dear Hirschvogel, I am so cold, so cold!" said 
 August, kissing its gilded lion's claws. " Is father not 
 in, Dorothea ?" 
 
 " No, dear. He is late." 
 
 Dorothea was a girl of seventeen, dark-haired and 
 serious, and with a sweet sad face, for she had had 
 many cares laid on her shoulders, even whilst still a 
 mere baby. She was the eldest of the Strehla family ; 
 and there were ten of them in all. Next to her there 
 came Jan and Karl and Otho, big lads, gaining a little 
 for their own living; and then came August, who went 
 up in the summer to the high alps with the farmers' 
 cattle, but in winter could do nothing to fill his own 
 little platter and pot ; and then all the little ones, who 
 could only open their mouths to be fed like young 
 birds, — Albrecht and Hilda, and Waldo and Christof, 
 and last of all little three-year-old Ermeugilda, with 
 eyes like forget-me-nots, whose birth had cost them 
 the life of their mother. 
 
 They were of that mixed race, half Austrian, half 
 Italian, so common in the Tyrol ; some of the children 
 were white and golden as lilies, others were brown and 
 brilliant as fresh-fallen chestnuts. The father was a 
 good man, but weak and weary with 50 many to find 
 2 
 
14 TEE NiJRNBERO STOVE. 
 
 for and so little to do it with. He worked at tlie salt- 
 furnaces, and by that gained a few florins ; people said 
 he would have worked better and kept his family more 
 easily if he had not loved his pipe and a draught of ale 
 too well ; but this had only been said of him after his 
 wife's death, when trouble and perplexity had begun 
 to dull a brain never too vigorous, and to enfeeble 
 further a character already too yielding. As it was, 
 the wolf often bayed at the door of the Strehla house- 
 hold, without a wolf from the mountains coming down. 
 Dorothea was one of those maidens who almost work 
 miracles, so far can their industry and care and intelli- 
 gence make a home sweet and wholesome and a single 
 loaf seem to swell into twenty. The children were 
 always clean and happy, and the table was seldom 
 without its big pot of soup once a day. Still, very 
 poor they were, and Dorothea's heart ached with 
 shame, for she knew that their father's debts were 
 many for flour and meat and clothing. Of fuel to 
 feed the big stove they had always enough without 
 cost, for their mother's father was alive, and sold wood 
 and fir cones and coke, and never grudged them to his 
 grandchildren, though he grumbled at Strehla's im- 
 providence and hapless, dreamy ways. 
 
 " Father says we are never to wait for him : we will 
 have supper, now you have come home, dear," said 
 Dorothea, who, however she might fret her soul in 
 secret as she knitted their hose and mended their 
 shirts, never let her anxieties cast a gloom on the chil- 
 dren ; only to August she did speak a little sometimes, 
 because he was so thoughtful and so tender of her 
 always, and knew as well as she did that there were 
 
THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 15 
 
 troubles about money, — though these troubles were 
 vague t3 them both, and the debtors were patient and 
 kindly, being neighbors all in the old tAvisting streets 
 between the guard-house and the river. 
 
 Supper was a huge bowl of soup, with big slices of 
 brown bread swimming in it and some onions bobbing 
 up and down : the bowl was soon emptied by ten 
 wooden spoons, and then the three eldest boys slipped 
 off to bed, being tired with their rough bodily labor in 
 the snow all day, and Dorothea drew her spinning- 
 wheel by the stove and set it whirring, and the little 
 ones got August down upon the old worn wolf-skin 
 and clamored to him for a picture or a story. For 
 August was the artist of the family. 
 
 He had a piece of planed deal that his father had 
 given him, and some sticks of charcoal, and he would 
 draw a hundred things he had seen in the day, sweep- 
 ing each out with his elbow when the children had 
 seen enough of it and sketching another in its stead, — 
 faces and dogs' heads, and men in sledges, and old 
 women in their furs, and pine-trees, and cocks and 
 hens, and all sorts of animals, and now and then — 
 very reverently — a Madonna and Child. It was all 
 very rough, for there was no one to teach him any- 
 thing. But it was all life-like, and kept the whole 
 troop of children shrieking with laughter, or watching 
 breathless, with wide open, wondering, awed eyes. 
 
 They were all so happy: what did they care for the 
 snow outside? Their little bodies were warm, and 
 their hearts merry ; even Dorothea, troubled about the 
 bread for the morrow, laughed as she spun ; and Au- 
 gust, with all his soul in his work, and little rosy Er- 
 
16 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 mengilda's cheek on his shoulder, glowiug after hla 
 frozen afternoon, cried out loud, smiling, as he looked 
 up at the stove that was shedding its heat down on 
 them all, — 
 
 " Oh, dear Hirschvogel ! you are almost as great and 
 good as the sun ! No ; you are greater and better, I 
 think, because he goes away nobody knows where all 
 these long, dark, cold hours, and does not care how 
 people die for want of him ; but you — ^you are always 
 ready : just a little bit of wood to feed you, and you 
 will make a summer for us all the winter through !" 
 
 The grand old stove seemed to smile through all its 
 iridescent surface at the praises of the child. No doubt 
 the stove, though it had known three centuries and 
 more, had known but very little gratitude. 
 
 It was one of those magnificent stoves in enamelled 
 faience which so excited the jealousy of the other pot- 
 ters of Niirnberg that in a body they demanded of the 
 magistracy that Augustin Hirschvogel should be for- 
 bidden to make any more of them, — the magistracy, 
 happily, proving of a broader mind, and having no 
 sympathy with the wish of the artisans to cripple their 
 greater fellow. 
 
 It was of great height and breadth, with all the 
 majolica lustre which Hirschvogel learned to give to 
 his enamels when he was making love to the young 
 Venetian girl whom he afterwards married. There 
 was the statue of a king at each corner, modelled with 
 as much force and splendor as his friend Albrecht 
 Diirer could have given unto them on coj)perplate or 
 canvas. The body of the stove itself was divided into 
 panels, Avhich had the Ages of Man painted on them 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 17 
 
 in polychrome; the borders of the panels had roses 
 and holly and laurel and other foliage, and German 
 mottoes in black letter of odd Old-World moralizing, 
 such as the old Teutons, and the Dutch after them, 
 love to have on their chimney-places and their drink- 
 ing-cups, their dishes and flagons. The whole was 
 burnished with gilding in many parts, and was radiant 
 everywhere with that brilliant coloring of which the 
 Hirschvogel family, painters on glass and great in 
 chemistry as they were, were all masters. 
 
 The stove was a very grand thing, as I say : possibly 
 Hirschvogel had made it for some mighty lord of the 
 Tyrol at that time when he was an imperial guest at 
 Innspruck and fashioned so many things for the Schloss 
 Amras and beautiful Philippine Welser, the burgher's 
 daughter, who gained an archduke's heart by her 
 beauty and the right to wear his honors by her wit. 
 Nothing was known of the stove at this latter day 
 in Hall. The grandfather Strehla, who had been a 
 master-mason, had dug it up out of some ruins where 
 he was building, and, finding it without a flaw, had 
 taken it home, and only thought it worth finding be- 
 cause it was such a good one to burn. That was now 
 sixty years past, and ever since then the stove had 
 stood in the big desolate empty room, warming three 
 generations of the Strehla family, and having seen 
 nothing prettier perhaps in all its many years than 
 the children tumbled now in a cluster like gathered 
 flowers at its feet. For the Strehla children, born to 
 nothing else, were all born with beauty : white or 
 brown, they were equally lovely to look upon, and 
 when they went into the church to mass, with their 
 
13 THE NVRNBERG STOVE. 
 
 curling locks and their clasped hands, they stood under 
 the grim statues like cherubs flown down off some 
 fresco. 
 
 "Tell us a story, August/' they cried, in chorus, 
 when they had seen charcoal pictures till they were 
 tired; and August did as he did every night pretty 
 nearly, — looked up at the stove and told them what 
 he imagined of the many adventures and joys and sor- 
 rows of the human being who figured on the panels 
 from his cradle to his grave. 
 
 To the children the stove was a household god. In 
 summer they laid a mat of fresh moss all round it, and 
 dressed it up with green boughs and the numberless 
 beautiful wild flowers of the Tyrol country. In win- 
 ter all their joys centred in it, and scampering home 
 from school over the ice and snow they were happy, 
 knowing that they would soon be cracking nuts or 
 roasting chestnuts in the broad ardent glow of its noble 
 tower, which rose eight feet high above them with all 
 its spires and pinnacles and crowns. 
 
 Once a travelling peddler had told them that the 
 letters on it meant Augustin Hirschvogel, and that 
 Hirschvogel had been a great German potter and 
 painter, like his father before him, in the art-sanctified 
 city of Niirnberg, and had made many such stoves, 
 that were all miracles of beauty and of workmanship, 
 putting all his heart and his soul and his faith into his 
 labors, as the men of those earlier ages did, and think- 
 ing but little of gold or praise. 
 
 An old trader, too, who sold curiosities not far from 
 the cliurch, had told August a little more about the 
 brave family of Hirschvogel, whose houses can be seen 
 
THE NURNBERO STOVE. 19 
 
 in Niirnberg to this clay ; of old Yeit, the first of them, 
 who painted the Gothic windows of St. Sebald with 
 the marriage of the Margravine ; of his sons and of 
 his grandsons, potters, painters, engravers all, and 
 chief of them great Augustin, the Luca della Robbia 
 of the North. And August's imagination, always 
 quick, had made a living personage out of these few 
 records, and saw Hirschvogel as though he were in the 
 flesh walking up and down the Maximilian-Strass in 
 his visit to Innspruck, and maturing beautiful things 
 in his brain as he stood on the bridge and gazed on the 
 emerald-green flood of the Inn. 
 
 So the stove had got to be called Hirschvogel in the 
 family, as if it were a living creature, and little August 
 was very proud because he had been named after that 
 famous old dead German Avho had had the genius to 
 make so glorious a thing. All the children loved the 
 stove, but with August the love of it was a passion ; 
 and in his secret heart he used to say to himself, 
 "When I am a man, I will make just such things too, 
 and then I will set Hirschvogel in a beautiful room in 
 a house that I will build myself in Innspruck just 
 outside the gates, where the chestnuts are, by the river : 
 that is what I will do when I am a man." 
 
 For August, a salt-baker's son and a little cow- 
 keeper when he was anything, was a dreamer of 
 dreams, and when he was upon the high alps with his 
 cattle, with the stillness and the sky around him, was 
 quite certain that he would live for greater things than 
 driving the herds up when the spring-tide came among 
 the blue sea of gentians, or toiling down in the town 
 with wood and with timber as his father and grand- 
 
20 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 father did every day of their lives. He was a strong 
 and healthy little fellow, fed on the free mountain-air, 
 and he was very happy, and loved his family devotedly, 
 and was as active as a squirrel and as playful as a hare ; 
 but he kept his thoughts to himself, and some of them 
 went a very long way for a little boy who was only 
 one among many, and to whom nobody had ever 
 paid any attention except to teach him his letters and 
 tell him to fear God. August in winter was only a 
 little, hungry school-boy, trotting to be catechised by 
 the priest, or to bring the loaves from the bake-house, 
 or to carry his father's boots to the cobbler ; and in 
 summer he was only one of hundreds of cow-boys, 
 who drove the poor, half-blind, blinking, stumbling 
 cattle, ringing their throat-bells, out into the sweet in- 
 toxication of the sudden sunlight, and lived up with 
 them in the heights among the Alpine roses, with only 
 the clouds and the snow-summits near. But he was 
 always thinking, thinking, thinking, for all that ; and 
 under his little sheepskin winter coat and his rough 
 hempen summer shirt his heart had as much courage 
 in it as Hofer's ever had, — great Hofer, who is a house- 
 hold word in all the Innthal, and whom August always 
 reverently remembered when he went to the city of 
 Innspruck and ran out by the foaming water-mill and 
 under the wooded height of Berg Isel. 
 
 August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told 
 the children stories, his own little brown face grow- 
 ing red with excitement as his imagination glowed to 
 fever-heat. That human being on the panels, who was 
 drawn there as a baby in a cradle, as a boy playing 
 among flowers, as a lover sighing under a casement, as 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 21 
 
 a soldier in the midst of strife, as a father with chil- 
 dren round him, as a weary, old, blind man on crutches, 
 and, lastly, as a ransomed soul raised up by angels, had 
 always had the most intense interest for August, and 
 he had made, not one history for him, but a thousand ; 
 he seldom told them the same tale twice. He had 
 never seen a story-book in his life ; his primer and his 
 mass-book were all the volumes he had. But nature 
 had given him Fancy, and she is a good fairy that 
 makes up for the want of very many things! only, 
 alas ! her wings are so very soon broken, poor thing, 
 and then she is of no use at all. 
 
 " It is time for you all to go to bed, children," said 
 Dorothea, looking up from her spinning. " Father is 
 very late to-night ; you must not sit up for him." 
 
 "Oh, five minutes more, dear Dorothea!" they 
 pleaded ; and little rosy and golden Ermengilda climbed 
 up into her lap. " Hirschvogel is so warm, the beds 
 are never so warm as he. Cannot you tell us another 
 tale, August ?" 
 
 " No," cried August, whose face had lost its light, 
 now that his story had come to an end, and who sat 
 serious, with his hands clasped on his knees, gazing on 
 to the luminous arabesques of the stove. 
 
 " It is only a week to Christmas," he said, suddenly. 
 
 " Grandmother's big cakes !" chuckled little Christof, 
 who was five years old, and thought Christmas meant 
 a big cake and nothing else. 
 
 " What will Santa Claus find for 'Gilda if she be 
 good?" murmured Dorothea over the child's sunny 
 head ; for, however hard poverty might pinch, it could 
 never pinch so tightly that Dorothea would not find 
 
22 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 some wooden toy and some rosy apples to put in her 
 little sister's socks. 
 
 " Father Max has promised me a big goose, because 
 I saved the calf's life in June," said August ; it was 
 the twentieth time he had told them so that month, he 
 was so proud of it. 
 
 " And Aunt Maila will be sure to send us wine and 
 honey and a barrel of flour; she always does," said 
 Albrecht. Their aunt Maila had a chalet and a little 
 farm over on the green slopes towards Dorp Ampas. 
 
 " I shall go up into the woods and get Hirschvogel's 
 crown," said August; they always crowned Hirsch- 
 vogel for Christmas with pine boughs and ivy and 
 mountain-berries. The heat soon withered the crown ; 
 but it was part of the religion of the day to them, as 
 much so as it was to cross themselves in church and 
 raise their voices in the " O Salutaris Hostia." 
 
 And they fell chatting of all they would do on the 
 Christ-night, and one little voice piped loud against 
 another's, and they were as happy as though their 
 stockings would be full of golden purses and jewelled 
 toys, and the big goose in the soup-pot seemed to them 
 such a meal as kings would envy. 
 
 In the midst of their chatter and laughter a blast of 
 frozen air and a spray of driven snow struck like ice 
 through the room, and reached them even in the warmth 
 of the old wolf-skins and the great stove. It was the 
 door which had opened and let in the cold ; it wa«! 
 their father who had come home. 
 
 The younger children ran joyous to meet him. 
 Dorothea pushed the one wooden arm-chair of the 
 room to the stove, and August flew to set the jug of 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 23 
 
 beer on a little round table, and fill a long clay pipe ; 
 for their father was good to them all, and seldom 
 raised his voice in anger, and they had been trained by 
 the mother they had loved to dutifulness and obedience 
 and a watchful affection. 
 
 To-night Karl Strehla responded very wearily to the 
 young ones' welcome, and came to the wooden chair 
 with a tired step and sat down heavily, not noticing 
 either pipe or beer. 
 
 "Are you not well, dear father?" his daughter 
 asked him. 
 
 "I am well enough," he answered, dully, and sat 
 there with his head bent, letting the lighted pipe grow 
 cold. 
 
 ■He was a fair, tall man, gray before his time, and 
 bowed with labor. 
 
 " Take the children to bed," he said, suddenly, at 
 last, and Dorothea obeyed. August stayed behind, 
 curled before the stove ; at nine years old, and when 
 one earns money in the summer from the farmers, one 
 is not altogether a child any more, at least in one's own 
 estimation. 
 
 August did not heed his father's silence : he was 
 used to it. Karl Strehla was a man of few words, and, 
 being of weakly health, was usually too tired at the 
 end of the day to do more than drink his beer and 
 sleep. August lay on the wolf-skin, dreamy and com- 
 fortable, looking up through his drooping eyelids at 
 the golden coronets on the crest of the great stove, and 
 wondering for the millionth time whom it had been 
 made for, and what grand places and scenes it had 
 known. 
 
24 THE NVRNBERG STOVE. 
 
 Dorothea came down from putting the little ones in 
 their beds ; the cuckoo-clock in the corner struck eight ; 
 she looked to her father and the untouched pipe, then 
 sat down to her spinning, saying nothing. She thought 
 he had been drinking in some tavern ; it had been often 
 so with him of late. 
 
 There was a long silence; the cuckoo called the 
 quarter twice; August dropped asleep, his curls fall- 
 ing over his face; Dorothea's wheel hummed like a 
 cat. 
 
 Suddenly Karl Strehla struck his hand on the table, 
 sending the pipe on the ground. 
 
 " I have sold Hirschvogel," he said ; and his voice 
 was husky and ashamed in his throat. The spinning- 
 wheel stopped. August sprang erect out of his sleep. 
 
 "Sold Hirschvogel!" If their father had dashed 
 the holy crucifix on the floor at their feet and spat on 
 it, they could not have shuddered under the horror of 
 a greater blasphemy. 
 
 " I have sold Hirschvogel !" said Karl Strehla, in 
 the same husky, dogged voice. " I have sold it to a 
 travelling trader in such things for two hundred florins. 
 What would you? — I owe double that. He saw it 
 this morning when you were all out. He will pack it 
 and take it to Munich to-morrow." 
 
 Dorothea gave a low shrill cry : 
 
 " Oh, father ! — the children — in mid-winter !" 
 
 She turned white as the snow without; her words 
 died away in her throat. 
 
 August stood, half blind with sleep, staring with 
 dazed eyes as his cattle stared at the sun when they 
 came out from their winter's prison. 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 25 
 
 " It is not true I It is not true !" he muttered. 
 " You are jesting, father ?" 
 
 Strehla broke into a dreary laugh. 
 
 " It is true. Would you like to know what is true 
 too? — that the bread you eat, and the meat you put in 
 this pot, and the roof you have over your heads, are 
 none of them paid for, have been none of them paid 
 for for months and months : if it had not been for your 
 grandfather I should have been in prison all summer 
 and autumn, and he is out of patience and will do no 
 more now. There is no work to be had ; the masters 
 go to younger men : they say I work ill ; it may be so. 
 Who can keep his head above water with ten hungry 
 children dragging him down ? When your mother 
 lived, it was different. Boy, you stare at me as if I 
 were a mad dog ! You have made a god of yon china 
 thing. Well — it goes : goes to-morrow. Two hun- 
 dred florins, that is something. It will keep me out 
 of prison for a little, and with the spring things may 
 turn ^" 
 
 August stood like a creature paralyzed. His eyes 
 were wide open, fastened on his father's with terror and 
 incredulous horror ; his face had grown as white as his 
 sister's ; his chest heaved with tearless sobs. 
 
 " It is not true ! It is not true !" he echoed, stupidly. 
 It seemed to him that the very skies must fall, and 
 the earth perish, if they could take away Hirschvogel. 
 They might as soon talk of tearing down God's sun 
 out of the heavens. 
 
 " You will find it true," said his father, doggedly, 
 and angered because he was in his own soul bitterly 
 ashamed to have bartered away the heirloom and treas- 
 
26 THE NUENBERQ STOVE. 
 
 ure of his race and the comfort and health-giver of his 
 young children. " You will find it true. The dealer 
 has paid me half the money to-night, and will pay me 
 the other half to-morrow when he packs it up and 
 takes it away to Munich. No doubt it is worth a great 
 deal more, — at least I suppose so, as he gives that, — 
 but beggars cannot be choosers. The little black stove 
 in the kitchen will warm you all just as well. Who 
 would keep a gilded, painted thing in a poor house like 
 this, when one can make two hundred florins by it ? 
 Dorothea, you never sobbed more when your mother 
 died. What is it, when all is said ? — a bit of hard- 
 ware much too grand-looking for such a room as this. 
 If all the Strehlas had not been born fools it would 
 have been sold a century ago, when it was dug up 
 out of the ground. 'It is a stove for a museum,' 
 the trader said when he saw it. To a museum let it 
 go." 
 
 August gave a shrill shriek like a hare's when it is 
 caught for its death, and threw himself on his knees 
 at his father's feet. 
 
 "Oh, father, father!" he cried, convulsively, his 
 hands closing on Strehla's knees, and his uplifted face 
 blanched and distorted with terror. "Oh, father, dear 
 father, you cannot mean what you say? Send it away 
 — our life, our sun, our joy, our comfort ? We shall 
 all die in the dark and the cold. Sell me rather. Sell 
 me to any trade or any pain you like; I will not mind. 
 But Hirschvogel ! — it is like selling the very cross off 
 the altar I You must be in jest. You could not do 
 such a thing — you could not! — ^you who have always 
 been gentle and good, and who have sat in the warmth 
 
THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 27 
 
 here year after year with our mother. It is not a 
 piece of hardware, as you say; it is a living thing, for 
 a great man's thoughts and fancies have put life into 
 it, and it loves us though we are only poor little chil- 
 dren, and we love it with all our hearts and souls, and 
 up in heaven I am sure the dead Hirschvogel knows ! 
 Oh, listen ; I will go and try and get work to-morrow ! 
 I will ask them to let me cut ice or make the paths 
 through the snow. There must be something I could 
 do, and I will beg the people we owe money to to wait; 
 they are all neighbors, they will be patient. But sell 
 Hirschvogel ! — oh, never ! never ! never ! Give the 
 florins back to the vile man. Tell him it would be 
 like selling the shroud out of mother's coffin, or the 
 golden curls off Ermengilda's head ! Oh, father, dear 
 father ! do hear me, for pity's sake !" 
 
 Strehla was moved by the boy's anguish. He loved 
 his children, though he was often weary of them, and 
 their pain was pain to him. But besides emotion, and 
 stronger than emotion, was the anger that August 
 roused in him : he hated and despised himself for the 
 barter of the heirloom of his race, and every word of 
 the child stung him with a stinging sense of shame. 
 
 And he spoke in his wrath rather than in his sorrow. 
 
 "You are a little fool," he said, harshly, as they had 
 never heard him speak. " You rave like a play-actor. 
 Get up and go to bed. The stove is sold. There is 
 no more to be said. Children like you have nothing 
 to do with such matters. The stove is sold, and goes 
 to Munich to-morrow. What is it to you ? Be thank- 
 ful I can get bread for you. Get on your legs, I say, 
 and go to bed." 
 
28 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 Strehla took up the jug of ale as he paused, and 
 drained it slowly as a man who had no cares. 
 
 August sprang to his feet and threw his hair back 
 off his face ; the blood rushed into his cheeks, making 
 them scarlet; his great soft eyes flamed alight with 
 furious passion. 
 
 " You dare not !" he cried, aloud, "you dare not sell 
 it, I say ! It is not yours alone ; it is ours " 
 
 Strehla flung the emptied jug on the bricks with a 
 force that shivered it to atoms, and, rising to his feet, 
 struck his son a blow that felled him to the floor. It 
 was the first time in all his life that he had ever raised 
 his hand against any one of his children. 
 
 Then he took the oil-lamp that stood at his elbow 
 and stumbled off to his own chamber with a cloud 
 before his eyes. 
 
 " What has happened ?" said August, a little while 
 later, as he opened his eyes and saw Dorothea weeping 
 above him on the wolf-skin before the stove. He had 
 been struck backward, and his head had fallen on the 
 hard bricks where the wolf-skin did not reach. He 
 sat up a moment, with his face bent upon his hands. 
 
 "I remember now," he said, very low, under his 
 breath. 
 
 Dorothea showered kisses on him, while her tears 
 fell like rain. 
 
 " But, oh, dear, how could you speak so to father ?" 
 she murmured. " It was very wrong." 
 
 " No, I was right," said August, and his little mouth, 
 that hitherto had only curled in laughter, curved down- 
 ward with a fixed and bitter seriousness. " How dare 
 he? How dare he?' he muttered, with his head sunk 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 29 
 
 in his hands. " It is not his alone. It belongs to us 
 all. It is as much yours and mine as it is his." 
 
 Dorothea could only sob in answer. She was too 
 frightened to speak. The authority of their parents 
 in the house had never in her remembrance been ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 " Are you hurt by the fall, dear August ?" she mur- 
 mured, at length, for he looked to her so pale and 
 strange. 
 
 "Yes — no. I do not know. What does it matter?" 
 
 He sat up upon the wolf-skin with passionate pain 
 upon his face ; all his soul was in rebellion, and he was 
 only a child and was powerless. 
 
 " It is a sin ; it is a theft ; it is an infamy," he said, 
 slowly, his eyes fastened on the gilded feet of Hirsch- 
 vogel. 
 
 " Oh, August, do not say such things of father !" 
 sobbed his sister. "Whatever he does, we ought to 
 think it right." 
 
 August laughed aloud. 
 
 "Is it right that he should spend his money in 
 drink ? — that he should let orders lie unexecuted ? — 
 that he should do his work so ill that no one cares to 
 employ him? — that he should live on grandfather's 
 charity, and then dare sell a thing that is ours every 
 whit as much as it is his ? To sell Hirschvogel ! Oh, 
 dear God ! I would sooner sell my soul !" 
 
 "August!" cried Dorothea, with piteous entreaty. 
 He terrified her, she could not recognize her little, gay, 
 gentle brother in those fierce and blasphemous words. 
 
 August laughed aloud again; then all at once his 
 laughter broke down into bitterest weeping. He threw 
 
30 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 himself forward on the stove, covering it with kisses, 
 and sobbing as though his heart weuld burst from his 
 bosom. 
 
 What could he do? Nothing, nothing, nothing! 
 
 "August, dear August," whispered Dorothea, pite- 
 ously, and trembling all over, — for she was a very- 
 gentle girl, and fierce feeling terrified her, — " August, 
 do not lie there. Come to bed : it is quite late. In 
 the morning you will be calmer. It is horrible indeed, 
 and we shall die of cold, at least the little ones ; but 
 if it be father's will " 
 
 "Let me alone," said August, through his teeth, 
 striving to still the storm of sobs that shook him from 
 head to foot. " Let me alone. In the morning ! — how 
 can you speak of the morning ?" 
 
 " Come to bed, dear," sighed his sister. " Oh, 
 August, do not lie and look like that ! you frighten 
 me. Do come to bed." 
 
 '' I shall stay here." 
 
 " Here ! all night !" 
 
 " They might take it in the night. Besides, to leave 
 it now .'" 
 
 " But it is cold ! the fire is out." 
 
 '' It will never be warm any more, nor shall we." 
 
 All his childhood had gone out of him, all his glee- 
 ful, careless, sunny temper had gone with it ; he spoke 
 sullenly and wearily, choking down the great sobs in 
 his chest. To him it was as if the end of the world 
 had come. 
 
 His sister lingered by him while striving to persuade 
 him to go to his place in the little croMxled bedchamber 
 with Albrecht and Waldo and Christof. But it was 
 
THE NVRNBERG STOVE. 3] 
 
 In vain. " I shall stay here," was all he answered her. 
 And he stayed, — all the night long. 
 
 The lamps went out ; the rats came and ran across 
 the floor ; as the hours crept on through midnight and 
 past, the cold intensified and the air of the room grew 
 like ice. August did not move ; he lay with his face 
 downward on the golden and rainbow-hued pedestal of 
 the household treasure, which henceforth was to be cold 
 for evermore, an exiled thing in a foreign city in a far- 
 off land. 
 
 Whilst yet it was dark his three elder brothers came 
 down the stairs and let themselves out, each bearing his 
 lantern and going to his work in stone-yard and timber- 
 yard and at the salt-works. They did not notice him ; 
 they did not know what had happened. 
 
 A little later his sister came down with a light in 
 her hand to make ready the house ere morning should 
 break. 
 
 She stole up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder 
 timidly. 
 
 "Dear August, you must be frozen. August, do 
 look up ! do speak !" 
 
 August raised his eyes with a wild, feverish, sullen 
 look in them tliat she had never seen there. His face 
 was ashen white : his lips were like fire. He had not 
 slept all night; but his passionate sobs had given way 
 to delirious waking dreams and numb senseless trances, 
 which had alternated one on another all through the 
 freezing, lonely, horrible hours. 
 
 " It will never be warm again," he muttered, " never 
 again !" 
 
 Dorothea clasped him with trembling hands. 
 
32 TEE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 " August ! do you not know me ?" she cried, in an 
 agony. " I am Dorothea. Wake up, dear — wake up ! 
 It is morning, only so dark !" 
 
 August shuddered all over. 
 
 " The morning !" he echoed. 
 
 He slowly rose up on to his feet. 
 
 " I will go to grandfather," he said, very low. " He 
 is always good : perhaps he could save it." 
 
 Loud blows with the heavy iron knocker of the 
 house-door drowned his words. A strange voice called 
 aloud through the keyhole, — 
 
 " Let me in ! Quick ! — there is no time to lose ! 
 More snow like this, and the roads will all be blocked. 
 Let me in ! Do you hear ? I am come to take the 
 great stove." 
 
 August sprang erect, his fists doubled, his eyes 
 blazing. 
 
 " You shall never touch it !" he screamed ; " you 
 shall never touch it !" 
 
 " Who shall prevent us ?" laughed a big man, who 
 was a Bavarian, amused at the fierce little figure fronting 
 him. 
 
 " I !" said August. " You shall never have it ! you 
 shall kill me first !" 
 
 "Strehla," said the big man, as August's father 
 entered the room, " you have got a little mad dog here : 
 muzzle him." 
 
 One way and another they did muzzle him. He 
 fought like a little demon, and hit out right and left, 
 and one of his blows gave the Bavarian a black eye. 
 But he was soon mastered by four grown men, and his 
 father flung him with no light hand out from the door 
 
THE NURNBERO STOVE. 33 
 
 of the back entrance, and the buyers of the stately and 
 beautiful stove set to work to pack it heed fully and 
 carry it away. 
 
 When Dorothea stole out to look for August, he was 
 nowhere in sight. She went back to little 'Gilda, who 
 was ailing, and sobbed over the child, whilst the others 
 stood looking on, dimly understanding that with 
 Hirschvogel was going all the warmth of their bodies, 
 all the light of their hearth. 
 
 Even their father now was sorry and ashamed ; but 
 two hundred florins seemed a big sum to him, and, 
 after all, he thought the children could warm them- 
 selves quite as well at the black iron stove in the 
 kitchen. Besides, whether he regretted it now or not, 
 tlie work of the Niirnberg potter was sold irrevocably, 
 and he had to stand still and see the men from Munich 
 wrap it in manifold wrappings and bear it out into the 
 snowy air to where an ox-cart stood in waiting for it. 
 
 In another moment Hirschvogel was gone, — gone 
 forever and aye. 
 
 August had stood still for a time, leaning, sick and 
 faint from the violence that had been used to him, 
 against the back wall of the house. The wall looked 
 on a court where a well was, and the backs of other 
 houses, and beyond them the spire of the Muntze 
 Tower and the peaks of the mountains. 
 
 Into the court an old neighbor hobbled for water, 
 and, seeing the boy, said to him, — 
 
 " Child, is it true your father is selling the big painted 
 stove?" 
 
 August nodded his head, then burst into a passion of 
 tears. 
 
34 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 "Well, for sure he is a fool," said the neighbor. 
 " Heaven forgive me for calling him so before his own 
 child ! but the stove was worth a mint of money. I 
 do remember in my young days, in old Anton's time 
 (that was your great-grandfather, my lad), a stranger 
 from Vienna saw it, and said that it was worth its 
 weight in gold." 
 
 August's sobs went on their broken, impetuous 
 course. 
 
 " I loved it ! I loved it !" he moaned. " I do not 
 care what its value was. I loved it ! / loved it !" 
 
 " You little simpleton !" said the old man, kindly. 
 " But you are wiser than your father, when all's said. 
 If sell it he must, he should have taken it to good 
 Herr Steiner over at Spriiz, who would have given 
 him honest value. But no doubt they took him over 
 his beer, — ay, ay ! but if I were you I would do better 
 than cry. I would go after it." 
 
 August raised his head, the tears raining down his 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Go after it when you are bigger," said the neigh- 
 bor, with a good-natured wish to cheer him up a little. 
 " The world is a small thing after all : I was a travel- 
 ling clockmaker once upon a time, and I know that 
 your stove will be safe enough whoever gets it ; any- 
 thing that can be sold for a round sum is always 
 wrapped up in cotton wool by everybody. Ay, ay, 
 don't cry so much ; you will see your stove again some 
 day." 
 
 Then the old man hobbled away to draw his brazen 
 pail full of water at the well. 
 
 August remained leanino: against the wall : his head 
 
THE NVRNBERO STOVE. 35 
 
 was buzzino; and his heart flutterino; with the new idea 
 which had presented itself to his mind. "Go after 
 it," had said the old man. He thought, " Why not go 
 with it ?" He loved it better than any one, even better 
 than Dorothea; and he shrank from the thought of 
 meeting his father again, his father who had sold 
 Hirschvogel. 
 
 He was by this time in that state of exaltation in 
 which the impossible looks quite natural and common- 
 place. His tears were still wet on his pale cheeks, but 
 they had ceased to fall. He ran out of the court-yard 
 by a little gate, and across to the huge Gothic porch of 
 the church. From there he could watch unseen his 
 father's house-door, at which were always hanging some 
 blue-and-gray pitchers, such as are common and so 
 picturesque in Austria, for a part of the house was let 
 to a man who dealt in pottery. 
 
 He hid himself in the grand portico, which he had 
 so often passed through to go to mass or complin 
 within, and presently his heart gave a great leap, for 
 he saw the straw-enwrapped stove brought out and laid 
 with infinite care on the bullock-dray. Two of the 
 Bavarian men mounted beside it, and the sleigh-wagon 
 slowly crept over the snow of the place, — snow crisp 
 and hard as stone. The noble old minster looked its 
 grandest and most solemn, with its dark-gray stone 
 and its vast archways, and its porch that was itself as 
 big as many a church, and its strange gargoyles and 
 lamp-irons black against the snow on its roof and 
 on the pavement; but for once August had no eyes 
 for it: he only watched for his old friend. Then 
 he, a little unnoticeable figure enough, like a score 
 
36 THE NVRNBERG STOVE. 
 
 of other b(>ys in Hall, crept, unseen by any of his 
 brothers or sisters, out of the porch and over the 
 shelving uneven square, and followed in the wake of 
 the dray. 
 
 Its course lay towards the station of the railway, 
 which is close to the salt-works, whose smoke at times 
 sullies this part of clean little Hall, though it does not 
 do very much damage. From Hall the iron road 
 runs northward through glorious country to Salzburg, 
 Vienna, Prague, Buda, and southward over the Bren- 
 ner into Italy. Was Hirschvogel going north or south? 
 This at least he would soon know. 
 
 August had often hung about the little station, watch- 
 ing the trains come and go and dive into the heart of 
 the hills and vanish. No one said anything to him 
 for idling about ; people are kind-hearted and easy of 
 temper in this pleasant land, and children and dogs are 
 both happy there. He heard the Bavarians arguing 
 and vociferating a great deal, and learned that they 
 meant to go too and wanted to go with the great stove 
 itself. But this they could not do, for neither could 
 the stove go by a passenger-train nor they themselves 
 go in a goods-train. So at length they insured their 
 precious burden for a large sum, and consented to send 
 it by a luggage-train which was to pass through Hall 
 in half an hour. The swift trains seldom deign to 
 notice the existence of Hall at all. 
 
 August heard, and a desperate resolve made itself 
 up in his little mind. Where Hirschvogel went would 
 he go. He gave one terrible thought to Dorothea — 
 poor, gentle Dorothea! — sitting in the cold at home, 
 then set to work to execute his project. How he man- 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 37 
 
 aged it he never knew very clearly himself, but certain 
 it is that when the goods-train from the north, that 
 had come all the way from Linz on the Danube, 
 moved out of Hall, August was hidden behind tlie 
 stove in the great covered truck, and wedged, unseen 
 and undreamt of by any human creature, amidst tlie 
 cases of wood-carving, of clocks and clock-work, of 
 Vienna toys, of Turkish carpets, of Russian skins, of 
 Hungarian wines, which shared the same abode as did 
 his swathed and bound Hirschvogel. No doubt he 
 was very naughty, but it never occurred to him that 
 he was so : his whole mind and soul were absorbed in 
 the one entrancing idea, to follow his beloved friend 
 and fire-king. 
 
 It was very dark in the closed truck, which had only 
 a little window above the door ; and it was crowded, 
 and had a strong smell in it from the Russian hides 
 and the hams that were in it. But August was not 
 frightened; he was close to Hirschvogel, and pres- 
 ently he meant to be closer still; for he meant to do 
 nothing less than get inside Hirschvogel itself. Being 
 a shrewd little boy, and having had by great luck 
 two silver groschen in his breeches-pocket, which he 
 had earned the day before by chopping wood, he had 
 bought some bread and sausage at the station of a 
 woman there who knew him, and who thought he was 
 going out to his uncle Joachim's chalet above Jen- 
 bach. This he had with him, and this he ate in the 
 darkness and the lumbering, pounding, thundering 
 noise which made him giddy, as never had he been 
 in a train of any kind before. Still he ate, having 
 had no breakfast, and being a child, and half a German, 
 4 
 
38 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 aud not knowing at all how or when he ever would 
 eat again. 
 
 When he had eaten, not as much as he wanted, but 
 as much as he thought was prudent (for who could say 
 when he would be able to buy anything more?), he set 
 to work like a little mouse to make a hole in the withes 
 of straw and hay which enveloped the stove. If it had 
 been put in a packing-case he would have been defeated 
 at the onset. As it was, he gnawed, and nibbled, and 
 pulled, and pushed, just as a mouse would have done, 
 making his hole where he guessed that the opening of 
 the stove was, — the opening through which he had so 
 often thrust the big oak logs to feed it. No one dis- 
 turbed him; the heavy train went lumbering on and 
 on, and he saw nothing at all of the beautiful moun- 
 tains, and shining waters, and great forests through 
 which he was being carried. He was hard at w^ork 
 getting through the straw and hay and twisted ropes ; 
 and get through them at last he did, and found the 
 door of the stove, which he knew so well, and which 
 was quite large enough for a child of his age to slip 
 through, and it was this which he had counted upon 
 doing. Slip through he did, as he had often done at 
 home for fun, and curled himself up there to see if he 
 could anyhow remain during many hours. He found 
 that he could ; air came in through the brass fret- work 
 of the stove; and with admirable caution in such a 
 little fellow he leaned out, drew the hay and straw to- 
 gether, and rearranged the ropes, so that no one could 
 ever have dreamed a little mouse had been at them. 
 Then he curled himself up again, this time more like 
 a dormouse than anything else ; and, being safe inside 
 
THE NIRNBERG STOVE. 39 
 
 his dear Hirschvogel aud intensely cold, lie *vent fast 
 asleep as if he were in his own bed at home with Al- 
 brecht and Christof on either side of hi:n. The train 
 lumbered on, stopping often and long, as the habit of 
 goods-trains is, sweeping the snow away with its cow- 
 switcher, and rumbling through the deep heart of the 
 mountains, with its lamps aglow like the eyes of a dog 
 in a night of frost. 
 
 The train rolled on in its heavy, slow fashion, and 
 the child slept soundly for a long while. AYhen he 
 did awake, it was quite dark outside in the land ; he 
 could not see, and of course he was in absolute dark- 
 ness ; and for a while he was sorely frightened, and 
 trembled terribly, and sobbed in a quiet heart-broken 
 fashion, thinking of them all at home. Poor Doro- 
 thea ! how anxious she would be ! How she would 
 run over the town and walk up to grandfather's at 
 Dorf Ampas, and perhaps even send over to Jeubach, 
 thinking he had taken refuge with Uncle Joachim! 
 His conscience smote him for the sorrow he must be 
 even then causing to his gentle sister; but it never 
 occurred to him to try and go back. If he once were 
 to lose sight of Hirschvogel how could he ever hope to 
 find it again? how could he ever know whither it had 
 gone, — north, south, east, or west? The old neighbor 
 had said that the world was small ; but August knew 
 at least that it must have a great many places in it : 
 that he had seen himself on the maps on his school- 
 house walls. Almost any other little boy would, I 
 ihink, have been frightened out of his wits at the po- 
 sition in which he found himself; but August was 
 brave, and he had a firm belief that God and Hirsch- 
 
40 THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 
 
 vogel would take care of liim. The master-potter oi 
 Niirnberg was always present to his mind, a kindly, 
 benign, and gracious spirit, dwelling manifestly in that 
 porcelain tower whereof he had been the maker. 
 
 A droll fancy, you say? But every child with a 
 soul in him has quite as quaint fancies as this one was 
 of August's. 
 
 So he got over liis terror and his sobbing both, 
 though he was so utterly in the dark. He did not 
 feel cramped at all, because the stove was so large, and 
 air he had in plenty, as it came through the fret-work 
 running round the top. He was hungry again, and 
 again nibbled with prudence at his loaf and his sausage. 
 He could not at all tell the hour. Every time the train 
 stopped and he heard the banging, stamping, shouting, 
 and jangling of chains that went on, his heart seemed 
 to jump up into his mouth. If they should find him 
 out ! Sometimes porters came and took away this case 
 and the other, a sack here, a bale there, now a big bag, 
 now a dead chamois. Every time the men trampled 
 near him, and swore at each other, and banged this 
 and that to and fro, he was so frightened that his very 
 breath seemed to stop. When they came to lift the 
 stove out, would they find him ? and if they did find 
 him, would they kill him ? That was what he kept 
 thinking of all the way, all through the dark hours, 
 which seemed without end. The goods-trains are 
 usually very slow, and are many days doing what a 
 quick train does in a few hours. This one was quicker 
 than most, because it was bearing goods to the King 
 of Bavaria; still, it took all the short winter's day 
 and the long winter's night and half another day to go 
 
THE NiJRNBERQ STOVE. 41 
 
 over ground that tlie mail-trains cover in a forenoon. 
 It passed great armored Kuifstein standing across the 
 beautiful and solemn gorge, denying the right of way 
 to all the foes of Austria. It passed twelve hours later, 
 after lying by in out-of-the-way stations, pretty Eosen- 
 heim, that marks the border of Bavaria. And here 
 the Niirnberg stove, with August inside it, was lifted 
 out heedfully and set under a covered way. When it 
 was lifted out, the boy had hard work to keep in his 
 screams ; he was tossed to and fro as the men lifted the 
 huge thing, and the earthenware walls of his beloved 
 fire-king were not cushions of down. However, though 
 they swore and grumbled at the weight of it, they never 
 suspected that a living child was inside it, and they 
 carried it out on to the platform and set it down under 
 the roof of the goods-shed. There it passed the rest 
 of the night and all the next morning, and August 
 was all the while within it. 
 
 The winds of early winter sweep bitterly over Ro- 
 senheim, and all the vast Bavarian plain was one white 
 sheet of snow. If there had not been whole armies of 
 men at work always clearing the iron rails of the snow, 
 no trains could ever have run at all. Happily for 
 August, the thick wrappings in which the stove was 
 enveloped and the stoutness of its own make screened 
 him from the cold, of which, else, he must have died, — 
 frozen. He had still some of his loaf, and a little — a 
 very little — of his sausage. What he did begin to 
 suffer from was thirst; and this frightened him almost 
 more than anything else, for Dorothea had read aloud 
 to them one night a story of the tortures some wrecked 
 men had endured because they could not find any water 
 4* 
 
42 THE NURNBERO STOVE, 
 
 but the salt sea. It was many hours since he had last 
 taken a drink from the wooden spout of their old 
 pump, which brought them the sparkling, ice-cold 
 water of the hills. 
 
 But, fortunately for him, the stove, having been 
 marked and registered as " fragile and valuable," was 
 not treated quite like a mere bale of goods, and the 
 Rosenheim station-master, who knew its consignees, 
 resolved to send it on by a passenger-train that would 
 leave there at daybreak. And when this train went 
 out, in it, among piles of luggage belonging to other 
 travellers, to Vienna, Prague, Buda-Pest, Salzburg, 
 was August, still undiscovered, still doubled up like 
 a mole in the winter under tlie grass. Those words, 
 "fragile and valuable," had made the men lift Hirsch- 
 vogel gently and with care. He had begun to get 
 used to his prison, and a little used to the incessant 
 pounding and jumbling and rattling and shaking with 
 which modern travel is always accompanied, though 
 modern invention does deem itself so mightily clever. 
 All in the dark he was, and he was terribly thirsty ; 
 but he kept feeling the earthenware sides of the Niirn- 
 berg giant and saying, softly, " Take care of me ; oh, 
 take care of me, dear Hirschvogel !" 
 
 He did not say, " Take me back ;" for, now that he 
 was fairly out in the world, he wished to see a little of 
 it. He began to t-hink that they must have been all 
 over the world in all this time that the rolling and 
 roaring and hissing and jangling had been about his 
 ears ; shut up in the dark, he began to remember all 
 the tales that had been told in Yule round the fire at 
 his grandfather's good house at Dorf, of gnomes and 
 
THE NiJRNBERG STOVE. 43 
 
 elves and subterranean terrors, and the Erl King 
 riding on the black horse of night, and — and — and 
 he began to sob and to tremble again, and this time 
 did scream outright. But the steam was screaming 
 itself so loudly that no one, had there been any one 
 nigh, would have heard him ; and in another minute 
 or so the train stopped with a jar and a jerk, and he 
 in his cage could hear men crying aloud, " Miinchen ! 
 Miinchen !" 
 
 Then he knew enough of geography to know that 
 he was in the heart of Bavaria. He had had an uncle 
 killed in the Bayerischenwald by the Bavarian forest 
 guards, when in the excitement of hunting a black 
 bear he had overpassed the limits of the Tyrol fron- 
 tier. 
 
 That fate of his kinsman, a gallant young chamois- 
 hunter who had taught him to handle a trigger and 
 load a muzzle, made the very name of Bavaria a 
 terror to August. 
 
 " It is Bavaria ! It is Bavaria !" he sobbed to the 
 stove; but the stove said nothing to him; it had no fire 
 in it. A stove can no more speak without fire than a 
 man can see without light. Give it fire, and it will 
 sing to you, tell tales to you, offer you in return all 
 the sympathy you ask. 
 
 "It is Bavaria!" sobbed August; for it is always a 
 name of dread augury to the Tyroleans, by reason of 
 those bitter struggles and midnight shots and untimely 
 deaths which come from those meetings of jiiger and 
 hunter in the Bayerischenwald. But the train stopped; 
 Munich was reached, and August, hot and cold by 
 turns, and shaking like a little aspen-leaf, felt himself 
 
44 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 once more carried out on the shoulders of men, rolled 
 along on a truck, and finally set down, where he knew 
 not, only he knew he was thirsty, — so thirsty! If 
 only he could have reached his hand out and scooped 
 up a little snow ! 
 
 He thought he had been moved on this truck many 
 miles, but in truth the stove had been only taken from 
 the railway-station to a shop in the Marienplatz. 
 Fortunately, the stove was always set upright on its 
 four gilded feet, an injunction to that effect having 
 been affixed to its written label, and on its gilded feet 
 it stood now in the small dark curiosity-shop of one 
 Hans Rhilfer. 
 
 " I shall not unpack it till Anton comes," he heard 
 a man's voice say ; and then he heard a key grate in a 
 lock, and by the unbroken stillness that ensued he con- 
 cluded he was alone, and ventured to peep through the 
 straw and hay. What he saw was a small square room 
 filled with pots and pans, pictures, carvings, old blue 
 jugs, old steel armor, shields, daggers, Chinese idols, 
 Vienna china, Turkish rugs, and all the art lumber 
 and fabricated rubbish of a bric-d-brac dealer's. It 
 seemed a wonderful place to him ; but, oh ! was there 
 one drop of water in it all? That was his single 
 thought ; for his tongue was parching, and his throat 
 felt on fire, and his chest began to be dry and choked 
 as with dust. There was not a drop of Avater, but 
 there was a lattice window grated, and beyond the 
 window was a wide stone ledge covered with snow. 
 August cast one look at the locked door, darted out of 
 his hiding-place, ran and opened the window, crammed 
 the snow into his mouth again and again, and then 
 
THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 45 
 
 flew back into the stove, drew the hay and straw over 
 the place he entered by, tied the cords, and shut the 
 brass door down on himself. He had brought some 
 big icicles in with him, and by them his thirst was 
 finally, if only temporarily, quenched. Then he sat 
 still in the bottom of the stove, listening intently, wide 
 awake, and once more recovering his natural bold- 
 ness. 
 
 The thought of Dorothea kept nipping his heart 
 anc" his conscience with a hard squeeze now and then ; 
 but he thought to himself, " If I can take her back 
 Hirschvogel, then how pleased she will be, and how 
 little 'Gilda will clap her hands !" He was not at all 
 selfish in his love for Hirschvogel : he wanted it for 
 them all at home quite as much as for himself. There 
 was at the bottom of his mind a kind of ache of shame 
 that his father — his own father — should have stripped 
 their hearth and sold their honor thus. 
 
 A robin had been perched upon a stone griflBn 
 sculptured on a house-eave near. August had felt for 
 the crumbs of his loaf in his pocket, and had thrown 
 them to the little bird sitting so easily on the frozen 
 snow. 
 
 In the darkness where he was he now heard a little 
 song, made faint by the stove-wall and the window- 
 glass that was between him and it, but still distinct 
 and exquisitely sweet. It was the robin, singing after 
 feeding on the crumbs. August, as he heard, burst 
 into tears. He thought of Dorothea, who every morn- 
 ing threw out some grain or some bread on the snow 
 before the church. " What use is it going there," she 
 said, " if we forget the sweetest creatures God has 
 
46 THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 
 
 made ?" Poor Dorothea ! Poor, good, tender, much- 
 burdened little soul ! He thought of her till his tears 
 ran like rain. 
 
 Yet it never once occurred to him to dream of going 
 home. Hirschvogel was here. 
 
 Presently the key turned in the lock of the door, 
 he heard heavy footsteps and the voice of the man 
 who had said to his father, " You have a little mad 
 dog ; muzzle him !" The voice said, " Ay, ay, you 
 have called me a fool many times. Now you shall see 
 what I have gotten for two hundred dirty florins. 
 Potztausend! never did you do such a stroke of work." 
 
 Then the other voice grumbled and swore, and the 
 steps of the two men approached more closely, and the 
 heart of the child went pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, as a mouse's 
 does when it is on the top of a cheese and hears a 
 housemaid's broom sweeping near. They began to 
 strip the stove of its wrappings : that he could tell by 
 the noise they made with the hay and the straw. Soou 
 they had stripped it wholly : that, too, he knew by the 
 oaths and exclamations of wonder and surprise and 
 rapture which broke from the man who had not seen 
 it before. 
 
 " A right royal thing ! A wonderful and never-to- 
 be-rivalled thing! Grander than the great stove of 
 Hohen-Salzburg ! Sublime ! magnificent ! matchless !" 
 
 So the epithets ran on in thick guttural voices, dif- 
 fusing a smell of lager-beer so strong as they spoke that 
 it reached August crouching in his stronghold. If 
 they should open the door of the stove! That was 
 his frantic fear. If they should open it, it would be 
 all over with him. They would drag him out ; most 
 
THE NVRNBERO STOVE. 47 
 
 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 Niirnberg master's work for 
 nigh an hour, praising, marvelling, expatiating in the 
 lengthy German tongue, the men moved to a little 
 distance and began talking of sums of money and di- 
 vided 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 quarrelled, 
 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-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. 
 
48 THE NiJRNBERG STOVE. 
 
 Muffled sounds came to him through the shutters 
 from the streets below, — the rolling of wheels, tiie 
 clanging of church-bells, and bursts of that military 
 music which is so seldom silent in the streets of Mu- 
 nich. An hour perhaps passed by ; sounds of steps on 
 the stairs kept him in perpetual apprehension. lu 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 an- 
 other person, more clear and refined than theirs, an- 
 swered them curtly, and then, close by the Niirnberg 
 stove and the boy's ear, ejaculated a single " Wunder- 
 schon /" 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. 
 
 " Wanderschon .'" 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 Maxi- 
 milian," he said at last; and the poor little boy, mean- 
 while, within, was "hugged up into nothing," as you 
 children say, dreading that every moment he would 
 open the stove. And open it truly he did, and ex- 
 amined the brass-work of the door; but inside it was 
 so dark that crouching August passed unnoticed, 
 screwed up into a ball like a hedgehog as he was. 
 
THE NiJRNBERQ STOVE. 49 
 
 The gentleman shut to the door at length, without 
 havhig seen anything strange inside it; and then he 
 talked long and low with the tradesmen, and, as his 
 accent was different from that which August was used 
 to, the child could distinguish little that he said, except 
 the name of the king and the word "gulden" again 
 and again. After a while he went away, one of the 
 dealers accompanying him, one of them lingering be- 
 hind to bar up the shutters. Then this one also 
 withdrew again, double-locking the door. 
 
 The poor little hedgehog uncurled itself and dared 
 to breathe aloud. 
 
 What time was it? 
 
 Late in the day, he thought, for to accompany the 
 stranger they had lighted a lamp; he had heard the 
 scratch of the match, and through the brass fret- work 
 had seen the lines of light. 
 
 He would have to pass the night here, that was cer- 
 tain. He and Hirschvogel were locked in, but at least 
 they were together. If only he could have had some- 
 thing to eat ! He thought with a pang of how at this 
 hour at home they ate the sweet soup, sometimes with, 
 apples in it from Aunt Maila's farm orchard, and sang 
 together, and listened to Dorothea's reading of little 
 tales, and basked in the glow and delight that had 
 beamed on them from the great Niirnberg fire-king. 
 
 " Oh, poor, poor little 'Gilda ! What is she doing 
 without the dear Hirschvogel?" he thought. Poor 
 little 'Gilda ! she had only now the black iron stove of 
 the ugly little kitchen. Oh, how cruel of father ! 
 
 August could not bear to hear the dealers blame or 
 laugh at his father, but he did feel that it had been so, 
 G d 6 
 
50 THE NVRNBERG STOVE. 
 
 SO cruel to sell Hirschvogel. Tlie mere memory of all 
 those long winter evenings, when they had all closed 
 round it, and roasted chestnuts or crab-apples in it, and 
 listened to the howling of the wind and the deep 
 sound of the church-bells, and tried very much to 
 make each other believe that the wolves still came 
 down from the mountains into the streets of Hall, and 
 were that very minute growling at the house door, — 
 all this memory coming on him with the sound of the 
 city bells, and the knowledge that night drew near 
 upon him so completely, being added to his hunger 
 and his fear, so overcame him that he burst out crying 
 for the fiftieth time since he had been inside the stove, 
 and felt that he would starve to death, and won- 
 dered dreamily if Hirschvogel would care. Yes, he 
 was sure Hirschvogel would care. Had he not decked 
 it all summer long with alpine roses and edelweiss and 
 heaths and made it sweet with thyme and honeysuckle 
 and great garden-lilies ? Had he ever forgotten M'hen 
 Santa Clans came to make it its crown of holly and 
 ivy and wreathe it all around ? 
 
 "Oh, shelter me; save me; take care of me!" he 
 prayed to the old fire-king, and forgot, poor little man, 
 that he had come on this wild-goose chase northward 
 to save and take care of Hirschvogel ! 
 
 After a time he dropped asleep, as children can do 
 when they weep, and little robust hill-born boys most 
 surely do, be they where they may. It was not very 
 cold in this lumber-room ; it was tightly shut up, and 
 very full of things, and at the back of it were the hot 
 pipes of an adjacent house, where a great deal of fuel 
 was burnt. Moreover, August's clothes were warm 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 51 
 
 ones, and his blood was young. So he was not cold, 
 though Munich is terribly cold in the nights of Decem- 
 ber ; and he slept on and on, — which was a comfort to 
 him, for he forgot his woes, and his perils, and his 
 hunger, for a time. 
 
 Midnight was once more chiming from all the 
 brazen tongues of the city when he awoke, and, all 
 being still around him, ventured to put his head out of 
 the brass door of the stove to see why such a strange 
 bright light was round him. 
 
 It was a very strange and brilliant light indeed ; 
 and yet, what is perhaps still stranger, it did not 
 frighten or amaze him, nor did what he saw alarm 
 him either, and yet I think it would have done you or 
 me. For what he saw was nothing less than all the 
 bria-a-hraG in motion. 
 
 A big jug, an Apostel-Krug, of Kruessen, was sol- 
 emnly dancing a minuet with a plump Faenza jar; a 
 tall Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a 
 spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain 
 figure of Littenhausen was bowing to a very stiif sol- 
 dier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona 
 was playing itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive 
 music that thought itself merry came from a painted 
 spinnet covered with faded roses ; some gilt Spanish 
 leather had got up on the wall and laughed ; a Dresden 
 mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a 
 Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin ; a slim 
 Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Fer- 
 rara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel 
 in white Nymphenburg china ; and a portly Franconian 
 pitcher in grh gris was calling aloud, " Oh, these Ital- 
 
52 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 iaus ! always at feud !" But nobody listened to him 
 at all. A great number of little Dresden cups and 
 saucers were all skipping and waltzing; the teapots, 
 with their broad round faces, were spinning their own 
 lids like teetotums ; the high-backed gilded chairs were 
 having a game of cards together ; and a little Saxe 
 poodle, with a blue ribbon at its throat, was running 
 from one to another, whilst a yellow cat of Cornelis 
 Lachtleven's rode about on a Delft horse in blue pot- 
 tery of 1489. Meanwhile the brilliant light shed on 
 the scene came from three silver candelabra, though 
 they had no candles set up in them ; and, what is the 
 greatest miracle of all, August looked on at these mad 
 freaks and felt no sensation of wonder ! He only, as 
 he heard the violin and the spinnet playing, felt an 
 irresistible desire to dance too. 
 
 No doubt his face said what he wished ; for a 
 lovely little lady, all in pink and gold and white, with 
 poM'dered hair, and high-heeled shoes, and all made 
 of the very finest and fairest Meissen china, tripped up 
 to him, and smiled, and gave him her hand, and led 
 him out to a minuet. And he danced it perfectly, — 
 poor little August in his thick, clumsy shoes, and his 
 thick, clumsy sheepskin jacket, and his rough home- 
 spun linen, and his broad Tyrolean hat ! He must 
 have danced it perfectly, this dance of kings and queens 
 in days when crowns were duly honored, for the lovely 
 lady always smiled benignly and never scolded him at 
 all, and danced so divinely herself to the stately meas- 
 ures the spinnet was playing that August could not 
 take his eyes off her till, their minuet ended, she sat 
 down on her own white-and-gold bracket. 
 
THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 53 
 
 "I am the Princess of Saxe-Royale," she said to 
 him, with a benignant smile; "and you have got 
 through that minuet very fairly." 
 
 Then he ventured to say to her, — 
 
 " Madame my princess, could you tell me kindly 
 why some of the figures and furniture dance and speak, 
 and some lie up in a corner like lumber? It doe? 
 make me curious. Is it rude to ask ?" 
 
 For it greatly puzzled him why, when some of the 
 bric-ct-brac was all full of life and motion, some was 
 quite still and had not a single thrill in it. 
 
 " My dear child," said the powdered lady, " is it 
 possible that you do not know the reason? Why, 
 those silent, dull things are imitation !" 
 
 This she said with so much decision that she evi- 
 dently considered it a condensed but complete answer. 
 
 " Imitation ?" repeated August, timidly, not under- 
 standing. 
 
 " Of course ! Lies, falsehoods, fabrications !" said 
 the princess in pink shoes, very vivaciously. " They 
 only pretend to be what we are ! They never wake 
 up : how can they ? No imitation ever had any soul in 
 it yet." 
 
 " Oh !" said August, humbly, not even sure that he 
 understood entirely yet. He looked at Hirschvogel : 
 surely it had a royal soul within it : would it not wake 
 up and speak? Oh dear! how he longed to hear the 
 voice of his fire-king ! And he began to forget that 
 he stood by a lady who sat upon a pedestal of gold- 
 and-white china, with the year 1746 cut on it, and the 
 Meissen mark. 
 
 " What will you be when you are a man ?" said the 
 5* 
 
54 THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 
 
 little lady, sharply, for her })lack eyes were quick 
 though her red lips were smiling. " Will you work 
 for the Konigliche Porcellan-Manufadur, like my great 
 deadKandler?" 
 
 "I have never thought," said August, stammering; 
 "at least — that is — I do wish — I do hope to be a 
 painter, as was Master Augustin Hirschvogel at Niirn- 
 berg." 
 
 " Bravo !" said all the real briG-d-brac in one breath , 
 and the two Italian rapiers left off fighting to cry, 
 "Benone /" For there is not a bit of true bric-d-brae 
 in all Europe that does not know the names of the 
 mighty masters. 
 
 August felt quite pleased to have won so much 
 applause, and grew as red as the lady's shoes with 
 bashful contentment. 
 
 " I knew all the Hirschvogel, from old Veit down- 
 wards," said a fat gr^ de Flandre beer-jug : " I myself 
 was made at Niirnberg." And he bowed to the great 
 stove very politely, taking off his own silver hat — I 
 mean lid — with a courtly sweep that he could scarcely 
 have learned from burgomasters. The stove, however, 
 was silent, and a sickening suspicion (for what is such 
 heart-break as a suspicion of what we love?) (^me 
 through the mind of August: Was Hirschvogel only 
 imitation f 
 
 "No, no, no, no!" he said to himself, stoutly: though 
 Hirschvogel never stirred, never spoke, yet would he 
 keep all faith in it ! After all their happy years to- 
 gether, after all the nights of warmth and joy he owed 
 it, should he doubt his own friend and hero, whose 
 gilt lion's feet he had kissed in his babyhood? No, 
 
THE NiJRNBERG STOVE. 55 
 
 no, no, no !" he said, again, with so much emphasis 
 that the Lady of Meissen looked sharply again at him. 
 
 " No," she said, with pretty disdain ; " no, believe 
 me, they may ' pretend' forever. They can never look 
 like us ! They imitate oven our marks, but never can 
 they look like the real thing, never can they chassent 
 de racey 
 
 "How should they?" said a bronze statuette of 
 Vischer's. " They daub themselves green with ver- 
 digris, or sit out in the rain to get rusted ; but green 
 and rust are not jpatina ; only the ages can give that !" 
 
 "And my imitations are all in primary colors, staring 
 colors, hot as the colors of a hostelry's sign-board !" 
 said the Lady of Meissen, with a shiver. 
 
 " Well, there is a g7'^ de Flandve over there, who 
 pretends to be a Hans Kraut, as I am," said the jug 
 with the silver hat, pointing with his handle to a jug 
 that lay prone on its side in a corner. " He has copied 
 me as exactly as it is given to moderns to copy us. 
 Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what 
 a difference there is ! How crude are his blues ! how 
 evidently done over the glaze are his black letters! 
 He has tried to give himself my very twist ; but what 
 a lamentable exaggeration of that playful deviation in 
 my lines whiqh in his becomes actual deformity !" 
 
 " And look at that," said the gilt Cordovan leather, 
 with a contemptuous glance at a broad piece of gilded 
 leather spread out on a table, " They will sell him 
 cheek by jowl with me, and give him my name ; but 
 look ! / am overlaid with pure gold beaten tiiin as a 
 film and laid on me in absolute honesty by worthy 
 Diego de las G >rgias, worker in leather of kively Cor- 
 
56 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 dova in the blessed reign of Ferdinand the Most 
 Christian. His gilding is one part gold to eleven 
 other parts of brass and rubbish, and it has been laid 
 on him with a brush — a brush! — pah! of course he 
 will be as black as a crock in a few years' time, whilst 
 I am as bright as when I first was made, and, unless I 
 am burnt as my Cordova burnt its heretics, I shall 
 shine on forever." 
 
 " They carve pear- wood because it is so soft, and dye 
 it brown, and call it me !" said an old oak cabinet, with 
 a chuckle. 
 
 " That is not so painful ; it does not vulgarize you 
 so much as the cups they paint to-day and christen 
 after me !" said a Carl Theodor cup subdued in hue, 
 yet gorgeous as a jewel. 
 
 " Nothing can be so annoying as to see common 
 gimcracks aping me!" interposed the princess in the 
 pink shoes. 
 
 "They even steal my motto, though it is Scrip- 
 ture," said a Trauerhrug of Regensburg in black-and- 
 white. 
 
 "And my own dots they put on plain English china 
 creatures !" sighed the little white maid of Nymphen- 
 burg. 
 
 " And they sell hundreds and thousancjs of common 
 china plates, calling them after me, and baking my 
 saints and my legends in a muffle of to-day ; it is blas- 
 phemy !" said a stout plate of Gubbio, which in its 
 year of birth had seen the face of Maestro Giorgio. 
 
 " That is what is so terrible in these hric-d.-brao 
 places," said the princess of Meissen. " It brings one 
 in contact with such low, imitative creatures; one really 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 57 
 
 is safe nowhere nowadays unless under glass at the 
 Louvre or South Kensington." 
 
 " And they get even there," sighed the gr^ de Flan- 
 dre. "A terrible thing happened to a dear friend of 
 mine, a terre cuite of Blasius (you know the tei-res cuites 
 of Blasius date from 1560). Well, he was put under 
 glass in a museum that shall be nameless, and he found 
 himself set next to his own imitation born and baked 
 yesterday at Frankfort, and what think you the mis- 
 erable creature said to him, with a grin? 'Old Pipe- 
 clay,' — that is what he called my friend, — ' the fellow 
 that bought me got just as much commission on me as 
 the fellow that bought you, and that was all that he 
 thought about. You know it is only the public money 
 that goes !' And the horrid creature grinned again till 
 he actually cracked himself. There is a Providence 
 above all things, even museums." 
 
 " Providence might have interfered before, and saved 
 the public money," said the little Meissen lady with 
 the pink shoes. 
 
 "After all, does it matter?" said a Dutch jar of 
 Haarlem. "All the shamming in the world will not 
 make them us !" 
 
 "One does not like to be vulgarized," said the Lady 
 of Meissen, angrily. 
 
 "My maker, the Krabbetje,* did not trouble his 
 head about that," said the Haarlem jar, proudly. "The 
 Krabbetje made me for the kitchen, the bright, clean, 
 snow-white Dutch kitchen, wellnigh three centuries 
 
 * Jan Asselyn, called Krabbetje, the Little Crab, born 16.' 0, 
 master-potter of Delft and Haarlem. 
 
58 THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 
 
 ago, and now I am thought worthy the palace ; yet I 
 wish I were at home ; yes, I wish I could see the good 
 Dutch vrouw, and the shining canals, and the great 
 green meadows dotted with the kine." 
 
 " Ah ! if we could all go back to our makers !" 
 sighed the Gubbio plate, thinking of Giorgio Andreoli 
 and the glad and gracious days of the Renaissance : and 
 somehow the words touched the frolicsome souls of the 
 dancing jars, the spinning teapots, the chairs that were 
 playing cards ; and the violin stopped its merry music 
 with a sob, and the spinnet sighed, — thinking of dead 
 hands. 
 
 Even the little Saxe poodle howled for a master for- 
 ever lost; and only the swords went on quarrelling, 
 and made such a clattering noise that the Japanese 
 bonze rode at them on his monster and knocked them 
 both right over, and they lay straight and still, looking 
 foolish, and the little Nymphenburg maid, though she 
 was crying, smiled and almost laughed. 
 
 Then from where the great stove stood there came a 
 solemn voice. 
 
 All eyes turned upon Hirschvogel, and the heart of 
 its little human comrade gave a great jump of joy. 
 
 " My friends," said that clear voice from the turret 
 of Niirnberg faience, " I have listened to all you have 
 said. There is too much talking among the Mortalities 
 whom one of themselves has called the \yindbags. 
 Let not us be like them. I hear among men so much 
 vain speech, so much precious breath and precious time 
 wasted in empty boasts, foolish anger, useless reitera- 
 tion, blatant argument, ignoble mouthings, that I have 
 learned to deem speech a curse, laid on man to weaken 
 
TEE NURNBERG STOVE. 59 
 
 and envenom all his undertakings. For over two 
 hundred years I have never spoken myself: you, I 
 hear, are not so reticent. I only speak now because 
 one of you said a beautiful thing that touched me. If 
 we all might but go back to our makers ! Ah, yes ! 
 if we might ! We were made in days when even men 
 were true creatures, and so we, the work of their hands, 
 were true too. We, the begotten of ancient days, de- 
 rive all the value in us from the fact that our makers 
 wrought at us with zeal, with piety, with integrity, 
 with faith, — not to win fortunes or to glut a market, 
 but to do nobly an honest thing and create for the 
 honor of the Arts and God. I see amidst you a little 
 human thing who loves me, and in his own ignorant 
 childish way loves Art. Now, I want him forever to 
 remember this night and these words; to remember 
 that we are what we are, and precious in the eyes of 
 the world, because centuries ago those who were of 
 single mind and of pure hand so created us, scorning 
 sham and haste and counterfeit. Well do I recollect 
 my master, Augustin Hirschvogel. He led a wise and 
 blameless life, and wrought in loyalty and love, and 
 made his time beautiful thereby, like one of his own 
 rich, many-colored church casements, that told holy 
 tales as the sun streamed through them. Ah, yes, my 
 friends, to go back to our masters ! — that would be the 
 best that could befall us. But they are gone, and even 
 the perishable labors of their lives outlive them. For 
 many, many years I, once honored of emperors, dwelt 
 in a humble house and warmed in successive winters 
 three generations of little, cold, hungry children. 
 When I warmed them they forgot that they were 
 
60 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 hungry ; they laughed and told tales, and slept at last 
 about my feet. Then I knew that humble as had 
 become my lot it was one that my master would have 
 wished for me, and I was content. Sometimes a tired 
 woman would creep up to me, and smile because she 
 was near me, and point out my golden crown or my 
 ruddy fruit to a baby in her arms. That was better 
 than to stand in a great hall of a great city, cold and 
 empty, even though wise men came to gaze and throngs 
 of fools gaped, passing with flattering words. Where 
 I go now I know not ; but since I go from that humble 
 house where they loved me, I shall be sad and alone. 
 They pass so soon, — those fleeting mortal lives ! Only 
 we endure, — we, the things that the human brain creates. 
 We can but bless them a little as they glide by : if we 
 have done that, we have done what our masters wished. 
 So in us our masters, being dead, yet may speak and 
 live." 
 
 Then the voice sank away in silence, and a strange 
 golden light that had shone on the great stove faded 
 away ; so also the light died down in the silver cande- 
 labra. A soft, pathetic melody stole gently through 
 the room. It came from the old, old spinnet that was 
 covered with the faded roses. 
 
 Then that sad, sighing music of a bygone day died 
 too ; the clocks of the city struck six of the morning ; 
 day was rising over the Bayerischenwald. August 
 awoke with a great start, and found himself lying on 
 the bare bricks of the floor of the chamber, and all the 
 brio-ci-brao was lying quite still all around. The 
 pretty Lady of Meissen was motionless on her porcelain 
 bracket, and the little Saxe poodle was quiet at her side. 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE, Ql 
 
 He rose slowly to his feet. He was very cold, but 
 he was not sensible of it or of the hunger that was 
 gnawing his little empty entrails. He was absorbed 
 in the wondrous sight, in the wondrous sounds, that 
 he had seen and heard. 
 
 All was dark around him. Was it still midnight or 
 had morning come ? Morning, surely ; for against the 
 barred shutters he heard the tiny song of the robin. 
 
 Tramp, tramp, too, came a heavy step up the stair. 
 He had but a moment in which to scramble back into 
 the interior of the great stove, when the door opened 
 and the two dealers entered, bringing burning candles 
 with them to see their way. 
 
 August was scarcely conscious of danger more than 
 he was of cold or hunger. A marvellous sense of 
 courage, of security, of happiness, was about him, like 
 strong and gentle arms enfolding him and lifting him 
 upwards — upwards — upwards ! Hirschvogel would 
 defend him. 
 
 The dealers undid the shutters, scaring the red- 
 breast away, and then tramped about in their heavy 
 boots and chattered in contented voices, and began to 
 wrap up the stove once more in all its straw and hay 
 and cordage. 
 
 It never once occurred to them to glance inside. 
 Why should they look inside a stove that they had 
 bought and were about to sell again for all its glorious 
 beauty of exterior? 
 
 The child still did not feel afraid. A great exal- 
 tation had come to him : he was like one lifted up by 
 his angels. 
 
 Presently the two traders called up their porters, 
 
62 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 and the stove, heedfully swathed and wrapped and 
 tended as though it were some sick prince going on a 
 journey, was borne on the shoulders of six stout Ba- 
 varians down the stairs and out of the door into the 
 Marienplatz. Even behind all those wrappings August 
 felt the icy bite of the intense cold of the outer air at 
 dawn of a winter's day in Munich. The men moved 
 the stove with exceeding gentleness and care, so that 
 he had often been far more roughly shaken in his big 
 brothers' arras than he was in his journey now ; and 
 though both hunger and thirst made themselves felt, 
 being foes that will take no denial, he was still in that 
 state of nervous exaltation which deadens all physical 
 suffering and is at once a cordial and an opiate. He 
 had heard Hirschvogel speak ; that was enough. 
 
 The stout carriers tramped through the city, six of 
 them, with the Niirnberg fire-castle on their brawny 
 shoulders, and went right across Munich to the rail- 
 way-station, and August in the dark recognized all 
 the ugly, jangling, pounding, roaring, hissing railway- 
 noises, and thought, despite his courage and excitement, 
 " Will it be a very long journey ?" For his stomach 
 had at times an odd sinking sensation, and his head 
 sadly often felt light and swimming. If it was a very, 
 very long journey he felt half afraid that he would bo 
 dead or something bad before the end, and Hirsch- 
 vogel 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 
 
THE NURNBERO STOVE. 63 
 
 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 theii 
 voices. The train glided away over the Bavarian 
 plain southward; and he heard the men say some- 
 thing 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 con- 
 tent, for they laughed often, and, when they swore, did 
 so good-humoredly, and promised their porters fine 
 presents at New- Year; and August, like a shrewd 
 little boy as he was, who even in the secluded Innthal 
 had learned that money is the chief mover of men's 
 mirth, thought to himself, with a terrible pang, — 
 
 " They have sold Hirschvogel for some great sura ' 
 They have sold him already !" 
 
 Then his heart grew faint and sick within him, for 
 he knew very well that he must soon die, shut up 
 without food and water thus ; and what new owner of 
 
64 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 the great fire-palace would ever permit him to dwell 
 in it? 
 
 "Never mind; I will die" thought he; "and Hirsch- 
 vogel will know it." 
 
 Perhaps you think him a very foolish little fellow; 
 but I do not. 
 
 It is always good to be loyal and ready to endure to 
 the end. 
 
 It is but an hour and a quarter that the train usually 
 takes to pass from Munich to the Wurm-See or Lake 
 of Starnberg; but this morning the journey was much 
 slower, because the way was encumbered by snow. 
 When it did reach Possenhofen and stop, and the 
 Niirnberg stove was lifted out once more, August 
 could see through the fret- work of the brass door, as 
 the stove stood upright facing the lake, that this 
 Wurm-See was a calm and noble piece of water, of 
 great width, with low wooded banks and distant moun- 
 tains, a peaceful, serene place, full of rest. 
 
 It was now near ten o'clock. The sun had come 
 forth ; there was a clear gray sky hereabouts ; the snow 
 was not falling, though it lay white and smooth every- 
 where, down to the edge of the water, which before 
 long would itself be ice. 
 
 Before he had time to get more than a glimpse of 
 the green gliding surface, the stove was again lifted 
 up and placed on a large boat that was in waiting, — 
 cue of those very long and huge boats which the 
 women in these parts use as laundries, and the men as 
 timber-rafts. The stove, with much labor and muv.h 
 expenditure of time and care, was hoisted into this, 
 and August would have grown sick and giddy with 
 
THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 65 
 
 the heaving and falling if his big brothers had not 
 long used him to such tossing about, so that he was as 
 much at ease head, as feet, downward. The stove 
 once in it safely with its guardians, the big boat moved 
 across the lake to Leoni. How a little hamlet on a 
 Bavarian lake got that Tuscan-sounding name I can- 
 not tell; but Leoni it is. The big boat was a long 
 time crossing: the lake here is about three miles broad, 
 and these heavy barges are unwieldy and heavy to 
 move, even though they are towed and tugged at from 
 the shore. 
 
 ^' If we should be too late !" the two dealers mut- 
 tered to each other, in agitation and alarm. " He said 
 eleven o'clock." 
 
 "Who was he?" thought August; "the buyer, of 
 course, of Hirschvogel." The slow passage across the 
 Wurm-See was accomplished at length : the lake was 
 placid ; there was a sweet calm in the air and on the 
 water; there was a great deal of snow in the sky, 
 though the sun was shining and gave a solemn hush 
 to the atmosphere. Boats and one little steamer were 
 going up and down ; in the clear frosty light the dis- 
 tant mountains of Zillerthal and the Algau Alps were 
 visible ; market-people, cloaked and furred, went by on 
 the water or on the banks; the deep woods of the 
 shores were black and gray and brown. Poor August 
 could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted 
 him ; as the stove was now set, he could only see the 
 old worm-eaten wood of the huge barge. 
 
 Presently they touched the pier at Leoni. 
 
 "Now, men, for a stout mile and half! You shall 
 drink your reward at Christmas-time," said one of the 
 « 6* 
 
QQ THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 dealers to his porters, who, stout, strong men as they 
 were, showed a disposition to grumble at their task. 
 Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered sullenly 
 the Niirnberg stove, grumbling again at its preposterous 
 weight, but little dreaming that they carried within it a 
 small, panting, trembling boy; for August began to 
 tremble now that he was about to see the future owner 
 of Hirschvogel. 
 
 "If he look a good, kind man," he thought, "I will 
 beg him to let me stay with it." 
 
 The porters began their toilsome journey, and moved 
 off from the village pier. He could see nothing, for 
 the brass door was over his head, and all that gleamed 
 through it was the clear gray sky. He had been tilted 
 on to his back, and if he had not been a little moun- 
 taineer, used to hanging head-downwards over crevasses, 
 and, moreover, seasoned to rough treatment by the 
 hunters and guides of the hills and the salt-workers in 
 the town, he would have been made ill and sick by the 
 bruising and shaking and many changes of position to 
 which he had been subjected. 
 
 The way the men took was a mile and a half in 
 length, but the road was heavy with snow, and the 
 burden they bore was heavier still. The dealers 
 cheered them on, swore at them and praised them in 
 one breath ; besought them and reiterated their splen- 
 did promises, for a clock was striking eleven, and they 
 had been ordered to reach their destination at that 
 hour, and, though the air was so cold, the heat-drops 
 rolled oif their foreheads as they walked, they were so 
 frightened at being late. But the porters would not 
 budge a foot quicker than they chose, and as they were 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. Q'J 
 
 not poor four-footed carriers their employers dared 
 not thrash them, though most wilHugly would they 
 have done so. 
 
 The road seemed terribly long to the anxious trades- 
 men, to the plodding porters, to the poor little man in- 
 side the stove, as he kept sinking and rising, sinking 
 and rising, with each of their steps. 
 
 Where they were going he had no idea, only after 
 a very long time he lost the sense of the fresh icy wind 
 blowing on his face through the brass-work above, and 
 felt by their movements beneath him that they were 
 mounting steps or stairs. Then he heard a great many 
 different voices, but he could not understand what was 
 being said. He felt that his bearers paused some time, 
 <;hen moved on and on again. Their feet went so softly 
 he thought they must be moving on carpet, and as he 
 felt a warm air come to him he concluded that he was 
 in some heated chambers, for he was a clever little fel- 
 low, and could put two and two together, though he 
 was so hungry and so thirsty and his empty stomach 
 felt so strangely. They must have gone, he thought, 
 through some very great number of rooms, for they 
 walked so long on and on, on and on. At last the 
 stove was set down again, and, happily for him, set so 
 that his feet were downward. 
 
 What he fancied was that he was in some museum, 
 like that which he had seen in the city of Innspruck. 
 
 The voices he heard were very hushed, and the steps 
 seemed to go away, far away, leaving him alone with 
 Hirschvogel. He dared not look out, but he peeped 
 through the brass-work, and all he could see was a big 
 carved lion's head in ivory, with a gold crown atop. It 
 
68 THE NURNBERG STOVE. 
 
 belonged to a velvet fauteuil, but he could not see the 
 chair, only the ivory lion. 
 
 There was a delicious fragrance in the air, — a fra- 
 grance as of flowers. " Only how can it be flowers ?" 
 thought August. " It is November !" 
 
 From afar oflF, as it seemed, there came a dreamy, 
 exquisite music, as sweet as the spinnet's had been, but 
 so much fuller, so much richer, seeming as though a 
 chorus of angels were singing all together. August 
 ceased to think of the museum : he thought of heaven. 
 "Are we gone to the Master?" he thought, remembering 
 the words of Hirschvogel. 
 
 All was so still around him; there was no sound 
 anywhere except the sound of the far-off choral music. 
 
 He did not know it, but he was in the royal castle 
 of Berg, and the music he heard was the music of 
 Wagner, who was playing in a distant room some of 
 the motives of "Parsival." 
 
 Presently he heard a fresh step near him, and he 
 heard a low voice say, close behind him, " So !" An 
 exclamation no doubt, he thought, of admiration and 
 wonder at the beauty of Hirschvogel. 
 
 Then the same voice said, after a long pause, during 
 which no doubt, as August thought, this new-comer 
 was examining all the details of the wondrous fire- 
 tower, "It was well bought; it is exceedingly beauti- 
 ful ! It is most undoubtedly the work of Augustin 
 Hirschvogel." 
 
 Then the hand of the speaker turned the round 
 handle of the brass door, and the fainting soul of the 
 poor little prisoner within grew sick with fear. 
 
 The handle turned, the door was slowly drawn open, 
 
THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 69 
 
 8ome one bent down and looked in, and the same voice 
 that he had heard in praise of its beauty called aloud, 
 in surprise, " What is this in it? A live child !" 
 
 Then August, terrified beyond all self-control, and 
 dominated by one master-passion, sprang out of the 
 body of the stove and fell at the feet of the speaker. 
 
 " Oh, let me stay ! Pray, meinherr, let me stay !" 
 he sobbed. " I have come all the way with Hirsch- 
 vogel!" 
 
 Some gentlemen^s hands seized him, not gently by 
 any means, and their lips angrily muttered in his ear, 
 " Little knave, peace ! be quiet ! hold your tongue ! 
 It is the king !" 
 
 They were about to drag him out of the august at- 
 mosphere as if he had been some venomous, dangerous 
 beast come there to slay, but the voice he had heard 
 speak of the stove said, in kind accents, " Poor little 
 child ! he is very young. Let him go : let him speak 
 to me." 
 
 The word of a king is law to his courtiers : so, sorely 
 against their wish, the angry and astonished chamber- 
 lains let August slide out of their grasp, and he 
 stood there in his little rough sheepskin coat and his 
 thick, mud-covered boots, with his curling hair all in 
 a tangle, in the midst of the most beautiful chamber he 
 had ever dreamed of, and in the presence of a young 
 man with a beautiful dark face, and eyes full of dreams 
 and fire ; and the young man said to him, — 
 
 "My child, how came you here, hidden in this 
 stove ? Be not afraid : tell me the truth. I am the 
 king." 
 
 August in an instinct of homage cast his great 
 
70 THE N URN BERG STOVE. 
 
 battered black hat with the tarnished gold tassels down 
 on the floor of the room, and folded his little brown 
 hands in supplication. He was too intensely in earnest 
 to be in any way abashed ; he was too lifted out of 
 himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious of 
 any awe before any earthly majesty. He was only so 
 glad — so glad it was the king. Kings were always 
 kind ; so the Tyrolese think, who love their lords. 
 
 " 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 beauti- 
 ful 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 likes 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 !" 
 
THE nVrNBERO stove. 71 
 
 His lips quivered with a broken sob. 
 
 " And have you truly travelled inside this stove all 
 the way from Tyrol ?" 
 
 " Yes," said August ; " no one thought to look inside 
 till you did. 
 
 The king laughed ; then another view of the matter 
 occurred to him. 
 
 "Who bought the stove of your father?" he in- 
 quired. 
 
 " Traders of Munich/' said August, who did not know 
 that he ought not to have spoken to the king as to a 
 simple citizen, and whose little brain was whirling and 
 spinning dizzily round its one central idea. 
 
 " What sum did they pay your father, do you know ?" 
 asked the sovereign. 
 
 " Two hundred florins," said August, with a great 
 sigh of shame. " It was so much money, and he is so 
 poor, and there are so many of us." 
 
 The king turned to his geutlemen-in-waiting. " Did 
 these dealers of Munich come with the stove." 
 
 He was answered in the affirmative. He desired 
 them to be sought for and brought before him. As one 
 of his chamberlains hastened on the errand, the monarch 
 looked at August with compassion. 
 
 " You are very pale, little fellow : when did you eat 
 last?" 
 
 " I had some bread and sausage with me ; yesterday 
 afternoon I finished it." 
 
 " You would like to eat now ?" 
 
 " If I might have a little water I would be glad ; 
 my throat is very dry." 
 
 The king had water and wine brought for him, and 
 
72 THE NVRNBERQ STOVE. 
 
 cake also ; but August, though he drank eagerly, could 
 not swallow anything. His mind was in too great a 
 tumult. 
 
 " May I stay with Hirschvogel ? — may I stay ?" he 
 said, with feverish agitation. 
 
 " Wait a little," said the king, and asked, abruptly, 
 " What do you wish to be when you are a man ?" 
 
 "A painter. I wish to be what Hirschvogel was, — 
 I mean the master that made my Hirschvogel." 
 
 " I understand," said the king. 
 
 Then the two dealers were brought into their sover- 
 eign's presence. They were so terribly alarmed, not 
 being either so innocent or so ignorant as August was, 
 that they were trembling as though they were being led 
 to the slaughter, and they were so utterly astonished 
 too at a child having come all the way from Tyrol in 
 the stove, as a gentleman of the court had just told 
 them this child had done, that they could not tell what 
 to say or where to look, and presented a very foolish 
 aspect indeed. 
 
 "Did you buy this Niirnberg stove of this little 
 boy's father for two hundred florins ?" the king asked 
 them ; and his voice was no longer soft and kind as it 
 had been when addressing the child, but very stern. 
 
 "Yes, your majesty," murmured the trembling 
 traders. 
 
 " And how much did the gentleman who purchased 
 it for me give to you ?" 
 
 " Two thousand ducats, your majesty," muttered the 
 dealers, frightened out of their wits, and telling the 
 truth in their fright. 
 
 The gentleman was not present: he was a trusted 
 
THE NURNBERG STOVE. 73 
 
 counsellor in art matters of the king's, and often made 
 purchases for him. 
 
 The king smiled a little, and said nothing. The 
 gentleman had made out the price to him as eleven 
 thousand ducats. 
 
 " You will give at once to this boy's father the two 
 thousand gold ducats that you received, less the two 
 hundred Austrian florins that you paid him," said the 
 king to his humiliated and abject subjects. " You are 
 great rogues. Be thankful you are not more greatly 
 punished." 
 
 He dismissed them by a sign to his courtiers, and to 
 one of these gave the mission of making the dealers 
 of the Marienplatz disgorge their ill-gotten gains. 
 
 August heard, and felt dazzled yet miserable. Two 
 thousand gold Bavarian ducats for his father ! Why, 
 his father would never need to go any more to the salt- 
 baking ! And yet, whether for ducats or for florins, 
 Hirschvogel was sold just the same, and would the 
 king let him stay with it? — would he? 
 
 " Oh, do ! oh, please do !" he murmured, joining his 
 little brown weather-stained hands, and kneeling down 
 before the young monarch, who himself stood absorbed 
 in painful thought, for the deception so basely practised 
 for the greedy sake of gain on him by a trusted coun- 
 sellor was bitter to him. 
 
 He looked down on the child, and as he did so 
 smiled once more. 
 
 "Rise up, my little man," he said, in a kind voice; 
 
 " kneel only to your God. Will I let you stay with 
 
 your Hirschvogel ? Yes, I will ; you shall stay at my 
 
 court, and you shall be taught to be a painter, — in oils 
 
 D 7 
 
74 THE NVRNBERG STOVE. 
 
 or on porcelain as you will, — and you must grow up 
 worthily, and win all the laurels at our Schools of Art, 
 and if when you are twenty-one years old you have 
 done well and bravely, then I will give you your 
 Nurnberg stove, or, if I am no more living, then those 
 who reign after me shall do so. And now go away 
 with this gentleman, and be not afraid, and you shall 
 light a fire every morning in Hirschvogel, but you will 
 not need to go out and cut the wood." 
 
 Then he smiled and stretched out his hand; the 
 courtiers tried to make August understand that he 
 ought to bow and touch it with his lips, but August 
 could not understand that anyhow ; he was too 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 Niirnberg 
 stove. As for his dream in the dealers' room that 
 night, he will never admit that he did dream it ; he 
 
IE NUKNBERG STOVE. 
 
THE NURNBERQ STOVE. 75 
 
 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 
 fche sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds 
 that others cannot hear ? 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 She was a Qiiatre Saison Rose-tree. 
 
 She lived in a beautiful old garden with some charm- 
 ing magnolias for neighbors: they rather overshadowed 
 her, certainly, because they were so very great and 
 grand ; but then such shadow as that is preferable, as 
 every one knows, to a mere vulgar enjoyment of com- 
 mon daylight, and then the beetles went most to the 
 magnolia-blossoms, for being so great and grand of 
 course they got very much preyed upon, and this was 
 a vast gain for the rose that was near them. She her- 
 self leaned against the wall of an orange-house, in 
 company with a Banksia, a buoyant, active, simple- 
 minded thing, for whom Rosa Damascena, who thought 
 herself much better born than these climbers, had a 
 natural contempt. Banksise will flourish and be con- 
 tent anywhere, they are such easily-pleased creatures ; 
 and when you cut them they thrive on it, which shows 
 a very plebeian and pachydermatous temper ; and they 
 laugh all over in the face of an April day, shaking 
 their little golden clusters of blossom in such a merry 
 way that the Rose-tree, who was herself very reserved 
 and thorny, had really scruples about speaking to them. 
 
 For she was by nature extremely proud. — much 
 prouder than her lineage warranted, — and a hard fate 
 76 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 77 
 
 had fixed her to the wall of an orangery, where hardly 
 anybody ever came, except the gardener and his men 
 to carry the oranges in in winter and out in spring, 
 or water and tend them while they were housed there. 
 
 She was a handsome rose, and she knew it. But 
 the garden was so crowded — like the world — that she 
 could not get herself noticed in it. In vain was she 
 radiant and red close on to Christmas-time as in the 
 fullest heats of midsummer. Nobody thought about 
 her or praised her. She pined and was very unhappy. 
 
 The Banksise, who are little, frank, honest-hearted 
 creatures, and say out what they think, as such plebeian 
 people will, used to tell her roundly she was thankless 
 for the supreme excellence of her lot. 
 
 " You have everything the soul of a rose can wish 
 for: a splendid old wall with no nasty chinks in it; a 
 careful gardener, who nips all the larvae in the bud 
 before they can do you any damage ; sun, water, care ; 
 above all, nobody ever cuts a single blossom off you ! 
 What more can you wish for ? This orangery is para- 
 dise!" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 What wounded her pride so deeply was just this 
 fact, that they never did cut off any of her blossoms. 
 When day after day, year after year, she crowned her- 
 self with her rich crimson glory and no one ever came 
 nigh to behold or to gather it, she could have died 
 with vexation and humiliation. 
 
 Would nobody see she was worth anything ? 
 
 The truth was that in this garden there was such an 
 abundance of very rare roses that a common though 
 beautiful one like Rosa Damascena remained unthought 
 7* 
 
78 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 of; she was lovely, but then there were so many love- 
 lier still, or, at least, much more h la mode. 
 
 In the secluded garden-corner she suffered all the 
 agonies of a pretty woman in the great world, who is 
 only a pretty woman, and no more. It needs so very 
 much more to be " somebody." To be somebody was 
 what Rosa Damascena sighed for, from rosy dawn to 
 rosier sunset. 
 
 From her wall she could see across the green lawns, 
 the great parterre which spread before the house ter- 
 race, and all the great roses that bloomed there, — 
 Her Majesty Gloire de Dijon, who was a reigning 
 sovereign born, the royally-born Niph^tos, the Prin- 
 cesse Adelaide, the Comtesse Ouvaroff, the Vicomt- 
 esse de Gazes all in gold, Madame de Sombreuil in 
 snowy white, the beautiful Louise de Savoie, the ex- 
 quisite Duchess of Devon! ensis, — all the roses that 
 were great ladies in their own right, and as far off 
 her as were the stars that hung in heaven. Rosa 
 Damascena would have given all her brilliant carna- 
 tion hues to be pale and yellow like the Princesse 
 Adelaide, or delicately colorless like Her Grace of 
 Devoniensis. 
 
 She tried all she could to lose her own warm blushes, 
 and prayed that bees might sting her and so change 
 her hues; but the bees were of low taste, and kept 
 their pearl-powder and rouge and other pigments for 
 the use of common flowers, like the evening primrose 
 or the buttercup and borage, and never came near to 
 do her any good in arts of toilet. 
 
 One day the gardener approached and stood and 
 looked at her : then all at once she felt a sharp stab 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 79 
 
 in her from his knife, and a vivid pain ran downward 
 through her stem. 
 
 She did not know it, but gardeners and gods " this 
 way grant prayer." 
 
 "Has not something happened to me?" she asked 
 of the little Banksise ; for she felt very odd all over 
 her; and when you are unwell you cannot be very 
 haughty. 
 
 The saucy Banksise laughed, running over their 
 wires that they cling to like little children. 
 
 " You have got your wish," they said. " You are 
 going to be a great lady ; they have made you into a 
 Eosa Indica !" 
 
 A tea-rose ! Was it possible ? 
 
 Was she going to belong at last to that grand and 
 graceful order, which she had envied so long and vainly 
 from afar? 
 
 Was she, indeed, no more mere simple Rosa Damas- 
 cena? She felt so happy she could hardly breathe. 
 She thought it was her happiness that stifled her ; in 
 real matter of fact it was the tight bands in which the 
 gardener had bound her. 
 
 " Oh, what joy !" she thought, though she still felt 
 very uncomfortable, but not for the world would she 
 ever have admitted it to the Banksiae. 
 
 The gardener had tied a tin tube on to her, and it 
 was heavy and cumbersome ; but no doubt, she said, 
 to herself, the thing was fashionable, so she bore the 
 burden of it very cheerfully. 
 
 The Banksise asked her how she felt ; but she would 
 not deign even to reply ; and when a friendly black- 
 bird, who had often picked grubs off her leaves, came 
 
80 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 and sang to her, she kept silent : a Rosa Indica was 
 far above a blackbird. 
 
 " Next time you want a caterpillar taken away, he 
 may eat you for me /" said the blackbird, and flew off 
 in a huff. 
 
 She was very ungrateful to hate the blackbird so, for 
 he had been most useful to her in doing to death all 
 the larvae of worms and beetles and caterpillars and 
 other destroyers which were laid treacherously within 
 her leaves. The good blackbird, with many another 
 feathered friend, was forever at work in some good deed 
 of the kind, and all the good, grateful flowers loved 
 him and his race. But to this terribly proud and 
 discontented Eosa Damascena he had been a bore, 
 a common creature, a nuisance, a monster, — any one 
 of these things by turns, and sometimes all of them 
 altogether. She used to long for the cat to get him. 
 
 " You ought to be such a happy rose !" the merle 
 had said to her, one day. " There is no rose so strong 
 and healthy as you are, except the briers." 
 
 And from that day she had hated him. The idea 
 of naming those hedgerow brier roses in the same 
 breath with her! 
 
 You would have seen in that moment of her rage a 
 very funny sight had you been there; nothing less 
 funny than a rose-tree trying to box a blackbird's ears ! 
 
 But, to be sure, you would only have thought the 
 wind was blowing about the rose, so you would have 
 seen nothing really of the drollery of it all, which was 
 not droll at all to Rosa Damascena, for a wound in 
 one's vanity is as long healing as a wound from a 
 conical bullet in one's body. The blackbird had not 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. gj 
 
 gone near her after that, nor any of his relations and 
 friends, and she had had a great many shooting and 
 flying pains for months together, in consequence of 
 aphides' eggs having been laid inside her stem, — eggs 
 of which the birds would have eased her long before if 
 they had not been driven away by her haughty rage. 
 
 However, she had been almost glad to have some 
 ailment. She had called it aneurism, and believed it 
 made her look refined and interesting. If it would 
 only have made her pale ! But it had not done that : 
 she had remained of the richest rose color. 
 
 When the winter had passed and the summer had 
 come round again, the grafting had done its work : 
 she was really a Rosa Indica, and timidly put forth 
 the first blossom in her new estate. It was a small, 
 rather puny yellowish thing, not to be compared to her 
 own natural red clusters, but she thought it far finer. 
 
 Scarcely had it been put forth by her than the gar- 
 dener whipped it off with his knife, and bore it away 
 in proof of his success in such transmogrifications. 
 
 She had never felt the knife before, when she had 
 been only Rosa Damascena : it hurt her very much, 
 and her heart bled. 
 
 " II faut souffrir pour etre belle," said the Banksia) 
 in a good-natured effort at consolation. She was not 
 going to answer them, and she made believe that her 
 tears were only dew, though it was high noon and all 
 the dew-drops had been drunk by the sun, who by 
 noon-time gets tired of climbing and grows thirsty. 
 
 Her next essay was much finer, and the knife 
 whipped that off also. That summer she bore more 
 and more blossoms, and always the knife cut them 
 / 
 
g2 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 away, for she had been made one of the great race of 
 Rosa Indica. 
 
 Now, a rose-tree, when a blossom is chopped or 
 broken off, suffers precisely as we linman mortals do 
 if we lose a finger; but the rose-tree, being a much 
 more perfect and delicate handiwork of nature than 
 any human being, has a faculty we have not : it lives 
 and has a sentient soul in every one of its roses, and 
 whatever one of these endures the tree entire endures 
 also by sympathy. You think this very wonderful? 
 Not at all. It is no whit more wonderful than that a 
 lizard's tail chopped off runs about by itself, or that a 
 dog can scent a foe or a thief whilst the foe or the thief 
 is yet miles away. All these things are most wonder- 
 ful, or not at all so, — -just as you like. 
 
 In a little while she bore another child : this time it 
 was a fine fair creature, quite perfect in its hues and 
 shapes. "I never saw a prettier!" said an emperor 
 butterfly, pausing near for a moment; at that moment 
 the knife of the gardener severed the rosebud's stalk. 
 
 " The lady wants one for her bouquet de corsage : 
 she goes to the o})era to-night," the man said to another 
 man, as he took the young tea-rose. 
 
 " What is the opera ?" asked the mother-rose wearily 
 of the butterfly. He did not know ; but his cousin the 
 death's-head moth, asleep under a magnolia-leaf, looked 
 down with a grim smile on his quaint face. 
 
 "It is where everything dies in ten seconds," he 
 answered. "It is a circle of fire; many friends of 
 mine have flown in, none ever returned : your daughter 
 will shrivel up and perish miserably. One pays for 
 glory." 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 83 
 
 The rose-tree shivered through all her stalks ; but 
 she was still proud, and tried to think that all this was 
 said only out of envy. AVhat should an old death's- 
 head moth know, whose eyes were so weak that a far- 
 thing rushlight blinded them ? 
 
 So she lifted herself a little higher, and would not 
 even see that the Banksise were nodding to her; and 
 as for her old friend the blackbird, how vulgar he 
 looked, bobbing up and down hunting worms and 
 woodlice ! could anything be more outrageously vulgar 
 than that staring yellow beak of his? She twisted 
 herself round not to see him, and felt quite annoyed 
 that he went on and sang just the same, unconscious 
 of, or indiiferent to, her coldness. 
 
 With each successive summer Rosa Damascena be- 
 came more integrally and absolutely a Rosa Indica, 
 and suffered in proportion to her fashion and fame. 
 
 True, people came continually to look at her, and 
 especially in May-time would cry aloud, " What a 
 beautiful Niph^tos !" But then she was bereaved of 
 all her offspring, for, being of the race of Niph^toa, 
 they were precious, and one would go to die in an 
 hour in a hot ball-room, and another to perish in a 
 Sevres vase, where the china indeed was exquisite but 
 the water was foul, and others went to be suffocated in 
 the vicious gases of what the mortals call an opera- 
 box, and others were pressed to death behind hard 
 diamonds in a woman's bosom ; in one way or another 
 they each and all perished miserably. She herself also 
 lost many of her once luxuriant leaves, and had a little 
 scanty foliage, red-brown in summer, instead of the 
 thick, dark-green clothing that she had worn when a 
 
84 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 rustic maiden. Not a day passed but the knife stabbed 
 her; when the knife had nothing to take she was 
 barren and chilly, for she had lost the happy power 
 of looking beautiful all the year round, which once 
 she had possessed. 
 
 One day came when she was taken up out of the 
 ground and borne into a glass house, placed in a large 
 pot, and lifted up on to a pedestal, and left in a delicious 
 atmosphere, with patrician plants all around her with 
 long Latin names, and strange, rare beauties of their 
 own. She bore bud after bud in this crystal temple, 
 and became a very crown of blossom ; and her spirit 
 grew so elated, and her vanity so supreme, that she 
 ceased to remember she had ever been a simple Rosa 
 Damascena, except that she was always saying to her- 
 self, " How great I am ! how great I am !" which she 
 might have noticed that those born ladies, the Devoni- 
 ensis and the Louise de Savoie, never did. But she 
 noticed nothing except her own beauty, which she could 
 see in a mirror that was let into the opposite wall of 
 the greenhouse. Her blossoms were many and all 
 quite perfect, and no knife touched them ; and though 
 to be sure she was still very scantily clothed so far as 
 foliage went, yet she was all the more fashionable for 
 that, so what did it matter ? 
 
 One day, when her beauty was at its fullest perfec- 
 tion, she heard all the flowers about her bending and 
 whispering with rustling and murmuring, saying, 
 "Who will be chosen? who will be chosen?" 
 
 Chosen for what? 
 
 They did not talk much to her, because she was but 
 a new-comer and a parvenue, but she gathered fr< m 
 
TEE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 85 
 
 them In a little time that there was to be a ball for a 
 marriage festivity at the house to which the greenhouse 
 was attached. Each flower wondered if it would be 
 chosen to go to it. The azaleas knew they would go, 
 because they were in their pink or rose ball-dresses all 
 ready ; but no one else was sure. The rose-tree grew 
 quite sick and faint Math hope and fear Unless she 
 went, she felt that life was not worth the living. She 
 had no idea what a ball might be, but she knew that 
 it was another form of greatness, when she was all 
 ready, too, and so beautiful ! 
 
 The gardener came and sauntered down the glass 
 house, glancing from one to another. The hearts of 
 all beat high. The azaleas only never changed color : 
 they were quite sure of themselves. Who could do 
 without them in February ? 
 
 " Oh, take me ! take me ! take me !" prayed the 
 rose-tree, in her foolish, longing, arrogant heart. 
 
 Her wish was given her. The lord of their fates 
 smiled when he came to where she stood. 
 
 "This shall be for the place of honor," he mur- 
 mured, and he lifted her out of the large vase she 
 lived in on to a trestle and summoned his boys to bear 
 her away. The very azaleas themselves grew pale with 
 envy. 
 
 As for the rose-tree herself, she would not look at 
 any one; she was carried through the old garden 
 straight past the Banksise, but she would make them 
 no sign ; and as for the blackbird, she hoped a cat had 
 eaten him ! Had he not known her as Rosa Dama- 
 scena ? 
 
 She was borne bodily, roots and all, carefully 
 
86 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 wrapped up in soft matting, and taken into the great 
 house. 
 
 It was a very great house, a very grand house, and 
 there was to be a marvellous feast in it, and a prince 
 and princess from over the seas were that night to 
 honor the mistress of it by their presence. All this 
 Rosa Indica had gathered from the chatter of the 
 flowers, and when she came into the big palace she 
 saw many signs of excitement and confusion : servants 
 out of livery were running up against one another in 
 their hurry-scurry; miles and miles, it seemed, of 
 crimson carpeting were being unrolled all along the 
 terrace and down the terrace steps, since by some pe- 
 culiar but general impression royal personages are sup- 
 posed not to like to walk upon anything else, though 
 myself I think they must get quite sick of red carpet, 
 seeing so very much of it spread for them wherever 
 they go. To Rosa Indica, however, the bright scarlet 
 carpeting looked very handsome, and seemed, indeed, 
 a foretaste of heaven. 
 
 Soon she was carried quite inside the house, into an 
 immense room with a beautiful dome-shaped ceiling, 
 painted in fresco three centuries before, and fresh as 
 though it had been painted yesterday. At the end 
 of the room was a great chair, gilded and painted, 
 too, three centuries before, and covered with velvet, 
 gold-fringed and powdered with golden grasshoppers. 
 "That common insect here!" thought Rosa, in sur- 
 prise, for she did not know that the chief of the house, 
 long, long, long ago, when sleeping in the heat of noon 
 in Palestine in the first crusade, had been awakened by 
 a grasshopper lighting on his eyelids, and so had been 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 87 
 
 aroused in time to put on his armor and do battle with 
 a troop attacking Saracen cavalry, and beat them ; 
 wherefore, in gratitude, he had taken the humble field- 
 creature as his badge for evermore. 
 
 They set the roots of Rosa Indica now into a vase, 
 — such a vase ! the royal blue of Sevres, if you please, 
 and with border and scroll work and all kinds of 
 wonders and glories painted on it and gilded on it, 
 and standing four feet high if it stood one inch ! I 
 could never tell you the feelings of Rosa if I wrote 
 a thousand pages. Her heart thrilled so with ecstasy 
 that she almost dropped all her petals, only her vanity 
 came to her aid, and helped her to control in a measure 
 her emotions. The gardeners broke oflF a good deal 
 of mould about her roots, and they muttered one to 
 another something about her dying of it. But Rosa 
 thought no more of that than a pretty lady does when 
 her physician tells her she will die of tight lacing ; not 
 she ! She was going to be put into that Sevres vase. 
 
 This was enough for her, as it is enough for the lady 
 that she is going to be put into a hundred-guinea ball- 
 gown. 
 
 In she went. It was certainly a tight fit, as the 
 gown often is, and Rosa felt nipped, strained, bruised, 
 sufibcated. But an old proverb has settled long ago 
 that pride feels no pain, and perhaps the more foolish 
 the pride the less is the pain that is felt — for the 
 moment. 
 
 They set her well into the vase, putting green moss 
 over her roots, and then they stretched her branches 
 out over a gilded trellis-work at the back of the vase. 
 And very beautiful she looked; and she was at the 
 
88 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 head of the room, and a huge mirror dowu at the 
 farther end opposite to her showed her own reflection. 
 She Avas in paradise ! 
 
 " At last," she thought to herself, " at last they have 
 done me justice!" 
 
 The azaleas were all crowded round underneath her, 
 like so many kneeling courtiers, but they were not 
 taken out of their pots; they were only shrouded in 
 moss. They had no Sevres vases. And they had 
 always thought so much of themselves and given them- 
 selves such airs, for there is nothing so vain as an 
 azalea, — except, indeed, a camellia, which is the most 
 conceited flower in the world, though, to do it justice, 
 it is also the most industrious, for it is busy getting 
 ready its next winter buds whilst the summer is still 
 hot and broad on the land, which is very wise and 
 prudent in it and much to be commended. 
 
 Well, there was Rosa Indica at the head of the room 
 in the Sevres vase, and very proud and triumphant she 
 felt throned there, and the azaleas, of course, were 
 whispering enviously underneath her, " Well, after 
 all, she was only Rosa Damascena not so very long 
 ago." 
 
 Yes, ihey knew ! What a pity it was ! They knew 
 she had once been Rosa Damascena and never would 
 wash it out of their minds, — the tiresome, spiteful, 
 malignant creatures ! 
 
 Even aloft in the vase, in all her glory, the rose 
 could have shed tears of mortification, and was ready 
 to cry, like Themistocles, " Can nobody give us ob- 
 livion ?" 
 
 Nobody could give that, for the azaleas, who were 
 

 
 "pretty poll! oh, such a pretty poll !" 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. gg 
 
 SO irritated at being below her, were not at all likely 
 to hold their tongues. But she had great consolations 
 and triumphs, and began to believe that, let them say 
 what they chose, she had never been a common garden- 
 wall rose. The ladies of the house came in and praised 
 her to the skies ; the children ran up to her and clapped 
 their hands and shouted for joy at her beauty ; a won- 
 derful big green bird came in and hopped before her, 
 cocked his head on one side, and said to her, " Pretty 
 Poll ! oh, such a pretty Poll !" 
 
 " Even the birds adore me here !" she thought, not 
 dreaming he was only talking of himself; for when 
 you are as vain as was this poor dear Rosa, creation is 
 pervaded with your own perfections, and even when 
 other people say only " Poll !" you feel sure they are 
 saying " You !" or they ought to be if they are not. 
 
 So there she stood in her grand Sevres pot, and she 
 was ready to cry with the poet, " The world may end 
 to-night !" Alas ! it was not the world which was to 
 end. Let me hasten to close this true heart-rending 
 history. 
 
 There was a great dinner as the sun began to set, 
 and the mistress of the house came in on the arm of 
 the great foreign prince; and what did the foreign 
 prince do but look up at Rosa, straight up at her, and 
 over the heads of the azaleas, and say to his hostess, 
 " What a beautiful rose you have there ! A Niph^tos, 
 is it not?" 
 
 And her mistress, who had known her long as 
 simple Rosa Damascena, answered, "Yes, sir; it is a 
 Niphaos." 
 
 Oh to have lived for that hour ! The silly thing 
 8* 
 
90 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 thought it worth all her suffering from the gardener's 
 knife, all the loss of her robust health and delightful 
 power of flowering in all four seasons. She was a 
 Niph^tos, really and truly a Niph^tos! and not one 
 syllable hinted as to her origin ! She began to believe 
 she had been born a tea-rose I 
 
 The dinner was long and gorgeous ; the guests were 
 dazzling in jewels and in decorations ; the table was 
 loaded with old plate and rare china ; the prince made 
 a speech and used her as a simile of love and joy and 
 purity and peace. The rose felt giddy with triumph 
 and with the fumes of the wines around her. Her vase 
 was of purple and gold, and all the voices round her 
 said, " Oh, the beautiful rose !" No one noticed the 
 azaleas. How she wished that the blackbird could 
 see for a minute, if the cat would gobble him up the 
 next! 
 
 The day sped on ; the chatelaine and her guests 
 went away ; the table was rearranged ; the rose-tree 
 was left in its place of honor; the lights were lit; 
 there was the sound of music near at hand ; they were 
 dancing in other chambers. 
 
 Above her hung a chandelier, — a circle of imiumer- 
 able little flames and drops that looked like dew or 
 diamonds. She thought it was the sun come very 
 close. After it had been there a little while it grew 
 very hot, and its rays hurt her. 
 
 " Can you not go a little farther away, O Sun ?" she 
 said to it. It was flattered at being taken for the sun, 
 but answered her, " I am fixed in my place. Do you 
 not understand astronomy ?" 
 
 She did not know what astronomy was, so was 
 
THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 91 
 
 silent, and the heat hurt her. Still, she was in the 
 place of honor : so she was happy. 
 
 People came and went; but nobody noticed her. 
 They ate and drank, they laughed and made love, and 
 then went away to dance again, and the music went 
 on all night long, and all night long the heat of the 
 chandelier poured down on her. 
 
 " I am in the place of honor," she said to herself a 
 thousand times in each hour. 
 
 But the heat scorched her, and the fumes of the 
 wines made her faint. She thought of the sweet fresh 
 air of the old garden where the Banksise were. The 
 garden was quite near, but the windows were closed, 
 and there were the walls now between her and it. She 
 was in the place of honor. But she grew sick and 
 waxed faint as the burning rays of the artificial light 
 shining above her seemed to pierce through and through 
 her like lances of steel. The night seemed very long. 
 She was tired. 
 
 She was erect there on her Sevres throne, with the 
 light thrilling and throbbing upon her in every point. 
 But she thought of the sweet, dark, fresh nights in the 
 old home where the blackbird had slept, and she longed 
 for them. 
 
 The dancers came and went, the music thrummed 
 and screamed, the laughter was both near and far ; the 
 rose-tree was amidst it all. Yet she felt alone, — all 
 alone ! as travellers may feel in a desert. Hour suc- 
 ceeded hour; the night wore on apace; the dancers 
 ceased to come ; the music ceased, too ; the light still 
 burned down upon her, and the scorching fever of it 
 consumed her like fire. 
 
92 THE AMBITIOUS ROSE-TREE. 
 
 Then there came silence, — entire silence. Servants 
 came round and put out all the lights — hundreds and 
 hundreds of lights — quickly one by one. Other ser- 
 vants went to the windows and threw them wide open 
 to let out the fumes of wine. Without, the night was 
 changing into the gray that tells of earliest dawn. 
 But it was a bitter frost j the grass was white with it ; 
 the air was ice. In the great darkness that had now 
 fallen on all the scene this deadly cold came around 
 the rose-tree and wrapped her in it as in a shroud. 
 
 She shivered from head to foot. 
 
 The cruel glacial coldness crept into the hot ban- 
 queting-chamber, and moved round it in white, misty 
 circles, like steam, like ghosts of the gay guests that 
 had gone. All was dark and chill, — dark and chill as 
 B,ny grave ! 
 
 What worth was the place of honor now ? 
 
 Was this the place of honor ? 
 
 The rose-tree swooned and drooped ! A servant's 
 rough hand shook down its worn beauty into a heap 
 of fallen leaves. When they carried her out dead in 
 the morning, the little Banksia-buds, safe hidden from 
 the frost within their stems, waiting to come forth 
 when the summer should come, murmured to one 
 another, — 
 
 " She had her wish ; she was great. This way the 
 gods grant foolish prayers, and punish discontent !" 
 
MOUFFLOU. 
 
 MouFFLOu's masters were some boys and girls. 
 They were very poor, but they were very merry. 
 They lived in an old, dark, tumble-down place, and 
 their father had been dead five years ; their mother's 
 care was all they knew ; and Tasso was the eldest of 
 them all, a lad of nearly twenty, and he was so kind, 
 so good, so laborious, so cheerful, and so gentle, that 
 the children all younger than he adored him. Tasso 
 was a gardener. Tasso, however, though the eldest 
 and mainly the bread-winner, was not so much Mouf- 
 flon's master as was little Romolo, who was only ten, 
 and a cripple. Romolo, called generally Lolo, had 
 taught Moufflou all he knew ; and that all was a very 
 great deal, for nothing cleverer than was Moufflou had 
 ever walked upon four legs. 
 
 Why Moufflou ? 
 
 Well, when the poodle had been given to them by a 
 soldier who was going back to his home in Piedmont, 
 he had been a white woolly creature of a year old, 
 and the children's mother, who was a Corsican by 
 birth, had said that he was just like a moufflon, as they 
 call sheep in Corsica. White and woolly this dog re- 
 mained, and he became the handsomest and biggest 
 poodle in all the city, and the corruption of Moufflou 
 
 93 
 
94 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 from Moufflon remained the name by which he was 
 known; it was silly, perhaps, but it suited him and the 
 children, and Moufflon he was. 
 
 They lived in an old quarter of Florence, in that 
 picturesque zigzag which goes round the grand church 
 of Or San Michele, and which is almost more Venetian 
 than Tuscan in its mingling of color, charm, stateliness, 
 popular confusion, and architectural majesty. The tall 
 old houses are weather-beaten into the most delicious 
 hues ; the pavement is enchantingly encumbered with 
 peddlers and stalls and all kinds of trades going on in 
 the open air, in that bright, merry, beautiful Italian 
 custom which, alas, alas! is being driven away by new- 
 fangled laws which deem it better for the people to be 
 stuffed up in close, stewing rooms without air, and 
 would fain do away with all the good-tempered pol- 
 itics and the sensible philosophies and the wholesome 
 chatter which the open-street trades and street gossipry 
 encourage, for it is good for the populace to sfogare, 
 and in no other way can it do so one-half so innocently. 
 Drive it back into musty shops, and it is driven at once 
 to mutter sedition. . . . But you want to hear about 
 Moufflon. 
 
 Well, Moufflon lived here in that high house with 
 the sign of the lamb in wrought iron, which shows it 
 M'as once a warehouse of the old guild of the Arte della 
 Lana. They are all old houses here, drawn round 
 about that grand church which I called once, and will 
 call again, like a mighty casket of oxidized silver. A 
 mighty casket indeed, holding the Holy Spirit within 
 it; and with the vermilion and the blue and the orange 
 glowing in its niches and its lunettes like enamels, and 
 
itiOVFFLOU. 95 
 
 its statues of the apostles strong and noble, like the 
 times in which they were created, — St. Peter with his 
 keys, and St. Mark with his open book, and St. George 
 leaning on his sword, and others also, solemn and aus- 
 tere as they, austere though benign, for do they not 
 guard the White Tabernacle of Orcagna within? 
 
 The church stands firm as a rock, square as a fortress 
 of stone, and the winds and the waters of the skies 
 may beat about it as they will, they have no power to 
 disturb its sublime repose. Sometimes I think of all 
 the noble things in all our Italy Or San Michele is the 
 noblest, standing there in its stern magnificence, amidst 
 people's hurrying feet and noisy laughter, a memory 
 of God. 
 
 The little masters of Moufflou lived right in iis 
 shadow, where the bridge of stone spans the space 
 between the houses and the church high in mid-air: 
 and little Lolo loved the church with a great love. 
 He loved it in the morning-time, when the sunbeams 
 turned it into dusky gold and jasper ; he loved it in 
 the evening-time, when the lights of its altars glim- 
 mered in the dark, and the scent of its incense came 
 out into the street; he loved it in the great feasts, 
 Avhen the huge clusters of lilies were borne inside it ; 
 he loved it in the solemn nights of winter ; the flick- 
 ering gleam of the dull lamps shone on the robes of 
 an apostle, or the sculpture of a shield, or the glow of 
 a casement-moulding in majolica. He loved it always, 
 and, without knowing why, he called it la mia chiesa. 
 
 Lolo, being lame and of delicate health, was not 
 enabled to go io school or to work, though he wove 
 the straw covering of wine-flasks and plaited the can& 
 
96 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 matting with busy fingers. But for tlie most part he 
 did as he liked, and spent most of his time sitting on 
 the parapet of Or San Michele, watching the venders 
 of earthenware at their trucks, or trotting with his 
 crutch (and he could trot a good many miles when he 
 chose) out with Moufflon down a bit of the Stocking- 
 makers' Street, along under the arcades of the Uffizi, 
 and so over the Jewellers' Bridge, and out by byways 
 that he knew into the fields on the hill-side upon the 
 other bank of Arno. Moufflon and he would spend 
 half the day — all the day — out there in daffodil-time ; 
 and Lolo would come home with great bundles and 
 sheaves of golden flowers, and he and Moufflou were 
 happy. 
 
 His mother never liked to say a harsh word to Lolo, 
 for he was lame through her fault : she had let him fall 
 in his babyhood, and the mischief had been done to his 
 hip never again to be undone. So she never raised her 
 voice to him, though she did often to the others, — to 
 curly-pated Cecco, and pretty black-eyed Dina, and 
 saucy Bice, and sturdy Beppo, and even to the good, 
 manly, hard-working Tasso. Tasso was the mainstay 
 of the whole, though he was but a gardener's lad, 
 M^orking in the green Cascine at small wages. But all 
 he earned he brought home to his mother; and he 
 alone kept in order the lazy, high-tempered Sandro, 
 and he alone kept in check Bice's love of finery, and 
 he alone could with shrewdness and care make both 
 ends meet and put minestra always in the pot and 
 bread always in the cupboard. 
 
 When his mother thought, as she thought indeed 
 almost ceaselessly, tliat with a few months he would 
 
MOUFFLOU. 97 
 
 be of the age to draw his number, and might draw a 
 high one and be taken from her for three years, the 
 poor soul believed her very heart would burst and 
 break ; and many a day at twilight she would start 
 out unperceived and creep into the great church and 
 pour her soul forth in supplication before the White 
 Tabernacle. 
 
 Yet, pray as she would, no miracle could happen to 
 make Tasso free of military service : if he drew a fatal 
 number, go he must, even though he take all the lives 
 of them to their ruin with him. 
 
 One morning Lolo sat as usual on the parapet of the 
 church, Moufflou beside him. It was a brilliant morn- 
 ing in September. The men at the hand-barrows and 
 at the stalls were selling the crockery, the silk handker- 
 chiefs, and the straw hats which form the staple of the 
 commerce that goes on round about Or San Michele, — 
 very blithe, good-natured, gay commerce, for the most 
 part, not got through, however, of course, without 
 bawling and screaming, and shouting and gesticulat- 
 ing, as if the sale of a penny pipkin or a twopenny 
 pie-pan were the occasion for the exchange of many 
 thousands of pounds sterling and cause for the whole 
 world's commotion. It was about eleven o'clock ; the 
 poor petitioners were going in for alms to the house of 
 the fraternity of San Giovanni Battista ; the barber at 
 the corner was shaving a big man with a cloth tucked 
 about his chin, and his chair set well out on the pave- 
 ment; the sellers of the pipkins and pie-pans were 
 screaming till they were hoarse, " Un soldo Vuno, due 
 soldi tre!" big bronze bells were booming till they 
 seemed to clang right up to the deep-blue sky ; some 
 % ff 9 
 
98 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 brethren of the Misericordia went by bearing a black 
 bier; a large sheaf of glowing flowers — dahlias, zin- 
 nias, asters, and daturas — was borne through the huge 
 arched door of the church near St. Mark and his 
 open book. Lolo looked on at it all, and so did 
 Moufflon, and a stranger looked at them as he left 
 the church. 
 
 " You have a handsome poodle there, my little man," 
 he said to Lolo, in a foreigner's too distinct and careful 
 Italian. 
 
 "Mouffiou is beautiful," said Lolo, with pride. 
 "You should see him when he is just washed; but 
 we can only wash him on Sundays, because then Tasso 
 is at home." 
 
 " How old is your dog ?" 
 
 " Three years old." 
 
 " Does he do any tricks ?" 
 
 " Does he !" said Lolo, with a very derisive laugh : 
 " why. Moufflon can do anything ! He can walk on 
 make ready, present, and fire ; 
 shut a door ; make a wheel- 
 barrow of himself: there is nothing he will not do. 
 Would you like to see him do something ?" 
 
 " Very much," said the foreigner. 
 
 To Moufflon and to Lolo the street was the same 
 thing as home ; this cheery piazzetta by the church, so 
 utterly empty sometimes, and sometimes so noisy and 
 crowded, was but the wider threshold of their home 
 to both the poodle and the child. 
 
 So there, under the lofty and stately walls of the 
 old church, Lolo put Moufflon through his exercises. 
 They were second nature to Moufflon, as to most 
 
MOUFFLOU. 99 
 
 poodles. lie had inherited his address at them from 
 clever parents, and, as he had never been frightened or 
 coerced, all his lessons and acquirements were but play- 
 to him. He acquitted himself admirably, and the 
 crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sacristan 
 came out of the church and smiled, and the barber left 
 his customer's chin all in a lather while he laughed, for 
 the good folk of the quarter were all proud of Mouf- 
 flon and never tired of him, and the pleasant, easy- 
 going, good-humored disposition of the Tuscan popu- 
 lace is so far removed from the stupid buckram and 
 whalebone in which the new-fangled democracy wants 
 to imprison it. 
 
 The stranger also was much diverted by Moufflou's 
 talents, and said, half aloud, " How this clever dog 
 would amuse poor Victor ! Would you bring your 
 poodle to please a sick child I have at home !" he said, 
 quite aloud, to Lolo, who smiled and answered that he 
 would. Where was the sick child ? 
 
 " At the Gran Bretagna ; not far off," said the gen- 
 tleman. "Come this afternoon, and ask for me by 
 this name." 
 
 He dropped his card and a couple of francs into 
 Lolo's hand, and went his way. Lolo, with Moufflon 
 scampering after him, dashed into his own house, and 
 stumped up the stairs, his crutch making a terrible 
 noise on the stone. 
 
 "Mother, mother! see what I have got because 
 Moufflou did his tricks," he shouted. "And now you 
 can buy those shoes you want so much, and the coffee 
 that you miss so of a morning, and the new linen for 
 Tasso, and the shirts for Sandro." 
 
100 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 For to the mind of Lolo two francs was as two 
 millionSj — source unfathomable of riches inexhaustible ! 
 
 With the afternoon he and Moufflou trotted down 
 the arcades of the Uffizi and down the Lung' Arno to 
 the hotel of the stranger, and, showing the stranger's 
 card, which Lolo could not read, they were shown at 
 once into a great chamber, all gilding and fresco and 
 velvet furniture. 
 
 But Lolo, being a little Florentine, was never troubled 
 by externals, or daunted by mere sofas and chairs : he 
 stood and looked around him with perfect composure f 
 and Moufflou, whose attitude, when he was not romp- 
 ing, was always one of magisterial gravity, sat on his 
 haunches and did the same. 
 
 Soon the foreigner he had seen in the forenoon 
 entered and spoke to him, and led him into another 
 chamber, where stretched on a couch was a little wan- 
 faced boy about seven years old ; a pretty boy, but so 
 pallid, so wasted, so helpless. This poor little boy was 
 heir to a great name and a great fortune, but all the 
 science in the world could not make him strong enough 
 to run about among the daisies, or able to draw a single 
 breath without pain. A feeble smile lit up his face as 
 he saw Moufflou and Lolo ; then a shadow chased it 
 away. 
 
 " Little boy is lame like me," he said, in a tongue 
 Lolo did not understand. 
 
 " Yes, but he is a strong little boy, and can move 
 about, as perhaps the suns of his country will make 
 you do," said the gentleman, who was the poor little 
 boy's father. " He has brought you his poodle to 
 amuse you. What a handsome dog ! is it not ?" 
 
MOUFFLi.)U ACt^lTTkD HIMShLF ABLY AS h\'tK. 
 
MOUFFLOU. 101 
 
 •* Oh, bufflins !" said the poor little fellow, stretching 
 out his wasted hands to Moufflon, who submitted his 
 leonine crest to the caress. 
 
 Then Lolo went through the performance, and 
 Moufflou acquitted himself ably as ever ; and the little 
 invalid laughed and shouted with his tiny thin voice, 
 and enjoyed it all immensely, and rained cakes and 
 biscuits on both the poodle and its master. Lolo 
 crumped the pastries with willing white teeth, and 
 Moufflou did no less. Then they got up to go, and 
 the sick child on the couch burst into fretful lamenta- 
 tions and outcries. 
 
 " I want the dog ! I will have the dog !" was all 
 he kept repeating. 
 
 But Lolo did not know what he said, and was only 
 sorry to see him so unhappy. 
 
 "You shall have the dog to-morrow," said the 
 gentleman, to pacify his little son; and he hurried 
 Lolo and Moufflou out of the room, and consigned 
 them to a servant, having given Lolo five francs this 
 time. 
 
 "Why, Moufflou," said Lolo, with a chuckle of 
 delight, "if we could find a foreigner every day, we 
 could eat meat at supper, Moufflou, and go to the 
 theatre every evening !" 
 
 And he and his crutch clattered home with great 
 eagerness and excitement, and Moufflou trotted on his 
 four frilled feet, the blue bow with which B ce had 
 tied up his curls on the top of his head, fluttering in 
 the wind. But, alas ! even his five francs could bring 
 no comfort at home. He found his whole family 
 wailing and mourning in utterly inconsolable distress. 
 
102 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 Tasso had drawn his number that morning, and the 
 number was seven, and he must go and be a conscript 
 for three years. 
 
 The poor young man stood in the midst of his weep- 
 ing brothers and sisters, with his mother leaning against 
 his shoulder, and down his own brown cheeks the tears 
 were falling. He must go, and lose his place in the 
 public gardens, and leave his people to starve as they 
 might, and be put in a tomfool's jacket, and drafted 
 ofif among cursing and swearing and strange faces, 
 friendless, homeless, miserable! And the mother, — 
 what would become of the mother ? 
 
 Tasso was the best of lads and the mildest. He 
 was quite happy sweeping up the leaves in the long 
 alleys of the Cascine, or mowing the green lawns under 
 the ilex avenues, and coming home at supper-time 
 among the merry little people and the good woman 
 that he loved. He was quite contented; he wanted 
 nothing, only to be let alone ; and they would not let 
 him alone. They would haul him away to put a heavy 
 musket in his hand and a heavy knapsack on his back, 
 and drill him, and curse him, and make him into a 
 human target, a live popinjay. 
 
 No one had any heed for Lolo and his five francs, 
 and Moufflon, understanding that some great sorrow 
 had fallen on his friends, sat down and lifted up his 
 voice and howled. 
 
 Tasso must go away ! — that was all they understood. 
 For three long years they must go without the sight of 
 his face, the aid of his strength, the pleasure of his 
 smile: Tasso must go! When Lolo understood the 
 calamity that had befallen them, he gathered Moufflou 
 
MOUFFLOU. 103 
 
 up against his breast, and sat down too on the floor 
 beside him and cried as if he would never stop crying. 
 
 There was no help for it : it was one of those mis- 
 fortunes which are, as we say in Italian, like a tile 
 tumbled on the head. The tile drops from a height, 
 and the poor head bows under the unseen blow. That 
 is all. 
 
 " What is the use of that ?" said the mother, pas- 
 sionately, when Lolo showed her his five francs. " It 
 will not buy Tasso's discharge." 
 
 Lolo felt that his mother was cruel and unjust, and 
 crept to bed with Moufflon. Moufflou always slept on 
 Lolo's feet. 
 
 The next morning Lolo got up before sunrise, and 
 he and Moufflou accompanied Tasso to his work in the 
 Cascine. 
 
 Lolo loved his brother, and clung to every moment 
 •whilst they could still be together. 
 
 " Can nothing keep you, Tasso ?" he said, despair- 
 ingly, as they went down the leafy aisles, whilst the 
 Arno water was growing golden as the sun rose. 
 
 Tasso sighed. 
 
 "Nothing, dear. Unless Gesii would send me a 
 thousand francs to buy a substitute." 
 
 And he knew he might as well have said, " If one 
 could coin gold ducats out of the sunbeams on Arno 
 water." 
 
 Lolo was very sorrowful as he lay on the grass in 
 the meadow where Tasso was at work, and the poodle 
 lay stretched beside him. 
 
 When Lolo went home to dinner (Tasso took his 
 wrapped in a handkerchief) he found his mother very 
 
104 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 agitated and excited. She was laughing one moment, 
 crying the next. She was passionate and peevish, ten- 
 der and jocose by turns ; there was something forced 
 and feverish about her which the children felt but did 
 not comprehend. She was a woman of not very much 
 intelligence, and she had a secret, and she carried it ill, 
 and knew not what to do with it ; but they could not 
 tell that. They only felt a vague sense of disturbance 
 and timidity at her unwonted manner. 
 
 The meal over (it was only bean-soup, and that is 
 soon eaten), the mother said sharply to Lolo, " Your 
 aunt Anita wants you this afternoon. She has to go 
 out, and you are needed to stay with the children : be 
 oif with you." 
 
 Lolo was an obedient child ; he took his hat and 
 jumped up as quickly as his halting hip would let 
 him. He called Moufflou, who was asleep. 
 
 " Leave the dog," said his mother, sharply. " 'Nita 
 will not have him messing and carrying mud about 
 her nice clean rooms. She told me so. Leave him, I 
 say." 
 
 " Leave Moufflou !" echoed Lolo, for never in all 
 Moufflon's life had Lolo parted from him. Leave 
 Moufflou ! He stared open-eyed and open-mouthed 
 at his mother. What could have come to her ? 
 
 " Leave him, I say," she repeated, more sharply 
 than ever. "Must I speak twice to my own children? 
 Be off with you, and leave the dog, I say." 
 
 And she clutched Moufflou by his long silky mane 
 and dragged him backwards, whilst with the other 
 hand she thrust out of the door Lolo and Bice. 
 
 Lolo began to hammer with his crutch at the door 
 
MOUFFLOU. 105 
 
 thus closed on him ; but Bice coaxed and entreated 
 him. 
 
 " Poor mother has been so worried about Tasso," 
 she pleaded. " And what harm can come to Mouf- 
 flou ? And I do think he was tired, Lolo ; the Cas- 
 cine is a long way; and it is quite true that" Aunt 
 'Mta never liked him." 
 
 So by one means and another she coaxed her brother 
 away ; and they went almost in silence to where their 
 aunt Anita dwelt, which was across the river, near the 
 dark-red bell-shaped dome of Santa Spirito. 
 
 It was true that her aunt had wanted them to mind 
 her room and her babies whilst she was away carrying 
 home some lace to a villa outside the Roman gate, for 
 she was a lace-washer and clear-starcher by trade. 
 There they had to stay in the little dark room with 
 the two babies, with nothing to amuse the time except 
 the clang of the bells of the church of the Holy Spirit, 
 and the voices of the lemonade-sellers shouting in the 
 street below. Aunt Anita did not get back till it was 
 more than dusk, and the two children trotted home- 
 ward hand in hand, Lolo's leg dragging itself pain- 
 fully along, for without Mouflflou's white figure dan- 
 cing on before him he felt very tired indeed. It was 
 pitch dark when they got to Or San Michel e, and the 
 lamps burned dully. 
 
 Lolo stumped up the stairs wearily, with a vague, 
 dull fear at his small heart. 
 
 " Moufiflou, Moufflon !" he called. Where was 
 Moufflon ? Always at the first sound of his crutch 
 the poodle came flying towards him. " Moufflou, 
 Moufflon !" he called all the way up the long, dark, 
 
X06 MOVFFLOV. 
 
 twisting stone stair. He pushed open the door, and 
 he called again, " Moufflon, Moufflon !" 
 
 But no dog answered to his call. 
 
 "" Mother, where is Moufflon ?" he asked, staring 
 with blinking, dazzled eyes into the oil-lit room where 
 his mother sat knitting. Tasso was not then home 
 from work. His mother went on with her knitting ; 
 there was an uneasy look on her face. 
 
 " Mother, what have you done with Moufflon, my 
 Moufflon?" said Lolo, with a look that was almost 
 stern on his ten-year-old face. 
 
 Then his mother, without looking up and moving 
 her knitting-needles very rapidly, said, — 
 
 " Moufflon is sold !" 
 
 And little Dina, who was a quick, pert child, cried, 
 with a shrill voice, — 
 
 " Mother has sold him for a thousand francs to the 
 foreign gentleman." 
 
 " Sold him !" 
 
 Lolo grew white and grew cold as ice ; he stam- 
 mered, threw up his hands over his head, gasped a 
 little for breath, then fell down in a dead swoon, his 
 poor useless limb doubled under him. 
 
 When Tasso came home that sad night and found 
 his little brother shivering, moaning, and half deliri- 
 ous, and when he heard what had been done, he was 
 sorely grieved. 
 
 " Oh, mother, how could you do it ?" he cried. 
 *' Poor, poor Moufflon ! and Lolo loves him so !" 
 
 " I have got the money," said his mother, feverishly, 
 " and you will not need to go for a soldier : we can 
 buy your substitute. What is a poodle, that you 
 
MOUFFLOU. 107 
 
 mourn about it? We can get another poodle for 
 Lolo." 
 
 "Another will not be Moufflon/' said Tasso, and yet 
 was seized with such a frantic happiness himself at 
 the knowledge that he would not need go to the army, 
 that he too felt as if he were drunk on new wine, and 
 had not the heart to rebuke his mother. 
 
 "A thousand francs!" he muttered; "a thousand 
 francs! Dio mio! Who could ever have fancied any- 
 body would have given such a price for a common 
 white poodle? One would think the gentleman had 
 bought the church and the tabernacle !" 
 
 " Fools and their money are soon parted," said his 
 mother, with cross contempt. 
 
 It was true : she had sold Moufflon. 
 
 The English gentleman had called on her while Lolo 
 and the dog had been in the Casein e, and had said that 
 he was desirous of buying the poodle, which had so 
 diverted his sick child that the little invalid would not 
 be comforted unless he possessed it. Now, at any other 
 time the good woman would have sturdily refused any 
 idea of selling Moufflou ; but that morning the thou- 
 sand francs which would buy Tasso's substitute were 
 forever in her mind and before her eyes. When she 
 heard the foreigner her heart gave a great leap, and 
 her head swam giddily, and she thought, in a spasm 
 of longing — if she could get those thousand francs ! 
 But though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained 
 her grip on her native Florentine shrewdness. She 
 said nothing of her need of the money j not a syllable 
 of her sore distress. On the contrary, she was coy and 
 wary, affected great reluctance to part with her pet. 
 
108 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 invented a great offer made for him by a director of 
 a circus, and finally let fall a hint that less than a 
 thousand francs she could never take for poor Mouf- 
 flou. 
 
 The gentleman assented with so much willingness 
 to the price that she instantly regretted not having 
 asked double. He told her that if she would take the 
 poodle that afternoon to his hotel the money should be 
 paid to her; so she despatched her children after their 
 noonday meal in various directions, and herself took 
 Moufflou to his doom. She could not believe her 
 senses when ten hundred-franc notes were put into her 
 hand. She scrawled her signature, Rosina Calabucci, 
 to a formal receipt, and went away, leaving Moufflou 
 in his new owner's rooms, and hearing his howls and 
 moans pursue her all the way down the staircase and 
 out into the air. 
 
 She was not easy at what she had done. 
 
 " It seemed," she said to herself, " like selling a 
 Christian." 
 
 But then to keep her eldest son at home, — what a 
 joy that was ! On the whole, she cried so and laughed 
 so as she went down the Lung' Arno that once or twice 
 people looked at her, thinking her out of her senses, 
 and a guard spoke to her angrily. 
 
 Meanwhile, Lolo was sick and delirious with grief. 
 Twenty times he got out of his bed and screamed to 
 be allowed to go with Moufflou, and twenty times his 
 mother and his brothers put him back again and held 
 him down and tried in vain to quiet him. 
 
 The child was beside him^self with misery, "Mouf- 
 flou ! Moufflou !" he sobbed at every moment ; and by 
 
MOUFFLOU. 109 
 
 night he was in a raging fever, and when his mother, 
 frightened, ran in and called in the doctor of the 
 quarter, that worthy shook his head and said some- 
 thing as to a shock of the nervous system, and muttered 
 a long word, — " meningitis." 
 
 Lolo took a hatred to the sight of Tasso, and thrust 
 him away, and his mother too. 
 
 " It is for you Moufflou is sold," he said, with his 
 little teeth and hands tight clinched. 
 
 After a day or two Tasso felt as if he could not bear 
 his life, and went down to the hotel to see if the foreign 
 gentleman would allow him to have Moufflou back for 
 half an hour to quiet his little brother by a sight of 
 him. But at the hotel he was told that the Milord 
 Inglese who had bought the dog of Eosina Calabucci 
 had gone that same night of the purchase to Rome, to 
 Naples, to Palermo, chi sa f 
 
 " And Moufflou with him ?" asked Tasso. 
 
 " The barbone he had bought went with him," said 
 the porter of the hotel. "Such a beast! Howling, 
 shrieking, raging all the day, and all the paint scratched 
 off the salon door." 
 
 Poor Moufflou ! Tasso's heart was heavy as he 
 heard of that sad helpless misery of their bartered 
 favorite and friend. 
 
 "What matter?" said his mother, fiercely, when he 
 told her. " A dog is a dog. They will feed him 
 better than we could. In a week he will have for- 
 gotten— c/i^ .'" 
 
 But Tasso feared that Moufflou would not forget. 
 Lolo certainly would not. The doctor came to the 
 bedside twice a day, and ice and water were kept on 
 10 
 
110 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 the aching hot little head that had got the malady with 
 the long name, and for the chief part of the time Lolo 
 lay quiet, dull, and stupid, breathing heavily, and then 
 at intervals cried and sobbed and shrieked hysterically 
 for Moufflon. 
 
 " Can you not get what he calls for to quiet him 
 with a sight of it ?" said the doctor. But that was not 
 possible, and poor Rosina covered her head with her 
 apron and felt a guilty creature. 
 
 " Still, you will not go to the army," she said to 
 Tasso, clinging to that immense joy for her consola- 
 tion. " Only think ! we can pay Guido Squarcione to 
 go for you. He always said he would go if anybody 
 would pay him. Oh, my Tasso, surely to keep you is 
 worth a dog's life !" 
 
 "And Lolo's?" said Tasso, gloomily. "Nay, mother, 
 it works ill to meddle too much with fate. I drew my 
 number; I was bound to go. Heaven would have 
 made it up to you somehow." 
 
 " Heaven sent me the foreigner ; the Madonna's own 
 self sent him to ease a mother's pain," said Rosina, 
 rapidly and angrily. " There are the thousand francs 
 safe to hand in the cassone, and what, pray, is it we 
 miss ? Only a dog like a sheep, that brought gallons 
 of mud in with him every time it rained, and ate as 
 much as any one of you." 
 
 "But Lolo?" said Tasso, under his breath. 
 
 His mother was so irritated and so tormented by 
 her own conscience that she upset all the cabbage broth 
 into the burning charcoal. 
 
 "Lolo was always a little fool, thinking of nothing 
 but the church and the dog and nasty field-flowers," 
 
MOUFFLOU. Ill 
 
 she said, angrily. "I humored him ever too much 
 because of the hurt to his hip, and so — and so " 
 
 Then the poor soul made matters worse by drop- 
 ping her tears into the saucepan, and fanning the 
 charcoal so furiously that the flame caught her fan of 
 cane-leaves, and would have burned her arm had not 
 Tasso been there. 
 
 " You are ray prop and safety always. Who would 
 not have done what I did? Not Santa Felicita 
 herself," she said, with a great sob. 
 
 But all this did not cure poor Lolo. 
 
 The days and the weeks of the golden autumn 
 weather passed away, and he was always in danger, 
 and the small close room where he slept with Sandro 
 and Beppo and Tasso was not one to cure such an ill- 
 ness as had now beset him. Tasso went to his work 
 with a sick heart in the Cascine, where the colchicum 
 was all lilac among the meadow grass, and the ashes 
 and elms were taking their first flush of the coming 
 autumnal change. He did not think Lolo would ever 
 get well, and the good lad felt as if he had been the 
 murderer of his little brother. 
 
 True, he had had no hand or voice in the sale of 
 Moufflon, but Moufflon had been sold for his sake. It 
 made him feel half guilty, very unhappy, quite un- 
 worthy all the sacrifice that had been made for him. 
 "Nobody should meddle with fate," thought Tasso, 
 who knew his grandfather had died in San Bonifazio 
 because he had driven himself mad over the dream- 
 book trying to get lucky numbers for the lottery and 
 become a rich man at a stroke. 
 
 It was rapture, indeed, to know that he was free of 
 
112 MOUFFLOV. 
 
 the army for a time at least, that he might go on un- 
 disturbed at his healthful labor, and get a rise in wages 
 as time went on, and dwell in peace with his family, 
 and perhaps — perhaps in time earn enough to marry 
 pretty flaxen-haired Biondina, the daughter of the bar- 
 ber in the piazzetta. It was rapture indeed ; but then 
 poor Moufflon ! — and poor, poor Lolo ! Tasso felt as 
 if he had bought his own exemption by seeing his little 
 brother and the good dog torn in pieces and buried alive 
 for his service. 
 
 And where was poor Moufflou ? 
 
 Gone far away somewhere south in the hurrying, 
 screeching, vomiting, braying train that it made Tasso 
 giddy only to look at as it rushed by the green meadows 
 beyond the Cascine on its way to the sea. 
 
 " If he could see the dog he cries so for, it might 
 save him," said the doctor, who stood with a grave face 
 watching Lolo. 
 
 But that was beyond any one's power. No one could 
 tell where Moufflou was. He might be carried away 
 to England, to France, to Eussia, to America, — who 
 could say ? They did not know where his purchaser 
 had gone. Moufflou even might be dead. 
 
 The poor mother, when the doctor said that, went 
 and looked at the ten hundred-franc notes that were 
 once like angels' faces to her, and said to them, — 
 
 " Oh, you children of Satan, why did you tempt me ? 
 I sold the poor, innocent, trustful beast to get you, and 
 now my child is dying !" 
 
 Her eldest son would stay at home, indeed ; but if 
 this little lame one died ! Roslna Calabucci would 
 have given up the notes and consented never to own 
 
MOUFFLOU. 113 
 
 five francs in her life if only she could have gone back 
 over the time and kept Moufflon, and seen his little 
 master running out with him into the sunshine. 
 
 More than a month went by, and Lolo lay in the 
 same state, his yellow hair shorn, his eyes dilated and 
 yet stupid, life kept in him by a spoonful of milk, a 
 lump of ice, a drink of lemon-water ; always mutter- 
 ing, when he spoke at all, " Moufflon, Moufflon, dov' ^ 
 Moufflon ?" and lying for days together in somnolence 
 and unconsciousness, with the fire eating at his brain 
 and the weight lying on it like a stone. 
 
 The neighbors were kind, and brought fruit and the 
 like, and sat up with him, and chattered so all at once 
 in one continuous brawl that they were enough in 
 themselves to kill him, for such is ever the Italian 
 fashion of sympathy in all illness. 
 
 But Lolo did not get well, did not even seem to see 
 the light at all, or to distinguish any sounds around 
 him ; and the doctor in plain words told Rosina Cala- 
 bucci that her little boy must die. Die, and the church 
 so near ? She could not believe it. Could St. Mark, 
 and St. George, and the rest that he had loved so do 
 nothing for him ? No, said the doctor, they could do 
 nothing; the dog might do something, since the brain 
 had so fastened on that one idea ; but then they had 
 sold the dog. 
 
 " Yes ; I sold him !" said the poor mother, breaking 
 into floods of remorseful tears. 
 
 So at last the end drew so nigh that one twilight 
 
 time the priest came out of the great arched door that 
 
 is next St. Mark, with the Host uplifted, and a little 
 
 acolyte ringing the bell before it, and passed across the 
 
 h 10* 
 
114 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 piazzetta, and went up the dark staircase of Rosina's 
 dwelling, and passed through the weeping, terrified 
 children, and went to the bedside of Lolo. 
 
 Lolo was unconscious, but the holy man touched his 
 little body and limbs with the sacred oil, and prayed 
 over him, and then stood sorrowful with bowed head. 
 
 Lolo had had his first communion in the summer, 
 and in his preparation for it had shown an intelligence 
 and devoutness that had won the priest's gentle heart. 
 
 Standing there, the holy man commended the inno- 
 cent soul to God. It was the last service to be rendered 
 to him save that very last of all when the funeral 
 office should be read above his little grave among the 
 millions of nameless dead at the sepulchres of the 
 poor at Trebbiano. 
 
 All was still as the priest's voice ceased ; only the 
 sobs of the mother and of the children broke the still- 
 ness as they kneeled ; the hand of Biondina had stolen 
 into Tasso's. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a loud scuffling noise ; hurrying 
 feet came patter, patter, patter up the stairs, a ball of 
 mud and dust flew over the heads of the kneeling 
 figures, fleet as the wind Moufflon dashed through the 
 room and leaped upon the bed. 
 
 Lolo opened his heavy eyes, and a sudden light 
 of consciousness gleamed in them like a sunbeam. 
 "Moufflon!" he murmured, in his little thin faint 
 voice. The dog pressed close to his breast and kissed 
 his wasted face. 
 
 Moufflou was come home ! 
 
 And Lolo came home too, for death let go its hold 
 upon him. Little by little, very faintly and flicker- 
 
MOUFFLOU. 115 
 
 ingly and very uncertainly at the first, life returned to 
 the poor little body, and reason to the tormented, 
 heated little brain. Moufflou was his physician; 
 Moufflou, who, himself a skeleton under his matted 
 curls, would not stir from his side and looked at him 
 all day long with two beaming brown eyes full of 
 unutterable love. 
 
 Lolo was happy ; he asked no questions, — was too 
 weak, indeed, even to wonder. He had Moufflou ; 
 that was enough. 
 
 Alas ! though they dared not say so in his hearing, 
 it was not enough for his elders. His mother and 
 Tasso knew that the poodle had been sold and paid 
 for ; that they could lay no claim to keep him ; and 
 that almost certainly his purchaser would seek him out 
 and assert his indisputable right to him. And then 
 how would Lolo ever bear that second parting? — 
 Lolo, so weak that he weighed no more than if he had 
 been a little bird. 
 
 Moufflou had, no doubt, travelled a long distance 
 and suffered much. He was but skin and bone ; he 
 bore the marks of blows and kicks ; his once silken 
 hair was all discolored and matted ; he had, no doubt, 
 travelled far. But then his purchaser would be sure 
 to ask for him, soon or late, at his old home; and 
 then ? Well, then if they did not give him up them- 
 selves, the law would make them. 
 
 Rosina Calabucci and Tasso, though they dared say 
 nothing before any of the children, felt their hearts in 
 their mouths at every step on the stair, and the first 
 interrogation of Tasso every evening when he came 
 from his work was, " Has any one come for Moufflou ?" 
 
11$ MOUFFLOU. 
 
 For ten days no one came, and their first terrors lulled 
 a little. 
 
 On the eleventh morning, a feast-day, on whicli 
 Tasso was not going to his labors in the Cascine, there 
 came a person, with a foreign look, who said the words 
 they so much dreaded to hear : " Has the poodle that 
 you sold to an English gentleman come back to you ?" 
 
 Yes : his English master claimed him ! 
 
 The servant said that they had missed the dog in 
 Kome a few days after buying him and taking hira 
 there ; that he had been searched for in vain, and that 
 his master had thought it possible the animal might 
 have found his way back to his old home : there had 
 been stories of such wonderful sagacity in dogs : any- 
 how, he had sent for him on the chance ; he was him- 
 self back on the Lung' Arno. The servant pulled 
 from his pocket a chain, and said his orders were to 
 take the poodle away at once : the little sick gentleman 
 had fretted very much about his loss. 
 
 Tasso heard in a very agony of despair. To take 
 Moufflon away now would be to kill Lolo, — Lolo so 
 feeble still, so unable to understand, so passionately 
 alive to every sight and sound of Moufflon, lying for 
 hours together motionless with his hand buried in the 
 poodle's curls, saying nothing, only smiling now and 
 then, and murmuring a word or two in Moufflon's ear. 
 
 " The dog did come home," said Tasso, at length, in 
 a low voice ; " angels must have shown him the road, 
 poor beast ! From Rome ! Only to think of it, from 
 Rome I And he a dumb thing ! I tell you he is here, 
 honestly : so will you not trust me just so far as this? 
 Will you let me go with you and speak to the English 
 
MOUFFLOU. 117 
 
 lord before you take the dog away ? I have a little 
 brother sorely ill " 
 
 He could not speak more, for tears that choked his 
 voice. 
 
 At last the messenger agreed so far as this. Tasso 
 might go first and see the master, but he would stay 
 here and have a care they did not spirit the dog away, 
 — " for a thousand francs were paid for him," added 
 the man, " and a dog that can come all the way from 
 Rome by itself must be an uncanny creature." 
 
 Tasso thanked him, went up-stairs, was thankful 
 that his mother was at mass and could not dispute with 
 him, took the ten hundred-franc notes from the old 
 oak cassone, and with them in his breast-pocket walked 
 out into the air. He was but a poor working lad, but 
 he had made up his mind to do an heroic deed, for 
 self-sacrifice is always heroic. He went straightway 
 to the hotel where the English milord was, and when 
 he had got there remembered that still he did not 
 know the name of Moufflon's owner ; but the people 
 of the hotel knew him as Rosina Calabucci's son, and 
 guessed what he wanted, and said the gentleman who 
 had lost the poodle was within up-stairs and they 
 would tell him. 
 
 Tasso waited some half-hour with his heart beating 
 sorely against the packet of hundred-franc notes. At 
 last he was beckoned up-stairs, and there he saw a 
 foreigner with a mild fair face, and a very lovely lady, 
 and a delicate child who was lying on a couch. "Mouf- 
 flon ! Where is Moufflon ?" cried the little child, im- 
 patiently, as he saw the youth enter. 
 
 Tasso took his hat off, and stood in the door-way, 
 
113 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 an embrowned, healthy, not ungraceful figure, in his 
 working-clothes of rough blue stuff. 
 
 "If you please, most illustrious," he stammered, 
 " poor Moufflou has come home." 
 
 The child gave a cry of delight; the gentleman and 
 lady one of wonder. Come home ! All the way from 
 Eome! 
 
 " Yes, he has, most illustrious," said Tasso, gaining 
 courage and eloquence; "and now I want to beg some- 
 thing of you. We are poor, and I drew a bad number, 
 and it was for that my mother sold Moufflou. For 
 myself, I did not know anything of it; but she thought 
 she would buy my substitute, and of course she could ; 
 but Moufflou is come home, and my little brother Lolo, 
 the little boy your most illustrious first saw playing 
 with the poodle, fell ill of the grief of losing Mouf- 
 flou, and for a month has lain saying nothing sensible, 
 but only calling for the dog, and my old grandfather 
 died of worrying himself mad over the lottery num- 
 bers, and Lolo was so near dying that the Blessed Host 
 had been brought, and the holy oil had been put on 
 him, when all at once there rushes in Moufflou, skin 
 and bone, and covered with mud, and at the sight of 
 him Lolo comes back to his senses, and that is now ten 
 days ago, and though Lolo is still as weak as a new- 
 born thing, he is always sensible, and takes what we 
 give him to eat, and lies always looking at Moufflou, 
 and smiling, and saying, ' Moufflou 1 Moufflou !' and, 
 most illustrious, I know well you have bought the 
 dog, and the law is with you, and by the law you 
 claim it; but I thought perhaps, as Lolo loves him so, 
 you would let us keep the dog, and would take back 
 
MOUFFLOU. 119 
 
 the thousand francs, and myself I will go and be a 
 soldier, and heaven will take care of them all some 
 how." 
 
 Then Tasso, having said all this in one breathless, 
 monotonous recitative, took the thousand francs out of 
 his breast-pocket and held them out timidly towards 
 the foreign gentleman, who motioned them aside and 
 stood silent. 
 
 " Did you understand, Victor," he said, at last, to 
 his little son. 
 
 The child hid his face in his cushions. 
 
 " Yes, I did understand something : let Lolo keep 
 him ; Moufflon was not happy with me." 
 
 But he burst out crying as he said it. 
 
 Moufflon had run away from him. 
 
 Moufflou had never loved him, for all his sweet 
 cakes and fond caresses and platefuls of delicate savory 
 meats. Moufflou had run away and found his own 
 road over two hundred miles and more to go back to 
 some little hungry children, who never had enough to 
 eat themselves, and so, certainly, could never give 
 enough to eat to the dog. Poor little boy ! He was 
 so rich and so pampered and so powerful, and yet he 
 could never make Moufflou love him ! 
 
 Tasso, who understood nothing that was said, laid 
 the ten hundred-franc notes down on a table near him. 
 
 " If you would take them, most illustrious, and give 
 me back what my mother wrote when she sold Mouf- 
 flou," he said, timidly, " I would pray for you night 
 and day, and Lolo would too ; and as for the dog, we 
 will get a puppy and train him for your little signorino; 
 they can all do tricks, more or less, it comes by nature ; 
 
120 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 and as for me, I will go to the army willingly ; it is not 
 right to interfere with fate ; my old grandfather died 
 mad because he would try to be a rich man, by dream- 
 ing about it and pulling destiny by the ears, as if she 
 were a kicking mule ; only, I do pray of you, do not 
 take away Moufflon. And to think he trotted all those 
 miles and miles, and you carried him by train too, and 
 he never could have seen the road, and he has no 
 power of speech to ask " 
 
 Tasso broke down again in his eloquence, and drew 
 the back of his hand across his wet eyelashes. 
 
 The English gentleman was not altogether unmoved. 
 
 " Poor faithful dog !" he said, with a sigh. " I am 
 afraid we were very cruel to him, meaning to be kind. 
 No ; we will not claim him, and I do not think you 
 should go for a soldier ; you seem so good a lad, and 
 your mother must need you. Keep the money, ray 
 boy, and in payment you shall train up the puppy 
 you talk of, and bring him to my little boy. I will 
 come and see your mother and Lolo to-morrow. All 
 the way from Rome ! What wonderful sagacity ! what 
 matchless fidelity !" 
 
 You can imagine, without any telling of mine, the 
 joy that reigned in Moufflon's home when Tasso re- 
 turned thither with the money and the good tidings 
 both. His substitute was bought without a day's delay, 
 and Lolo rapidly recovered. As for Moufflon, he could 
 never tell them his troubles, his wanderings, his diffi- 
 culties, his perils; he could never tell them by what 
 miraculous knowledge he had found his way aci'oss 
 Italy, from the gates of Rome to the gates of Florence. 
 
MOUFFLOU. 121 
 
 But he soon grew plump again, and merry, and his 
 love for Lolo was yet greater than before. 
 
 By the winter all the family went to live on an 
 estate near Spezia that the English gentleman had 
 purchased, and there Moufflon was happier than ever. 
 The little English boy is gaining strength in the soft 
 air, and he and Lolo are great friends, and play with 
 Moufflou and the poodle puppy half the day upon the 
 sunny terraces and under the green orange boughs. 
 Tasso is one of the gardeners there; he will have to 
 serve as a soldier probably in some category or another, 
 but he is safe for the time, and is happy. Lolo, whose 
 lameness will always exempt him from military ser- 
 vice, when he grows to be a man means to be a florist, 
 and a great one. He has learned to read, as the first 
 step on the road of his ambition. 
 
 "But oh, Moufflou, how did you find your way 
 home ?" he asks the dog a hundred times a week. 
 
 How indeed ! 
 
 No one ever knew how Moufflou had made that 
 long journey on foot, so many weary miles ; but be- 
 yond a doubt he had done it alone and unaided, for if 
 any one had helped him they would have come home 
 with him to claim the reward. 
 
 And that you may not wonder too greatly at Mouf- 
 flou's miraculous journey on his four bare feet, I will 
 add here two facts known to friends of mine, of whose 
 truthfulness there can be no doubt. 
 
 One concerns a French poodle who was purchased 
 
 in Paris by the friend of my friend, and brought all 
 
 the way from Paris to Milan by train. In a few days 
 
 after his arrival in Milan the poodle was missing; and 
 
 F 11 
 
122 MOUFFLOU. 
 
 nothing more was heard or known of him until many- 
 weeks later his quondam owner in Paris, on opening 
 his door one morning, found the dog stretched dying 
 on the threshold of his old home. 
 
 That is one fact; not a story, mind you, a fact. 
 
 The other is related to me by an Italian nobleman, 
 who in his youth belonged to the Guardia Nobile of 
 Tuscany. That brilliant corps of elegant gentlemen 
 owned a regimental pet, a poodle also, a fine merry 
 and handsome dog of its kind; and the officers all 
 loved and made much of him, except, alas ! the com- 
 mandant of the regiment, who hated him, because 
 when the officers were on parade or riding in escort 
 the poodle was sure to be jumping and frisking about 
 in front of them. It is difficult to see where the harm 
 of this was, but this odious old martinet vowed ven- 
 geance against the dog, and, being of course all pow- 
 erful in his own corps, ordered the exile from Florence 
 of the poor fellow. He was sent to a farm at Prato, 
 twenty miles off, along the hills; but very soon he 
 found his way back to Florence. He was then sent 
 to Leghorn, forty miles off, but in a week's time had 
 returned to his old comrades. He was then, by order 
 of his unrelenting foe, shipped to the island of Sar- 
 dinia. How he did it no one ever could tell, for he 
 was carried safely to Sardinia and placed inland there 
 in kind custody, but in some wonderful way the poor 
 dog must have found out the sea and hidden himself 
 on board a returning vessel, for in a month's time from 
 his exile to the island he was back again among his 
 comrades in Florence. Now, what I have to tell you 
 almost breaks my heart to say, and will, I think, 
 
MOVFFLOU. 123 
 
 quite break yours to hear : alas ! the brute of a com- 
 mandant, untouched by such marvellous cleverness 
 and faithfulness, was his enemy to the bitter end, and, 
 in inexorable hatred, had him shot! Oh, when you 
 grow to manhood and have power, use it with tender- 
 ness! 
 
LAMPBLACK. 
 
 A POOR black paint lay very unhappy in its tube 
 one day alone, having tumbled out of an artist's color- 
 box and lying quite unnoticed for a year. " I am only 
 Lampblack," he said to himself. " The master never 
 looks at me : he says I am heavy, dull, lustreless, use- 
 less. I wish I could cake and dry up and die, as poor 
 Flakewhite did when he thought she turned yellow 
 and deserted her." 
 
 But Lampblack could not die ; he could only lie in 
 his tin tube and pine, like a silly, sorrowful thing as 
 he was, in company with some broken bits of charcoal 
 and a rusty palette-knife. The master never touched 
 him ; month after month passed by, and he was never 
 thought of; the other paints had all their turn of fair 
 fortune, and went out into the world to great acad- 
 emies and mighty palaces, transfigured and rejoicing 
 in a thousand beautiful shapes and services. But 
 Lampblack was always passed over as dull and coarse, 
 which indeed he was, and knew himself to be so, poor 
 fellow, which made it all the worse. " You are only 
 a deposit !" said the other colors to him ; and he felt 
 that it was disgraceful to be a deposit, though he was 
 not quite sure what it meant. 
 
 "If only I were happy like the others!" thought 
 124 
 
ijAMpblack. 125 
 
 poor, sooty Lampblack, sorrowful in his corner. 
 " There is Bistre, now, he is not so very much better- 
 looking than I am, and yet they can do nothing with- 
 out him, whether it is a girl's face or a wimple in a 
 river!" 
 
 The others were all so happy in this beautiful, 
 bright studio, whose open casements were hung with 
 myrtle and passion-flower, and whose silence was filled 
 with the singing of nightingales. Cobalt, with a 
 touch or two, became the loveliness of summer skies 
 at morning; the Lakes and Carmines bloomed in a 
 thousand exquisite flowers and fancies ; the Chromes 
 and Ochres (mere dull earths) were allowed to spread 
 themselves in sheets of gold that took the shine of the 
 sun into the darkest places; Umber, a sombre and 
 gloomy thing, could lurk yet in a child's curls and 
 laugh in a child's smiles; whilst all the families of the 
 Vermilions, the Blues, the Greens, lived in a perpetual 
 glory of sunset or sunrise, of ocean waves or autumn 
 woods, of kingly pageant or of martial pomp. 
 
 It was very hard. Poor Lampblack felt as if his 
 very heart would break, above all when he thought of 
 pretty little Rose Madder, whom he loved dearly, and 
 who never would even look at him, because she was so 
 very proud, being herself always placed in nothing less 
 than rosy clouds, or the hearts of roses, or something as 
 fair and spiritual. 
 
 " I am only a wretched deposit !" sighed Lampblack, 
 and the rusty palette-knife grumbled back, " My own 
 life has been ruined in cleaning dirty brushes, and see 
 what the gratitude of men and brushes is !" 
 
 " But at least you have been of use once ; but I 
 11* 
 
126 LAMPBLACK. 
 
 never am, — never !" said Lampblack, wearily ; and 
 indeed he had been there so long that the spiders 
 had spun their silver fleeces all about him, and he 
 was growing as gray as an old bottle does in a dark 
 cellar. 
 
 At that moment the door of the studio opened, and 
 there came a flood of light, and the step of a man was 
 heard: the hearts of all the colors jumped for joy, 
 because the step was that of their magician, who out 
 of mere common clays and ground ores could raise 
 them at a touch into splendors of the gods and divini- 
 ties immortal. 
 
 Only the heart of poor dusty Lampblack could not 
 beat a throb the more, because he was always left alone 
 and never was thought worthy even of a glance. He 
 could not believe his senses when this afternoon — oh, 
 miracle and ecstasy ! — -the step of the master crossed the 
 floor to the obscured corner where he lay under his 
 spiders' webs, and the hand of the master touched him. 
 Lampblack felt sick and faint with rapture. Had rec- 
 ognition come at last ? 
 
 The master took him up : " You will do for this 
 work," he said ; and Lampblack was borne trembling 
 to an easel. The colors, for once in their turn neglected, 
 crowded together to watch, looking in their bright tin 
 tubes like rows of little soldiers in armor. 
 
 " It is the old dull Deposit," they murmured to one 
 another, and felt contemptuous, yet were curious, as 
 scornful people often will be. 
 
 " But I am going to be glorious and great," thought 
 Lampblack, and his heart swelled high ; for never more 
 would they be able to hurl the name of Deposit at him, 
 
"old deposit is going to be a sign post." 
 
LAMPBLACK. 127 
 
 a name which hurt him none the less, but all the more 
 indeed, because it was unintelligible. 
 
 " You will do for this work," said the master, and 
 let Lampblack out of his metal prison-house into the 
 light and touched him with the brush that was the 
 wand of magic. 
 
 "What am I going to be?" wondered Lampblack, 
 as he felt himself taken on to a large piece of deal 
 board, so large that he felt he must be going to make 
 the outline of an athlete or the shadows of a tempest 
 at the least. 
 
 Himself he could not tell what he was becoming: 
 he was happy enough and grand enough only to be 
 employed, and, as he was being used, began to dream a 
 thousand things of all the scenes he would be in, and 
 all the hues that he would wear, and all the praise that 
 he would hear when he went out into that wonderful 
 great world of which his master was an idol. From 
 his secret dreams he was harshly roused ; all the colors 
 were laughing and tittering round him till the little tin 
 helmets they wore shook with their merriment. 
 
 " Old Deposit is going to be a sign-post," they cried 
 to one another so merrily that the spiders, who are not 
 companionable creatures, felt themselves compelled to 
 come to the doors of their dens and chuckle too. A 
 sign-post! Lampblack, stretched out in an ecstasy 
 upon the board, roused himself shivering from his 
 dreams, and gazed at his own metamorphosis. He 
 had been made into seven letters, thus : 
 
 B A N D I T A. 
 
 This word in the Italian country, where the English 
 
128 LAMPBLACK. 
 
 painter's studio was, means, Do not trespass, do not 
 shoot, do not show yourself here : anything, indeed, 
 that is peremptory and uncivil to all trespassers. In 
 these seven letters, outspread upon the board, was 
 Lampblack crucified I 
 
 Farewell, ambitious hopes and happy dreams ! He 
 had been employed to paint a sign-board, a thing 
 stoned by the boys, blown on by the winds, gnawed by 
 the rats, and drenched with the winter's rains. Better 
 the dust and the cobwebs of his old corner than such 
 shame as this ! 
 
 But help was there none. His fate was fixed. He 
 was dried with a drench of turpentine, hastily clothed 
 in a coat of copal, and, ere he yet was fully aware of all 
 his misery, w^as being borne away upon the great board 
 out of doors and handed to the gardener. For the 
 master was a hasty and ardent man, and had been 
 stung into impatience by the slaughter of some favor- 
 ite blue thrushes in his ilex-trees that day, and so in 
 his haste had chosen to do journeyman's work himself. 
 Lampblack was carried out of the studio for the last 
 time, and as the door closed on him he heard all the 
 colors laughing, and the laugh of little Rose Madder 
 was highest of all as she cried to Naples Yellow, who 
 was a dandy and made court to her, " Poor old ugly 
 Deposit ! He will grumble to the owls and the bats 
 now !" 
 
 The door shut, shutting him out forever from all 
 that joyous company and palace of fair visions, and 
 the rough hands of the gardener grasped him and car- 
 ried him to the edge of the great garden, where the 
 wall overlooked the public road, and there fastened 
 
LAMPBLACK. 129 
 
 hira up on high with a band of iron round the trunk 
 of a tree. 
 
 That night it rained heavily, and the north wind 
 blew, and there was thunder also. Lampblack, out in 
 the storm without his tin house to shelter him, felt that 
 of all creatures wretched on the face of the earth there 
 was not one so miserable as he. 
 
 A sign-board ! Nothing but a sign-board ! 
 
 The degradation of a color, created for art and artists, 
 could not be deeper or more grievous anywhere. Oh, 
 how he sighed for his tin tube and the quiet nook with 
 the charcoal and the palette-knife ! 
 
 He had been unhappy there indeed, but still had had 
 always some sort of liope to solace him, — some chance 
 still remaining that one day fortune might smile and 
 he be allowed to be at least the lowest stratum of some 
 immortal work. 
 
 But now hope was there none. His doom, his end, 
 were fixed and changeless. Nevermore could he be 
 anything but what he was ; and change there could be 
 none till weather and time should have done their 
 work on him, and he be rotting on the wet earth, a 
 shattered and worm-eaten wreck. 
 
 Day broke, — a gloomy, misty morning. 
 
 From where he was crucified upon the tree-trunk he 
 could no longer even see his beloved home the studio : 
 lie could only see a dusky, intricate tangle of branches 
 all about him, and below the wall of flint, with the 
 Banksia that grew on it, and the hard muddy highway, 
 drenched from the storm of the night. 
 
 A man passed in a miller's cart, and stood up and 
 swore at him, because the people had liked to come 
 
130 LAMPBLACK. 
 
 and shoot aud trap the birds of the master's wooded 
 gardens, aud knew that they must not do it now. 
 
 A slug crawled over him, and a snail also. A wood- 
 pecker hammered at him with its strong beak. A boy 
 went by under the wall and threw stones at him, and 
 called him names. The rain poiu*ed down again 
 heavily. He thought of the happy painting-room, 
 Avhere it had seemed always summer and always sun- 
 shine, and where now in the forenoon all the colors 
 were marshalling in the pageantry of the Arts, as he 
 had seen them do hundreds of times from his lone 
 corner. All the misery of the past looked happiness 
 now. 
 
 " If I were only dead, like Flakewhite," he thought ; 
 but the stones only bruised, they did not kill him : and 
 the iron band only hurt, it did not stifle him. For what- 
 ever suffers very much, has always so much strength 
 to continue to exist. And almost his loyal heart blas- 
 phemed and cursed the master who had brought him to 
 such a fate as this. 
 
 The day grew apace, and noon went by, and with it 
 the rain passed. The sun shone out once more, and 
 Lampblack, even imprisoned and wretched as he was, 
 could not but see how beautiful the wet leaves looked, 
 and the gossamers all hung with rain-drops, and the 
 blue sky that shone through the boughs ; for he had 
 not lived with a great artist all his days to be blind, 
 even in pain, to the loveliness of nature. The sun 
 came out, and with it some little brown birds tripped 
 out too, — very simple and plain in their costumes and 
 ways, but which Lampblack knew were the loves of 
 the poets, for he had heard the master call them sc 
 
LAMPBLACK. \^\ 
 
 many times in summer nights. The little brown birds 
 came tripping and pecking about on the grass under- 
 neath his tree-trunk, and then flew on the top of the 
 wall, which was covered with Banksia and many other 
 creepers. The brown birds sang a little song, for though 
 they sing most in the moonlight they do sing by day 
 too, and sometimes all day long. And what they sung 
 was this : 
 
 " Oh, how happy we are, how happy ! No nets dare 
 now be spread for us, no cruel boys dare climb, and no 
 cruel shooters fire. We are safe, quite safe, and the 
 sweet summer has begun !" 
 
 Lampblack listened, and even in his misery was 
 touched and soothed by the tender liquid sounds that 
 these little throats poured out among the light-yellow 
 bloom of the Banksia flowers. And when one of the 
 brown birds came and sat on a branch by him, sway- 
 ing itself and drinking the rain-drops off a leaf, he 
 ventured to ask, as well as he could for the iron that 
 strangled him, why they were so safe, and what made 
 them so happy. 
 
 The bird looked at him in surprise. 
 
 " Do you not know ?" he said. " It is you !'' 
 
 " I !" echoed Lampblack, and could say no more, 
 for he feared that the bird was mocking him, a poor, 
 silly, rusty black paint, only spread out to rot in fair 
 weather and foul. What good could he do to any 
 creature ? 
 
 " You," repeated the nightingale. " Did you not 
 see that man under the wall ? He had a gun ; we 
 should have been dead but for you. We will come 
 and sing to you all night long, since you like it ; and 
 
132 LAMPBLACK. 
 
 when we go to bed at dawn, I will tell my cousins the 
 thrushes and merles to take our places, so that you 
 shall hear somebody singing near you all the day long." 
 
 Lampblack was silent. 
 
 His heart was too full to speak. 
 
 Was it possible that he was of use, after all ? 
 
 " Can it be true ?" he said, timidly. 
 
 " Quite true," said the nightingale. 
 
 " Then the master knew best," thought Lampblack. 
 
 Never would he adorn a palace or be adored upon 
 an altar. His high hopes were all dead, like last year's 
 leaves. The colors in the studio had all the glories of 
 the world, but he was of use in it, after all ; he could 
 save these little lives. He was poor and despised, 
 bruised by stones and drenched by storms ; yet was he 
 content, nailed there upon his tree, for he had not been 
 made quite in vain. 
 
 The sunset poured its red and golden splendors 
 through the darkness of the boughs, and the birds 
 sang all together, shouting for joy and praising God. 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 It was in the year of grace 1490, in the reign of 
 Guidobaldo, Lord of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, — • 
 the year, by the way, of the birth of that most illus- 
 trious and gracious lady Vittoria Colonna. 
 
 It was in the spring of the year, in that mountain- 
 eyrie beloved of the Muses and coveted of the Borgia, 
 that a little boy stood looking out of a grated case- 
 ment into the calm sunshiny day. He was a pretty 
 boy, with hazel eyes, and fair hair cut straight above 
 his brows ; he wore a little blue tunic with some em- 
 broidery about the throat of it, and had in his hand a 
 little round flat cap of the same color. He was sad of 
 heart this merry morning, for a dear friend of his, a 
 friend ten years older than himself, had gone the night 
 before on a journey over the mountains to Maestro 
 Francesco at Bologna, there to be bound apprentice to 
 that gentle artist. This friend, Timoteo della Vita, 
 had been very dear to the child, had played with him 
 and jested with him, made him toys and told him 
 stories, and he was very full of pain at Timoteo's loss. 
 Yet he told himself not to mind, for had not Timoteo 
 said to him, " I go as goldsmith's 'prentice to the best 
 of men ; but I mean to become a painter" ? And the 
 child understood that to be a painter was to be the 
 12 133 
 
134 THE CHILD OF V RBI NO. 
 
 greatest and wisest the world held ; he quite understood 
 that, for he was Raffaelle, the seven-year-old son of 
 Signor Giovanni Sanzio. 
 
 He was a very happy little boy here in this stately yet 
 homely and kindly Urbino, where his people had come 
 for refuge when the lances of Malatesta had ravaged 
 and ruined their homestead. He had the dearest 
 old grandfather in all the world; he had a loving 
 mother, and he had a father who was very tender to 
 him, and painted him among the angels of heaven, and 
 was always full of pleasant conceits and admirable 
 learning, and such true love of art that the child 
 breathed it with every breath, as he could breathe the 
 sweetness of a cowslip-bell when he held one in his 
 hands up to his nostrils. 
 
 It was good in those days to live in old Urbino. It 
 was not, indeed, so brilliant a place as it became in a 
 later day, when Ariosto came there, and Bembo and 
 Castiglione and many another witty and learned gentle- 
 man, and the Courts of Love were held with ingenious 
 rhyme and pretty sentiment, sad only for wantonness. 
 But, if not so brilliant, it was homelier, simpler, full 
 of virtue, with a wise peace and tranquillity that 
 joined hands with a stout courage. The burgher was 
 good friends with his prince, and knew that in any 
 trouble or perplexity he could go up to the palace, or 
 stop the duke in the market-place, and be sure of 
 sympathy and good counsel. There were a genuine 
 love of beautiful things, a sense of public duty and 
 of public spirit, a loyal temper and a sage contentment, 
 among the good people of that time, which made them 
 happy and prosperous. 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. I35 
 
 All work was solidly and thoroughly done, living 
 was cheap, and food good and plentiful, much better 
 and more plentiful than it is now; in the fine old 
 houses every stone was sound, every bit of ornament 
 well wrought, men made their nests to live in and to 
 pass to their children and children's children after 
 them, and had their own fancies and their own tradi- 
 tions recorded in the iron-work of their casements and 
 in the wood-work of their doors. They had their 
 happy day of honest toil from matins bell to evensong, 
 and then walked out or sat about in the calm evening 
 air and looked down on the plains below that were 
 rich with grain and fruit and woodland, and talked 
 and laughed among each other, and were content with 
 their own pleasant, useful lives, not burnt up with 
 envy of desire to be some one else, as in our sickly, 
 hurrying time most people are. 
 
 Yes, life must have been very good in those old 
 days in old Urbino, better than it is anywhere in 
 ours. 
 
 Can you not picture to yourself good, shrewd, wise 
 Giovanni Sanzio, with his old father by his side, and 
 his little son running before him, in the holy evening 
 time of a feast-day, with the deep church-bells swaying 
 above-head, and the last sun-rays smiting the frescoed 
 walls, the stone bastions, the blazoned standard on the 
 castle roof, the steep city rocks shelving down into the 
 greenery of cherry-orchard and of pear-tree? I can, 
 whenever I shut my eyes and recall Urbino as it was ; 
 and would it had been mine to live then in that moun- 
 tain-home, and meet that divine child going along his 
 happy smiling way, garnering unconsciously in his in- 
 
136 THE CHILD OF URBING. 
 
 fant soul all the beautiful sights and sounds around 
 him, to give them in his manhood to the world. 
 
 " Let him alone : he will paint all this some day," 
 said his wise father, who loved to think that his brushes 
 and his colors would pass in time to Raffaelle, whose 
 hands would be stronger to hold them than his own 
 had been. And, whether he would ever paint it or 
 not, the child never tired of thus looking from his eyrie 
 on the rocks and counting all that passed below through 
 the blowing corn under the leafy orchard boughs. 
 
 There were so many things to see in Urbino in that 
 time, looking so over the vast green valley below: a 
 clump of spears, most likely, as men-at-arms rode 
 through the trees ; a string of market-folk bringing in 
 the produce of the orchards or the fields; perchance 
 a red-robed cardinal on a white mule with glittering 
 housings, behind him a sumpter train rich with bag- 
 gage, furniture, gold and silver plate ; maybe the duke's 
 hunting-party going out or coming homeward with 
 caracoling steeds, beautiful hounds straining at their 
 leash, hunting-horns sounding merrily over the green 
 country ; maybe a band of free lances, with plumes 
 tossing, steel glancing, bannerets fluttering against the 
 sky ; or maybe a quiet gray-robed string of monks or 
 pilgrims singing the hymn sung before Jerusalem, 
 treading the long lush grass with sandalled feet, com- 
 ing towards the city, to crowd slowly and gladly up its 
 rocky height. Do you not wish with me you could 
 stand in the window with Raffaelle to see the earth as 
 it was then ? 
 
 No doubt the good folks of Urbino laughed at him 
 often for a little moonstruck dreamer, so many hours 
 
THE CHILD OF U RBI NO. 137 
 
 did he stand looking, looking, — only looking, — as eyes 
 have a right to do that see well and not altogether as 
 others see. 
 
 Happily for him, the days of his childhood were 
 times of peace, and he did not behold, as his father had 
 done, the torches light np the street and the flames 
 devour the homesteads. 
 
 At this time Urbino was growing into fame for its 
 pottery-work : those big dishes and bowls, those mar- 
 riage-plates and pharmacy-jars, which it made, were 
 beginning to rival the products of its neighbor Gubbio, 
 and when its duke wished to send a bridal gift, or a 
 present on other festal occasions, he oftenest chose some 
 service or some rare platter of his own Urbino ware. 
 Now, pottery had not then taken the high place among 
 the arts of Italy that it was destined very soon to do. 
 As you will learn when you are older, after the Greeks 
 and the Christians had exhausted all that was beautiful 
 in shape and substance of clay vases, the art seemed to 
 die out, and the potters and the pottery-painters died 
 with it, or at any rate went to sleep for a great many 
 centuries, whilst soldiers and prelates, nobles and mer- 
 cenaries, were trampling to and fro all over the land and 
 disputing it, and carrying fire and torch, steel and des- 
 olation, with them in their quarrels and covetousness. 
 But now, the reign of the late good duke, great Fede- 
 rigo, having been favorable to the Marches (as we call 
 his province now), the potters and pottery-painters, with 
 other gentle craftsmen, had begun to look up again, 
 and the beneficent fires of their humble ovens had be- 
 gun to burn in Castel Durante, in Pesaro, in Faenza, 
 in Gubbio, and in Urbino itself. The great days had 
 12* 
 
X38 '^^E CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 not yet come : Maestro Giorgio was but a youngster, 
 and Orazio Fontane not born, nor the clever baker 
 Prestino either, nor the famous Fra Xanto ; but there 
 was a Don Giorgio even then in Gubbio, of whose 
 work, alas ! one plate now at the Louvre is all we have ; 
 and here in the ducal city on tlie hill rich and noble 
 things were already being made in the stout and lustrous 
 majolica that was destined to acquire later on so wide a 
 ceramic fame. Jars and bowls and platters, oval dishes 
 and ewers and basins, and big-bodied, metal-welded 
 pharmacy-vases were all made and painted at Urbino 
 whilst RafFaelle Sanzio was running about on rosy in- 
 fantine feet. There was a master-potter of the Monte- 
 feltro at that time, one Maestro Benedetto Ronconi, 
 whose name had not become world-renowned as Orazio 
 Fontane's and Maestro Giorgio's did in the following 
 century, yet who in that day enjoyed tie honor of all 
 the duchy, and did things very rare and fine in the 
 Urbino ware. He lived within a stone's throw of 
 Giovanni Sanzio, and was a gray-haired, handsome, 
 somewhat stern and pompous man, now more than 
 middle-aged, who had one beauteous daughter, by 
 name Pacifica. He cherished Pacifica well, but not 
 so well as he cherished the things he wrought, — the 
 deej) round nuptial plates and oval massive dishes t: at 
 he painted with Scriptural stories and strange devices, 
 and landscapes such as those he saw around, and flow- 
 ing scrolls with Latin mottoes in black letters, and 
 which, when thus painted, he consigned with an anx- 
 iously-beating heart to the trial of the ovens, and 
 which sometimes came forth from the trial all cracked 
 and bluired and marred, and sometimes emerged in 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. I39 
 
 triumph and came into his trembling hands iridescent 
 und lovely with those lustrous and opaline hues which 
 we admire in them to this day as the especial glory of 
 maj lieu 
 
 Maestro Benedetto was an ambitious and vain man, 
 and had had a hard, laborious manhood, working at 
 his potter's wheel and painter's brush before Urbino 
 ware was prized in Italy or even in the duchy. Now, 
 indeed, he was esteemed at his due worth, and his work 
 was so also, and he was passably rich, and known as 
 a good artist beyond the Marches; but there was a 
 younger man over at Gubbio, the Don Giorgio who 
 was precursor of unequalled Maestro Giorgio Andreoli, 
 who surpassed him, and made him sleep o' nights on 
 thorns, as envy makes all those to do who take her as 
 their bedfellow. 
 
 The house of Maestro Benedetto was a long stone 
 building, with a loggia at the back all overclimbed 
 by hardy rose-trees, and looking on a garden that was 
 more than half an orchard, and in which grew abun- 
 dantly pear-trees, plum-trees, and wood strawberries. 
 The lancet windows of his workshop looked on all 
 this quiet greenery. There were so many such pleas- 
 ant workshops then in the land, — calm, godly, home- 
 like places, filled from without with song of birds and 
 scent of herbs and blossoms. Nowadays men work in 
 crowded, stinking cities, in close factory chambers; and 
 their work is barren as their lives are. 
 
 The little son of neighbor Sanzio ran in and out this 
 bigger, wider house and garden of Maestro Benedetto 
 at his pleasure, for the maiden Pacifica was always 
 glad to see him, and even the sombre master-potter 
 
140 y^J5 CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 would unbend to him and show him how to lay the 
 color on to the tremulous fugitive unbaked biscuit. 
 
 Pacifica was a lovely young woman of some seven- 
 teen or eighteen summers ; and perhaps RafFaelle was 
 but remembering her when he painted in his after- 
 years the face of his Madonna di San Sisto. He loved 
 her as he loved everything that was beautiful and every 
 one who was kind; and almost better than his own 
 beloved father's studio, almost better than his dear old 
 grandsire's cheerful little shop, did he love this grave, 
 silent, sweet-smelling, sun-pierced, shadowy old house 
 of Maestro Benedetto. 
 
 Maestro Benedetto had four apprentices or pupils 
 in that time learning to become figuli, but the one 
 whom Eaflaelle liked the most (and Pacifica too) was 
 one Luca Torelli, of a village above in the mountains, 
 — a youth with a noble dark pensive beauty of his own, 
 and a fearless gait, and a supple, tall, slender figure 
 that would have looked well in the light coat of mail 
 and silken doublet of a man-at-arms. In sooth, the 
 spirit of Messer Luca was more made for war and its 
 risks and glories than for the wheel and the brush of 
 the bottega ; but he had loved Pacifica ever since he 
 had come down one careless holy-day into Urbino, 
 and had bound himself to her father's service in a 
 heedless moment of eagerness to breathe the same air 
 and dwell under the same roof as she did. He had 
 gained little for his pains : to see her at mass and at 
 raeal-times, now and tKen to be allowed to bring water 
 from the well for her or feed her pigeons, to see her 
 gray gown go down between the orchard trees and 
 catch the sunlight, to hear the hum of her spinning- 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. l^\ 
 
 wheel, the thrum of her viol, — this was the uttermost 
 he got of joy in two long years ; and how he envied 
 Ratifaelle running along the stone floor of the loggia 
 to leap into her arms, to hang upon her skirts, to pick 
 the summer fruit with her, and sort with her the 
 autumn herbs for drying ! 
 
 " I love Pacifica !" he would say, with a groan, to 
 RaiFaelle ; and Raifaelle would say, with a smile, "Ah, 
 Luca, so do I !" 
 
 " It is not the same thing, my dear," sighed Luca ; 
 " I want her for my wife." 
 
 " I shall have no wife ; I shall marry myself to 
 painting," said RafFaelle, with a little grave wise face 
 looking out from under the golden roof of his fair hair. 
 For he was never tired of watching his father painting 
 the saints with their branch of palm on their ground 
 of blue or of gold, or Maestro Benedetto making the 
 dull clay glow with angels' wings and prophets' robes 
 and holy legends told in color. 
 
 Now, one day as KafFaelle was standing and look- 
 ing thus at his favorite window in the potter's house, 
 his friend the handsome, black-browed Luca, who 
 Avas also standing there, did sigh so deeply and so 
 deplorably that the child was startled from his 
 dreams. 
 
 " Good Luca, what ails you ?" he murmured, wind- 
 ing his arms about the young man's knees. 
 
 "Oh, 'Faello!" mourned the apprentice, woefully. 
 " Here is such a chance to win the hand of Pacifica if 
 only I had talent, — such talent as that Giorgio of 
 Gubbio has ! If the good Lord had only gifted me 
 with a master'n skill, instead of all this bodily strength 
 
142 THE CHILD OF V RBI NO. 
 
 and sinew, like a wild hog of the woods, which avails 
 me nothing here !" 
 
 " "What chance is it?" asked Raffaelle, "and what is 
 there new about Pacifica? She told me nothing, and 
 I was with her an hour." 
 
 " Dear simple one, she knows nothing of it," said 
 Luca, heaving another tremendous sigh from his heart's 
 deepest depths. "You must know that a new order 
 has come in this very forenoon from the duke ; he 
 wishes a dish and a jar of the very finest and firmest 
 majolica to be painted with the story of Esther, and 
 made ready in three months from this date, to then go 
 as his gifts to his cousins of Gonzaga. He has ordered 
 that no cost be spared in the work, but that the painting 
 thereof be of the best that can be produced, and the 
 prize he will give is fifty scudi. Now, Maestro Bene- 
 detto, having known some time, it seems, of this order, 
 has had made in readiness several large oval dishes and 
 beautiful big-bellied jars : he gives one of each to each 
 of his pupils, — to myself, to Berengario, to Tito, and 
 Zenone. The master is sorely distraught that his eye- 
 sight permits him not himself to execute the duke's 
 commands ; but it is no secret that should one of us be 
 so fortunate as to win the duke's approbation, the 
 painter who does so shall become his partner here and 
 shall have the hand of Pacifica. Some say that he has 
 only put forth this promise as a stimulus to get the best 
 work done of which his bottega is capable ; but I know 
 Maestro Benedetto too well to deem him guilty of any 
 Buch evasion. What he has said he will carry out ; if 
 the vase and the dish win the duke's praise, they will 
 also win Pacifica. Now you see, 'Faello mine, why I 
 
THE CHILD OF URBIAO. 143 
 
 am so bitterly sad of heart, for I am a good craftsman 
 enough at the wheel and the furnace, and I like not ill 
 the handling and the moulding of the clay, but at the 
 painting of the clay I am but a tyro, and Berengario or 
 even the little Zenone will beat me ; of that I am sure." 
 
 Raffaelle heard all this in silence, leaning his elbows 
 on his friend's knee, and his chin on the palms of his 
 own hands. He knew that the other pupils were bet- 
 ter painters by far than his Luca, though not one of 
 them was such a good-hearted or noble-looking youth, 
 and for none of them did the maiden Pacifica care. 
 
 " How long a time is given for the jar and the dish 
 to be ready?" he asked, at length. 
 
 " Three months, my dear," said Luca, with a sigh 
 sadder than ever. " But if it were three years, what 
 difference would it make ? You cannot cudgel the di- 
 vine grace of art into a man with blows as you cudgel 
 speed into a mule, and I shall be a dolt at the end of 
 the time as I am now. What said your good father to 
 me but yesternight ? — and he is good to me and does 
 not despise me. He said, ' Luca, my son, it is of no 
 more avail for you to sigh for Pacifica than for the 
 moon. Were she mine I would give her to you, for 
 you have a heart of gold, but Signor Benedetto will 
 not ; for never, I fear me, will you be able to decorate 
 anything more than an apothecary's mortar or a barber's 
 basin. If I hurt you, take it not ill ; I mean kind- 
 ness, and were I a stalwart youth like you I would go 
 try my fortunes in the Free Companies in France or 
 Spain, or down in Rome, for you are made for a sol- 
 dier.' That was the best even your father could say 
 for me, 'Faello." 
 
144 THE CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 " But Pacifica," said the child, — " Pacifica would not 
 wish you to join the Free Companies?" 
 
 " God knows/' said Luca, hopelessly. " Perhaps she 
 would not care." 
 
 "I am sure she would," said Raffaelle, "for she does 
 love you, Luca, though she cannot say so, being but a 
 girl, and Signor Benedetto against you^ But that red- 
 cap you tamed for her, how she loves it, how she ca- 
 resses it, and half is for you, Luca, half for the bird !" 
 
 Luca kissed him. 
 
 But the tears rolled down the poor youth's face, for 
 he was much in earnest and filled with despair. 
 
 "Even if she did, if she do," he murmured, hope- 
 lessly, "she never will let me know it, since her fiither 
 forbids a thought of me ; and now here is this trial of 
 skill at the duke's order come to make things worse, 
 and if that swaggering Berengario of Fano win her, 
 then truly will I join the free lances and pray heaven 
 send me swift shrive and shroud." 
 
 Raffaelle was very pensive for a while; then he 
 raised his head and said, — 
 
 " I have thought of something, Luca. But I do not 
 know whether you will let me try it." 
 
 " You angel child ! What would your old Luca 
 deny to you ? But as for helping me, my dear, put 
 that thought out of your little mind forever, for no 
 one can help me, 'Faello, not the saints themselves, 
 since I was born a dolt !" 
 
 Raffaelle kissed him, and said, " Now listen !" 
 
 A few days later Signor Benedetto informed his 
 pupils in ceremonious audience of the duke's command 
 and of his own intentions; he did not pronounce his 
 
THE CHILD OF V RBI NO. I45 
 
 daughter's name to the youths, but he spoke in terms 
 that were clear enough to assure them that whoever 
 had the good fortune and high merit to gain the duke's 
 choice of his pottery shoukl have the honor of be- 
 coming associate in his own famous bottega. Now, it 
 had been known in Urbino ever since Pacifica liad 
 gone to her first communion that whoever pleased her 
 father well enough to become his partner would have 
 also to please her as her husband. Not much atten- 
 tion was given to maidens' wishes in those times, and 
 no one thought the master-potter either unjust or cruel 
 in thus suiting himself before he suited his daughter. 
 And what made the hearts of all the young men quake 
 and sink the lowest was the fact that Signor Benedetto 
 offered the competition not only to his own appren- 
 tices but to any native of the duchy of Urbino. For 
 who could tell what hero might not step forth from 
 obscurity and gain the great prize of this fair hand of 
 Pacifica's? And with her hand would go many a 
 broad gold ducat, and heritage of the wide old gray 
 stone house, and many an old jewel and old brocade 
 that were kept there in dusky sweet-smelling cabinets, 
 and also more than one good piece of land, smiling 
 with corn and fruit-trees, outside the gates in the lower 
 pastures to the westward. 
 
 Luca, indeed, never thought of these things, but the 
 other three pupils did, and other youths as well. Had 
 it not been for the limitation as to birth within the 
 duchy, many a gallant young painter from the other 
 side of the Apennines, many a lusty vasalino or bocca- 
 lino from the workshops of fair Florence herself, or 
 from the Lombard cities, might have travelled there 
 a k 13 
 
146 THE CHILD OF V RBI NO. 
 
 in hot liaste as fast as horses could cany thenij and 
 come to paint the clay for the sake of so precious a 
 recompense. But Urbino men they had to be; and 
 poor Luca, who was so full of despair that he could 
 almost have thrown himself headlong from the rocks, 
 was thankful to destiny for even so much slender 
 mercy as this, — that the number of his rivals was 
 limited. 
 
 " Had I been you," Giovanni Sanzia ventured once 
 to say respectfully to Signor Benedetto, "I think I 
 should have picked out for my son-in-law the best 
 youth that I knew, not the best painter ; for be it said 
 in all reverence, my friend, the greatest artist is not 
 always the truest man, and by the hearthstone humble 
 virtues have sometimes high claim." 
 
 Then Signor Benedetto had set his stern face like a 
 flint, knowing very well what youth Messer Giovanni 
 would have liked to name to him. 
 
 " I have need of a good artist in my bottega to keep 
 up its fame," he had said, stiffly. " My vision is not 
 what it was, and I should be loath to see Urbino ware 
 fall back, M'hilst Pesaro and Gubbio and Castel-Durante 
 gain ground every day. Pacifica must pay the penalty, 
 if penalty there be, for being the daughter of a great 
 artist." 
 
 Mirthful, keen-witted Sanzio smiled to himself, and 
 went his way in silence; for he who loved Andrea 
 Mantegna did not bow down in homage before the 
 old master-potter's estimation of himself, which was in 
 truth somewhat overweening in its vanity. 
 
 " Poor Pacifica !" he thought : " if only my 'Faello 
 were but some decade older !" 
 
TEE CHILD OF URBINO. I47 
 
 He, who could not foresee the future, the splendid, 
 wondrous, unequalled future that awaited his young 
 son, wished nothing better for him than a peaceful 
 painter's life here in old Urbino, under the friendly- 
 shadow of the Montefeltro's palace-walls. 
 
 Meanwhile, where think you was Raifaelle? Half 
 the day, or all the day, and every day whenever he 
 could? Where think you was he? Well, in the attic 
 of Luca, before a bowl and a dish almost as big as 
 himself. The attic was a breezy, naked place, under- 
 neath the arches supporting the roof of Maestro Bene- 
 detto's dwelling. Each pupil had one of these garrets 
 to himself, — a rare boon, for which Luca came to be 
 very thankful, for without it he could not have shel- 
 tered his angel ; and the secret that E.affaelle had whis- 
 pered to him that day of the first conference had been, 
 " Let me try and paint it !" 
 
 For a long time Luca had been afraid to comply, 
 had only forborne indeed from utter laughter at the 
 idea from his love and reverence for the little speaker. 
 Baby Sanzio, who was only just seven years old as the 
 April tulips reddened the corn, painting a majolica 
 dish and vase to go to the Gonzaga of Mantua ! The 
 good fellow could scarcely restrain his shouts of mirth 
 at the audacious fancy; and nothing had kept him 
 grave but the sight of that most serious face of RafFa- 
 elle, looking up to his with serene, sublime self-confi- 
 dence, nay, perhaps, rather, confidence in heaven and 
 in heaven's gifts. 
 
 " Let me try !" said the child a hundred times. He 
 would tell no one, only Luca would know ; and if be 
 failed — well, there would only be the spoiled pottery 
 
148 THE CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 to pay for, and had he not two whole ducats that the 
 duke had given him when the court had come to be- 
 hold his father's designs for the altar-frescoes at San 
 Domiuico di Cagli ? 
 
 So utterly in earnest was he, and so intense and blank 
 was Luca's absolute despair, that the young man had 
 in turn given way to his entreaties. " Never can I do 
 aught," he thought, bitterly, looking at his own clumsy 
 designs. " And sometimes by the help of cherubs the 
 saints work miracles." 
 
 "It will be no miracle," said Eaffaelle, hearing him 
 murmur this : " it will be myself, and that which the 
 dear God has put into me." 
 
 From that hour Luca let him do what he would, and 
 through all these lovely early summer days the child 
 came and shut himself up in the garret, and studied, 
 and thought, and worked, and knitted his pretty fair 
 brows, and smiled in tranquil satisfaction, according to 
 the mood he was in and the progress of his labors. 
 
 Giovanni Sanzio went away at that time to paint an 
 altar-piece over at Citta di Castello, and his little son 
 for once Avas glad he was absent. Messer Giovanni 
 would surely have remarked the long and frequent 
 visits of Raffaelle to the attic, and would, in all like- 
 lihood, have obliged him to pore over his Latin or to 
 take exercise in the open fields; but his mother said 
 nothing, content that he should be amused and safe, 
 and knowing well that Pacifica loved him and would 
 let him come to no harm under her roof. Pacifica her- 
 self did wonder that he deserted her so perpetually for 
 the garret. But one day when she questioned him the 
 ^weet-faoed rogue clung to her and murmured, " Oh 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 149 
 
 Pacifica, I do want Luca to win yon, because he loves 
 you so ; and I do love you both !" And she grew 
 pale, and answered him, " Ah, dear, if he could !" and 
 then said never a word more, but went to her distaff; 
 and Haffaelle saw great tears fall off her lashes down 
 among the flax. 
 
 She thought he went to the attic to watch how Luca 
 painted, and loved him more than ever for that, but 
 knew in the hopelessness of her heart — as Luca also 
 knew it in his — that the good and gallant youth would 
 never be able to create anything that would go as the 
 duke's gifts to the Gonzaga of Mantua, ^nd she did 
 care for Luca ! She had spoken to him but rarely 
 indeed, yet passing in and out of the same doors, and 
 going to the same church offices, and dwelling always 
 beneath the same roof, he had found means of late for 
 a word, a flower, a serenade. And he was so hand- 
 some and so brave, and so gentle, too, and so full 
 of deference. Poor Pacifica cared not in the least 
 whether he could paint or not. He could have made 
 her happy. 
 
 In the attic Raffaelle passed the most anxious hours 
 of all his sunny little life. He would not allow Luca 
 even to look at what he did. He barred the door and 
 worked ; when he went away he locked his work up 
 in a wardrobe. The swallows came in and out of the 
 unglazed window, and fluttered all around him ; the 
 morning sunbeams came in too, and made a nimbus 
 round his golden head, like that which his father gilded 
 above the heads of saints. Haffaelle worked on, not 
 looking off, though clang of trumpet, or fanfare of 
 cymbal, often told him there was much going on worth 
 13* 
 
150 I'lIJ^ CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 looking at down below. He was only seven years old, 
 but he labored as earnestly as if he were a man grown, 
 his little rosy fingers gripping that pencil which was to 
 make him in life and death famous as kings are not 
 famous, and let his tender body lie in its last sleep in 
 the Pantheon of Kome. 
 
 He had covered hundreds of sheets with designs be- 
 fore he had succeeded in getting embodied the ideas 
 that haunted him. When he had pleased himself at 
 last, he set to work to transfer his imaginations to the 
 clay in color in the subtile luminous metallic enamel 
 that characterizes Urbino majolica. 
 
 Ah, how glad he was now that his father had let 
 him draw from the time he Avas two years old, and 
 that of late Messer Benedetto had shown him some- 
 thing of the mysteries of painting on biscuit and pro- 
 ducing the metallic lustre which was the especial glory 
 of the pottery of the duchy ! 
 
 How glad he was, and how his little heart bounded 
 and seemed to sing in this his first enjoyment of the 
 joyous liberties and powers of creative work ! 
 
 A well-known writer has said that genius is the 
 power of taking pains ; he should have said rather 
 that genius has this power also, but that first and fore- 
 most it possesses the power of spontaneous and exqui- 
 site production without effort and with delight. 
 
 Luca looked at him (not at his work, for the child 
 had made him promise not to do so) and began to 
 marvel at his absorption, his intentness, the evident 
 facility with which he worked : the little figure, lean- 
 ing over the great dish on the bare board of the table, 
 with the oval opening of the window and the blue sky 
 
THE CHILD OF U RBI NO. \^\ 
 
 beyond it, began to grow sacred to him with more than 
 the sanctity of childhood. Raifaelle's face grew very 
 serious, too, and lost its color, and his large hazel eyes 
 looked very big and grave and dark. 
 
 " Perhaps Signor Giovanni will be angry with me if 
 ever he know," thought poor Luca; but it was too late 
 to alter anything now. The child Sanzio had become 
 his master. 
 
 So Rafifaelle, unknown to any one else, worked on 
 and on there in the attic while the tulips bloomed and 
 withered, and the honeysuckle was in flower in the 
 hedges, and the wheat and barley were being cut in 
 the quiet fields lying far down below in the sunshine. 
 For midsummer was come ; the three months all but a 
 week had passed by. It was known that every one 
 was ready to comj)ete for the duke's choice. 
 
 One afternoon Raifaelle took Luca by the hand and 
 said to him, " Come." 
 
 He led the young man up to the table, beneath the 
 unglazed window, where he had passed so many of 
 these ninety days of the spring and summer. 
 
 Luca gave a great cry, and stood gazing, gazing, 
 gazing. Then he fell on his knees and embraced the 
 little feet of the child : it was the first homage that 
 he, whose life became one beautiful song of praise, re- 
 ceived from man. 
 
 " Dear Luca," he said, softly, " do not do that. If 
 it be indeed good, let us thank God." 
 
 What his friend saw were the great oval dish and 
 the great jar or vase standing with the sunbeams full 
 upon them, and the brushes and the tools and the 
 colors all strewn around. And they shone with lustrous 
 
152 THE CHILD OF IJRBINO. 
 
 opaline hues and wondrous flame-like glories and gleam- 
 ing iridescence, like melted jewels, and there were all 
 manner of graceful symbols and classic designs wrought 
 upon them ; and their borders were garlanded with 
 cherubs and flowers, bearing the arms of Montefeltro, 
 and the landscapes were the tender, homely landscapes 
 round about Urbino; and the mountains had the 
 solemn radiance that the Apennines wore at evening- 
 time, and amidst the figures there was one supreme, 
 white-robed, golden-crowned Esther, to whom the 
 child painter had given the face of Pacifica. And this 
 wondrous creation, wrought by a baby's hand, had 
 safely and secretly passed the ordeal of the furnace, 
 and had come forth without spot or flaw. 
 
 Luca ceased not from kneeling at the feet of Raf- 
 faelle, as ever since has kneeled the world. 
 
 " Oh, wondrous boy ! Oh, angel sent unto men !" 
 sighed the poor 'prentice, as he gazed ; and his heart 
 was so full that he burst into tears. 
 
 " Let us thank God," said little Raffaelle, again ; 
 and he joined his small hands that had wrought this 
 miracle, and said his Laus Domini. 
 
 When the precious jar and the great platter were 
 removed to the wardrobe and shut up in safety behind 
 the steel wards of the locker, Luca said, timidly, feeling 
 twenty years in age behind the wisdom of this divine 
 child, " But, dearest boy, I do not see how your marvel- 
 lous and most exquisite accomplishment can advan- 
 tage me. Even if you would allow it to pass as mine, I 
 could not accept such a thing : it would be a fraud, a 
 shame : not even to win Pacifica could I consent." 
 
 "Be not so hasty, good friend," said Paffaelle. 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 153 
 
 " Wait just a little longer yet and see. I have my 
 own idea. Do trust in me." 
 
 " Heaven speaks in you, that I believe," said Luca, 
 humbly. 
 
 RafFaelle answered not, but ran down-stairs, and 
 passing Pacifica, threw his arms about her in more 
 than his usual affectionate caresses. 
 
 " Pacifica, be of good heart," he murmured, and 
 would not be questioned, but ran homeward to his 
 mother. 
 
 "Can it be that Luca has done well," thought 
 Pacifica ; but she feared the child's wishes had outrun 
 his wisdom. He could not be any judge, a child of 
 seven years, even though he were the son of that good 
 and honest painter and poet, Giovanni Sanzio. 
 
 The next morning was midsummer day. Now, the 
 pottery was all to be placed on this forenoon in the 
 bottega of Signor Benedetto ; and the Duke Guido- 
 baldo was then to come and make his choice from 
 amidst them ; and the master-potter, a little because he 
 was a courtier, and more because he liked to affect a 
 mighty indifference and to show he had no favoritism, 
 had declared that he would not himself see the com- 
 peting works of art until the eyes of the Lord of 
 Montefeltro also fell upon them. 
 
 As for Pacifica, she had locked herself in her chamber, 
 alone with her intense agitation. The young men were 
 swaggering about, and taunting each other, and boast- 
 ing. Luca alone sat apart, thrumming an old lute. 
 Giovanni Sanzio, who had ridden home at evening 
 from Citta di Castello, came in from his own house 
 and put his hand on the youth's shoulder. 
 
154 ' ^^^ CHILD OF V RBI NO. 
 
 *' I hear the Pesaro men have brought fine things. 
 Take courage, my lad. Maybe we can entreat the 
 duke to dissuade Pacifica's father from this tyrannous 
 disposal of her hand." 
 
 Luca shook his head wearily. 
 
 There would be one beautiful thing there, indeed, 
 he knew; but what use would that be to him? 
 
 " The child — the child " he stammered, and 
 
 then remembered that he must not disclose Raffaelle's 
 secret. 
 
 " My child ?" said Signor Giovanni. " Oh, he will 
 be here ; he will be sure to be here : wherever there is 
 a painted thing to be seen, there always, be sure, is 
 Haffaelle." 
 
 Then the good man sauntered within from the loggia, 
 to exchange salutations with Ser Benedetto, who, in a 
 suit of fine crimson with doublet of sad-colored velvet, 
 was standing ready to advance bare-headed into the 
 street as soon as the hoofs of the duke's charger should 
 strike on the stones. 
 
 "You must be anxious in your thoughts," said 
 Signor Giovanni to him. "They say a youth from 
 Pesaro brings something fine : if you should find your- 
 self bound to take a stranger into your work-room and 
 your home " 
 
 " If he be a man of genius he will be welcome," 
 answered Messer Ronconi, pompously. "Be he of 
 Pesaro, or of Fano, or of Castel-Durante, I go not 
 back from my word : I keep my word, to my own 
 hindrance even, ever." 
 
 " Let us hope it will bring you only joy and triumph 
 here," said his neighbor, who knew him to be an honest 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. J 55 
 
 man and a true, if over-obstinate and too vain of his 
 own place in Urbino. 
 
 " Our lord the duke !" shouted the people standing 
 in the street; and Ser Benedetto walked out with 
 stately tread to receive the honor of his master's visit 
 to his bottega. 
 
 Raffaelle slipped noiselessly up to his father's side, 
 and slid his little hand into Sanzio's. 
 
 • " You are not surely afraid of our good Guido- 
 baldo !" said his father, with a laugh and some little 
 surprise, for Raffaelle was very pale, and his lower lip 
 trembled a little. 
 
 " No," said the child, simply. 
 
 The young duke and his court came riding down the 
 street, and paused before the old stone house of the 
 master-potter, — splendid gentlemen, though only in 
 their morning apparel, with noble Barbary steeds fret- 
 ting under them, and little pages and liveried varlets 
 about their steps. Usually, unless he went hunting or 
 on a visit to some noble, Guidobaldo, like his father, 
 walked about Urbino like any one of his citizens ; but 
 he knew the pompous and somewhat vainglorious 
 temper of Messer Benedetto, and good-naturedly was 
 willing to humor its harmless vanities. Bowing to the 
 ground, the master-potter led the way, walking back- 
 ward into his bottega; the courtiers followed their 
 prince; Giovanni Sanzio with his little son and a few 
 other privileged persons went in also at due distance. 
 At the farther end of the workshop stood the pupils and 
 the artists from Pesaro and other places in the duchy 
 whose works were there in competition. In all there 
 "were some ten competitors : poor Luca, who had set 
 
156 THE CHILD OF U RBI NO. 
 
 his owu work on the table with the rest as he waa 
 obliged to do, stood hindmost of all, shrinking back, 
 to hide his misery, into the deepest shadow of the 
 deep-bayed latticed window. 
 
 On the narrow deal benches that served as tables 
 on working-days to the pottery-painters were ranged 
 the dishes and the jars, with a number attached to 
 each, — no name to any, because Signor Benedetto was 
 resolute to prove his own absolute disinterestedness in 
 the matter of choice : he wished for the best artist. 
 Prince Guidobaldo, doffing his plumed cap courteously, 
 walked down the long room and examined each pro- 
 duction in its turn. On the whole, the collection made 
 a brave display of majolica, though he was perhaps a 
 little disappointed at the result in each individual case, 
 for he had wanted something out of the common run 
 and absolutely perfect. Still, with fair words he com- 
 plimented Signor Benedetto on the brave show, and 
 only before the work of poor Luca was he entirely 
 silent, since indeed silence was the greatest kindness 
 he could show to it : the drawing was bold and regu- 
 lar, but the coloring was hopelessly crude, glaring, and 
 ill-disposed. 
 
 At last, before a vase and a dish that stood modestly 
 at the very farthest end of the deal bench, the duke 
 gave a sudden exclamation of delight, and Signor 
 Benedetto grew crimson with pleasure and surprise, 
 and Giovanni Sanzio pressed a little nearer and tried 
 to see over the shoulders of the gentlemen of the 
 court, feeling sure that something rare and beautiful 
 must have called forth that cry of wonder from the 
 Lord of Montefeltro, and having seen at a glance 
 
THE CHILD OF URBINO. 157 
 
 that for his poor friend Luca there was no sort of 
 hope. 
 
 " This is beyond all comparison/' said Guidobaldo, 
 taking the great oval dish up reverently in his hands. 
 " Maestro Benedetto, I do felicitate you indeed that you 
 should possess such a pupil. He will be a glory to our 
 beloved Urbino." 
 
 " It is indeed most excellent work, my lord duke/' 
 said the master-potter, who was trembling with surprise 
 and dared not show all the astonishment and emotion 
 that he felt at the discovery of so exquisite a creation 
 in his bottega. " It must be," he added, for he was 
 a very honest man, " the work of one of the lads of 
 Pesaro or Castel-Duraute. I have no such craftsman 
 in my workshop. It is beautiful exceedingly !" 
 
 " It is worth its weight in gold !" said the prince, 
 sharing his emotion. " Look, gentlemen — look ! Will 
 not the fame of Urbino be borne beyond the Apennines 
 and Alps?" 
 
 Thus summoned, the court and the citizens came to 
 look, and averred that truly never in Urbino had they 
 seen such painting on majolica. 
 
 " But whose is it ?" said Guidobaldo, impatiently, 
 casting his eyes over the gathered group in the back- 
 ground of apprentices and artists. " Maestro Bene- 
 detto, I pray you, the name of the artist ; I pray you, 
 quick !" 
 
 " It is marked number eleven, my lord," answered 
 the master-potter. " Ho, you who reply to that num- 
 ber, stand out and give your name. My lord duke has 
 chosen your work. Ho, there ! do you hear me ?" 
 
 But not one of the group moved. The young men 
 U 
 
158 THE CHILD OF URBINO. 
 
 looked from one to another. Who was this nameless 
 rival ? There were but ten of themselves. 
 
 " Ho, there !" repeated Signor Benedetto, getting 
 angry. " Cannot you find a tongue, I say ? Who has 
 wrought this work? Silence is but insolence to his 
 highness and to me !" 
 
 Then the child Sanzio loosened his little hand from 
 his father's hold, and went forward, and stood before 
 the master-potter. 
 
 " I painted it," he said, with a pleased smile : " I^ 
 Raffaelle." 
 
 Can you not fancy, without telling, the confusion, 
 the wonder, the rapture, the incredulity, the questions, 
 the wild ecstasy of praise, that followed on the discov- 
 ery of the child artist ? Only the presence of Guido- 
 baldo kept it in anything like decent quietude, and 
 even he, all duke though he was, felt his eyes wet and 
 felt his heart swell ; for he himself was childless, and 
 for the joy that Giovanni Sanzio felt that day he would 
 have given his patrimony and duchy. 
 
 He took a jewel hung on a gold chain from his own 
 breast and threw it over Raffaelle's shoulders. 
 
 " There is your first guerdon," he said : "you will 
 have many, O wondrous child, who shall live when we 
 are dust!" 
 
 Raffaelle, who himself was all the while quite tran- 
 quil and unmoved, kissed the duke's hand with sweetest 
 grace, then turned to his own father. 
 
 " It is true I have won my lord duke's prize ?" 
 
 " Quite true, my angel !" said Giovanni Sanzio, with 
 tremulous voice. 
 
 Raffaelle looked up at Maestro Benedetto. 
 
THE CHILD OF U RBI NO. I59 
 
 " Then I claim the hand of Pacifica !" 
 
 There was a smile on all the faces round, even ou 
 the darker countenances of the vanquished painters. 
 
 " Oh, would indeed you were of age to be my son by 
 marriage, as you are the son of my heart !" murmured 
 Signor Benedetto. " Dear and marvellous child, you 
 are but jesting, I know. Tell me what it is indeed 
 that you would have. I could deny you nothing ; and 
 truly it is you who are my master." 
 
 " I am your pupil," said Raffaelle, with that pretty 
 serious smile of his, his little fingers playing with the 
 ducal jewel. " I could never have painted that majol- 
 ica yonder had you not taught me the secrets and man- 
 agement of your colors. Now, dear maestro mine, and 
 you, O my lord duke, do hear me ! I by the terms of 
 the contest have won the hand of Pacifica and the right 
 of association with Messer Ronconi. I take these rights 
 and I give them over to my dear friend Luca of Fano, 
 because he is the honestest man in all the world, and 
 does honor Signor Benedetto and love Pacifica as no 
 other can do so well, and Pacifica loves him ; and my 
 lord duke will say that thus all will be well." 
 
 So with the grave innocent audacity of a child he 
 spoke, — this seven-year-old painter who was greater 
 than any there. 
 
 Signor Benedetto stood mute, sombre, agitated. Luca 
 had sprung forward and dropped on one knee: he was 
 as pale as ashes. Rafiaelle looked at him with a smile. 
 
 "My lord duke," he said, with his little gentle 
 smile, " you have chosen my work ; defend me in my 
 rights." 
 
 *' Listen to the voice of an angel, my good Ben- 
 
160 THE CHILD OF VRBINO. 
 
 edetto; lieaven speaks by him," said Guidobaldo, 
 gravely, laying his hand on the arm of his master- 
 potter. 
 
 Harsh Signor Benedetto burst into tears. 
 
 "I can refuse him nothing," he said, with a sob. 
 '' He will give such glory unto Urbino as never the 
 world hath seen !" 
 
 "And call down this fair Pacifica whom Eaffuelle 
 has won," said the sovereign of the duchy, "and I 
 will give her myself as her dower as many gold pieces 
 as we can cram into this famous vase. An honest 
 youth who loves her j^nd whom she loves, — what 
 better can you do, Benedetto? Young man, rise up 
 and be happy. An angel has descended on earth this 
 day for you." 
 
 But Luca heard not: he was still kneeling at the 
 feet of Eaffaelle, where the world has knelt ever 
 
" LET US REST A LITTLE." 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 It was in one of the green lanes of South Devonshire 
 that Gemma, being quite tired out, threw herself down 
 on the daisied grass and said to her grandfather, — 
 
 " Nonno, let us rest a little and eat." Her grand- 
 father said to her, — 
 
 " Carina mia, I would eat gladly, but we have 
 nothing to eat. Tiie satchel is empty." 
 
 Gemma, lying chest downward on the turf, sighed, 
 and buried her hands in her abundant curls and cooled 
 her forehead on the damp grass. She was just thirteen 
 years old, and she was so pretty that she made the heart 
 of the old grandfather ache often when he looked at 
 her and thought that she would most likely soon be 
 left alone in the world, for her little brother Bindo 
 could not be said to count for anything, being only ten 
 years old. Gemma was very lovely indeed, being tall 
 and lithe and gay, and full of grace, and having a beau- 
 tiful changeable face, all light and color. But she was 
 only thirteen, and all she could do to get her livelihood 
 was to dance the saltarello and the tarantella. She and 
 her brother danced, which they did very prettily, and 
 the old man whom they called Nonno told fortunes 
 and performed some simple conjuring tricks, and these 
 were all bad trades as times went, for nowadays nobody 
 I U* 161 
 
J 62 IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 amuses himself with simple things, and the rural folk 
 have grown as sharp and as serious as the city people, 
 which to my thinking is a very great loss to the world, 
 for merry people are generally kind people, and con- 
 tented people are easily governed, and have no appe- 
 tites for politics and philosophies and the like indiges- 
 tible things. 
 
 Nonno and Gemma and Bincio were merry enough 
 even on empty stomachs. The old man was as simple 
 as a duck, and as gentle as a rabbit, and was rather 
 more of a child than either of the children. BIndo 
 was a little, round, playful, gleeful thing, like a little 
 field-mouse, and Gemma was as gay as a lark, though 
 she had to bear the burden of the only brains that there 
 were in the family. 
 
 They were little Neapolitans ; they had been born in 
 a little cabin on the sunny shore facing Ischia, and in 
 their infancy had tumbled about naked and glad as 
 young dolphins in the bright blue waters. Then their 
 parents had died, — their father at sea, their mother of 
 fever, — and left them to the care of Nonno ; Nonno, 
 who was very old, so old that they thought he must 
 have been made almost before the world itself, and who, 
 after having been a showman of puppets to divert the 
 poorest classes all his life, was so very poor himself then 
 that he could hardly scrape enough together to get a 
 little drink of thin wine and an inch or two of polenta. 
 Being so very poor, he was seduced into accepting an en- 
 gagement for himself and the children with a wicked man 
 whose business it was in life to decoy poor little Italians 
 and make money out of them in foreign lands. Nonno 
 was so good and simple himself that he thought every- 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 163 
 
 body was as harmless as he was, and his grief and 
 amazement were very great when on reaching the 
 English shores with this wicked man he found that 
 the wicked man meant to give him the slip altogether 
 and go off with the t\vo children. By a mere hazard, 
 Nonno, whose name was Epifania Santo (a droll name, 
 but he himself had been a foundling), was able to 
 defeat the wicked man so far that he got out of his 
 clutches and took his grandchildren with him. But 
 there they all three were in England, with no money 
 at all, and nothing on earth but a few puppets, and a 
 conjurer's box of playthings, and the stilts on which 
 the wicked man had had the children taught to walk. 
 And in England they had now been four years, re- 
 maining there chiefly because they had no notion how 
 to get home again, and partly because Nonno had such 
 a great terror of the sea. He had suffered so much on 
 the long voyage into which he had been entrapped from 
 Naples, round by the Bay of Biscay up the Bristol 
 Channel, that he would sooner have died there and 
 then than have set foot again on board a sea-going 
 vessel. So in England they had stayed, wandering 
 about and picking up a few pence in villages and towns, 
 and clinging together tenderly, and being very often 
 hungry, cold, tired, roofless, but yet being all the while 
 happy. 
 
 Sometimes, too, they fared well : the children's bril- 
 liant uncommon beauty and pretty foreign accent often 
 touched country-people's hearts, and sometimes they 
 would get bed and board at homely farm-houses high 
 on lonely hills, or be made welcome without payment 
 in little wayside inns. They had kept to the south- 
 
l64 J^ THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 west part of the kingdom, never being able to afford 
 other means of locomotion than their own feet, and the 
 farthest distance they had ever compassed had been 
 this far-south country-side, where the green woods and 
 pastures roll down to the broad estuaries of Exe and 
 Dart. This green, wet, shadowy country always seemed 
 strange to the children ; for a long while they thought 
 it was always evening in England. They could re- 
 member the long sunshiny years at home, and the ra- 
 diant air, and the blue, clear sky, and the sea that 
 seemed always laughing. They could never forget it 
 indeed, and when they were together they never talked 
 of anything else: only the cactus-fruit and the green 
 and black figs, the red tomatoes and the rough pome- 
 granates, and the big balls of gold to be had in the 
 orange woods just for the plucking; the boats with the 
 pretty striped sails, and the villas with the marbles and 
 the palms, and the islands all aglow in the sunset, and 
 the distance you could see looking away, away, away 
 into the immeasurable azure of the air. Oh, yes, they 
 remembered it all, and at night they would weep for it, 
 the old man's slow salt tears mingling with the pas- 
 sionate rain of the childish eyes. Here it was green 
 and pretty in its own way, but all so dark, so wet, so 
 misty ! 
 
 " When I try to see, there is a white wall of shadow, 
 — I think it is shadow ; perhaps it is fog, but it is 
 always there," said Gemma. " At hume one looks, and 
 looks, and looks ; there is no end to it." 
 
 Gemma longed sorely to go home; she had not 
 minded the sea at all. Bindo, like Nonno, had been 
 very ill on the voyage, and cried even now whenever 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 165 
 
 he saw a ship, for fear he should be going in it. Bindo 
 was sadly babyish for ten years old ; to make amends, 
 his sister was almost a woman at thirteen. 
 
 They ought now to have been all three serious and 
 alarmed, for Nonno's satchel had not a penny in it, 
 nor a crust, and they were all hungry, for it was noon- 
 day. But instead of being miserable they joked, and 
 laughed, and kissed each other, as thousands of their 
 country-folks at home with equally empty stomachs 
 were doing, lying on sunny moles, or marble-strewn 
 benches, or thymy turf under ilex shadows. But then 
 in our dear Italy there is always the sun, the light, the 
 air that kisses and feeds and sends to soft sleep her 
 children, and Gemma and her brother and grandfather 
 were in a wet English lane, with the clouds hurrying 
 up over the distant hills by Dartmoor, and the rain- 
 drops still hanging to the great elm-boughs overhead. 
 
 Yet they were merry, and sang snatches of Neapoli- 
 tan songs, and took no thought for the morrow. They 
 were not far off Dartmouth, and they meant to go into 
 the quaint old town by market-day, and the Dart fisher- 
 and boating-folk were always kind to them. If they 
 were hungry now they would eat to-morrow. 
 
 Suddenly, however, Nonno grew thoughtful as he 
 looked at Gemma, lying face downward on the wet 
 grass, her sandalled feet in air, a dragon-fly fluttering 
 above her head. 
 
 " What would you do if I were to die, my pieci- 
 cotta f" said the poor old man, all at once remembering 
 he was nigh eighty years old. Gemma raised herself, 
 and said nothing. Her eyes, which were very beauti- 
 ful eyes, grew sad and moist. 
 
166 J^ '^^^ APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 " I would take care of Bindo, Nonno," she answered, 
 at last. " Do not be afraid of that." 
 
 " But how ? It is easy to say. But how ?" 
 
 " I suppose I could dance at theatres," said Gemma, 
 after reflection. Nonno shook his head. 
 
 " For the theatres you would need to dance differ- 
 ently: it is all spinning, craning, drilling there; you 
 dance, my child, as a flower in the wind. The theatres 
 do not care for that." 
 
 " Then I do not know," said Gemma. " But some- 
 thing I would do. Bindo should not suffer." 
 
 " You are a good child," said the old man, tender'y. 
 She sank down again on the grass. 
 
 " Do not think of dying, Nonno," she said. '•' It in 
 all so dark where death is." 
 
 " Not when one gets to the saints," said the simple 
 old man. He always fancied Paradise just like Amalfi, 
 — his own Amalfi, where long ago, so long ago, he had 
 run and leaped, a merry naked boy, in the azure waves, 
 and caught the glittering sea-mouse and the pink column 
 of the gemmia in his hands. Paradise would be just 
 like Amalfi; the promise of it consoled him as he 
 trotted on tired limbs along the wet gravel of English 
 market-roads, or meekly bore the noisy horse-play of 
 English village crowds. 
 
 The rain had ceased, and the sun was shining a little 
 in a drowsy half-hearted way, as if it were but half 
 awake even at mid-day. There were big hedges on 
 either side of the lane, and broad strips of turf. These 
 lanes are almost all that is left of the rural and leafy 
 old England of Seventeen Hundred ; and they are 
 beautiful in their own way when midsummer crowds 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. IQ'J 
 
 them with flowers, and in spring when their palra-wil- 
 lows blossom, and in antumn when their hazel -coppices 
 are brown with nuts, and in winter when their holly 
 and ivy clamber high, and their fine trees make a 
 tracery of bare boughs delicate as the net-work of lace 
 against the gray skies. 
 
 On the other side of the hedge, to their right, there 
 was a large corn-field ; it was now the time when wheat 
 is ripe in England, and the men and women who were 
 reaping it were sitting, resting, drinking their cider and 
 eating their noonday bread and bacon. Bindo watched 
 them through a hole in the hedge, and began to cry. 
 
 " It makes me hungrier to see them eat !" he said, 
 with a sob. Gemma sprang to her feet. 
 
 " Do not cry so, my Bindo," she said, with a tender 
 voice : " I will ask them to give you some." 
 
 She thrust her lithe body through the gap, and 
 walked boldly across the field, — a strange figure for an 
 English corn-field, with her short white skirt, and her 
 red bodice, and her striped sash of many colors, and her 
 little coral ear-rings in her ears ; she was bareheaded, 
 and her dusky gold hair, the hair that the old painters 
 loved, was coiled rope-like all around her small head. 
 
 " My little brother is hungry : will you be so very 
 gentle and give us a little bread ?" she said, in her 
 pretty accent, which robbed the English tongue of all 
 its gutturals and clothed it in a sweetness not its own. 
 She was not fond of begging, being proud, and she 
 colored very much as she said it. 
 
 The reapers stared, then grinned, gaped once or twice, 
 and then stretched big brown hands out to her with 
 goodly portions of food, and one added a mug of cider. 
 
168 I^ THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 " I do thank you so much," she said, \^ith a smile 
 that was like a sunbeam. ^' The drink I take not, for 
 Nonno has no love of it; but for the bread I pray 
 may San Martino bless you !" 
 
 Then she courtesied to them, as nature and nobody 
 else had taught her to do, and ran away, fleet as a lap- 
 wing, with her treasure. 
 
 " 'Tis that dancing-girl of the Popish country," said 
 the men one to another, and added that if the master 
 caught her in his lane 'twould be the worse for her, for 
 he couldna abide tramps and vagabon's. But Gemma, 
 who knew nothing of that, was sharing her spoils with 
 glee, and breaking the small bit of bread she allowed 
 to herself with teeth as white as a dog's. 
 
 " The way to Dartmouth will not now seem so long," 
 she said, and Bindo nodded his head with a mouth quite 
 full of good brown bread and fat bacon. 
 
 " How much do they love came secca here !" said 
 Nonno, with a sigh, thinking of the long coils of maca- 
 roni, the lovely little fried fish, the oil, the garlic, the 
 black beans, that he never saw now, alas, alas ! " The 
 land is fat, but the people they know not how to live," 
 he added, with a sigh. "A people without wine, — 
 what should they know ?" 
 
 "They make good bread," said Gemma, with her 
 ivory teeth in a crust. 
 
 Meantime, the person who owned the lane was 
 coming out into the fields to see how his men got on 
 with their work. His house stood near, hidden in 
 trees on a bend of the Ex.e. He was rich, young, 
 prosperous, and handsome ; he was also generous and 
 charitable; but he was a magistrate, and he hated 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. Igg 
 
 strollers. By name he was known as Philip Carey; 
 his people had been squires here for many generations ; 
 he called himself a yeoman, and was as proud as if he 
 were a prince. 
 
 As fates would have it, he rode down the lane now 
 on his gray horse, and when he saw the group of Nonno 
 and Gemma and Bindo, with their bags and bales and 
 bundles, scattered about on the turf of his lane, his 
 gray eyes grew ominously dark. 
 
 "Who gave you leave to come here?" he asked, 
 sternly enough, as he reined up his horse. 
 
 Nonno looked up smiling, and stood up and bowed 
 with grace and ease. The English tongue he had 
 never been able to master : he glanced at Gemma to 
 bid her answer. 
 
 "We were only resting, Excellenza," said she, boldly. 
 " It is a public road." 
 
 "It is not a public road," said the owner of it. 
 " And if it were, you would have no right to cumber 
 it. Are you strollers ?" 
 
 "Strollers?" repeated Gemma: she did not under- 
 stand the word. 
 
 " Tramps ? Are you tramps ?" 
 
 " We are artists," said Gemma. 
 
 " What do you do for your living ?" asked her judge. 
 
 " We dance," she answered, " and Nonno yonder he 
 does conjuring tricks, and sometimes has a little lotto, 
 but that is only when we have got a little money : we 
 have none now." 
 
 " A lottery !" exclaimed Mr. Carey, whose face grew 
 very stern. "You are mere idle vagabonds, then, 
 when you are not worse. Do you live by your wits?" 
 H 15 
 
170 J^ ^^^ APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 " We dance," said Gemma, again. 
 
 " Dance ! Can you read and write ?" 
 
 " Oh, no." 
 
 " How old are you ?" 
 
 "I am thirteen, Bindo is ten, Nonno is — is — is, oh, 
 as old as the world." 
 
 " Is he your grandfather ?" 
 
 " That is what you say in English. We say Nonno." 
 
 " Cannot he speak English ?" 
 
 " No : he has lost his teeth, and it is so hard, is your 
 English." 
 
 " You are an impudent girl." 
 
 Gemma smiled her beautiful shining smile, as if he 
 had paid her an admirable compliment. 
 
 She knew the rider by sight very well, though he 
 did not know her. His housekeeper had whipped 
 Bindo for getting into her poultry-house and putting 
 two eggs in his pocket, and his gardener one day had 
 turned them both out of his orchards as trespassers, so 
 that he and his residence of Carey's Honor were al- 
 ready scored with black in the tablets of the children's 
 memories. 
 
 That he was a handsome young man, with a grave 
 and pensive face and a very sweet smile, when he did 
 smile, which was rarely, did not affect Gemma's dislike 
 to him : she was too young to be impressed by good 
 looks. Philip Carey was not touched by the beauty 
 of her either : he scarcely saw that she was pretty, he 
 was so angry with her for what seemed to him her 
 saucy answers. 
 
 " Why are you not dressed like a Christian ?" he 
 6aid, somewhat irrelevantly. 
 
IN THE APPLE-CO UNTRF. 17| 
 
 " I am a Christian," said Gemma, angry in her turn, 
 — " a better Christian than you are. And what is my 
 dress to you ? You do not buy it." 
 
 " It is immodest." 
 
 " Oh ! oh !" cried Gemma, with a flame-like light- 
 ning in her eyes ; and like lightning she leaped up on 
 to tiie saddle and gave the astonished gentleman a 
 sounding box on both ears. 
 
 He was so utterly astonished that he had no time 
 to protect himself, and his horse, which was utterly 
 astonished too, began to plunge and rear and kick, and 
 fully occupied him, whilst a guffaw from the field be- 
 yond added to his rage by telling him that his reapers 
 had witnessed his discomfiture. 
 
 Gemma had leaped to the ground as swiftly as she 
 had leaped to the saddle, and, whilst the horse was 
 rearing and plunging, had caught up their bag and 
 baggage, had pushed and pulled her brother and her 
 grandfather before her, and had flown down the lane 
 and out of sight before Philip Carey had reduced his 
 steed to any semblance of reason. His ears tingled and 
 his pride was bitterly incensed, yet he could not help 
 laughing at himself. 
 
 " The little tigress !" he thought, as he endeavored 
 to soothe his fretting and wheeling beast, which was 
 young and only half broken. 
 
 When he rode in at last by an open gate among his 
 reapers the men were all too afraid of him not to wear 
 very grave faces, as though they had seen nothing. 
 Every one was afraid of Philip Carey except his dogs, 
 which shows that he had a good heart under a stern 
 manner, for dogs never make mistakes as men do. 
 
172 ^^ THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 He remained about his fields all the day, and went 
 home to a solitary dinner. He had no living relative. 
 He was rather more of a scholar than a farmer, and 
 liked his loneliness. His old house, which was called 
 Carey's Honor ever since the days of the Tudors, was 
 a rambling comfortable building, set amidst green lawn, 
 huge hew- and oak-trees, and meadows that stretched 
 downward to the broad Dart water. It was all within 
 and without as it had been in the days of the Armada, 
 and the ivy that covered it was as old as the brass 
 dogs in the big chimney-places. Many men with such 
 a possession would have been restless to reach a higher 
 rank, but Philip Carey was a grave young man, of re- 
 fined and severe taste and simple habits. He loved his 
 home, and was content with it, and wanted nothing of 
 the world. 
 
 This evening he did not feel so contented as usual : 
 his ears seemed still to tingle from those blows at the 
 hand of a child. He liked old Greek and Latin au- 
 thors, and when the day was done liked to sit and read 
 of a summer evening under the biggest yew upon his 
 lawn, with the lowing of the cattle, the song of the 
 nightingale, and the cries of the water-birds the only 
 sounds upon the quiet air. But this evening his fa- 
 vorite philosophers said nothing to him : had Plato or 
 any one of them ever had his ears boxed by a little fury 
 of a strolling dancer? 
 
 The little fury, meanwhile, was dancing the saltardlo 
 with her brother before a crazy old wooden inn in 
 Dartmouth, — dancing it as the girls do under the cork- 
 trees in Sardinia, and under the spreading oaks of the 
 Marches, and so pleasing the yokels of the river town 
 
JN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 173 
 
 with Ler grace and fire and animation that the pence 
 rolled in by scores into her tambourine, and the mis- 
 tress of the poor little inn said to her, " Nay, my pretty, 
 as you have gained them here you must spend them 
 here, and it is market-day to-morrow." 
 
 Gemma was quite happy to have gained so much, 
 and she got a modest little supper for Nonno, and as 
 she shook down all her dark gold hair in the moon- 
 light and looked on the water rippling away past the 
 walls of the old castle she laughed out, though she was 
 all alone, thinking of the grave gentleman on the gray 
 horse, and murmured naughtily to herself, " I hope I 
 did hurt him ! Oh, I hope I hurt him !" 
 
 Then she knew she ought not to hope that, and 
 kissed the Madonnina that hung at her throat, and asked 
 the Holy Mother's pardon, and then laid herself down 
 on the little hard bed and went as sound asleep as a 
 flittermouse in winter-time. 
 
 The next day was market-day in the little sleepy 
 Old-World town upon the Dart, where the ships and 
 the boats go by on the gray sea and the brown river- 
 water. There would be watermen and countrymen, 
 both, in numbers, farmers and fisherfolk, millers and 
 cider-merchants, peddlers and hucksters, and egg-wivea 
 and wagoners, and Nonno was early awakened by the 
 children, who were eager to begin getting more pence 
 with the sunrise : the pence when they were made had 
 such a terrible knack of flying away again. Gemma 
 believed that they grew wings like the butterflies, 
 though she never could see them, and though she and 
 Nonno kept such close watch and ward over them. 
 
 They made themselves as spruce as they could for 
 15* 
 
174 ^^ y^^ APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 the day. Gemma had washed her white bodice and 
 Biudo's white shirt, and, though the scarlet and the 
 blue and the yellow had got stained and weather-worn, 
 the clothes yet were picturesque, and with their curling 
 hair, and their beautiful big black eyes, and their cheeks 
 as warm and as soft as peaches, slie and Bindo were a 
 pretty sight as they bent and swayed and circled and 
 moved, now so slowly, now so furiously, in the changes 
 of the saltarello, whilst their grandfather played for 
 them on a little wooden flute, and Gemma beat her 
 tambourine high above her auburn head, and, as the 
 music waxed faster and the dance wilder, sprang and 
 whirled and leaped and bounded for all the world, the 
 people said, like the jack-o'-lantern that flashes over 
 the bogs of Dartmoor. 
 
 They danced, with pauses for rest between their dances, 
 all the day long ; and when they were so very tired that 
 they could dance no more, Nonno began his simple 
 tricks with his thimble and peas, his wooden cups, and 
 his little tray full of cards. They were innocent tricks, 
 and when he told fortunes by the cards (which Gemma 
 expounded to whosoever would pay a penny to hear the 
 future) he dealt out fate so handsomely that such a 
 destiny was very cheap indeed at four farthings. 
 
 The country-folks were pleased and content to have 
 a gilt coach and horses and all manner of good luck 
 promised them over the cards, and the youths liked to 
 look at pretty Gemma, who was so unlike the maidens 
 they picked apples with, or sold pilchards to, in their 
 green Devon ; and so the day wore merrily on apace, 
 and the afternoon sun was slanting towards its setting 
 over the Cornish shores and Cornish seas far away to 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRT. 175 
 
 the westward, when all in a moment there was a shout 
 of "Police! Police!" and the good-humored crowd 
 hustled together and made way, and two constables 
 with wooden truncheons, saying never a word, marched 
 up to the poor little tray-table, swept off it cards and 
 coins and conjuring toys, and arrested poor old trem- 
 bling Nonno in the sacred name of the Law ! 
 
 Nonno began to scream a million words to a minute, 
 but, alas ! they were all Italian words, nobody under 
 stood one of them. Bindo sobbed, and Gemma, stand- 
 ing a moment transfixed with horror, flew upon the 
 constable who had taken her poor old grandfather and 
 bit his arm till the blood spurted. Mad with pain, the 
 constable seized her, not gently, and clutched Bindo by 
 the collar with his other hand. There was no possi- 
 bility of resistance ; Gemma fought, indeed, like a little 
 polecat, but the men were too strong for her ; they soon 
 took her away through the crowd on the same road that 
 Nonno was taking peaceably, and when the crowd mut- 
 tered a little at its play being thus spoiled, the consta- 
 bles only said, gruffly, " Get you out of the way, or 
 ye'll be clapped in jail too, maybe; thimble-rigging, 
 card -sharping, posturing, gambling, swindling, — why, 
 this old dodger will have a month of treadmill if he 
 have a day !" 
 
 And the crowd said among itself that to be sure the 
 old fellow was a foreigner, it would not do to get into 
 trouble about him, and most likely he only made believe 
 to know the future ; so left him to himself, and went 
 to the alehouses and consoled themselves for his mis- 
 fortunes in draughts of cider. 
 
 The two constables, meanwhile, consigned the old 
 
176 IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 man and his grandchildren to the lock-up: Nonno kept 
 sighing and sobbing, and asking innumerable ques- 
 tions in his own tongue, and Bindo shrieked at the 
 top of his voice as he was dragged along; Gemma 
 alone, now that she was vanquished, was mute. Her 
 lips were shut and silent, but her eyes spoke, darting 
 out flames of fire as if Vesuvius itself were burning 
 behind thera. For four whole years they had been 
 wandering about the southwest part of England, and 
 had done no less and no more than they had done 
 to-day, and never had they been told that it was 
 wrong. 
 
 How could it be wrong to make a pea jump away 
 from under a wooden cup, and promise a ploughman 
 or a wagoner a coach and horses if it pleased him? 
 For if Nonno did cheat a little, ever so little, poor old 
 man, the children did not know it, and whatever 
 Nonno did was always to them alike virtue and wis- 
 dom. 
 
 The constables were very angry with them; Gemma 
 had bitten one of them as if she were a little wild-cat, 
 and the old man seemed to them a sorry old rascal, 
 living by his wits and his tricks and promising the 
 yokels coaches-and-six to turn a penny. Foreigners 
 are not favored by the rural police in England ; and 
 whether they have plaster casts, dancing bears, singing 
 children, performing mice or monkeys, or only a few 
 conjuring toys, like poor old Epifania Santo, it is all 
 one to the rural police: down they go as members 
 of the dangerous classes. If the market-folks wanted 
 diversion, there were good, honest Punch and Judy 
 generally to be seen on fair-days ; and once or twice a 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 177 
 
 year, at the great cider or horse fairs, there came always 
 a show, with dwarfs, and giants, and a calf with two 
 heads : what more could any country population need 
 in the way of entertainment ? 
 
 Into the lock-up, accordingly, they put poor Nonno 
 and his grandchildren, and shut and locked the door 
 upon them. 
 
 It was now evening-time : there was clean straw in 
 the place, and a mug of water and some bread. Nonno 
 and Bindo abandoned themselves to the uttermost hope- 
 lessness of despair, and laid themselves face downward 
 on the straw, sobbing their very hearts out. Gemma 
 was dry-eyed, her forehead was crimson, her teeth were 
 set ; she was consumed with rage, that burnt up alike 
 her terror and her pain. Oh, why did not a handful 
 of Neapolitan sailors sail over the water, and land, and 
 kill all these English? It was four years since she 
 had seen Naples, but she remembered, — oh, how she 
 remembered ! And they had come all the way out of 
 their own sunshine only to be locked up in a trap like 
 rats ! Furious thoughts of setting fire to this prison- 
 house beset her ; she had matches in her pocket, but it 
 would be hard to set it on fire without consuming them- 
 selves with it, since the doors were fast locked. What 
 could she do ? M'hat could she do ? 
 
 " Why do they take us ? We have done no harm," 
 she said, through her shut teeth. 
 
 " Carina mia/' sighed her grandfather, shivering 
 where he lay on the straw, "I am afraid before the 
 law we are no better than the owls and the wood-rats 
 are; we are only vagabonds; we have no dwelling and 
 we have no trade." 
 
178 IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 " We pay for our lodging, and we pay for our 
 bread !" 
 
 " Perhaps they do not believe that. Always have I 
 been so afraid this would happen, and now it has come 
 at last." 
 
 Tlie poor old man sank back on the straw again, 
 and began to sob piteously. Why had he left the merry 
 crowds of the Strada del Male, where there was always 
 a laugh and a song, and a slice of melon or of pasta f 
 
 At last both he and Bindo sobbed themselves into 
 sleep, but no sleep came to Gemma; she was wide 
 awake, panting, hot, all alive with fury, all the night. 
 
 With morning they were all taken before the magis- 
 trates, who were sitting that day. There were a great 
 many gentlemen and officials, but among them all 
 Gemma only saw one, the horseman whose ears she 
 had boxed in the lane. For Philip Carey was on the 
 bench that day, and recognized, with not much pleasure, 
 the little group of Italian strollers. They all three 
 looked miserable, jaded, and very dusty. The night 
 passed in the lock-up had taken all their look of sun- 
 shiny merriment away ; the straw had caught on their 
 poor garments; the faces of Nonno and the little boy 
 were swollen and disfigured with crying; only Gemma, 
 all dishevelled and dusty and feverish, had a pride and 
 ferocity about her that gave her strength and kept her 
 beauty. 
 
 As she was the only one who could talk any English, 
 she was ordered to speak for the others ; but when she 
 said her grandfather's name was Epifania Santo, there 
 was a laughter in the court, which incensed her so 
 bitterly that she flung back her curls out of her eyes 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 179 
 
 and said, " If you do not believe what I say, why do 
 you want me to speak ?" 
 
 Then being once started she went on before any of 
 the magistrates or officials could stop her : " You have 
 taken us up; why have you taken us up? we have 
 done nobody any sort of harm. We only dance, and 
 Nonno tells fortunes, and does the tricks, and you have 
 taken his box away, and do you call that honest to a 
 poor man? We do not rob, we do not kill, we do not 
 hurt; when Bindo takes an apple I am angry." And 
 then her English, which was apt to go away from her 
 in moments of excitement, failed her utterly, and she 
 poured out a torrent of Neapolitan patois which not a 
 soul there present understood, only from her flashing 
 eyes and her expressive gestures it was easy to guess 
 that it meant vehement invective and reproach. 
 
 Mr. Carey looked at her attentively, but he said 
 nothing; his brother magistrates, when she had been 
 peremptorily ordered to be still and listen, put a few 
 sharp questions to her and examined the witnesses, 
 who were policemen and country-people, and who all 
 deposed to the fact that the old Italian did tricks and 
 told fortunes and got them to put their pence down by 
 fair promises, and had moreover dice and cards whereby 
 he induced them to lose money. The children only 
 danced; they had no habitation; they were always 
 wandering about ; by their papers they were natives of 
 Naples. Then the constable whose arm Gemma had 
 bitten appeared with it in a sling, and stated what she 
 had done to him, and this terrible piece of violence 
 prejudiced the whole court greatly against her. 
 
 Mr. Carey smiled once; he took no share in the 
 
180 I^ '^^^ APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 examination. But Gemma was always looking at him ; 
 ehe was always thinking, " This is all his doing because 
 I struck him : he has had us all put in prison because 
 I offended him." 
 
 She hated him, — oh, how she hated him ! If she 
 had not been so watched and warded by the constables, 
 she would have leaped across the court and done the 
 same thing again. For she did not mind anything for 
 herself; but if they put Nonno and Bindo back in 
 prison, and parted them from her, — she knew people 
 were parted in prison and boys and girls were never 
 together there, nor ever the old left with the young. 
 And she knew too that in England there were prisons 
 called workhouses, where they packed away all the 
 people who were poor. Her heart stood still with 
 fright, and all she saw in the dusky court was the 
 grave face of Philip Carey, which seemed to her like 
 the stony face of Fate. 
 
 "Ah, himha mia," sobbed her grandfather in a 
 whisper, "yonder is the gentleman you struck as he 
 rode on his horse. You have been our undoing with 
 your fiery temper: always was I afraid that you 
 would be !" 
 
 Under that reproof Gemma's head drooped and all 
 the color fled out of her cheeks. She knew that it waa 
 a just one. 
 
 Bindo, meanwhile, was clinging to her skirts and 
 whimpering like a poor little beaten puppy, till she 
 thought her very brain would go mad, whirling round 
 and round in such misery. 
 
 The magistrates spoke together, Mr. Carey alone 
 saying little: there was a strong feeling against aJ' 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. tg] 
 
 strollers at that time in the county, on account of 
 many robberies that had been committed on outlying 
 farms by tramps and gypsies in the last few years, and 
 many raids that had been made on poultry-houses, 
 apple-lofts, and sheep-folds. Epifania Santo and his 
 grandchildren only seemed to the bench idle, useless, 
 and not harmless vagrants, no better than the wood- 
 rats, as old Nonno had said ; whilst the fierce onslaught 
 on the constable of which Gemma had been guilty gave 
 their misdeeds a darker color in the eyes of the Devon 
 gentlemen. 
 
 After some consultation and some disagreement 
 among the magistrates, the old man, having no visible 
 means of subsistence, was condemned to a month's 
 imprisonment for unlawfully gambling and deceiving 
 the public, whilst Bindo and Gemma were respectively 
 ordered to be consigned to reformatories. In consider- 
 ation of Epifania Santo's age, and of his being a 
 foreigner, he was spared hard labor. When Gemma 
 comprehended the sentence, and the old man had been 
 made to understand it also, such a scene of grief and 
 of despair ensued as no English court had ever beheld. 
 To the slow and stolid folk of the banks of Dart it 
 seemed as if madness had descended straight upon 
 these strangers. Their passionate paroxysms of woe 
 had no limit, and no likeness to anything ever seen in 
 Devon before. 
 
 Gemma had to be torn by main force from her 
 brother and grandfather, and, writhing in the hands 
 of the constables as an otter writhes on a spear, she 
 shook her little clinched fists at the bench, and, seeing 
 there only the face of Philip Carey, who to her belief 
 16 
 
132 ^^ ^^^ APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 was sole author of all her sorrows and ills, she cried 
 to him, " I struck you yesterday, I will hurt you more 
 before many days are over. You are a wicked, wicked, 
 wicked man !" 
 
 Then the policeman seized her more roughly, and 
 put his hand over her mouth, and carried her away by 
 sheer force. 
 
 "Did that little jade really strike you a blow, 
 Carey?" asked one of his fellow-magistrates, in sur- 
 prise. 
 
 Mr. Carey smiled a little. " Oh, yes," he said, quietly. 
 " But I had deserved it." 
 
 " I wonder you wanted us to be more lenient, then." 
 
 "One cannot be revenged on a child," he answered, 
 " and they are children of the sun ; they have hotter 
 passions than ours, and quicker oblivion. It would 
 have been better to have given them a little money and 
 shipped them back to Naples. But you outnumbered 
 me. The old man is inoffensive, I think. After all, 
 a penny was not much for a yokel to pay to be blessed 
 by the promise of a coach-and-six." 
 
 But his fellow-magistrates did not see the matter 
 in this light, and thought the old stroller well out 
 of mischief in the jail of Dartmouth. Philip Carey 
 two days before would have thought so with them, 
 for he had the reputation of being severe on the 
 bench ; but the sunny, dusky, ardent face of Gemma 
 had touched him, and the love of the three for each 
 other seemed enviable to him. He had been all alone 
 since his early boyhood, and such affection as theirs 
 seemed to him a beautiful and priceless treasure. 
 It was cruel, he thought, to tear it asunder, as cruel 
 
IN THE APPLE-COVNTRV. 183 
 
 as to pluck all to pieces a red rose just flowered to 
 the light. 
 
 He rode home that evening in the twilight, some- 
 what saddened, and doubtful whether the law was as 
 just and unerring a thing as he had always until then 
 believed it. 
 
 The night saw poor old Nonno put in prison as if 
 he were a thief, and saw the children severed and 
 taken respectively to the boys' and the girls' asylum 
 in a reformatory for naughty children, which some 
 good people with the best intentions had built and 
 endowed in the neighborhood. They had so clung 
 together, and so madly resisted being parted, that they 
 had fairly frightened the men and women in charge 
 of them. They had never been away from each other 
 an hour in their lives ever since little Bindo had been 
 born one summer day in the cabin by the Mediterra- 
 nean and laid in the half of a great gourd as a cradle 
 for his sister's wondering eyes to admire. But severed 
 now they were, and whilst poor Bindo in the boys' 
 ward was subjected to such a scrubbing as he had 
 never had in all his days, and his abundant auburn 
 curls were cut short. Gemma — whose paroxysms of 
 passion had given place to a stolid and strange qui- 
 etude — was also bathed, and clothed in the clothes of 
 the reformatory, whilst her many-colored sash, her pic- 
 turesque petticoats, and her coral ear-rings and necklace 
 were all taken away, fumigated, rolled up in a bundle, 
 and ticketed with a number. She submitted, but her 
 great eyes glared and glowed strangely, and she was 
 perfectly mute. Not a single sound could those set in 
 command over her force from her lips. 
 
184 J^ I'SE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 The superiors were used to stubborn children, savage 
 children, timid children, vicious children ; but this 
 silence of hers, following on her delirium of fury and 
 grief, was new and startling to them. 
 
 She looked very odd, clad perforce in some straightly- 
 cut stiff gray clothes, and when she was set down, one 
 of a long row, to have supper oif oatmeal porridge, the 
 handsome, pale, desperate little face of hers, with burn- 
 ing eyes and an arched red mouth, looked amidst the 
 faces of the other little girls like a carnation among 
 cabbage-stalks. Not a morsel would she eat; not a 
 word would she speak ; at no one would she even 
 look. 
 
 " Oh, Nonno ! oh, Bindo !" her heart kept crying, 
 till it seemed as if it would burst, but never a sound 
 escaped her. 
 
 Poor little Bindo, meanwhile, was sobbing every 
 minute, but he ate his porridge, though he watered 
 it with floods of tears, where he was set among a score 
 of gray-clad, crop-headed English boys, who were 
 gaping and grinning at him. 
 
 With the close of evening Bindo was stowed away 
 in the boys' dormitory, and Gemma was led to one of 
 a number of narrow little iron beds with blue counter- 
 panes. She was undressed and bidden to lie down, 
 which she did. Her bed was the last of the row, and 
 next to the wall : she turned her face to the wall and 
 they thought her resigned. Soon the light was put 
 out, and the little sleepers were in the land of dreams. 
 
 But Gemma never closed her eyes. Her heart 
 seemed to be beating all over her body. She stuffed 
 the sheet into her mouth, and bit it hard to keep in the 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 135 
 
 cries of agony that sprang to her lips. Would she 
 ever see Nonno again? Bindo she might, perhaps, 
 but Nonno, — she was sure he would die in prison. 
 
 There was a window in the wall near the bed ; it was 
 unshuttered. She could see the gray of the evening 
 change to the dark of the night, and then the moon 
 came out, — the harvest-moon, as they called it here. 
 She was only waiting for every one to be asleep to get 
 up and look out of that window and see whether it 
 would let her escape. An under-matron slept in the 
 dormitory, but at the farther end, where everything 
 was quite hushed, and when the slow breathing of 
 the children told that they were all sleeping soundly, 
 Gemma got up in her bed and sat erect. Finding all 
 was still, she put one foot out of bed, and then an- 
 other, and very softly stole to the window. It was a 
 lattice window, and left a little open, for the night was 
 warm. A sweet smell of moist fields, of growing 
 grass, of honeysuckle hedges, came up on the night 
 air. Gemma noiselessly opened the window a little 
 farther and looked out: it was far, far down to the 
 ground below : still, she thought it was possible for her 
 to escape. She stole back to the bedside, put on the 
 hideous, ungainly cotton clothes as well as she could 
 in the dark, and knotted the skirt of the frock tight 
 round her limbs so as to leave them untrammelled. 
 If no one awoke, she could get away, she reflected ; 
 for her quick eyes had seen a rain-pipe that passed 
 from the casement to the ground. 
 
 She paused a few moments, making sure, quite sure, 
 that every one in the long dormitory was asleep. As 
 she stood, she saw some hundred matches lying by a 
 16* 
 
18Q IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 lamp, of which the light was put out, on a little table 
 near. A cruel joy danced into her eyes : she stretched 
 out her hand and took the matches and slipped them 
 in the bosom of her frock. Then, with the courage 
 of desperation, she climbed to the window-seat, put 
 half her body out of it, and, clinging to the iron 
 pipe with both hands, let herself slide down, down, 
 down, to where she knew not. All was dark beneath 
 her. 
 
 But if she slid into the sea that would be better, shf 
 said to herself, than to live on imprisoned. 
 
 As it happened, the window was twenty feet and 
 more from the earth, but the turf was beneath, and 
 the rain-pipe was so made that she could easily clasp 
 it with feet and hands and glide down it, only grazing 
 all the skin off her palms, and bruising her knees and 
 her chest. No one heard her, there was no alarm 
 given; she reached the ground in safety as a village 
 clock tolled ten. 
 
 She dropped all in a heap, and lay still, half stunned, 
 for some moments; soon she got her breath and her 
 wits again, and rose up on her feet and looked about 
 her. She knew all tlie country-side well, having been 
 here ever since the apple- orchards had been in blossom, 
 and, when they had not been performing, having scam- 
 pered hither and thither with Bindo, begging honey or 
 eggs at the cottages, or coaxing the boatmen to let them 
 drift down the river. 
 
 The moon was now very bright, and she saw that 
 she stood near the Dart water, and she could discover 
 here a steeple, there a gable, yonder a windmill, and so 
 forth, by which she could tell where slie was. She had 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. Igy 
 
 been brought in a covered van to the reformatory, and 
 had only known that it was near Dartmouth. 
 
 The grass on which she stood grew under a low wall, 
 and beyond the wall was a towing-path, and beyond 
 that the river. The towing-path she knew well ; she 
 and Bindo had often ridden on the backs of the tow- 
 ing-horses or got a seat in the big barges by just singing 
 their little songs and twanging their tambourines. 
 
 The towing-path served her purpose well. She 
 looked back at the big pile behind her, a white, square, 
 grim-looking place; Bindo was sleeping under its roof; 
 then she hardened her heart, vaulted over the river- 
 wall, and began to run down the river-path. 
 
 She did not hesitate, for she had a very wicked re- 
 solve in her soul, and her goal was four miles away, 
 she knew, as a water-mill on the other bank among 
 willows was an old friend of hers, and told her her 
 whereabouts. Not a sound came from the house be- 
 hind her ; not a creature had awakened, or the alarm- 
 bell would have been clanging and lights appearing at 
 every window. She was quite safe thus far, and she 
 began to run along the dewy grassy path where the 
 glowworms were twinkling at every step under the 
 ferns and the dock leaves. 
 
 " The wicked, wicked man !" she kept saying in her 
 teeth. 
 
 She never saw the pretty glowworms she was so 
 fond of at other times, or heard the nightingales sing- 
 ing in the woods, for when a sin is in the soul it makes 
 the eyes blind and the ears deaf. She only ran on, 
 stumbling often and feeling for the matches in the 
 bosom of her ugly gray cotton frock. The frock was 
 
188 I^ THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 irksome to her : she longed for her own short skirts 
 and pliable bodice, and she missed the scarf about her 
 loins, and the necklace at her throat. But she ran on 
 and on, having a set purpose and a great crime in her 
 mind. 
 
 She knew that if she only followed the towing-path 
 long enough she would come to the place called Carey's 
 Honor. 
 
 She knew it well : she had often looked over its 
 white gates and envied the calves and the lambs in 
 its pastures, and wondered what the rooms were like 
 within beyond the rose-hung windows, and sighed for 
 the nectarines and the cherries that grew in its green 
 old garden-ways. It might be farther or nearer than 
 she fancied ; that she could not be sure about ; but she 
 knew that if she went on long enough along the Dart 
 water she would come to it. She did not feel at all 
 frightened at being out all alone so late ; after the ex- 
 citement and despair of the day she seemed to have no 
 feeling left except this one burning, consuming, terrible 
 longing for vengeance, which made her feet fly over 
 the towing-path to the peaceful Elizabethan house 
 lying among its yews and limes and stacks and hives 
 and byres in the moonlight. 
 
 She had been running and walking an hour and a 
 half or more, when a bend in the water showed her 
 the twisted chimney-stacks and the black-and-white 
 wood-work and the honeysuckle-covered porches of 
 the homestead, with the moon shining above it and 
 the green uplands sloping behind. Then Gemma, 
 whose young soul was now so full of wickedness that 
 there was not a spot of light left in it, climbed over 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 189 
 
 the white wooden gate and crept up over the wide 
 grass-lands where the cattle were asleep and the big 
 ox-eye daisies were shut up at rest. The air was full 
 of the sweet smell of the dog-rose, of the honeysuckle, 
 of the sweet brier, and away across the meadows the 
 black-and-white timbers and the deep gables of the 
 old house were distinct in the moon-rays. 
 
 She crossed the pastures and opened a little wicket 
 that was never latched, and got into the gardens, where 
 the stocks and picotees and gilly -flowers and moss roses 
 and sweet williams and all other dear old-fashioned 
 blossoms were filling the night with their fragrance. 
 But Gemma had no thought for them. She crept on 
 up to the house, and saw that in one part the thatched 
 roof came down so low to the ground that, standings 
 on a stone bench which was beneath, she would be able 
 to touch it. She sprang on to the bench, drew her 
 matches out of her bosom, struck light to them, and 
 was about to thrust the blazing bunch into the thatch, 
 when a huge dog bounded out of the shadow, leaped 
 on her, and knocked her head downwards off the stone 
 seat on to the grass : he would have torn her to pieces, 
 only he was such a great and good creature that, seeing 
 she was a child, he was merciful in his strength. 
 
 " Monarch, what is it, my lad ?" said Philip Carey, 
 as he came out from the open door of the porch, 
 alarmed at the noise of the fall. 
 
 The Newfoundland left her and went to his master, 
 and Mr. Carey saw the form of Gemma lying prone 
 upon his gravel and the bundle of blazing matches 
 still clutched in her clinched hand. 
 
 " Good heavens ! the child came to burn my house 
 
190 ^^ "^^^ APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 down!" he cried, half aloud, as he stooped over her and 
 lifted her up : she had fallen on the back of her head 
 and was stunned into insensibility for the moment. 
 He wrenched the burning matches out of her tightly- 
 closed fingers and stamped the fire out of them with 
 his heel. That was soon done, and when the danger- 
 ous things were mere harmless splinters of wood he 
 lifted the insensible form of the child up in his arms 
 and carried her into his house. 
 
 " She has escaped from the reformatory," he thought, 
 as he saw the ugly gray cotton gown and the blue apron 
 that was tacked on to it. 
 
 He laid her gently on a couch, and called his house- 
 keeper, a white-haired, kindly old woman, with cheeks 
 like the apples that crowded his orchards in October. 
 
 " Monarch knocked this little girl down, and she is 
 senseless with the fall. Will you do your best for her, 
 Mary ? She is one of the Home children," he said to 
 tlie old dame, and he did not add a word about the 
 matches. 
 
 The housekeeper's simple remedies soon recalled 
 Gemma back to her senses, and she opened her great, 
 frightened, humid eyes to the light of the lamp-lit 
 room. 
 
 "I zolfini, IzoIJini!" she murmured, thinking of her 
 matches and vaguely fancying that she was in the midst 
 of flames. All her English had gone clean away from 
 her. 
 
 " It is that foreign child, master," said the house- 
 keeper, — " the one that has been roaming the country 
 ever since Candlemas ; I caught her little brother at 
 the hen-house at Easter-time, and spanked him. They 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. IQl 
 
 were both of them sentenced, weren't they, in town 
 this morning, and the old grandfather too ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Carey, curtly, " she has run away, 
 that is evident. Suppose you go and get some little 
 room ready for her, for she will not be able to go back 
 to-night. She is all right now, I fancy, though she is 
 not yet fairly awake." 
 
 " One of the attics, master ? Shall she sleep with 
 Hannah ? — not as Hannah will stomach it, a little 
 waif and stray out of prison " 
 
 " No, no ; get her a nice little room ready anywhere 
 you like, but one that is comfortable. She is a very 
 forlorn little maid : we must be good to her, Mary." 
 
 " Her little brother was at the hen-house, and I 
 spanked him " 
 
 " She is not her brother," said Philip Carey, im- 
 patiently. " Leave me with her a little." 
 
 Though her master was very gentle, the house- 
 keeper knew that he chose to be obeyed, and she 
 trotted off up the broad oak staircase obediently. 
 
 Philip Carey remained beside Gemma; and the big 
 black dog also sat looking at her, with his head held 
 critically on one side, for he had not made up his mind 
 about her. 
 
 " You came to burn my house down ?" said Mr. 
 Carey, gravely, as he looked full into her face. 
 
 She understood what he said, but she did not answer. 
 Her mind was still confused ; she remembered what 
 she had come to do, and she began to understand that 
 she had failed to do it and was in the power of this man 
 whom she hated. 
 
 " I caught you in the act," he continued, sternly • 
 
192 ^^ THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 " and if my dog had not thrown you down you would 
 probably have succeeded, for old thatch burns like tin- 
 der. Now, will you tell me why you wished to do me 
 so great an injury ?" 
 
 Gemma was still mute ; her brows were drawn to- 
 gether, her eyes underneath them were flashing and 
 sombre ; she had raised herself on one arm on the 
 cushions of the couch, and gazed at him in silence. 
 
 " Perhaps you do not know," said Mr. Carey, " that 
 the crime of arson, the crime you tried to commit, is 
 one punished by only less severity than is shown to 
 murder. Very often it becomes murder too, when 
 people are burned, as they often are, in the house 
 that is fired. For the mere attempt I can have you 
 imprisoned for many years. Now tell me, I order 
 you to tell me instantly, why you desired to injure me 
 so hideously?" 
 
 Gemma followed his words and gathered their mean- 
 ing, and felt forced to obey. But all the passion of 
 hate and of pain in her surged up in broken utterances, 
 for the foreign language was ill able to convey all the 
 vehemence of emotion and of indignation raging in her 
 heart. 
 
 " I came — I came — I came," she muttered, " I came 
 to burn your house : yes ; why not ? I told you in the 
 morning I would do something worse to you. I did 
 strike you, but you had deserved it. You had said I 
 was immodest ; and then because you were angry you 
 had us all taken up by the police, and you put dear 
 Nonno in prison as if he were a thief, when he is so 
 honest that he scolds Bindo if Bindo takes an apple, 
 and you have parted me and Bindo, and shut us in a 
 
/;V^ THE APPLE-COUNTRY. I93 
 
 horrible ijlace, and they have cut our hair and washed 
 us, and I saw I could get away to-night, and I did, 
 and I dropped through the window ; and the matches 
 were there, and I said to myself I would burn your 
 house down ; I had heard people say that you were 
 fond of your house, and if you say that it was wicked 
 of me, it has been you who have been wicked first. 
 You are a bad, vile, cruel man to shut dear Nonno 
 into your prisons, and he nearly ottanf uno years old, 
 and so good and so kind and so merry ; and never will 
 we see him again, and sooner than go back to that place 
 which you put me in, I will drown myself in your rivei 
 
 there, or make your dog tear me to pieces -" 
 
 Then the poor little soul burst into a rain of tears 
 enough to have extinguished a million lighted lucifer 
 matches or the very fires of a burning house had there 
 been one. 
 
 Philip Carey allowed the tempest of grief to exhaust 
 itself; then he said to her, in a grave and very sweet 
 voice, yet a little sternly, — 
 
 " My poor little girl, you were ready to take a great 
 crime on your little white soul to-night; and who 
 knows where its evil might have stopped ? Fire is not 
 a plaything. Now, I want you to listen to what I have 
 to say about myself. I am a magistrate, and I was on 
 the bench to-day, it is true. But I did not appr-ove of 
 the sentence passed on you by men of greater age and 
 weight in the county than I am, and I tried my best, 
 vainly, to have it mitigated. I had nothing whatever 
 to do with your grandfather's arrest. What he did, 
 harmless though it seems, was yet against the law; and 
 the mayor of the town chose to enforce the law against 
 
 I n 17 
 
194 J^ "THE APPLE-COUNTRT. 
 
 him. More than this, my dear, not only would I not, 
 had I been alone, have sentenced your grandfather in 
 so severe a manner, but I would have aided you all to 
 return to your own country. As it is, I mean to-mor- 
 row to use what influence I possess to endeavor to ob- 
 tain a remission of your grandfather's sentence, and 1 
 meant also to go across to Portsmouth and see the 
 Italian consul there, to ascertain whether or not he 
 could not help you to go back to Naples if I could 
 succeed in getting your punishments remitted, as I 
 hoped to do." 
 
 He paused, and Gemma gazed at him with dilated 
 eyes and a hot color on her cheeks. She was silent 
 and ashamed. 
 
 " Now you have spoiled it all," continued Mr. Carey : 
 "how can I beg for a little incendiary to be let loose 
 on the world ? And my gardener will see those lucifer 
 matches in the morning, and every one will know or 
 guess then what you came to do, and why my dog 
 Monarch sprang on you." 
 
 The color went out of her face, and her lips quivered. 
 " But it was only me," she said, piteously. " Nonno 
 would not have tried to fire your house, nor Bindo. 
 It was only me. Could you not punish me all by my- 
 self and let them out? If you will only let them out, 
 I will go back to prison, and I will not run away again : 
 I will bear it all my life if I must, if you will only 
 let out Nonno and Bindo !" 
 
 "My dear," answered Philip Carey, "I have no 
 power : I cannot deal you out life and death, as you 
 seem to think. You are a dangerous and fierce little 
 tigress, of that there is no doubt; but I do not think 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 195 
 
 the reformatory, good as it is, would improve you much. 
 Suppose we make a bargain : if you will promise me 
 to try and be good, I will promise you to try and liber- 
 ate you all three, and send you all back in a good ship 
 to your own country." 
 
 With as much rapidity as she had sprung up on his 
 saddle to box his ears, Gemma sprang off the couch, 
 and, to his great amazement, threw her arms about his 
 neck and kissed him. 
 
 " Oh, you are good !" she murmured, rapturously. 
 " I love you, I love you, I love you as much as I 
 hated you yesterday !" 
 
 And she was so pretty that Philip Carey could not 
 be angry with her any more. 
 
 She slept soundly that night under the roof she had 
 tried to burn, and in the morning had the most tempt- 
 ing breakfast brought to her on her little bed that she 
 had ever imagined in all her life, and Monarch came 
 and put his big muzzle down on the snowy counterpane, 
 and made friends with her over honey and muffins and 
 cream. 
 
 Mr. Carey kept his promise, and, by means of con- 
 tinuous efforts for some ten days, succeeded in getting 
 the release of poor old Epifania Santo and of Bindo, 
 and obtaining also for them a free passage by a sail»ig- 
 ship then loading in Devonport and bound to go down 
 Channel to the south coast of Italy with a cargo of iron 
 and steel. 
 
 During this time that he was thus returning good for 
 evil and exerting himself in her cause. Gemma remained 
 under the care of his housekeeper, and saw him very 
 often in each day, and had a simple, pretty, white linen 
 
196 IN 'THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 
 
 frock made for her, and spent all her time in the gar- 
 dens and orchards and meadows with Monarch and the 
 other dogs of the house. 
 
 When Philip Carey at last announced to her that all 
 was arranged for their departure by the sailing-vessel, 
 and that she would meet her brother and grandfather 
 at the docks, he was surprised to see a cloud sweep 
 over her mobile face, and great tears fill her eyes once 
 more. 
 
 " Cannot we stay ? cannot we stay ?" she said, with a 
 sob. " Grandfather is so afraid of the sea, and Bindo 
 will be so sorry to leave before the apples are ripe, and 
 me, — I cannot bear to leave you .'" 
 
 "Do you like me a little, then?" said Mr. Carey, 
 astonished and touched. 
 
 " Oh, so much !" said Gemma, with a great sigh. 
 " You have been so kind, and I have been so wicked." 
 
 He hesitated a moment, much surprised, then an- 
 swered, — 
 
 " Well, it might perhaps be arranged. Your grand- 
 father is very old for a voyage, and there is a little 
 cottage down beyond ray orchards that he might have ; 
 but. Gemma, if I let you stay on my land, you must 
 promise me to be very reasonable and obedient, and to 
 learn all you are told to learn, and never to give way 
 to your furious passions." 
 
 " Oh, I will be so good !" she cried, in ecstasy, as she 
 sprang up in his arms and kissed him again. " I will 
 be so good ! and when I am with you I forget that we 
 never really see the sun, and Bindo says he is sure that 
 your apples are better than our grapes and figs auu 
 oranges at home." 
 
IN THE APPLE-COUNTRY. 197 
 
 " It is well you should think so, if you are to live 
 all your lives amidst the apples," said Philip Carey, 
 with a smile. 
 
 So they stayed there ; and a few years later, when 
 Gemma had grown a most beautiful young girl, and 
 become wise and gentle as well, though she still kept 
 her April face that was all sunshine and storm in the 
 same moment, Philip Carey made her his wife and 
 Monarch's mistress; and she is still always ready to 
 declare that apples are the best and sweetest fruit that 
 grows. For, you see, Love gathers them for her. 
 
FINDELKIND. 
 
 There was a little boy, a year or two ago, who lived 
 under the shadow of Martiuswand. Most people know, 
 I should suppose, that the Martinswand is that moun- 
 tain in the Oberinnthal where, several centuries past, 
 brave Kaiser Max lost his footing as he stalked the 
 chamois, and fell upon a ledge of rock, and stayed there, 
 in mortal peril, for thirty hours, till he was rescued by 
 the strength and agility of a Tyrol hunter, — an angel 
 in the guise of a hunter, as the chronicles of the time 
 prefer to say. 
 
 The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of 
 the spurs of the greater Sonnstein, and rises precipi- 
 tously, looming, massive and lofty, like a very fortress 
 for giants, where it stands right across that road which, 
 if you follow it long enough, takes you through Zell to 
 Landeck, — old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where 
 Frederick of the Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows 
 in ballads to his people, — and so on by Bludenz into 
 Switzerland itself, by as noble a highway as any trav- 
 eller can ever desire to traverse on a summer's day. It 
 is within a mile of the little burg of Zell, where the 
 people, in the time of their emperor's peril, came out 
 with torches and bells, and the Host lifted up by their 
 priest, and all prayed on their knees underneath the 
 
FINDELKIND. I99 
 
 steep gaunt pile of limestone, that is the same to-day as 
 it was then whilst Kaiser Max is dust ; it soars up on 
 one side of this road, very steep and very majestic, 
 having bare stone at its base, and being all along its 
 summit crowned with pine woods; and on the other 
 side of the road are a little stone church, quaint and 
 low, and gray with age, and a stone farm-house, and 
 cattle-sheds, and timber-sheds, all of wood that is darkly 
 brown from time; and beyond these are some of the 
 most beautiful meadows in the world, full of tall grass 
 and countless flowers, with pools and little estuaries 
 made by the brimming Inn River that flows by them ; 
 and beyond the river are the glaciers of the Sonustein 
 and the Selrain and the wild Arlberg region, and the 
 golden glow of sunset in the west, most often seen from 
 here through the veil of falling rain. 
 
 At this farm-house, with Martinswand towering 
 above it, and Zell a mile beyond, there lived, and lives 
 still, a little boy who bears the old historical name of 
 Findelkind, whose father. Otto Korner, is the last of a 
 sturdy race of yeomen, who had fought with Hofer and 
 Haspinger, and had been free men always. 
 
 Findelkind came in the middle of seven other chil- 
 dren, and was a pretty boy of nine years, with slenderer 
 limbs and paler cheeks than his rosy brethren, and 
 tender dreamy eyes that had the look, his mother told 
 him, of seeking stars in mid-day : de chercher midi d, 
 quatorze heures, as the French have it. He was a good 
 little lad, and seldom gave any trouble from disobedi- 
 ence, though he often gave it from forgetful ness. His 
 father angrily complained that he was always in the 
 clouds, — that is, he was always dreaming, and so very 
 
200 FINDELKIND. 
 
 often would spill the milk out of the pails, chop his 
 own fingers instead of the wood, and stay watching the 
 swallows when he was sent to draw water. His brothers 
 and sisters were always making fun of him : they were 
 sturdier, ruddier, and merrier children than he was, 
 loved romping and climbing and nutting, thrashing 
 the walnut-trees and sliding down snow-drifts, and 
 got into mischief of a more common and childish sort 
 than Findelkind's freaks of fancy. For indeed he 
 was a very fanciful little boy : everything around had 
 tongues for him ; and he would sit for hours among 
 the long rushes on the river's edge, trying to imagine 
 what the wild green-gray water had found in its wan- 
 derings, and asking the water-rats and the ducks to 
 tell him about it ; but both rats and ducks were too 
 busy to attend to an idle little boy, and never spoke : 
 which vexed him. 
 
 Findelkind, however, was very fond of his books : 
 he would study day and night, in his little ignorant, 
 primitive fashion. He loved his missal and his primer, 
 and could spell them both out very fairly, and was 
 learning to write of a good priest in Zirl, where he 
 trotted three times a week with his two little brothers. 
 When not at school, he was chiefly set to guard the 
 sheep and the cows, which occupation left him very 
 much to himself; so that he had many hours in the 
 summer-time to stare up to the skies and wonder — 
 wonder — wonder about all sorts of things; while in 
 the winter — the loug, white, silent winter, when the 
 post-wagons ceased to run, and the road into Switzer- 
 land was blocked, and the whole world seemed asleep, 
 except for the roaring of the winds — Findelkind, who 
 
FINDELKIND. 201 
 
 Btill trotted over the snow to school in Zirl, would 
 dream still, sitting on the wooden settle by the fire, 
 when he came home again under Martinswand. For 
 the worst — or the best — of it all was that he was Fin- 
 delkind. 
 
 This is what was always haunting him. He was 
 Findelkind ; and to bear this name seemed to him to 
 mark him out from all other children and to dedicate 
 him to heaven. One day three years before, when he 
 had been only six years old, the priest in Zirl, who was 
 a very kindly and cheerful man, and amused the chil- 
 dren as much as he taught them, had not allowed 
 Findelkind to leave school to go home, because the 
 storm of snow and wind was so violent, but had kept 
 him until the worst should pass, with one or two other 
 little lads who lived some way off, and had let the boys 
 roast a meal of apples and chestnuts by the stove in 
 his little room, and, while the wind howled and the 
 blinding snow fell without, had told the children the 
 story of another Findelkind, — an earlier Findelkind, 
 who had lived in the flesh on Arlberg as far back as 
 1381, and had been a little shepherd-lad, "just like 
 you," said the good man, looking at the little boys 
 munching their roast crabs, and whose country had 
 been over there, above Stuben, where Danube and 
 Rhine meet and part. 
 
 The pass of Arlberg is even still so bleak and bitter 
 that few care to climb there; the mountains around are 
 drear and barren, and snow lies till midsummer, and 
 even longer sometimes. " But in the early ages," said 
 the priest (and this is quite a true tale that the children 
 heard with open eyes, and mouths only not open be- 
 
202 FINDELKIND. 
 
 cause they were full of crabs and chestnuts), " in the 
 early ages/' said the priest to them, " the Arlberg was 
 far more dreary than it is now. There was only a 
 mule-track over it, and no refuge for man or beast; 
 so that wanderers and peddlers, and those whose need 
 for work or desire for battle brought them over that 
 frightful pass, perished in great numbers, and were 
 eaten by the bears and the wolves. The little shep- 
 herd-boy Findelkind — who was a little boy five hun- 
 dred years ago, remember," the priest repeated, — " was 
 sorely disturbed and distressed to see these poor dead 
 souls in the snow winter after winter, and seeing the 
 blanched bones lie on the bare earth, unburied, when 
 summer melted the snow. It made him unhappy, very 
 unhappy ; and what could he do, he a little boy keep- 
 ing sheep ? He had as his wages two florins a year ; 
 that was all; but his heart rose high, and he had 
 faith in God. Little as he was, he said to himself, he 
 would try and do something, so that year after year 
 those poor lost travellers and beasts should not pei'ish 
 so. He said nothing to anybody, but he took the 
 few florins he had saved up, bade his master farewell, 
 and went on his way begging, — a little fourteenth-cen- 
 tury boy, with long, straight hair, and a girdled tunic, 
 as you see them," continued the priest, " in the min- 
 iatures in the black-letter missal that lies upon my 
 desk. No doubt heaven favored him very strongly, 
 and the saints watched over him; still, without the 
 boldness of his own courage and the faith in his own 
 heart they would not have done so. I suppose, too, 
 that when knights in their armor, and soldiers in their 
 cami)s, saw such a little fell )W all alone, they helped 
 
FINDELKIND. 203 
 
 him, and perba[)S struck some blows for him, and so 
 sped him on his way, and protected him from robbers 
 and from wild beasts. Still, be sure that the real 
 shield and the real reward that served Findelkind of 
 Arlberg was the pure and noble purpose that armed 
 him night and day. Now, history does not tell us 
 where Findelkind went, nor how he fared, nor how 
 long he was about it; but history does tell us that the 
 little barefooted, long-haired boy, knocking so loudly 
 at castle gates and city walls in the name of Christ and 
 Christ's poor brethren, did so well succeed in his quest 
 that before long he had returned to his mountain- 
 home with means to have a church and a rude dwell- 
 ing built, where he lived with six other brave and 
 charitable souls, dedicating themselves to St. Christo- 
 pher, and going out night and day to the sound of the 
 Angelus, seeking the lost and weary. This is really 
 what Findelkind of Arlberg did five centuries ago, and 
 did so quickly that his fraternity of St. Christopher 
 twenty years after numbered among its members arch- 
 dukes, and prelates, and knights without number, and 
 lasted as a great order down to the days of Joseph II. 
 This is what Findelkind in the fourteenth century did, 
 I tell you. Bear like faith in your hearts, my chil- 
 dren ; and though your generation is a harder one than 
 this, because it is without faith, yet you shall move 
 mountains, because Christ and St. Christopher will be 
 with you." 
 
 Then the good man, having said that, blessed them, 
 and left them alone to their chestnuts and crabs, and 
 went into his own oratory to prayer. The other boys 
 laughed and chattered ; but Findelkind sat very quietly, 
 
204 FINDELKIND. 
 
 thinking of his namesake, all the day after, and for 
 many days and weeks and months this story haunted 
 him. A little boy had done all that ; and this little 
 boy had been called Findelkind : Findelkind, just like 
 himself. 
 
 It was beautiful, and yet it tortured him. If the 
 good man had known how the history would root itself 
 in the child's mind, perhaps he would never have told 
 it; for night and day it vexed Findelkind, and yet 
 seemed beckoning to him and crying, " Go thou and do 
 likewise !" 
 
 But what could he do ? 
 
 There was the snow, indeed, and there were the 
 mountains, as in the fourteenth century, but there were 
 no travellers lost. The diligence did not go into 
 Switzerland after autumn, and the country-people who 
 went by on their mules and in their sledges to Inn- 
 spruck knew their way very well, and were never 
 likely to be adrift on a winter's night, or eaten by a 
 wolf or a bear. 
 
 When spring came, Findelkind sat by the edge of 
 the bright pure water among the flowering grasses, and 
 felt his heart heavy. Findelkind of Arlberg who was 
 in heaven now must look down, he fancied, and think 
 him so stupid and so selfish, sitting there. The first 
 Findelkind, a few centuries before, had trotted down 
 on his bare feet from his mountain-pass, and taken his 
 little crook, and gone out boldly over all the land on 
 his pilgrimage, and knocked at castle gates and city 
 walls in Christ's name and for love of the poor ! That 
 was to do something indeed ! 
 
 This poor little living Findelkind would look at the 
 
FINDELKIND. 205 
 
 miniatures in the priest's missal, in one of which there 
 was the little fourteenth-century boy with long hanging 
 hair and a wallet and bare feet, and he never doubted 
 that it was the portrait of the blessed Findelkind who 
 was in heaven ; and he wondered if he looked like a 
 little boy there, or if he were changed to the likeness 
 of an angel. 
 
 " He was a boy just like me," thought the poor little 
 fellow, and he felt so ashamed of himself, — so very 
 ashamed ; and the priest had told him to try and do 
 the same. He brooded over it so much, and it made 
 him so anxious and so vexed, that his brothers ate his 
 porridge and he did not notice it, his sisters pulled his 
 curls and he did not feel it, his father brought a stick 
 down on his back and he only started and stared, and 
 his mother cried because he was losing his mind and 
 would grow daft, and even his mother's tears he scarcely 
 saw. He was always thinking of Findelkind in 
 heaven. 
 
 When he went for water, he spilt one-half; when he 
 did his lessons, he forgot the chief part; when he drove 
 out the cow, he let her munch the cabbages ; and when 
 he was set to watch the oven he let the loaves burn, like 
 great Alfred. He was always busied thinking, " Little 
 Findelkind that is in heaven did so great a thing: why 
 may not I ? I ought ! I ought !" What was the use 
 of being named after Findelkind that was in heaven, 
 unless one did something great too ? 
 
 Next to the church there is a little stone lodge, or 
 
 shed, with two arched openings, and from it you look 
 
 into the tiny church with its crucifixes and relics, or 
 
 out to great, bold, sombre Martinswand, as you like 
 
 18 
 
206 FINDELKIND. 
 
 best ; and in this spot Findelkind would sit liour aftei 
 hour, while his brothers and sisters were playing, and 
 look up at the mountains or on to the altar, and wish 
 and pray and vex his little soul most wofully ; and his 
 ewes and his lambs would crop the grass about the 
 entrance, and bleat to make him notice them and lead 
 them farther afield, but all in vain. Even his dear 
 sheep he hardly heeded, and his pet ewes, Katte and 
 Greta, and the big ram Zips, rubbed their soft noses 
 in his hand unnoticed. So the summer droned away, 
 — the summer that is so short in the mountains, and 
 yet so green and so radiant, with the torrents tumbling 
 through the flowers, and the hay tossing in the meadows, 
 and the lads and lasses climbing to cut the rich sweet 
 grass of the alps. The short summer passed as fast as 
 a dragon-fly flashes by, all green and gold, in the sun ; 
 and it was near winter once more, and still Findelkind 
 was always dreaming and wondering what he could do 
 for the good of St. Christopher ; and the longing to do 
 it all came more and more into his little heart, and he 
 puzzled his brain till his head ached. One autumn 
 morning, whilst yet it was dark, Findelkind made his 
 mind up, and rose before his brothers, and stole down- 
 stairs and out into the air, as it was easy to do, because 
 the house-door never was bolted. He had nothing with 
 him ; he was barefooted, and his school-satchel was 
 slung behind him, as Findelkind of Arlberg's wallet 
 had been five centuries before. 
 
 He took a little stafi* from the piles of wood lying 
 about, and went out on to tlie high-road, on his way to 
 do heaven's will. He was not very sure what that 
 divine will wished, but that was because he was only 
 
EVEN HIS DEAR SHEEP HE HARDLY HEEDED. 
 
FINDELKIND. 207 
 
 nine years old, and not very wise; but Findelkind 
 that was in heaven had begged for the poor ; so would 
 he. 
 
 His parents were very poor, but he did not think of 
 them as in any want at any time, because he always had 
 his bowlful of porridge and as much bread as he wanted 
 to eat. This morning he had nothing to eat ; he wished 
 to be away before any one could question him. 
 
 It was quite dusk in the fresh autumn morning : the 
 sun had not risen behind the glaciers of the Stubaithal, 
 and the road was scarcely seen ; but he knew it very 
 well, and he set out bravely, saying his prayers to 
 Christ, and to St. Christopher, and to Findelkind that 
 was in heaven. 
 
 He was not in any way clear as to Avhat he would 
 do, but he thought he would find some great thing to 
 do somewhere, lying like a jewel in the dust; and he 
 went on his way in faith, as Findelkind of Arlberg 
 had done before him. 
 
 His heart beat high, and his head lost its aching pains, 
 and his feet felt light ; so light as if there were wings 
 to his ankles. He would not go to Zirl, because Zirl 
 he knew so well, and there could be nothing very won- 
 derful waiting there ; and he ran fast the other way. 
 When he was fairly out from under the shadow of 
 Martinswand, he slackened his pace, and saw the sun 
 come on his path, and the red day redden the gray- 
 green water, and the early Stellwagen from Landeck, 
 that had been lumbering along all the night, overtook 
 him. 
 
 He would have run after it, and called out to the 
 travellers for alms, but he felt ashamed : his father 
 
208 FINDELKIND. 
 
 had never let him beg, and he did not know how to 
 begin. 
 
 The Stellwagen rolled on through the autumn mud, 
 and that was one chance lost. He was sure that the 
 first Findelkind had not felt ashamed when he had 
 knocked at the first castle gates. 
 
 By and by, when he could not see Martinswand by 
 turning his head back ever so, he came to an inn that 
 used to be a post-house in the old days when men 
 travelled only by road. A woman was feeding chickens 
 in the bright clear red of the cold daybreak. 
 
 Fiudelkind timidly held out his hand. " For the 
 poor !" he murmured, and doffed his cap. 
 
 The old woman looked at him sharply. " Oh, is it 
 you, little Findelkind ? Have you run off from school? 
 Be off with you home ! I have mouths enough to feed 
 here." 
 
 Findelkind went away, and began to learn that it 
 is not easy to be a prophet or a hero in one's own 
 country. 
 
 He trotted a mile farther, and met nothing. At last 
 he came to some cows by the wayside, and a man tend- 
 ing them. 
 
 "Would you give me something to help make a 
 monastery ?" he said, timidly, and once more took off 
 his cap. The man gave a great laugh. " A fine monk, 
 you ! And who wants more of these lazy drones ? Not 
 I." 
 
 Findelkind never answered: he remembered the 
 priest had said that the years he lived in were very- 
 hard ones, and men in them had no faith. 
 
 Ere long he came to a big walled house, with turrets 
 
FINDELKIND. 209 
 
 and grated casements, — very big it looked to him, — 
 like one of the first Findelkind's own castles. His 
 heart beat loud against his side, but he plucked up his 
 courage, and knocked as loud as his heart was beating. 
 
 He knocked and knocked, but no answer came. 
 The house was empty. But he did not know that; 
 he thought it was that the people within were cruel, 
 and he went sadly onward with the road winding be- 
 fore him, and on his right the beautiful impetuous gray 
 river, and on his left the green Mittelgebirge and the 
 mountains that rose behind it. By this time the day 
 was up ; the sun was glowing on the red of the cran- 
 berry shrubs and the blue of the bilberry-boughs : he 
 was hungry and thirsty and tired. But he did not give 
 in for that ; he held on steadily ; he knew that there 
 was near, somewhere near, a great city that the people 
 called Sprugg, and thither he had resolved to go. By 
 noontide he had walked eight miles, and came to a 
 green place where men were shooting at targets, the 
 tall thick grass all around them : and a little way 
 farther off was a train of people chanting and bearing 
 crosses and dressed in long flowing robes. 
 
 The place was the Hottinger Au, and the day was 
 Saturday, and the village was making ready to perform 
 a miracle-play on the morrow. 
 
 Findelkind ran to the robed singing-folk, quite sure 
 that he saw the people of God. " Oh, take me, take 
 me !" he cried to them ; " do take me with you to do 
 heaven's work." 
 
 But they pushed him aside for a crazy little boy that 
 spoiled their rehearsing. 
 
 " It is only for Hotting folk," said a lad older than 
 18* 
 
210 FINDELKIND. 
 
 himself. "Get out of the way with you, lAebchen." 
 And the man who carried the cross knocked him with 
 force on the head, by mere accident ; but Findelkind 
 thought he had meant it. 
 
 Were people so much kinder five centuries before, 
 he wondered, and felt sad as the many-colored robes 
 swept on through the grass, and the crack of the rifles 
 sounded sharply through the music of the chanting 
 voices. He went on, foot-sore and sorrowful, thinking 
 of the castle doors that had opened, and the city gates 
 that had unclosed, at the summons of the little long- 
 haired boy whose figure was painted on the missal. 
 
 He had come now to where the houses were much 
 more numerous, though under the shade of great trees, 
 — lovely old gray houses, some of wood, some of stone, 
 some with frescos on them and gold and color and 
 mottoes, some with deep barred casements, and carved 
 portals, and sculptured figures ; houses of the poorer 
 people now, but still memorials of a grand and gracious 
 time. For he had wandered into the quarter of St. 
 Nicholas in this fair mountain-city, which he, like his 
 country-folk, called Sprugg, though the government 
 calls it Innspruck. 
 
 He got out upon a long gray wooden bridge, and 
 looked up and down the reaches of the river, and 
 thought to himself, maybe this was not Sprugg but 
 Jerusalem, so beautiful it looked with its domes shining 
 golden in the sun, and the snow of the Soldstein and 
 Branjoch behind them. For little Findelkind had 
 never come so far as this before. As he stood on the 
 bridge so dreaming, a hand clutched him, and a voice 
 said, — 
 
FINDELKIND. 211 
 
 "A whole kreutzer, or you do not pass!" 
 
 Findelkind started and trembled. 
 
 A kreutzer ! he had never owned such a treasure in 
 all his life. 
 
 " I have no money !" he murmured, timidly, " I 
 came to see if I could get money for the poor." 
 
 The keeper of the bridge laughed. 
 
 " You are a little beggar, you mean ? Oh, very 
 well ! Then over my bridge you do not go." 
 
 " But it is the city on the other side ?" 
 
 " To be sure it is the city ; but over nobody goes 
 without a kreutzer." 
 
 " I never have such a thing of my own ! never ! 
 never !" said Findelkind, ready to cry. 
 
 " Then you were a little fool to come away from 
 your home, wherever that may be," said the man at 
 the bridge-head. " Well, I will let you go, for you 
 look a baby. But do not beg ; that is bad." 
 
 " Findelkind did it !" 
 
 " Then Findelkind was a rogue and a vagabond," 
 said the taker of tolls. 
 
 " Oh, no— no— no !" 
 
 " Oh, yes — yes — ^yes, little sauce-box; and take that," 
 said the man, giving him a box on the ear, being angry 
 at contradiction. 
 
 Findelkind's head drooped, and he went slowly over 
 the bridge, forgetting that he ought to have thanked 
 the toll-taker for a free passage. The world seemed 
 to hira very dijfficult. How had Findelkind done 
 when he had come to bridges ? — and, oh, how had 
 Findelkind done when he had been hungry ? 
 
 For this poor little Findelkind was getting very 
 
212 FINDELKIND. 
 
 hungry, and his stomach was as empty as was his 
 wallet. 
 
 A few steps brought him to the Goldenes Dachl. 
 He forgot his hunger and his pain, seeing the sun 
 shine on all that gold, and the curious painted galleries 
 under it. He thought it was real solid gold. Real 
 gold laid out on a house-roof, — and the people all so 
 poor! Findelkind began to muse, and wonder why 
 everybody did not climb up there and take a tile off 
 and be rich? But perhaps it would be wicked. 
 Perhaps God put the roof there with all that gold to 
 prove people. Findelkind got bewildered. 
 
 If God did such a thing, was it kind? 
 
 His head seemed to swim, and the sunshine went 
 round and round with him. There went by him, just 
 then, a very venerable-looking old man with silver 
 hair : he was wrapped in a long cloak. Findelkind 
 pulled at the coat gently, and the old man looked down. 
 
 " What is it, my boy ?" he asked. 
 
 Findelkind answered, " I came out to get gold : may 
 I take it off that roof?" 
 
 " It is not gold, child, it is gilding." 
 
 "What is gilding?" 
 
 " It is a thing made to look like gold : that is all." 
 
 " It is a lie, then !" 
 
 The old man smiled. " Well, nobody thinks so. 
 If you like to put it so, perhaps it is. What do you 
 want gold for, you wee thing?" 
 
 " To build a monastery and house the poor." 
 
 The old man's face scowled and grew dark, for he 
 was a Lutheran pastor from Bavaria. 
 
 " Who taught you such trash ?" he said, crossly. 
 
FINDELKIND. 213 
 
 " It is not trash. It is faith." 
 
 And Findelkind's face began to burn and his blue 
 eyes to darken and moisten. There was a little crowd 
 beginning to gather, and the crowd was beginning to 
 laugh. There were many soldiers and rifle-shooters in 
 the throng, and they jeered and joked, and made fun 
 of the old man in the long cloak, who grew angry then 
 with the child. " You are a little idolater and a little: 
 impudent sinner !" he said, wrathfully, and shook the 
 boy by the shoulder, and went away, and the throng 
 that had gathered round had only poor Findelkind left 
 to tease. 
 
 He was a very poor little boy indeed to look at, with 
 his sheepskin tunic, and his bare feet and legs, and his 
 wallet that never was to get filled. 
 
 " Where do you come from, and what do you 
 want?" they asked; and he answered, with a sob in 
 his voice, — 
 
 " I want to do like Findelkind of Arlberg." 
 
 And then the crowd laughed, not knowing at all 
 what he meant, but laughing just because they did not 
 know : as crowds always will do. And only the big 
 dogs that are so very big in this country, and are all 
 loose, and free, and good-natured citizens, came up to 
 him kindly, and rubbed against him, and made friends ; 
 and at that tears came into his eyes, and his courage 
 rose, and he lifted his head. 
 
 "You are cruel people to laugh," he said, indig- 
 nantly : " the dogs are kinder. People did not laugh 
 at Findelkind. He was a little boy just like me, no 
 better and no bigger, and as poor; and yet he had so 
 much faith, and the world then was so good, that he 
 
214 FINDELKIND. 
 
 left his sheep and got money enough to build a church 
 and a hospice to Christ and St. Christopher. And I 
 want to do the same for the poor. Not for myself, no ; 
 for the poor ! I am Fiadelkind too, and Findelkind 
 of Arlberg that is in heaven speaks to me." 
 
 Then he stojjped, and a sob rose again in his throat. 
 
 " He is crazy !" said the people, laughing, yet a little 
 scared ; for the priest at Zirl had said rightly, this is 
 not an age of faith. At that moment there sounded, 
 coming from the barracks, that used to be the Schloss 
 in the old days of Kaiser Max and Mary of Burgundy, 
 the sound of drums and trumpets and the tramp of 
 marching feet. It was one of the corps of Jagers of 
 Tyrol, going down from the avenue to the Rudolfplatz, 
 with their band before them and their pennons stream- 
 ing. It was a familiar sight, but it drew the street- 
 throngs to it like magic : the age is not fond of dream- 
 ers, but it is very fond of drums. In almost a moment 
 the old dark arcades and the river-side and the passages 
 near were all empty, except for the women sitting at 
 their stalls of fruit or cakes, or toys. They are won- 
 derful old arched arcades, like the cloisters of a cathe- 
 dral more than anything else, and the shops under them 
 are all homely and simple, — shops of leather, of furs, 
 of clothes, of wooden playthings, of sweet and whole- 
 some bread. They are very quaint, and kept by poor 
 folks for poor folks ; but to the dazed eyes of Findel- 
 kind they looked like a forbidden paradise, for he was 
 so hungry and so heart-broken, and he had never seen 
 any bigger place than little Zirl. 
 
 He stood and looked wistfully, but no one offered 
 him anything. Close by was a stall of splendid purple 
 
FINDELKIND. 215 
 
 grapes, but the old woman that kept it was busy knit- 
 ting. She only called to him to stand out of her light. 
 
 " You look a poor brat : have you a home ?" said 
 another woman, who sold bridles and whips and horses' 
 bells, and the like. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have a home, — by Martinswand," said 
 Findelkind, with a sigh. 
 
 The woman looked at him sharply. " Your parents 
 have sent you on an errand here ?" 
 
 " No ; I have run away." 
 
 " Run away ? Oh, you bad boy ! — unless, indeed, — 
 are they cruel to you ?" 
 
 " No ; very good." 
 
 " Are you a little rogue, then, or a thief?" 
 
 " You are a bad woman to think such things," said 
 Findelkind, hotly, knowing himself on how innocent 
 and sacred a quest he was. 
 
 " Bad ? I ? Oh ho !" said the old dame, cracking 
 one of her new whips in the air, " I should like to make 
 you jump about with this, you thankless little vaga- 
 bond. Be off!" 
 
 Findelkind sighed again, his momentary anger pass- 
 ing ; for he had been born with a gentle temper, and 
 thought himself to blame much more readily than he 
 thought other people were, — as, indeed, every wise 
 child does, only there are so few children— or men — 
 that are wise. 
 
 He turned his head away from the temptation of the 
 bread and fruit-stalls, for in truth hunger gnawed him 
 terribly, and wandered a little to the left. From where 
 he stood he could see the long, beautiful street of Teresa, 
 with its oriels and arches, painted windows and gilded 
 
216 FINDELKIND. 
 
 fiigns, and the steep, gray, dark mountains closing it in 
 at the distance ; but the street frightened liim, it looked 
 so grand, and he knew it would tempt him : so he went 
 where he saw the green tops of some high elms and 
 beeches. The trees, like the dogs, seemed like friends. 
 It was the human creatures that were cruel. 
 
 At that moment there came out of the barrack gates, 
 with great noise of trumpets and trampling of horses, a 
 group of riders in gorgeous uniforms, with sabres and 
 chains glancing and plumes tossing. It looked to Fin- 
 delkind like a group of knights, — those knights who 
 had helped and defended his namesake with their steel 
 and their gold in the old days of the Arlberg quest. 
 His heart gave a great leap, and he jumped on the dust 
 for joy, and he ran forward and fell on his knees and 
 waved his cap like a little mad thing, and cried out, — 
 
 " Oh, dear knights ! oh, great soldiers ! help me ! 
 Fight for me, for the love of the saints ! I have come 
 all the way from Martinswand, and I am Findelkind, 
 and I am trying to serve St. Christopher like Findel- 
 kind of Arlberg." 
 
 But his little swaying body and pleading hands and 
 shouting voice and blowing curls frightened the horses : 
 one of them swerved and very nearly settled the woes 
 of Findelkind forever and aye by a kick. The soldier 
 who rode the horse reined him in with difficulty : he 
 was at the head of the little staff, being indeed no less 
 or more than the general commanding the garrison, 
 which in this city is some fifteen thousand strong. An 
 orderly sprang from his saddle and seized the child, 
 and shook him, and swore at him. Findelkind was 
 frightened ; but he shut his eyes and set his teetli, and 
 
FINDELKIND. 217 
 
 said to himself that tlie martyrs must have had very 
 much worse than these things to suffer in their pilgrim- 
 age. He had fancied these riders were knights, — such 
 knights as the priest had shown him the likeness of in 
 old picture-books, whose mission it had been to ride 
 through the world succoring the weak and weary, and 
 always defending the right. 
 
 " What are your swords for, if you are not knights?" 
 he cried, desperately struggling in his captor's grip, 
 and seeing through his half-closed lids the sunshine 
 shining on steel scabbards. 
 
 " What does he want ?" asked the officer in com- 
 mand of the garrison, whose staff all this bright and 
 martial array was. He was riding out from the bar- 
 racks to an inspection on the Rudolfplatz. He was a 
 young man, and had little children himself, and was 
 half amused, half touched, to see the tiny figure of the 
 little dusty boy. 
 
 " I want to build a monastery, like Findelkind of 
 Arlberg, and to help the poor," said our Findelkind, 
 valorously, though his heart was beating like that of 
 a little mouse caught in a trap ; for the horses were 
 trampling up the dust around him, and the orderly's 
 grip was hard. 
 
 The officers laughed aloud ; and indeed he looked a 
 poor little scrap of a figure, very ill able to help even 
 himself. 
 
 " Why do you laugh?" cried Findelkind, losing his 
 terror in his indignation, and inspired with the courage 
 which a great earnestness always gives. " You should 
 not laugh. If you were true knights, you would not 
 laugh : you would fight for me. I am little, I know, 
 K 19 
 
218 FINDELKIND. 
 
 — I am very little, — but he was no bigger than I; 
 and see what great things he did. But the soldiers 
 were good in those days ; they did not laugh and use 
 bad words " 
 
 And Findelkind, on whose shoulder the orderly's 
 hold was still fast, faced the horses, which looked to 
 him as huge as Martinswand, and the swords, which 
 he little doubted were to be sheathed in his heart. 
 
 The officers stared, laughed again, then whispered 
 together, and Findelkind heard them say the word 
 "crazed." Findelkind, whose quick little ears were 
 both strained like a mountain leveret's, understood 
 that the great men were saying among themselves 
 that it was not safe for him to be about alone, and 
 that it would be kinder to him to catch and cage 
 him, — the general view with which the world regards 
 enthusiasts. 
 
 He heard, he understood; he knew that they did 
 not mean to help him, these men with the steel weapons 
 and the huge steeds, but that they meant to shut him 
 up in a prison; he, little free-born, forest-fed Findel- 
 kind. He wrenched himself out of the soldier's grip, 
 as the rabbit wrenches itself out of the jaws of the 
 trap even at the cost of leaving a limb behind, shot 
 between the horses' legs, doubled like a hunted thing, 
 and spied a refuge. Opposite the avenue of gigantic 
 poplars and pleasant stretches of grass shaded by other 
 bigger trees, there stands a very famous churcli, famous 
 alike in the annals of history and of art, — the church 
 of the Franciscans, that holds the tomb of Kaiser 
 Max, though, alas ! it holds not his ashes, as his dying 
 desire was that it should. The church stands here, a 
 
FINDELKIND. 219 
 
 noble, sombre place, with the Silver Chapel of Philip- 
 piua Wessler adjoining it, and in front the fresh cool 
 avenues that lead to the river and the broad water- 
 meadows and the grand Hall road bordered with the 
 painted stations of the Cross. 
 
 There were some peasants coming in from the 
 country driving cows, and some burghers in their 
 carts, with fat, slow horses ; some little children were 
 at play under the poplars and the elms; great dogs 
 were lying about on the grass ; everything was happy 
 and at peace, except the poor throbbing heart of little 
 Findelkind, who thought the soldiers were coming 
 after him to lock him up as mad, and ran and ran as 
 fast as his trembling legs would carry him, making 
 for sanctuary, as, in the old bygone days that he loved, 
 many a soul less innocent than his had done. The 
 wide doors of the Hof kirche stood open, and on the 
 steps lay a black-and-tan hound, watching no doubt 
 for its master or mistress, who had gone within to 
 pray. Findelkind, in his terror, vaulted over the dog, 
 and into the church tumbled headlong. 
 
 It seemed quite dark, after the brilliant sunshine 
 on the river and the grass ; his forehead touched the 
 stone floor as he fell, and as he raised himself and 
 stumbled forward, reverent and bareheaded, looking 
 for the altar to cling to when the soldiers should enter 
 to seize him, his uplifted eyes fell on the great Tomb. 
 
 The tomb seems entirely to fill the church, as, with 
 its twenty-four guardian figures round it, it towers up 
 in the twilight that reigns here even at mid-day. 
 There are a stern majesty and grandeur in it which 
 dwarf every other monument and mausoleum. It is 
 
220 FINDELKIND. 
 
 grim, it is rude, it is savage, with the spirit of the 
 rough ages that created it; but it is great with their 
 greatness, it is heroic with their heroism, it is simple 
 with their simplicity. 
 
 As the awe-stricken eyes of the terrified child fell 
 on the mass of stone and bronze, the sight smote him 
 breathless. The mailed warriors standing around it, 
 so motionless, so solemn, filled him with a frozen 
 nameless fear. He had never a doubt that they were 
 the dead arisen. The foremost that met his eyes were 
 Theodoric and Arthur ; the next, grim Eudolf, father 
 of a dynasty of emperors. There, leaning on their 
 swords, the three gazed down on him, armored, 
 armed, majestic, serious, guarding the empty grave, 
 which to the child, who knew nothing of its history, 
 seemed a bier; and at the feet of Theodoric, who 
 alone of them all looked young and merciful, poor 
 little desperate Findelkind fell with a piteous sob, and 
 cried, " I am not mad ! Indeed, indeed, I am not 
 mad !" 
 
 He did not know that these grand figures were but 
 statues of bronze. He was quite sure they were the 
 dead, arisen, and meeting there, around that tomb on 
 which the solitary kneeling knight watched and prayed, 
 encircled, as by a wall of steel, by these his comrades. 
 He was not frightened, he was rather comforted and 
 stilled, as with a sudden sense of some deep calm and 
 certain help. 
 
 Findelkind, without knowing that he was like so 
 many dissatisfied poets and artists much bigger than 
 himself, dimly felt in his little tired mind how beauti- 
 ful and how gorgeous and how grand the world must 
 
FINDELEIND. 221 
 
 have been when heroes and knights like these had 
 gone by in its daily sunshine and its twilight storms. 
 No wonder Findelkind of Arlberg had found his pil- 
 grimage so fair, when if he had needed any help he 
 liad only had to kneel and clasp these firm, mailed 
 limbs, these strong cross-hilted swords, in the name of 
 Christ and of the poor. 
 
 Theodoric seemed to look down on him with benig- 
 nant eyes from under the raised visor ; and our poor 
 Findelkind, weeping, threw his small arms closer and 
 closer round the bronze knees of the heroic figure, 
 and sobbed aloud, " Help me, help me ! Oh, turn 
 the hearts of the people to me, and help me to do 
 good!" 
 
 But Theodoric answered nothing. 
 
 There was no sound in the dark, hushed churcn , 
 the gloom grew darker over Findelkind's eyes; the 
 mighty forms of monarchs and of heroes grew dim 
 before his sight. He lost consciousness, and fell prone 
 upon the stones at Theodoric's feet ; for he had fainted 
 from hunger and emotion. 
 
 When he awoke it was quite evening ; there was a 
 lantern held over his head ; voices were muttering 
 curiously and angrily; bending over him were two 
 priests, a sacristan of the church, and his own father. 
 His little wallet lay by him on the stones, always 
 empty. 
 
 "Boy of mine! were you mad?" cried his father, 
 half in rage, half in tenderness. " The chase you have 
 led me! — and your mother thinking you were drowned ! 
 — and all the working day lost, running after old 
 women's tales of where they had seen you ! Oh, little 
 19* 
 
222 FINDELKIND. 
 
 fool, little fool ! what was amiss with Martinswand, that 
 you must leave it?" 
 
 Findelkind slowly and feebly rose, and sat up on 
 the pavement, and looked up, not at his father, but at 
 the knight Theodoric. 
 
 " I thought they would help me to keep the poor," 
 he muttered, feebly, as he glanced at his own wallet. 
 "And it is empty, — empty." 
 
 " Are we not poor enough ?" cried his father, with 
 natural impatience, ready to tear his hair with vex- 
 ation at having such a little idiot for a son. " Must 
 you rove afield to find poverty to help, when it sits 
 cold enough, the Lord knows, at our own hearth? Oh, 
 little ass, little dolt, little maniac, fit only for a mad- 
 house, talking to iron figures and taking them for real 
 men ! What have I done, O heaven, that I should be 
 afflicted thus?" 
 
 And the poor man wept, being a good affectionate 
 soul, but not very wise, and believing that his boy was 
 mad. Then, seized with sudden rage once more, at 
 thought of his day all wasted, and its hours harassed 
 and miserable through searching for the lost child, he 
 plucked up the light, slight figure of Findelkind in 
 his own arms, and, with muttered thanks and excuses 
 to the sacristan of the church, bore the boy out with 
 him into the evening air, and lifted him into a cart 
 which stood there with a horse harnessed to one side 
 of the pole, as the country-people love to do, to the 
 risk of their own lives and their neighbors'. Findel- 
 kind said never a word ; he was as dumb as Theodoric 
 had been to him; he felt stupid, heavy, half blind; 
 his father pushed him some bread, and he ate it by 
 
FINDELKIND. 223 
 
 sheer instinct, as a lost animal will do ; the cart jogged 
 on, the stars shone, the great church vanished in the 
 gloom of night. 
 
 As they went through the city towards the river- 
 side along the homeward way, never a word did his 
 father, who was a silent man at all times, address to 
 him. Only once, as they jogged over the bridge, he 
 spoke. 
 
 "Son," he asked, "did you run away truly thinking 
 to please God and help the poor ?" 
 
 " Truly I did !" answered Findelkind, with a sob in 
 his throat. 
 
 " Then thou wert an ass !" said his father. " Didst 
 never think of thy mother's love and of my toil? Look 
 at home." 
 
 Findelkind was mute. The drive was very long, 
 backward by the same way, with the river shining in 
 the moonlight and the mountains half covered with 
 the clouds. 
 
 It was ten by the bells of Zirl when they came oncc 
 more under the solemn shadow of grave Martinswand. 
 There were lights moving about his house, his brothers 
 and sisters were still up, his mother ran out into the 
 road, weeping and laughing with fear and joy. 
 
 Findelkind himself said nothing. 
 
 He hung his head. 
 
 They were too fond of him to scold him or to jeer 
 at him ; they made him go quickly to his bed, and his 
 mother made him a warm milk posset and kissed him. 
 
 "We will punish thee to-morrow, naughty and cruel 
 one," said his parent. "But thou art punished enough 
 already, for in thy place little Stefan had the sheep, 
 
224 FINDELKIND. 
 
 and he has lost Katte's lambs, — the beautiful twin 
 lambs! I dare not tell thy father to-night. Dost 
 hear the poor thing mourn ? Do not go afield for thy 
 duty again." 
 
 A pang went through the heart of Findelkind, as 
 if a knife had pierced it. He loved Katte better than 
 almost any other living thing, and she was bleating 
 under his window childless and alone. They were 
 such beautiful lambs, too ! — lambs that his father had 
 2)romised should never be killed, but be reared to swell 
 the flock. 
 
 Findelkind cowered down in his bed, and felt 
 wretched beyond all wretchedness. He had been 
 brought back ; his wallet was empty ; and Katte's 
 lambs were lost. He could not sleep. 
 
 His pulses were beating like so many steam-hammers ; 
 he felt as if his body were all one great throbbing 
 heart. His brothers, who lay in the same chamber 
 with him, were sound asleep ; very soon his father and 
 mother snored also, on the other side of the wall. Fin- 
 delkind was alone wide awake, watching the big white 
 moon sail past his little casement, and hearing Katte 
 bleat. 
 
 Where were her poor twin lambs ? 
 
 The night was bitterly cold, for it was already far on 
 in autumn; the rivers had swollen and flooded many 
 fields, the snow for the last week had fallen quite low 
 down on the mountain-sides. 
 
 Even if still living, the little lambs would die, out on 
 such a night without the mother or food and shelter of 
 any sort. Findelkind, whose vivid brain always saw 
 everything that he imagined as if it w^ere being acted 
 
FINDELKIND. 225 
 
 before his eyes, in fancy saw his two dear lambs float- 
 ing dead down the swollen tide, entangled in rushes on 
 the flooded shore, or fallen with broken limbs upon a 
 crest of rocks. He saw them so plainly that scarcely 
 could he hold back his breath from screaming aloud in 
 the still night and answering the mourning wail of the 
 desolate mother. 
 
 At last he could bear it no longer : his head burned, 
 and his brain seemed whirling round ; at a bound he 
 leaped out of bed quite noiselessly, slid into his sheep- 
 skins, and stole out as he had done the night before, 
 hardly knowing what he did. Poor Katte was mourn- 
 ing in the wooden shed with the other sheep, and the 
 wail of her sorrow sounded sadly across the loud roar 
 of the rushing river. 
 
 The moon was still high. 
 
 Above, against the sky, black and awful with clouds 
 floating over its summit, was the great Martinswand. 
 
 Findelkind this time called the big dog Waldmar to 
 him, and with the dog beside him went once more out 
 into the cold and the gloom, whilst his father and 
 mother, his brothers and sisters, were sleeping, and 
 poor childless Katte alone was awake. 
 
 He looked up at the mountain and then across the 
 water-swept meadows to the river. He was in doubt 
 which way to take. Then he thought that in all like- 
 lihood the lambs would have been seen if they had 
 wandered the river way, and even little Stefan would 
 have had too much sense to let them go there. So he 
 crossed the road and began to climb Martinswand. 
 
 With the instinct of the born mountaineer, he had 
 brought out his crampons with him, and had now fas- 
 P 
 
226 FINDELKIND. 
 
 tened them on his feet ; he knew every part and ridge 
 of the mountains, and had more than once climbed 
 over to that very spot where Kaiser Max had Imng in 
 peril of his life. 
 
 On second thoughts he bade Waldmar go back to 
 the house. The dog was a clever mountaineer, too, 
 but Findelkind did not wish to lead him into danger. 
 " I have done the wrong, and I will bear the brunt," 
 he said to himself; for he felt as if he had killed 
 Katte's children, and the weight of the sin was like lead 
 on his heart, and he would not kill good Waldmar too. 
 
 His little lantern did not show much light, and as 
 he went higher upwards he lost sight of the moon. 
 The cold was nothing to him, because the clear still air 
 was that in which he had been reared ; and the dark- 
 ness he did not mind, because he was used to that also; 
 but the weight of sorrow upon him he scarcely knew 
 how to bear, and how to find two tiny lambs in this 
 vast waste of silence and shadow would have pnzzled 
 and M^earied older minds than his. Garibaldi and all 
 his household, old soldiers tried and true, sought all 
 night once upon Caprera in such a quest, in vain. 
 
 If he could only have awakened his brother Stefan 
 to ask him which way they had gone ! but then, to be 
 sure, he remembered, Stefan must have told that to all 
 those who had been looking for the lambs from sunset 
 to nightfall. All alone he began the ascent. 
 
 Time and again, in the glad spring-time and the 
 fresh summer weather, he had driven his flock upwards 
 to eat the grass that grew in the clefts of the rocks and 
 on the broad green alps. The sheep could not climb 
 to the highest points ; but the goats did, and he with 
 
FINDELKIND. 227 
 
 them. Time and again he had lain on his back in 
 these uppermost heigiits, with the lower clouds behind 
 him and the black wings of the birds and the crows 
 almost touching his forehead, as he lay gazing up into 
 the blue depth of the sky, and dreaming, dreaming, 
 dreaming. 
 
 He would never dream any more now, he thought 
 to himself. His dreams had cost Katte her lambs, 
 and the world of the dead Findelkind was gone for- 
 ever : gone were all the heroes and knights ; gone ali 
 the faith and the force ; gone every one who cared for 
 the dear Christ and the poor in pain. 
 
 The bells of Zirl were ringing midnight. Findel- 
 kind heard, and wondered that only two hours had 
 gone by since his mother had kissed him in his bed. 
 It seemed to him as if long long nights had rolled 
 away, and he had lived a hundred years. 
 
 He did not feel any fear of the dark calm night, 
 lit now and then by silvery gleams of moon and stars. 
 The mountain was his old familiar friend, and the ways 
 of it had no more terror for him than these hills here 
 used to have for the bold heart of Kaiser Max. In- 
 deed, all he thought of was Katte, — Katte and the 
 lambs. He knew the way that the sheep-tracks ran ; 
 the sheep could not climb so high as the goats ; and he 
 knew, too, that little Stefan could not climb so high as 
 he. So he began his search low down upon Martins- 
 wand. 
 
 After midnight the cold increased ; there were snow- 
 clouds hanging near, and they opened over his head, 
 and the soft snow came flying along. For himself he 
 did not mind it, but alas for the lambs ! — if it covered 
 
228 FINDELKIND. 
 
 them, how would he find them ? And if they slept iu 
 it they were dead. 
 
 It was bleak and bare on the mountain-side, though 
 there were still patches of grass such as the flocks liked, 
 that had grown since the hay was cut. The frost of 
 the night made the stone slippery, and even the irons 
 gripped it with difficulty ; and there was a strong wind 
 rising like a giant's breath, and blowing his small horn 
 lantern to and fro. 
 
 Now and then he quaked a little with fear, — not fear 
 of the night or the mountains, but of strange spirits and 
 dwarfs and goblins of ill repute, said to haunt Martins- 
 wand after nightfall. Old women had told him of 
 such things, though the priest always said that they 
 were only foolish tales, there being nothing on God's 
 earth wicked save men and women who had not clean 
 hearts and hands. Findelkind believed the priest; 
 still, all alone on the side of the mountain, with the 
 snow-flakes flying round him, he felt a nervous thrill 
 that made him tremble and almost turn backward. 
 Almost, but not quite ; for he thought of Katte and 
 the poor little lambs lost — and perhaps dead — through 
 his fault. 
 
 The path went zigzag and was very steep; the Arolla 
 pines swayed their boughs in his face ; stones that lay 
 in his path unseen in the gloom made him stumble. 
 Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a 
 rushing sound ; the air grew so cold that all Martins- 
 wand might have been turning to one huge glacier. 
 All at once he heard through the stillness — for there 
 is nothing so still as a mountain-side in snow — a little 
 pitiful bleat. All his terrors vanished ; all his mem- 
 
FINDELKIND. 229 
 
 ories of ghost-tales passed away ; his heart gave a leap 
 of joy ; he was sure it was the cry of the lambs. He 
 stopped to listen more surely. He was now many 
 score of feet above the level of his home and of Zirl ; 
 he was, as nearly as he could judge, half-way as high 
 as where the cross in the cavern marks the spot of the 
 Kaiser's peril. The little bleat sounded above him, 
 and it was very feeble and faint. 
 
 Findelkind set his lantern down, braced himself up 
 by drawing tighter his old leathern girdle, set his 
 sheepskin cap firm on his forehead, and went towards 
 the sound as far as he could judge that it might be. 
 He was out of the woods now ; there were only a few 
 straggling pines rooted here and there in a mass of 
 loose-lying rock and slate ; so much he could tell by 
 the light of the lantern, and the lambs, by the bleat- 
 ing, seemed still above him. 
 
 It does not, perhaps, seem very hard labor to hunt 
 about by a dusky light upon a desolate mountain-side ; 
 but when the snow is falling fast, — when the light is 
 only a small circle, wavering, yellowish on the white, 
 — when around is a wilderness of loose stones and 
 yawning clefts, — when the air is ice and the hour is 
 past midnight, — the task is not a light one for a man ; 
 and Findelkind was a child, like that Findelkind that 
 was in heaven. 
 
 Long, very long, was his search j he grew hot and 
 forgot all fear, except a spasm of terror lest his light 
 should burn low and die out. The bleating had quite 
 ceased now, and there was not even a sigh to guide 
 him ; but he knew that near him the lambs must be, 
 and he did not waver or despair. 
 20 
 
230 FIIsDELKIND. 
 
 He did not pray ; praying in the morning had been 
 no use ; but he trusted in God, and he labored hard, 
 toiling to and fro, seeking in every nook and behind 
 each stone, and straining every muscle and nerve, till 
 the sweat rolled in a briny dew off his forehead, and 
 his curls dripped with wet. At last, with a scream 
 of joy, he touched some soft close wool that gleamed 
 white as the white snow. He knelt down on the 
 ground, and peered behind the stone by the full light 
 of his lantern ; there lay the little lambs, — two little 
 brothers, twin brothers, huddled close together, asleep. 
 Asleep ? He was sure they were asleep, for they were 
 60 silent and still. 
 
 He bowed over them, and kissed them, and laughed, 
 and cried, and kissed them again. Then a sudden 
 horror smote him ; they were so very still. There they 
 lay, cuddled close, one on another, one little white head 
 on each little white body, — drawn closer than ever to 
 gether, to try and get warm. 
 
 He called to them; he touched them; then he caught 
 them up in his arms, and kissed them again, and again, 
 and again. Alas ! they were frozen and dead. Never 
 again would they leap in the long green grass, and frisk 
 with each other, and lie happy by Katte's side ; they 
 had died calling for their mother, and in the long, 
 cold, cruel night, only death had answered. 
 
 Findelkind did not weep, or scream, or tremble ; his 
 heart seemed frozen, like the dead lambs. 
 
 It was he who had killed them. 
 
 He rose up and gathered them in his arms, and cud- 
 dled them in the skirts of his sheepskin tunic, and cast 
 his staff away that he might carry them, and so, thus 
 
FINDELKIND. 231 
 
 burdened with their weight, set his face to the snow 
 and the wind once more, and began his downward 
 way. 
 
 Once a great sob shook him ; that was all. Now he 
 had no fear. 
 
 The night might have been noon-day, the snow- 
 storm might have been summer, for aught that he 
 knew or cared. 
 
 Long and weary was the way, and often he stumbled 
 and had to rest ; often the terrible sleep of the snow 
 lay heavy on his eyelids, and he longed to lie down and 
 be at rest, as the little brothers were ; often it seemed 
 to him that he would never reach home again. But he 
 shook the lethargy off him and resisted the longing, and 
 held on his way: he knew that his mother would 
 mourn for him as Katte mourned for the lambs. At 
 length, through all difficulty and danger, when his 
 light had spent itself and his strength had wellnigh 
 spent itself too, his feet touched the old high-road. 
 There were flickering torches and many people, and 
 loud cries around the church, as there had been four 
 hundred years before, when the last sacrament had been 
 said in the valley for the hunter-king in peril above. 
 
 His mother, being sleepless and anxious, had risen 
 long before it was dawn, and had gone to the children's 
 chamber, and had found the bed of Findelkind empty 
 once more. 
 
 He came into the midst of the people with the two 
 little lambs in his arms, and he heeded neither the out- 
 cries of neighbors nor the frenzied joy of his mother : 
 his eyes looked straight before him, and his face was 
 white like the snow. 
 
232 FINDELKIND. 
 
 " I killed them," he said, and then two great tears 
 rolled down his cheeks and fell on the little cold bodies 
 of the two little dead brothers. 
 
 Findelkind was very ill for many nights and many 
 days after that. 
 
 Whenever he spoke in his fever he always said, " I 
 killed them !" 
 
 Never anything else. 
 
 So the dreary winter months went by, while the deep 
 snow filled up lands and meadows, and covered the 
 great mountains from summit to base, and all around 
 Martinswand was quite still, and now and then the 
 post went by to Zirl, and on the holy-days the bells 
 tolled ; that was all. His mother sat between the stove 
 and his bed with a sore heart; and his father as he 
 went to and fro between the walls of beaten snow, from 
 the wood-shed to the cattle-byre, was sorrowful, think- 
 ing to himself the child would die, and join that earlier 
 Findelkind whose home was with the saints. 
 
 But the child did not die. 
 
 He lay weak and wasted and almost motionless a 
 long time; but slowly, as the spring-time drew near, 
 and the snows on the lower hills loosened, and the 
 abounding waters coursed green and crystal-clear down 
 all the sides of the hills, Findelkind revived as the 
 earth did, and by the time the new grass was springing 
 and the first blue of the gentian gleamed on the alps, 
 he was well. 
 
 But to this day he seldom plays and scarcely ever 
 laughs. His face is sad, and his eyes have a look of 
 trouble. 
 
 Sometimes the priest of Zirl says of him to others, 
 
FINDELKIND. 233 
 
 " He will be a great poet or a great hero some day." 
 "Who knows ? 
 
 Meanwhile, in the heart of the child there reraains 
 always a weary pain, that lies on his childish life as a 
 stone may lie on a flower. 
 
 " I killed them !" he says often to himself, thinking 
 of the two little white brothers frozen to death on Mar- 
 tinswand that cruel night ; and he does the things that 
 are told him, and is obedient, and tries to be content 
 with the humble daily duties that are his lot, and when 
 he says his prayers at bedtime always ends them so : 
 
 "Dear God, do let the little lambs play with the 
 other Findelkind that is in heaven." 
 
MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO. 
 
 A TURKEY stood on a wall and saw a drove of black 
 and gray pigs go by on the high-road underneath. The 
 turkey was a very handsome gobbler, and his plumage 
 was of the most brilliant gray and white, and his 
 wattles were of the red of the carnation or the rose. 
 He was very proud, and as he looked down on the pigs 
 he stuck up his tail peacock- wise and fanned the air 
 with it, and strutted up and down on the stone ledge, 
 and said to himself, "What poor, dusty, hard-driven 
 drudges those are in the road there ! And not a single 
 feather upon them ! Nothing to cover their bodies ex- 
 cept a few dingy-looking hairs ! And they can only 
 make an odd snuffling noise instead of gobbling ! What 
 a contemptible grunting and grumbling ! And then 
 what a tail ! — a wisp of rope would be better !" 
 
 Then he spread his own tail higher and higher and 
 broader and broader, just to show the pigs what a tail 
 could be; and he gobbled loudly, that they might 
 know what intelligible and melodious speech was like. 
 
 The poor pigs went snuffling and shuffling along 
 in the mud and stones beneath the wall, and were 
 driven into the straw-yard of the turkey's own farm- 
 house. 
 
 Next morning, lo! the turkej- was put in a ooop 
 234 
 
MELEAORIS GALLOP AVO. 235 
 
 and was carried off to market, with a number of ducks 
 and geese and cackling pullets, and wlio should be next 
 to him but a poor gray pig, with his heels tied together 
 so that he could not stir. 
 
 " What a wretched creature !" said the turkey in its 
 pride, for the coop had not taken down its vanity one 
 peg. " What a sorry animal ! and such a tail ! Of 
 course they are going to cut his throat. As for me, 
 this is a throne : I suppose I am going to the palace. 
 Perhaps the queen has never seen a beautiful turkey 
 before." 
 
 Then he began again to spread out his tail-plume 
 and shake his rosy wattles, and began to gobble, gobble, 
 gobble with all his might. But the cart gave a lurch 
 and the coop tilted on one side, and the turkey tilted 
 up with it and lost his balance. 
 
 " Dear me ! what a price one pays for being of high 
 rank in this world !" he said to himself, as he clung to 
 the side of the wicker-work and tried to preserve his 
 dignity. 
 
 The poultry were all in flat baskets, and so were the 
 geese and the ducks. 
 
 " He'll be fine for killing three months hence, ma'am !" 
 his driver was saying, as he stopped the cart and held 
 up the coop to show our gentleman to a woman who 
 stood on the curbstone. 
 
 " For killing !" echoed the turkey ; and he swooned 
 away, and fell in a heap of ruffled feathers on the 
 bottom of the wicker-work prison. 
 
 For death had never occurred to him as a possible 
 fate for himself, though he saw other creatures go daily 
 to martyrdom. 
 
236 MELEAORIS OALLOPAVO. 
 
 " You will be sooner or later killed, just as I shall 
 be," said the pig, with a grunt, as the turkey came to 
 itself. " What do you suppose they fatten you for ? 
 For love of you ? Ough ! you silly vain thing !" 
 
 " I thought it was because — because — because I am 
 a turkey !" sighed the poor prisoner in the coop. 
 
 " Because you are a turkey !" echoed the pig. " As 
 if there were not five hundred thousand turkeys in the 
 world ! That is all. You will be before Christmas 
 just as I shall be : a knife will slit your throat." 
 
 The poor turkey swooned again on hearing this, and 
 did not recover so rapidly as before : therefore the cart 
 had jolted on again and was standing in the market- 
 place, with the horses out of the shafts, before he 
 opened his eyes and regaiaed his consciousness. 
 
 The master of the cart was away from it, and it had 
 been unpacked of most of its contents, and the pig 
 and the turkey were left alone. 
 
 Suddenly the pig gave a grunt, and the turkey 
 started, for his nerves were on edge and the least thing 
 frightened him. 
 
 " What a hideous voice you have !" he said, pettishly. 
 " You should hear me .'" 
 
 And he began to gobble with all his might. 
 
 " I don't see that your noise is a bit prettier than 
 mine," said the pig. " But it is very silly to lose your 
 time squabbling about voices. We could get out if 
 you would help me a little." 
 
 The turkey was silent. 
 
 To get out would be delightful; but to go into 
 partnership with piggy hurt his pride so much that he 
 would not even ask in what way escape could be 
 
MELEAQRIS GALLOPAVO. 237 
 
 accomplished. But the pig was in too much haste and 
 too much in earnest to stand upon etiquette. 
 
 " I can get my snout to your coop," he said, eagerly ; 
 "and I will gnaw it asunder — it's nothing but wicker 
 — if you will promise to peck my cords to pieces when 
 you are out. Now, don't you see what I mean ?" 
 
 The turkey was so enraptured that his pride all 
 tumbled down like a broken egg, and his wings began 
 to flap in a tremendous flurry. 
 
 " Make haste ! make haste !" he cried, and gobbled 
 till he was red in the face. 
 
 " Don't make such a noise, or they'll hear you," said 
 the pig, getting his teeth well on to the wicker, " and 
 then you and I shall go up as the alderman and his 
 chains on to some horrid man's table." 
 
 " Alderman ?" said the turkey. 
 
 "They call a roast turkey and its sausages so," 
 explained the pig. 
 
 The turkey thought it very ghastly pleasantry. 
 
 The pig meanwhile was hard at work, and in a very 
 little time he had gnawed, and pulled, and bitten, and 
 twisted the coop on the side near to him in such an 
 effectual manner that the turkey soon got his head 
 through, and then his throat, and then his body. He 
 gave a gobble of glory and joy. 
 
 " But undo me !" squeaked the pig. 
 
 Now, the turkey was in a fearful hurry to be gone ; 
 his heart beat and his wings flapped so that he almost 
 fell into convulsions ; but he was a bird of honor and 
 good faith. He bent down and pecked with such 
 frantic force at the knots tying the pig's legs that he 
 filled his beak with frayed cord, and in less time than 
 
238 MELEAGRIS GALLOP AVO. 
 
 I take to write it piggy tumbled in his heavy fashion 
 off the cart on to the ground, — free. 
 
 "Now run," said the pig; and nobody knows how 
 fast a pig can run who has not seen him put his mind 
 and his will into it. The turkey could not fly, be- 
 cause his wings were cut, and tame turkeys seldom 
 know much about flying ; but, what with a stride and 
 a flutter mixed in one, he managed to cover the ground 
 rapidly, and kept up side by side with the pig, who, for 
 his part, knowing the country, kept steadily on down 
 the road, which fortunately for them was a solitary one, 
 and made straight for a wood which he saw in the dis- 
 tance. The wood was about a mile and a half off, and 
 the two comrades were in sore distress when they came 
 up to it ; but they did reach it unstopped, and sank 
 down on the grass under some larches with a sigh of 
 content. 
 
 " Such a useless tree the larch !" murmured the pig ; 
 " not an acorn on it once in all its days !" 
 
 For, of course, the pig viewed all trees only in rela- 
 tion to acorns. 
 
 " I can't eat acorns," sighed the turkey, as soon as he 
 got his breath. 
 
 " You ungrateful creature," said the pig in re- 
 proof. " Be content that you have escaped with your 
 life." 
 
 " Are you sure we have escaped ?" 
 
 " We have escaped for the time," said the philosophic 
 pig ; " and to be loose in a wood is heaven upon earth. 
 There must be grain, or berries, or something you can 
 pick up, if only you will look about for it." 
 
 Now it was easy for the good pig to be philosophic, 
 
MELEAORIS OALLOPAVO. 239 
 
 because near at hand he had smelt out a savory spot in 
 the mossy ground, and he was right in the very middle 
 of a hearty meal of truffles. 
 
 " I never thought to have to beg my bread," sighed 
 the turkey. 
 
 " Who do you suppose would take the trouble to feed 
 you if it was not to kill you ?" grunted the pig, with 
 his mouth quite full. " You need not beg your bread, 
 as you call it ; look for it, — as I do." 
 
 The turkey, pressed by hunger, did begin to look. 
 A tame turkey, you know, knows nothing about feed- 
 ing itself; food is thrown out to it; and our turkey, at 
 any rate, had always supposed that was an ordination 
 of Providence. 
 
 But little by little, watching the pig devouring the 
 truffles, natural appetites and instincts awoke in him : 
 no doubt his grandparents a hundred times removed 
 had been wild turkeys by the borders of the Missouri 
 or in the woods of Arkansas, and hereditary instincts 
 revived in him under the all-potent prick of hunger. 
 He did begin to look about, and spied a wild straw- 
 berry or two and ate them, and saw a blackberry-bush 
 and stripped it, and, finding a big grasshopper and a 
 small frog, found an appetite also for them. 
 
 " I never kncAV so much natural nourishment grew 
 about one," he remarked to the pig, who snorted, — 
 
 " There is food enough ; only men take it all. Your 
 people are all in America, but men can't let them alone 
 even there, so I have lieard. Oh, there is a pretty hen- 
 pheasant ! Good-morning, Madame Phasiani." 
 
 " Is that her name ?" asked the turkey. 
 
 " It is her family name; and your own is Meleagris 
 
240 MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO. 
 
 Gallopavo, and I don't suppose you knew that," said 
 the pig, very snappishly. 
 
 The turkey was silent. Meleagris Gallopavo ! That 
 really was a very fine name ! 
 
 " Is one well off in this wood, Madame Phasiani?" 
 asked the pig of the pheasant, who sighed, and replied 
 that the wood was very nice, and Indian corn was 
 thrown out twice a day ; but then when there was the 
 trail of the beater over it all, who could be happy ? 
 
 " There is the trail of the butcher over me," said the 
 pig, " but I enjoy myself whilst I can. You mentioned 
 Indian corn, madam : is the keeper's cottage unfor- 
 tunately near us, then ?" 
 
 She said it was half a mile off, or perhaps not so 
 much. 
 
 " This is a preserve, then ?" said the pig. 
 
 She sighed again, and said it was, and sauntered 
 pensively away with her head on one side, as pheasants 
 always do. 
 
 " I hoped it was a bit of wild coppice," said the pig. 
 "Ah, here is a kingfisher. How do, Mr. Alced?" 
 
 But the kingfisher, who is the shyest creature upon 
 earth, skimmed away in silence. 
 
 " Why do you call them all those fine names ?" said 
 the turkey. 
 
 " It costs nothing, and it pleases them," said the pig, 
 curtly. " It is part of men's tomfoolery," he added, 
 after a pause ; and then, seeing a turtle-dove, he grunted 
 in his most amiable fashion, "Sir Turtur Auritus, 
 good-day. We are resting in your wood a little while ; 
 it is very cool, and green, and pleasant. May I ask if 
 it be also safe f 
 
'/J>%^) 
 
 'jf}' -*^^l:i:*A. 
 
 "may 1 ASK IF IT BE ALSO SAFE?" 
 
MELEAQRIS OALLOPAVO. 241 
 
 "Safe!" said the turtle-dove, sitting down on a 
 cranberry-bough. " There are guns, guns, guns, from 
 morning to night." 
 
 " Surely not this time of the year ? No !" 
 
 " There are for us," said the turtle-dove, sorro\vfully ; 
 " and when there are not guns there are traps. They 
 have no mercy on us. We only eat the pine-kernels, 
 the wood-spurge, grain, the little snails. We do no 
 harm. Yet they hunt us down ; they put poisoned 
 colza for us ; they kill us by thousands ; and I have 
 heard — though it seems too terrible to be true — that 
 they pack us alive in hampers, keep us shut up one 
 atop of another for days, then pull our tail-feathers 
 out, and shut us up again in another box ; when that 
 box flies open they shoot at us, so I have heard." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; my gentlemen call that their 'poules,' and 
 give each other prizes for doing it," said the pig, with a 
 grim sympathy. " They think it vulgar when the lads 
 at village fairs grease our tails and hunt us. Dear Sir 
 Turtur Auritus, is there such a gigantic sham, such an 
 unutterable beast anywhere as Man ?" 
 
 " I should think there is not," said the turtle-dove. 
 " Myself I live out of the world, on the top of that 
 lime-tree you see there, and if I can only alight safely 
 to feed and drink twice a day, I ask no more." 
 
 A pretty partridge went tripping by at that moment, 
 with some finely-grown sons and daughters after her. 
 She was a charming and lovely creature, only she had 
 a sadly nervous manner. 
 
 "When it grows near the 1st of September," she 
 said in a tone of apology to the pig, who saluted her 
 as Lady Starnacineria, " every sound, the very slightest 
 L J 21 
 
242 MELEAORIS GALLOPAVO. 
 
 sends my heart up into my mouth, and I take every 
 stone for a dog. What is the use or the joy of bring- 
 ing these dear children into a world of shot? Their 
 doom is to be huddled alive into a game-bag, with 
 broken limbs and torn bodies, and my lord will think 
 himself a saint fit for heaven if he send a hamper of 
 them up to a hospital." 
 
 " All men's hypocrisy, madam," said the pig. " I 
 prefer the frank, blunt snap of the fox, who makes 
 no pretence of Christian charit}', but only wants his 
 dinner." 
 
 " If it were only the fox," sighed the partridge, 
 " that would be very bearable ; and he likes a common 
 hen quite as well as ourselves, — and better, because the 
 poor vulgar creature is bigger." 
 
 With a sigh she devoted herself to laying open 
 an ants' nest, and called to her young to devour the 
 eggs in it. 
 
 " This seems a very nice home of yours," said the 
 pig, to provoke conversation. 
 
 The partridge sighed as the pheasant had done. 
 
 "It is too charming among these turnips," she 
 said, " and there is most excellent fare all over these 
 fields ; but, alas ! for what a fate do I live and hatch 
 these dear children — the gun, the dog, the bag ! Ah, 
 dear sir, life to a partridge, where man is, is only a 
 vale of tears, though led in the best of corn-fields !" 
 
 And she said " Cheep, cheep," and made a restless 
 little flutter of all her feathers, and crept under the rail 
 again back among the turnips. 
 
 At that moment a fine black rabbit, with a white tuft 
 for a tail, darted by too quick for the pig to stop him. 
 
MELEAGRIS GALLOPAVO. 243 
 
 "Ah, he has a sad life, — almost as sad as mine!" 
 said the turtle-dove. " He dwells in quite a humble 
 way under ground, but they never let him alone. 
 When they can shoot nothing else, they are forever 
 banging and blazing at him. And they put a ferret 
 through his hall door without even knocking to say 
 they are there. Have you ever seen the poor bunnies 
 sitting outside their warrens cleaning their faces like 
 pussy-cats in the cool of the early morning ! Ah, such 
 a pretty sight ! But men only want them for their 
 pelts or to put them in a pie." 
 
 " What is your opinion of men, dear lady ?" said the 
 pig, as a red-and-white cow came and looked over the 
 fence. 
 
 " Oh, don't mention them !" said the cow, with un- 
 feigned horror. " Don't they massacre all my pretty 
 children, and drive me to market with my udders 
 bursting, and break my heart and brand my skin? 
 and when I am grown old will they not knock 
 me on the head, or run a knife through my spine, 
 and turn me into a hundred uses, hide, and hoofs, 
 and everything? it is all written in their children's 
 lesson-books. ' The most useful animal in the king- 
 dom of nature is a cow.' That is what they say. 
 Ugh !" 
 
 "My dear friend," said the pig, turning to the 
 turkey, "you see that every living thing is devoured 
 by man. Why should you suppose you were to be 
 the exception ?" 
 
 "No one has such a tail as I have," said the 
 turkey. 
 
 His fright over, he had come to the conclusion that 
 
244 MELEAGRIS GALLOP AVO. 
 
 nobody would ever do anything except adore a being 
 with such a tail as his. 
 
 " What is your tail compared with the peacock's ?" 
 said the pig, with scorn. " You are only so vain 
 because you are so ignorant." 
 
 " Do they kill peacocks ?" asked the turkey. 
 
 "No; I don't think they do," replied the pig, 
 truthful, though truth demolished his theories, which 
 is more than can be said for human philosophers. 
 
 " Then why do they keep them ?" said the turkey. 
 
 " Because they have such wonderful tails," said the 
 pig, incautiously. 
 
 " TAe/'e .'" said the turkey, triumphantly ; and out 
 he spread his own tail, making it into a very grand 
 wheel, and crying with all his might in that peculiar 
 voice which nature has given to turkeys, " I am Mele- 
 agris Gallopavo ! I am Meleagris Gallopavo !" 
 
 He had never known his new name till five minutes 
 previously ; but that made no difference : he was just 
 as vain of it as if he had borne it all his life. Ask 
 the Herald's College if this be uncommon. 
 
 He had stretched his throat out, and his rosy 
 wattles glowed like geraniums, and he turned slowly 
 round and round so that every one might admire him, 
 and he stuck his tail up on high as stiff and as straight 
 as if it had been made of pasteboard. 
 
 " I am Meleagris Gallopavo !" he cried, with a very 
 shrill shriek, and scattered the sandy soil of the wood 
 all about him with his hind claws. 
 
 Crack ! A bludgeon rolled him over, a mere ball of 
 ruffled, crumpled feathers, on the ground, and a lurcher 
 dog ran into him and gripped him tight and hard. 
 
MELEAGRIS GALLOP AVO. 245 
 
 " We're in luck, mate !" said an ill-looking fellow 
 who was prowling along the edge of the field with 
 another as ill favored. " Mum's the word, and he'll 
 go in the pot worth twenty rabbits. Who'd ha' thought 
 of finding a darned turkey out on the spree ?" 
 
 Then the cruel man rammed poor Meleagris Gallo- 
 pavo into a bag that he carried with him. He was a 
 village ne'er-do-weel, seeing if he could trespass with 
 impunity and knock over a bunny or two on the sly. 
 knowing that the keepers were away from that part of 
 the wood that day. The pig lay hidden among the 
 wood-spurge and the creeping moss, and looked so 
 exactly like a log of grayish-brown timber that the 
 ruffians never noticed him. 
 
 " I knew his tail would be the undoing of him !" 
 he said, sorrowfully, as his poor friend was borne off 
 dead in the poachers' sack. 
 
 He himself had never looked so complacently on his 
 own gray hairless wisp as he did now. How conven- 
 ient it was ! Anybody would take it for a bit of dry 
 grass or a twig. 
 
 I may as well add that the mistress of the wood came 
 through it next day, and the pig followed her home, 
 and ate an apple which she gave him so cannily that 
 she sent him into her yard, and has kept him like a 
 very prince of pigs ever since. But he is always sorry 
 for his poor friend's fate ; and he has never since told 
 any turkey that its family name is Meleagris Gallopavo. 
 
 21* 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 The little Earl was a very little one indeed, as 
 far as years and stature were, but he was a very big 
 one if you consider his possessions and his impor- 
 tance. He was only a month old when his father 
 died, and only six months old when his mother, too, 
 left him for the cold damp vault, with its marbles 
 and its rows of velvet coffins, — a vault that was very 
 grand, but so chilly and so desolate that when they 
 took the little Earl there on holy-days to lay his 
 flowers down upon the dead he could never sleep for 
 nights afterwards, remembering its darkness and 
 solemnity. 
 
 The little Earl was called Hubert Hugh Lupus 
 Alured Beaudesert, and was the Earl of Avillion and 
 Lantrissaint ; but by his own friends and his grand- 
 mother and his old nurse he was called only Bertie. 
 
 He was eight years old in the summer-time, when 
 there befell him the adventure I am going now to relate 
 to you, and he was, for his age, quite a baby ; he was 
 slender and slight, and he had a sweet little face like a 
 flower, with very big eyes, and a quantity of fair hair 
 cut after the fashion of the Reynolds and Gains- 
 borough children. He had always been kept as if he 
 were a china doll that would break at a touch. His 
 246 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 247 
 
 grandmother and his uncle had been left the sole charge 
 of him; and as they were both invalids, and the latter 
 a priest, and both dwelt in great retirement at the castle 
 of Avillion, the little Earl's little life had not been a 
 boy's life. 
 
 He had always been tranquil, for every one loved 
 him, and he had all things that he wished for ; yet he 
 was treated more as if he were a rare flower or a most 
 fragile piece of porcelain, than a little bright boy of 
 real flesh and blood ; and, without knowing it, he was 
 often tired of all his cotton-wool. He was such a tiny 
 fellow, you see, to be the head of his race, and the last 
 of it too ; for there were no others of this great race 
 from which he had sprung, and his uncle, as a priest, 
 could never marry. Thus so much depended on this 
 small short life that the fuss made over him, and the 
 care taken of him, had ended in making him so in- 
 capable of taking any care of himself that if he had 
 ever got out alone in a street he would have been run 
 over to a certainty, and as he grew older he grew sad 
 and feverish, and chafed because he was never allowed 
 to do the things that all boys by instinct love to do. 
 By nature the little Earl was very brave, but he was 
 made timid by incessant cautions ; and as he was, too, 
 by nature very thoughtful, the seclusion from other 
 children in which he was brought up made him too 
 serious for his age. 
 
 Avillion was deep-bosomed in woods, throned high 
 above a lake and moors and mountains, and setting its 
 vast stone buttresses firmly down into the greenest, 
 smoothest turf in all the green west country of Eng- 
 land ; a grand and glorious place, famous in history, 
 
248 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 full of majesty and magnificence, and sung to, forever, 
 by the deep music of the Atlantic waves. Once upon 
 a time the Arthurian Court that Mr. Tennyson has told 
 you of so often had held its solemn jousts and its blame- 
 less revels there; at least, so said the story of AvilHon, 
 as told in ballads of the country-side, — more trust- 
 worthy historians than most people think. 
 
 All those ballads the little Earl knew by heart, and 
 he loved them more than anything, for Deborah, his 
 nurse, had crooned them over his cradle before ever he 
 could understand even the words of them ; so that 
 Arthur and Launcelot, and Sir Gawain and Sir Gala- 
 had, and all the knightly lives that were once at Tin- 
 tagel, were more real to him than the living figures 
 about hira, and these fancies served him as his play- 
 mates, — for he had few others, except his dog Ralph and 
 his pony Royal. His relatives were ailing, melancholy, 
 attached to silence and solitude, and though they would 
 have melted gold and pearls for Bertie's drinking if 
 he could have drunk them, never bethought themselves 
 that noise and romps and laughter and fun and a little 
 spice of peril are all things without which a child's life 
 is as dead and spiritless as a squirrel's in a cage. And 
 Bertie did not know it either. He studied under his 
 tutor. Father Philip, a noble and learned old man, and 
 he was caressed and cosseted by his nurse Deborah, and 
 he wore beautiful little dresses, most usually of velvet, 
 and he had wonderful toys that were sent from Paris, 
 automatons that danced and fenced and played the 
 guitar, and animals that did just what live animals do, 
 and Punches and puppets that played and mimicked by 
 clock-work, and little yachts that sailed by clock-work, 
 
TEE LITTLE EARL. 249 
 
 and whole armies of soldiers, and marvellous games 
 costly and splendid ; but he had nobody to play at all 
 these things with, and it was dull work playing with 
 them by himself. Deborah played with them in the 
 best way she knew, but she was not a child, being sixty- 
 six years old, and was of a slow imagination and of 
 rheumatic movements. 
 
 " Run and play," Father Philip would often say to 
 him, taking him perforce from his books; but the 
 little Earl would answer, sadly, "I have nobody to 
 play with !" 
 
 That want of his attracted no attention from all 
 those peoj^le who loved the ground his little feet trod 
 on ; he was surrounded with every splendor and indul- 
 gence, he had half the toys of the Palais Royal in his 
 nursery, and he had a bed to sleep in of ivory inlaid 
 with silver, that had once belonged to the little King 
 of Rome ; millions of money were being stored up for 
 him, and lands wide enough to make a principality 
 called him lord : it never occurred to anybody that the 
 little Earl of Avillion was not the most fortunate child 
 that lived under the sun. 
 
 "Why do people all call me 'my lord'?" he asked 
 one day, suddenly becoming observant of this fact. 
 
 " Because you are my lord," said Deborah, — which 
 did not content him. 
 
 He asked Father Philip. 
 
 " My dear little boy, it is your title : think not of 
 it save as an obligation to bear your rank well and 
 without stain." 
 
 At last the little Earl grew so pale and thin and so 
 delicate in health that the physician who was always 
 
250 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 watching over him said to his grandmother that the boy 
 wanted change of air, and advised the southern coast 
 for him, and cessation of almost all study; which order 
 grieved Father Philip sorely, for Bertie could read his 
 Livy M'cll, and was beginning to spell through his 
 Xenophon, and it cut the learned gentleman to the 
 heart that his pupil should give up all this and go back 
 on the royal road to learning. For both he and his 
 uncle were resolved that the little Earl should be very 
 learned, and the boy was eager enough to learn, only 
 he liked still better knowing how the flowers grew, and 
 why the birds could fly while he could not, and how 
 the wood-bee made his neat house in the tree-trunk, and 
 the beaver built his dam across the river, — inquiries 
 which everybody about him was inclined to discourage. 
 Natural science was not looked on with favor in the 
 nursery and school-room of Avillion. It was considered 
 to lead people astray. 
 
 So the little Earl was moved southward, with his 
 grandmother, and his nurse, and his physician, and 
 Ralph and Royal, — for he would not go without them, 
 — and several servants as well. They were to go to 
 Shankliu in the Isle of Wight, and they made the 
 journey by sea in the beautiful sailing-yacht which was 
 waiting for Bertie's manhood, after having been the 
 idol of his father's. On board, the little Earl was well 
 amused ; but he worried every one about him by ques- 
 tions as to the fishes. 
 
 '^ Lord, child ! they are but nasty clammy things, 
 only nice when they are cooked," said his nurse; and 
 his grandmamma said to him, " Dear, they were made 
 to live in the sea, just as the birds are made to fly in 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 251 
 
 the air." Aud this did not satisfy the little man at all; 
 but he could get no more information, for the doctor, 
 who could have told him a good deal, was under the 
 thumb of his stately mistress, and Lady Avillion had 
 said very sternly that the boy was not to be encouraged 
 in his nonsense: what he must be taught were the 
 duties of his position and all he owed to the country, — 
 the poor little Earl ! 
 
 He was a very small, slender, pale-cheeked lord in- 
 deed, with his golden hair hanging over his puzzled 
 forehead, that used to ache sometimes with carrying 
 Xeuophon and Livy, and underneath the hair two 
 great wondering blue eyes, of a blue so dark that they 
 were like wet violets. His hands were tiny and thin, 
 and his legs, clad in their red-silk stockings and black- 
 velvet breeches, were like two sticks : people who saw 
 him go by whispered about him and said all the poor 
 little fellow's rank and riches would not keep him long 
 in the land of the living. Once the little Earl heard 
 that said, and understood what it meant, and thought 
 to himself, "I shouldn't mind dying if I could take 
 Ralph : perhaps there would be somebody to play with 
 there." 
 
 It was May, and there were not many folks at 
 Shanklin : still, there were two or three children he 
 might have played with, but his grandmamma thought 
 them vulgar children, not fit playmates for him ; aud 
 so the poor little Earl, with the burden of his great- 
 ness, had to walk soberly and sadly past them, with 
 his little tired red-stockinged legs, while the little girls 
 said to each other, in a whisper, " There's a little lord !" 
 and the boys hallooed out, " He's the swell that owns 
 
252 ^-H"^ LITTLE EARL. 
 
 the schooner." Bertie would sigh, as he heard : what 
 was the use of owning the schooner, when you had no 
 one to play with on it, and never could do what you 
 liked ? 
 
 You have never seen Shanklin, for you have never 
 been in England ; and if you do go now, you will 
 never see it as it was when Bertie walked there, when 
 it was the prettiest and most primitive little place in 
 England ; now, they tell me, it has been made into a 
 watering-place, with a pier and an esplanade. 
 
 Shanklin used to be a little green mossy village cov- 
 ered up in honeysuckle and hawthorn ; low long houses, 
 green too with ivy and creepers, hid themselves away 
 in sweet-smelling old-fashioned gardens ; yellow roads 
 ran between high banks and hedges out to the green 
 down or downward to the ripple of the sea ; and the 
 cool brown sands, glistening and firm, twice a day felt 
 the kiss of the tide. The cliffs were brown too, for the 
 most part ; some were white ; the gray sea stretched in 
 front ; and the glory of the place was its leafy chine 
 and ravine that severed the rocks and was full of 
 foliage and of the sound of birds. It used to be all 
 so quiet there ; now and then there passed in the offing 
 a brig or a yacht or a man-of-war; now and then 
 farmers' carts came in from the downs by Appuldur- 
 combe or the farms beyond the Undercliif ; there were 
 some fishing-cabins by the beach, and one old inn with 
 a long grassy garden, where the coaches used to stop 
 that ran through the quiet country from Ryde to 
 Ventnor. It was so green, so still, so friendly, so 
 fresh ; when I think of it I hear the swish of its lazy 
 waves, and I smell the smell of its eglantine hedges, 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 253 
 
 and I see the big brown eyes of my gallant dog as he 
 came breathless up from the sea. 
 
 Alas ! you will never see it so. The hedges are 
 down, they tell me, and the grand dog is dead, and the 
 hateful engine tears through the fields, and the sands 
 are beaten to make an esplanade, and the beach is 
 noisy and hideous with the bray of bands and the 
 laughter of fools. 
 
 What will the world be like when you are twenty ? 
 Very frightful, I fear. This is progress, they say ? 
 
 But what of the little Earl ? you ask. 
 
 Well, the little Earl knew Shanklin as I knew it, — 
 when the blackbirds and thrushes sang in the quiet 
 chine, and the sense of an infinite peace dwelt on its 
 simple shores. His grandmamma had taken for the 
 summer the house that stands in its woods at the head 
 of the chine and looks straight down that rift of 
 greenery to the gray sea. I know not what that house 
 is now; then it was charming, chalet-like, yet spa- 
 cious. 
 
 Here the little Earl was set free of his studies and 
 kept out in the air when it was fine, and when it 
 rained was sent, not to his books, but to his toys. Yet 
 it did not seem to him any great change ; for when he 
 rode, James was with him ; and when he walked, 
 Deborah was with him ; and when he bathed, William 
 was with him ; and when he was only in the garden, 
 there was grandmamma. 
 
 He was never alone. Oh, how he longed to be alone 
 
 sometimes ! And he never had any playfellows : how 
 
 he would watch those two or three vulgar little boys 
 
 building sand-castles and sailing their boats! He 
 
 22 
 
254 '^SE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 would have given all his big schooner and its crew to 
 be one of those little boys. 
 
 He had a cruise now and then off the island, and the 
 skipper came up bare-headed and hoped my lord en- 
 joyed the sail ; but he did not enjoy it. William and 
 Deborah were always after him, telling him to mind 
 this, and take care of that, till he wished his pretty 
 snow-white sailor dress with the gold buttons were 
 only rags and tatters ! For the poor little Earl was 
 an adventurous and curious little lad at heart, and had 
 a spirit of his own, though he was so meek ; and he 
 was tired of being treated like a baby. 
 
 His eighth birthday came round in June, and won- 
 derful and magnificent were the presents he had sent 
 him ; but he only felt a little more tired than he had 
 done before ; the bonbons he was not allowed to eat, 
 the splendidly-bound books seemed nonsense to a little 
 classic who read Livy ; the toys he did not care for, 
 and the gold dressing-case his grandmamma gave him 
 was no pleasure : he had one in silver, and his very 
 hair he was never permitted to brush himself. 
 
 "As I may not eat the bonbons, might I send them 
 all to the children on the sands?" he asked wistfully 
 of his grandmother. 
 
 "Impossible, my love," she answered. "We do not 
 know who they are." 
 
 " INIay I give them to the poor children then ?" said 
 the little lad. 
 
 " That would hardly be wise, dear. It would give 
 them a taste for luxuries." 
 
 Bertie sighed: life on this his eighth birthday seemed 
 very empty. 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 255 
 
 "Why are people strangers to each other? Why 
 does not everybody speak to every one else ?" he said 
 at last, desperately. " St. Paul says we are all brothers, 
 and St. Francis " 
 
 " My dear child, do not talk nonsense," said Lady 
 Avillion. " We shall have you a Radical when you 
 are of age !" 
 
 " What is that?" said Bertie. 
 
 " The people who slew your dear Charles the First 
 were Radicals," said his grandmother, cleverly. 
 
 He was discouraged and silent. He went sorrow- 
 fully and leaned against one of the windows and looked 
 down the green vista of the chine. It was raining, and 
 they would not let him go out of doors. He thought 
 to himself, " What use is it calling me ^ my lord,' and 
 telling me I own so much, and bowing down before 
 me, if I may never do once, just once, as I like? I 
 know I am a little boy ; but then, if I am an Earl, if 
 I am good enough to be that, I ought to be able to do 
 once as I like. Else, if not, what is the use? And 
 why does the skipper say always to me, ' Your lord- 
 ship is owner here' ?" 
 
 And then a fancy came into his little head. Was 
 he like the Princes in the Tower? Was he a prisoner, 
 after all? His little mind was full of the pageant of 
 history, and he made his mind up now that he was a 
 princely captive watched and warded. 
 
 "Tell me, dear Deb," he said, catching his nurse 
 by the sleeve as she turned from his bed that night, 
 " tell me, is it not true that I am in prison, though 
 you are all so kind to me ; that somebody else wants 
 ray throne ?" 
 
256 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 Nurse Deborah thought he was " off his head/' and 
 ran to the physician for a cooling draught, and sat up 
 in fright all the night, not even reassured by his sound 
 tranquil sleep. 
 
 Bertie asked her nothing more. 
 
 He was more sure than ever that a captive he was, 
 kept in kindly and honorable durance, like James of 
 Scotland in the Green Tower. 
 
 Whilst he was lying awake, a grand and startling 
 idea dawned on him : What if he were to go out and 
 see the world for himself? This notion has fascinated 
 many a child before him. Did not St. Teresa of Spain, 
 when she was a little thing, toddle out with a tiny 
 brother over the brown sierras ? So absolutely now 
 did this enterprise dazzle and conquer the little Earl 
 that before night was half-way over he had persuaded 
 himself that a prisoner he was, and that his stolen 
 kingdom he would go and find, just as the knights in 
 his favorite tales sallied forth to seek the Holy Grail. 
 The passion for adventure, for escape, for finding out 
 the truth, grew so strong on him that at the first flush 
 of daybreak he slid out of bed and resolved that go 
 alone he would. He longed to take Ralph, but he 
 feared it would not be right: who knew what perils or 
 pains awaited him? — and to make the dog sharer in 
 them seemed selfish. So he threw a glove of his own 
 for Ralph to guard, bade him be still, and set about 
 his own flight. 
 
 He made a sad bungle of dressing himself, for he 
 had never clothed himself in his life; but at last he 
 got the things on somehow, and most of them hind- 
 part-before. But he did it all without awaking Deb- 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 257 
 
 orah, and, taking his sailor-hat, he managed to drop 
 out of the window on to the sward below without any- 
 one being aware. 
 
 It was quite early day ; the sky was red, the shadows 
 and the mists were still there, the birds were piping 
 good-morrow to each other. 
 
 " How lovely it is !" he thought. " Oh, why doesn't 
 everybody get up at sunrise ?" 
 
 He knew, however, that if he wanted to see the 
 world by himself he must not tarry there and think 
 about the dawn. So off he set, as fast as his not very 
 strong legs could carry him, and he got down to the 
 shore. 
 
 The fog was on the sea and screened it from his 
 sight, and there was no one on the beach except a boy 
 getting nets ready in an old boat. To the boy ran 
 Bertie, and held to him two half-crowns. " Will you 
 row me to Bonchurch for that?" he asked. 
 
 The boy grinned. "For sure, little master; and 
 Pd like to row a dozen at the price." 
 
 Into the boat jumped the little Earl, with all the 
 feverish agility given to prisoners, who are escaping, 
 by their freed instincts. It was a very old, dirty boat, 
 and soiled his pretty white clothes terribly, but he had 
 no eyes for that, he so enjoyed that delicious sense of 
 being all alone and doing just as he liked. The boy 
 was a big boy and strong, and rowed with a will ; and 
 the old tub went jumping and bobbing and splashing 
 through the rather heavy swell. The gig of his yacht 
 was a smart, long boat, beautifully clean, and with 
 rowers all dressed in red caps and white jerseys ; but 
 the little Earl had never enjoyed rowing in that half 
 r 22* 
 
258 ^^^ LITTLE EARL. 
 
 SO much. Tliere had been always somebody to look 
 after him and say, " Don't lean over the side," or, 
 " Mind the water does not splash you," or, " Take 
 care !" Oh, that tiresome " Take care !" It makes a 
 boy want to jump head-foremost into the sea, or fling 
 himself head-downwards from the nearest apple-tree ! 
 I know you have felt so yourself twenty times a week, 
 though I do not tell you that you were right. 
 
 Nothing is prettier than the UuderclifF as you look 
 up at it from the sea, — a tangle of myrtle and laurel 
 and beech and birch coming down to the very shore, 
 all as Nature made it. Bertie, as the boat wabbled 
 along like a fat old duck, looked up at it and was en- 
 chanted, and then he looked at the white wall of mist 
 on the waters, and was enchanted too. It was like 
 Wonderland. His dreams were broken by the fisher- 
 lad's voice : 
 
 " I'll have to put you ashore at the creek, little mas- 
 ter, and get back, or daddy '11 give me a hiding." 
 
 " Who is ' daddy' ?" 
 
 " Father," said the boy. " He'll lick me, for the 
 tub's his'n." 
 
 Bertie was perplexed. He had heard of bears being 
 licked into shape by their fathers and mothers, but this 
 boy, though rough and rather shapeless, looked too old 
 for such treatment. 
 
 " You were a wicked boy to use the boat, then," he 
 said, with great severity. 
 
 The lad only grinned. 
 
 " Little master, you tipped me a crown." 
 
 " I did not mean to tempt you to do wrong," said 
 Bertie, very seriously still ; and then he colored, for 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 259 
 
 was he very sure that he was not doing wrong him- 
 self? 
 
 The old boat was grinding on the shingle then, and 
 the rower of it was putting him ashore at a little creek 
 that was wooded and pretty, and up which the sea ran 
 at high tide ; there was a little cottage at the head ; f 
 it. I have heard that this wood-glen used to be in the 
 old time a very famous place for smugglers, and it is 
 still solitary and romantic, or at least was so still 
 when the little Earl was set down there. "Where 
 am I ?" he asked the boy. But the wicked boy 
 only grinned, and began to wabble back through the 
 water as fast as his long slashing strokes could carry 
 him. The little Earl felt rather foolish and rather 
 helpless. 
 
 He was not far on his way towards seeing the world, 
 and he began to wish for some breakfast. There was 
 smoke going out of a chimney of the cottage, and the 
 door of it stood open, but he was afraid the people there 
 might stop him if he asked for anything, and, besides, 
 the path up to it through the glen looked rocky and 
 thorny and impassable, so he kept along by the beach, 
 finding it heavy walking, for there were more stones 
 than sands, and the beach was strewn with rocks, large 
 and small, and stiff prickly furze. But he had the sea 
 beside him and the world before him, and he walked 
 on bravely, and in a little while he came into Bon- 
 church. It was very early yet, and Bonchurch was 
 asleep, and most of its snug thatched houses, hidden 
 away in their gardens and fuchsia hedges, were shut 
 up snugly ; the tall trees of its one street made a deep 
 shadow in it, and the broad placid water of its great 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 261 
 
 come, you are j and your pa and your ma can pay for 
 it." 
 
 " No, no," murmured Bertie, getting very red ; and, 
 fearing lest his longing for the meal should overcome 
 his honor, he stumbled out of the baking-house door 
 and ran up the tree-shadowed road faster than ever he 
 had run in his life. 
 
 To be sure, he had plenty of money of his own ; 
 they all said so ; but he never knew well where it was, 
 or what it meant ; and, besides, he intended never to 
 go back to his grandmother and Deborah and Ralph 
 and Royal any more, till he had found out the truth 
 and seen his kingdom. 
 
 So he ran on through Bonchurch and out of it, leav- 
 ing its pleasant green shade with a little sigh, half of 
 impatience, half of hunger. He did not go on by the 
 sea, for he knew by hearsay that this way would take 
 him to Ventnor, and he was afraid people in a town 
 would know him and stop him ; so he set forth inland, 
 where the deep lanes delve through the grassy downs ; 
 and here, sitting on a stile, the little Earl saw the 
 ploughboy eating something white and round and big 
 that he himself had never seen before. 
 
 " It must be something very delicious to make him 
 enjoy it so much," thought the little Earl, and then 
 curiosity entered so into him, and he longed so much 
 to taste this wonderful unknown thing, that he went 
 up to the boy and said to him, — 
 
 " Will you be so kind as to let me know what you 
 are eating ?" 
 
 The ploughboy grinned from ear to ear. 
 
 " For certain, little zurr," he said, with a burr and 
 
262 ^^^ LITTLE EARL. 
 
 a drawl in his speech, and he gave the thing to Bertie, 
 which was neither more nor less than a peeled turnip. 
 
 The little Earl looked at it doubtfully, for he did 
 not much fancy what the other had handled with 
 his big brown hands and bitten with his big yellow 
 teeth. But then, to enjoy anything as much as that 
 other had enjoyed it, and to taste something quite 
 unknown ! — this counterbalanced his disgust and over- 
 ruled his delicacy. One side of the great white thing 
 was unbitten; he took an eager tremulous little bite 
 out of that. 
 
 " But, oh !" he cried in dismay as he tasted, " it has 
 no taste at all, and what there is is nasty !" 
 
 " Turnips is main good," said the boy. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " said the little Earl, with intense horror ; 
 and he threw the turnip down amongst the grass, and 
 went away sorely puzzled. 
 
 " Little master," roared Hodge after him, " I'll bet 
 as you aren't hungry." 
 
 That was it, of course. 
 
 The little Earl was not really hungry, — never had 
 been really hungry in all his life. But this explana- 
 tion of natural philosophy did not occur to him, not 
 even when the boy hallooed it after him. He only said 
 to himself, "How can that boy eat that filthy thing? 
 and he really did look as if he liked it so !" 
 
 Presently, after trotting a mile or so, he passed a 
 little shop set all by itself at the end of a lane, — sure.y 
 the tiniest, loneliest shop in Great Britain. But a 
 cheery-looking old woman kept it, and he saw it had 
 bread in it, as well as many other stuffs, and tin canis- 
 ters that were to him incomprehensible. 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 263 
 
 " If you please," he said, rather timidly, offering the 
 gold anchor off the ribbon of his hat, " I have lost my 
 money, and could you be so kind as to give me any 
 breakfast for this ?" 
 
 The old woman smelt the anchor, bit it, twinkled 
 her eyes, and then drew a long face, " It ain't worth 
 tuppence, master," she said ; " but ye're mighty small 
 to be out by yourself, and puny like : I don't say as 
 how I won't feed yer." 
 
 "Thanks," said Bertie, who did not know at all 
 what his anchor was worth. 
 
 " Come in out o' dust," said the old woman, smartly, 
 and then she bustled about and set him down in her 
 little den to milk, bread, and some cold bacon. 
 
 That he had no appetite was the despair of his people 
 and physician at home, and cod-liver oil, steel, quinine, 
 and all manner of nastiness had been administered to 
 provoke hunger in him, with no effect : by this time, 
 however, he had almost as much hunger as the boy who 
 had munched the turnip. 
 
 Nothing had ever tasted to him half so good in his 
 life. 
 
 The old woman eyed him curiously. "You's a 
 runaway," she thought; "but I'll not raise the 
 cry after ye, or they'll come spying about this bit o' 
 gold." 
 
 She said to herself that the child would come to no 
 harm, and when a while had gone by she would step 
 over to Ryde or Newport and get a guinea on the 
 brooch. 
 
 Her little general shop was not a very prosperous 
 business, though useful to the field-folk ; and sanding 
 
264 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 her sugar, and putting clay in her mustard, and adding 
 melted fat to her butter, had not strengthened her moral 
 principles. 
 
 As Bertie was eating, there came a very thin, scantily- 
 clad, miserable-looking woman, who held out a half- 
 penny. " A sup o' milk for Susy, missus," she said, in 
 a very pitiful faint voice. 
 
 "How be Sue?" asked the mistress of the shop. 
 The woman shook her head with tears running down 
 her hollow cheeks. 
 
 " My boy he's gone in spinney," she murmured, " to 
 try and catch summat, if he can : will you change it, 
 missus, if he git a good bird ?" 
 
 The old woman winked, frowned, and glanced at 
 Bertie. 
 
 " Birds aren't good eatin' on fust of July," she ob- 
 served, as she handed the milk. The woman paid the 
 halfpenny and hurried away with the milk. 
 
 "I think that woman is very poor," said Bertie, 
 questioningly and solemnly. 
 
 The old dame chuckled. 
 
 " No doubts o' that, master." 
 
 " Then you are cruel to take her money : you should 
 have given her the milk." 
 
 " Ho, ho, little sir ! be you a parson in a gownd ? 
 I'm mappen poor as she, and she hiv desarved all she 
 gits, for her man he were a poacher, and he died in jail 
 last Jannivery." 
 
 "A poacher!" said Bertie, with the natural in- 
 stinctive horror of a landed gentleman. " And her 
 son was going to snare a bird I" he cried, with light 
 breaking in on him ; " and you would give them things 
 
THE LITTLE EARL 265 
 
 in exchange for the bird ! Oh, what a very cruel, 
 what a very wicked woman you are !" 
 
 For an answer she shied at him a round wooden 
 trencher, which missed its aim and strucli a basket of 
 eggs and smashed them, and one of the panes of her 
 shop- window as well. 
 
 Bertie got up and walked slowly out of the door, 
 keeping his eyes upon her. 
 
 " When I see a magistrate, I shall tell him about 
 you," he said, solemnly : " you tempt poor people : that 
 is very dreadful." 
 
 The enraged woman, in her outraged feelings, threw 
 a pail of dirty water after him, some of which splashed 
 him and completed the disfigurement of his white suit. 
 He looked up and down to see for the poor woman with 
 the milk, that he might console her poverty and open 
 her eyes to her sins; but she was not within sight; and 
 Bertie reflected that if he stopped to correct other 
 people's errors he should never see the world and find 
 his kingdom. 
 
 He had eaten a hearty meal, and his spirits rose and 
 his heart was full of hope and valor; and if he had 
 only had Ralph with him, he would have been quite 
 happy. 
 
 So he went away valorously across a broad rolling 
 down, and about half a mile farther on he came to a 
 little shed. In the shed were a fire, and a man, and a 
 pig ; in the fire was an iron, and the pig was tied by a 
 rope to a ring. Bertie saw the man take the red-hot 
 iron and go up to the pig : Bertie's face grew blanched 
 with horror. 
 
 "Stop, stop! what are you doing to the pig?" he 
 Mo 23 
 
266 '^^^ LITTLE EARL. 
 
 screamed, as he ran in to the man, who looked up and 
 stared. 
 
 "I be branding the pig. Get out, or I'll brand 
 you !" he cried. Bertie held his ground ; his eyes 
 were flashing. 
 
 " You wicked, wicked man ! Do you not know that 
 poor pig was made by God ?" 
 
 "Dunno," said the wretch, with a grin. " She'll be 
 eat by men, come Candlemas ! I be marking of her, 
 'cos I'll turn her out on the downs with t'other. Git 
 out, youngster ! you've no call here." 
 
 Bertie planted himself firmly on his feet, and doubled 
 his little fists. 
 
 " I will not see you do such a cruelty to a poor dumb 
 thing," he said, while he grew white as death, " I will 
 not." 
 
 The man scowled and yet grinned. 
 
 "Will you beat me, little Hop-o'-my-thumb?" 
 
 Bertie put himself before the poor black pig, who 
 was squealing from mere fright and the scorch of the 
 fire. 
 
 " You shall not get the pig without killing me first. 
 You are a cruel man." 
 
 The man grew angry. 
 
 " Tell you what, youngster : I've a mind to try the 
 jumping-irons on you for your impudence. You look 
 like a drowned white kitten. Clear ofi*, if you don't 
 want to taste something right red hot." 
 
 Bertie's whole body grew sick, but he did not move 
 and he did not quail. 
 
 " I would rather you did it to me than to this poor 
 thing," he answered. 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 267 
 
 "I'm blowed!" said the man, relaxing his wrath 
 from sheer amazement. " Well, you're a good plucked 
 one, you are." 
 
 " I do not know what you mean," said Bertie, a little 
 liaughtily ; " but you shall not hurt the pig." 
 
 " Darn me !" yelled the man ; " I'll burn you, sure 
 as you live, if you don't kneel on your bare bones and 
 beg my pardon." 
 
 " I will not do that." 
 
 " You won't beg my pardon for cheeking me ?" 
 
 " No : you are a wicked man." 
 
 Bertie's eyes closed ; he grew faint ; he fully believed 
 that in another instant he would feel the hissing fire 
 of the brand. But he did not yield. 
 
 The man's hand dropped to his side. 
 
 " You are a plucked one," he said, once more. 
 " Lord, child, it was a joke. You're such a rare game 
 un, to humor you, there, I'll let the crittur go without 
 marking her. But you're a rare little fool, if you're 
 not an angel down from on high." 
 
 Bertie's eyes filled with tears. He held his hand out 
 royally to be kissed, as he was used to do at Avillion. 
 
 The big, black-looking man crushed it in his own 
 brown paw. 
 
 " My ! you're a game un !" he muttered, with 
 wonder and awe. 
 
 " And you will never, never, never burn pigs any 
 more?" said Bertie, searching his face with his own 
 serious large eyes. 
 
 "I'll ne'er brand this un," said the man, with a 
 shamefaced laugh. "Lord, little sir, you're the first 
 as ever got as much as that out of me !" 
 
268 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 " But you never must do it," said Bertie, solemnly. 
 " It is wicked of you, and God is angry ; and it is 
 very mean for you, such a big man and so strong, 
 to hurt a defenceless dumb thing. You must never 
 do it." 
 
 " What is your name, little master ?" said the big 
 man, humbly. 
 
 " They call me Avillion." 
 
 " William ? Then I'll say William all the days of 
 my life at my prayers o' Sundays," said the man, with 
 some emotion, and murmured to himself, " Such a game 
 un I never seed." 
 
 " Thanks very much," said Bertie, gently, and then 
 he lifted his hat politely, and went out of the shed 
 before the man could recover from his astonishment. 
 When the little Earl looked back, he saw the giant 
 pouring water on the fire, and the pig was loose. 
 
 "I was afraid," thought Bertie. "But he should 
 have burnt me all up every bit : I never would have 
 given in." 
 
 And something seemed to say in his ear, "The 
 loveliest thing in all the world is courage that goes 
 hand in hand with mercy ; and these two together can 
 work miracles, like magicians." 
 
 By this time Bertie, except for a certain inalienable 
 grace and refinement that were in his little face and 
 figure, had few marks of a young gentleman. His 
 snowy serge was smirched and stained with black- 
 berries ; his red stockings, from the sea-water and the 
 field-mud, had none of their original color; his hat 
 had been bent and crumpled by his fall, and his hair 
 was rough. Nobody passing him could have dreamt 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 269 
 
 that this sorry wanderer was a little earl. Neverthe- 
 less, when he had been dressed in his little court suit 
 and had been taken to see the queen once at Balmoral, 
 he had never been a quarter so proud nor a tenth part 
 so happy. He longed to meet Cromwell, and Richard 
 the Third, and Gessler, and Nero. He began to feel 
 like all the knights he had ever read of, and those 
 were many. 
 
 Presently he saw a little maiden weeping. She was 
 an ugly little maiden, with a shock head of red hair, 
 and a wide mouth, and a brickdust skin ; but she was 
 crying. In his present heroic mood, he could not pass 
 her by unconsoled. 
 
 " Little girl, why do you cry ?" he said, stopping in 
 the narrow green lane. 
 
 She looked at him out of a sharp little eye, and her 
 face puckered up afresh. 
 
 " I'se going to schule, little master !" 
 
 "To school, do you mean? And why does that 
 make you cry ? Can you read ?" 
 
 " Naw," said the maiden, and sobbed loudly. 
 
 " Then why are you not glad to go and learn ?" said 
 Bertie, in his superior wisdom. 
 
 "There's naebody to do nowt at home," said the red- 
 haired one, with a howl. "Mother's abed sick, and 
 Tarn's hurt his leg, and who'll mind baby? He'll 
 tumble the kittle o'er hisself, I know he will, and 
 he'll be scalt to death, '11 baby !" 
 
 " Dear, dear !" said Bertie, sympathetically. " But 
 why do you go to school then ?" 
 
 "'Cos I isn't thirteen," sobbed the shock-haired 
 nymph : " I'se only ten. And daddy was had up las 
 23* 
 
270 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 week and pit in prison 'cos he kept me at home. And 
 if I ain't at home, who'll mind baby, and who'll bile 
 
 the taters, and who'll ? Oh, how I wish I was 
 
 thirteen !" 
 
 Bertie did not understand. He had never heard of 
 the School Board. 
 
 " What does your father do ?" he asked. 
 
 " Works i' brick-field. All on us work i' brick- 
 field. I can take baby to brick-field; he sit in the 
 clay beautiful, but they awn't let me take him to 
 schule, and he'll be scalt, I know he'll be scalt. He'll 
 allers get a-nigh the kittle if he can." 
 
 " But it is very shocking not to know how to read," 
 said the little Earl, very gravely. " You should have 
 learned that as soon as you could speak. I did." 
 
 "Maybe yours aren't brick-field folk," said the little 
 girl, stung by her agony to sarcasm. " I've allers had 
 a baby to mind, ever since I toddled ; first 'twas Tam, 
 and then 'twas Dick, and now 'tis this un. I dunno 
 want to read ; awn't make bricks a-readin'." 
 
 "Oh, but you will learn such beautiful things," said 
 Bertie. " I do think, you know, that you ought to go 
 to school." 
 
 "So the gemman said as pit dad in th' lock-up," said 
 the recalcitrant one, doggedly. " Butiful things aren't 
 o' much count, sir, when one's belly's empty. I oodn't 
 go to the blackguds now, if 'tweren't as poor dad says 
 as how I must, 'cos they lock him up." 
 
 " It seems very hard to lock him up," said Bertie, 
 with increasing sympathy; "and I think you ought to 
 obey him and go. I will see if I can find the baby. 
 Where do you live ?" 
 
THE LITTLE EARL 271 
 
 She pointed vaguely over the copses and pastures : 
 " Go on a mile, and you'll see Jim Bracken's cottage ; 
 but, Lord love you ! you^W ne'er manage baby." 
 
 "I will try," said Bertie, sweetly. His fancy as well 
 as his charity was stirred ; for he had never, that he 
 knew of, seen a baby. " But indeed you should go to 
 school." 
 
 " Fm a-going," said the groaning and blowsy hero- 
 ine with a last sob, and then she set off running as 
 quickly as a pair of her father's boots, ten times too 
 large, allowed her, her slate and her books making a 
 loud clatter as she struggled on her way. 
 
 He was by this time very tired, for he was not used 
 to such long walks ; but curiosity and compassion put 
 fresh spirit into his heart, and his small legs pegged 
 valorously over the rough ground, the red stockings 
 and the silver buckles becoming by this time much 
 begrimed with mud. 
 
 He knocked at one cottage door, and saw only a 
 very cross old woman, who flourished a broom at him. 
 
 " No, it bean't Jim Bracken's. Get you gone ! — yua 
 look like a runaway." 
 
 Now, a runaway he was ; and, as truth when we are 
 guilty is always even as a two-edged sword, Bertie 
 colored up to the roots of his hair, and bolted off as 
 fast as he could to the only other cottage visible, be- 
 yond a few acres of mangel-wurzel and all the lucern 
 family, which the little Earl fancied were shamrocks. 
 For he was far on in Euclid, could speak German well, 
 and could spell through Tacitus fairly, but about the 
 flowers of the field and the grasses no one had ever 
 thought it worth while to tell him anything at all. 
 
272 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 Indeed, to tell you the truth, I do not think his tutors 
 knew anything about them themselves. 
 
 This other cottage was so low, so covered up in its 
 broken thatch, which in turn was covered with lichen, 
 and was so tumble-down and sorrowful-looking, that 
 Bertie thought it was a ruined cow-shed. However, 
 it stood where the school-girl had pointed : so he took 
 his courage in both hands, as we say in French, and 
 advanced to it. The rickety door stood open, and he 
 saw a low miserable bed with a miserable woman lying 
 on it ; a shock-headed boy sprawled on the floor, an- 
 other crouched before a fire of brambles and sods, and 
 between the legs of this last boy was a strange, uncouth, 
 shapeless object, which, but for the fact that it was 
 crying loudly, never would have appeared to his as- 
 tonished eyes as the baby for whom was prophesied a 
 tragic and early end by the kettle. The boy who had 
 this object in charge stared with two little round eyes. 
 
 " Mamsey, there's a young gemman," he said, in an 
 awed voice. 
 
 Bertie took off his hat, and went into the room with 
 his prettiest grace. 
 
 " If you please, are you very ill ?" he said, in his 
 little soft voice, to the woman in bed. " I met — I 
 met — a little girl who was so anxious about the baby, 
 and I said I would come and see if I could be of any 
 
 The woman raised herself on one elbow, and looked 
 at him with eager, haggard eyes. 
 
 " Lord, little sir, there's naught to be done for us ; 
 — leastways, unless you had a shillin' or two " 
 
 " I have no money," murmured Bertie, feeling very 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 273 
 
 unlike a little earl in that moment. The woman gave 
 a weary angry sigh and sank back indifferent. 
 
 " Can I do nothing ?" said Bertie, wistfully. 
 
 " By golly !" said the boy on the floor, " unless you've 
 got a few coppers, little master " 
 
 " Coppers ?" repeated the little Earl. 
 
 " Pence," said the boy, shortly ; then the baby began 
 to howl, and the boy shook it. 
 
 " Do please not make it scream so," said Bertie. 
 " That is what you call the baby, is it not ?" 
 
 " Iss," said the boy Dick, sullenly. " This here's 
 baby, cuss him ! and what bisness be he of yourn ?" 
 
 For interference without coppers to follow was a 
 barren intruder that he was disposed to resent. 
 
 " I thought I could amuse him," said Bertie, timidly. 
 " I told your sister I would." 
 
 Dick roared into loud guffaws. 
 
 " Baby'd kick you into middle o' next week, you 
 poor little puny spindle-shanks!" said this rude boy; 
 and Bertie felt that he was very rude, though he had 
 no idea what was meant by spindle-shanks. 
 
 The other boy, who was lying on his stomach, — a 
 sadly empty little stomach, — here reversed his position 
 and stared up at Bertie. 
 
 " I think you're a kind little gemman," he said, 
 " and Dick's cross 'cos he's broke his legs, and we've 
 had no vittles since yesternoon, and only a sup o' tea 
 Peg made afore she went, and mother's main bad, that 
 she be." 
 
 And tears rolled down this gentler little lad's dirty 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Oh, dear, what shall I do ?" said Bertie, with a 
 
274 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 sigh : if he had only had the money and the watch 
 that had fallen into the sea ! He looked round hira 
 and felt very sick ; it was all so dirty, so dirty ! — and 
 he had never seen dirt before; and the place smelt 
 very close and sour, and the children's clothes were 
 mere rags, and the woman was all skin and bone, on 
 her wretched straw bed ; and the unhappy baby was 
 screaming loudly enough to be heard right across the 
 sea to the French coast. 
 
 " Baby, poor baby, don't cry so !" said Bertie, very 
 softly, and he dangled the ends of his red sash before 
 its tearful eyes, and shook them up and down : the at- 
 tention of the baby was arrested, it ceased to howl, and 
 put out its hands, and began to laugh instead ! Bertie 
 was very proud of his success, and even the sullen Dick 
 muttered, " Well, I never !" 
 
 The little Earl undid his scarf and let the baby pull 
 it towards itself. Dick's eyes twinkled greedily. 
 
 " Master, that'd sell for summat !" 
 
 " Oh, you must not sell it," said the little Earl, 
 eagerly. " It is to amuse the poor baby. And what 
 pretty big eyes he has ! how he laughs !" 
 
 " Your shoes 'ud sell," muttered Dick. 
 
 " Dick ! don't, Dick ! that's begging," muttered Tam. 
 Bertie stared in surprise. To sell his shoes seemed as 
 odd as to be asked to sell his hair or his hands. The 
 woman opened her fading, glazing eyes. 
 
 " They're honest boys, little sir : you'll pardon of 
 'em; they've eat nothing since yesternoon, and then 
 'twas only a carrot or two, and boys is main hungry." 
 
 " And have you nothing ?" said Bertie, aghast at the 
 misery in this unknown world. 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 275 
 
 " How'd we have anything ?" said the sick woman, 
 grimly. " They've locked up my man, and Peg's sent 
 to school while we starve ; and nobody earns nothin', 
 for Dick's broke his leg, and I've naught in ray breasts 
 for baby " 
 
 "But would not somebody you work for — or the 
 priest — ?" began Bertie. 
 
 " Passon don't do nowt for us, — my man's a Meth- 
 ody ; and at brick-field they don't mind us ; if we be 
 there, well an' good, — we work and get paid ; and if 
 we isn't there, well — some un else is. That's all." 
 Then she sank back, gasping. 
 
 Bertie stood woe-begone and perplexed. 
 
 " Did you say my shoes would sell ?" he murmured, 
 very miserably, his mind going back to the history of 
 St. Martin and the cloak. 
 
 Di<;k brightened up at once. 
 
 " Master, I'll get three shillin' on 'em, maybe more, 
 down in village yonder." 
 
 " You mus'n't take the little gemman's things," mur- 
 mured the mother, feebly ; but faintness was stealing 
 on her, and darkness closing over her sight. 
 
 " Three shillings !" said Bertie, who knew very little 
 of the value of shillings ; " that seems very little ! I 
 think they cost sovereigns. Could you get a loaf of 
 bread with three shillings ?" 
 
 "Gu-r-r-r!" grinned Dick, and Bertie understood 
 that the guttural sound meant assent and rapture. 
 
 " But I cannot walk without shoes." 
 
 " "Walk ! yah ! ye'll walk better. We niver have no 
 shoes !" said Dick. 
 
 « Don't you, rm%.^" 
 
276 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 " Golly ! no ! Ye'll walk ten times finer ; ye won't 
 trip, nor stumble, nor nothin', and ye'll run as fast 
 again." 
 
 " Oh, no, I shall not," murmured Bertie, and he was 
 going to say that he would be ashamed to be seen with- 
 out shoes, only he remembered that, as these boys had 
 none, that would not be kind. A desperate misery 
 came over him at the thought of being shoeless, but 
 then he reasoned with himself, " To give was no 
 charity if it cost you nothing : did not the saints strip 
 themselves to the uttermost shred for the poor?" 
 
 He stooped and took off his shoes with the silver 
 buckles on them, and placed them hastily on the floor. 
 
 " Take them, if they will get you bread," he said, 
 with the color mounting in his face. 
 
 Dick seized them with a yell of joy. " Tarnation 
 that I can't go mysel'. Here, Tam, run quick and sell 
 'em to old Nan; and get bread, and meat, and potatoes, 
 and milk for baby, and Lord knows what; p'raps a gill 
 of gin for mammy." 
 
 " I don't think we ought to rob little master, 
 Dick," murmured little Tam. His brother hurled a 
 crutch at him, and Tam snatched up the pretty shoes 
 and fled. 
 
 " My blazes, sir," said Dick, with rather a shame- 
 faced look, " if you'd a beast like a lot of fire gnawing 
 at your belly all night long, yer wouldn't stick at nowt 
 to get bread." 
 
 Bertie only imperfectly comprehended. The baby, 
 tired of the sash, began to cry again ; and Dick, grown 
 good-natured, danced it up and down. 
 
 " How old are you ?" said Bertie. 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 277 
 
 * Nigh on eight," said Dick. 
 
 " Dear me I" sighed the little Earl ; this rough, mas- 
 terful, coarse-toDgued boy seemed like a grown man to 
 hira. 
 
 " You won't split on us ?" said Dick, sturdily. 
 
 "What is that?" asked Bertie. 
 
 " Not tell anybody you give us the shoes : there'd be 
 a piece of work." 
 
 " As if one told when one did any kindness !" mur- 
 mured Bertie, with a disgust he could not quite conceal. 
 " I mean, when one does one's duty." 
 
 " But what'll you gammon 'em with at home ? — 
 they'll want to know what you've done with your 
 Bhoes." 
 
 "I am not going home," said the little Earl, and 
 there was a something in the way he spoke that silenced 
 Dick's tongue, — which he would have called his clap- 
 per. 
 
 "What in the world be the little swell arter?" 
 thought Dick. 
 
 Bertie meanwhile, with some awe and anxiety, was 
 watching the livid face of the sick woman : he had 
 never seen illness or death, but it seemed to him that 
 she was very ill indeed. 
 
 " Are you not anxious about your mother ?" he asked 
 of the rough boy. 
 
 " Yes," said Dick, sulkily, with the water coming 
 in his eyes. " Dad's in the lock-up : that's wuss still, 
 young sir." 
 
 " Not worse than death," said Bertie, solemnly. " He 
 will come back." 
 
 " Oh, she'll come round with a drop of gin and a sup 
 
278 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 of broth," said Dick, confidently. " 'Tis all hunger and 
 frettin', hers is." 
 
 " I am glad I gave my shoes," thought Bertie. 
 Then there was a long silence, broken only by the 
 hissing of the green brambles on the fire and the yelps 
 of the baby. 
 
 " Maybe, sir," said Dick, after a little, " you'd put 
 the saucepan on? I can't move with this here leg. 
 If you'd pit some water out o' kittle in him, he'll be 
 ready for cookin' when the vittles come." 
 
 " I will do that," said Bertie, cheerfully, and he set 
 the saucepan on by lifting it with both hands : it was 
 very black, and its crock came off on his knicker- 
 bockers. Then, by Dick's directions, he found a pair 
 of old wooden bellows, and blew on the sticks and 
 sods ; but this he managed so ill that Dick wriggled 
 himself along the floor closer to the fire and did it 
 himself. 
 
 " You're a gaby !" he said to his benefactor. 
 
 « What is that ?" said Bertie. 
 
 But Dick felt that it was more prudent not to ex- 
 plain. 
 
 In half an hour Tam burst into the room, breathless 
 and joyous, his scruples having disappeared under the 
 basket he bore. 
 
 " She gived me five shillin' !" he shouted ; " and I's 
 sure they's wutli a deal more, 'cos her eyes twinkled 
 and winked, and she shoved me a peg-top in !" 
 
 " Gie us o't !" shrieked Dick, in an agony at being 
 bound to the floor with all these good things before his 
 sight. 
 
 Little Tarn, who was very loyal, laid them all out 
 
THE LITTLE EARx.. 279 
 
 on the ground before his elder : two quartern loaves, 
 two pounds of beef, onions, potatoes, a bit of bacon, 
 and a jug of milk. 
 
 Dick poured some milk into an old tin mug, and 
 handed it roughly to Bertie. 
 
 "Feed the baby, will yer, whiles Tarn and me 
 cooks?" 
 
 The little Earl took the can, and advanced to the 
 formidable bundle of rags, who was screaming like a 
 very hoarse raven. 
 
 " I think you should attend to your mother first," 
 he said, gently, as the baby made a grab at the little 
 tin pot, the look of which it seemed to know, and 
 shook half the milk over itself. 
 
 " Poor mammy !" said Tam, who was gnawing a bit 
 of bread ; and, with his bread in one hand, he got up 
 and put a little gin and water quite hot between his 
 mother's lips. She swallowed it without opening her 
 eyes or seeming to be conscious, and Tam climbed down 
 from the bed again with a clear conscience. 
 
 "We'll gie her some broth," he said, manfully, 
 while he and Dick, munching bread and raw bacon, 
 tumbled the beef in a lump into the saucepan, drowned 
 in water with some whole onions, in the common 
 fashion of cottage-cooking. The baby, meanwhile, was 
 placidly swallowing the milk that the little Earl held 
 for it very carefully, and, when that was done, accepted 
 a crust that he offered it to suck. 
 
 The two boys were crouching before the crackling 
 fire, munching voraciously, and watching the boiling 
 of the old black pot. They had quite forgotten their 
 benefactor. 
 
280 ^^-^5? LITTLE EARL. 
 
 "My! What'll Peg say when she's to home?" 
 chuckled Tain. 
 
 " She'll say that she'd ha' cooked better," growled 
 Dick. " Golly ! ain't the fat good ?" 
 
 Bertie stood aloof, pleased, and yet sorrowful because 
 they did not notice him. 
 
 Even the baby had so completely centred its mind 
 in the crust that it had abandoned all memory of the 
 red scarf. 
 
 Bertie looked on a little Avhile, but no one seemed to 
 remember him. The boys' eyes were glowing on the 
 saucepan, and their cheeks w^ere filled out with food as 
 the cherubs in his chapel at home were puffed out with 
 air as they blew celestial trumpets. 
 
 He went to the door slowly, looked back, and then 
 retreated into the sunshine. 
 
 " It would be mean to put them in mind of me," he 
 thought, as he withdrew. 
 
 Suddenly a sharp pain shot through him : a stone 
 had cut his unshod foot. 
 
 " Oh, dear me ! how ever shall I walk without any 
 shoes or boots !" he thought, miserably ; and he was 
 very nearly bursting out crying. 
 
 On the edge of these fields was a wood, — a low, 
 dark, rolling wood, — which looked to the little Earl, 
 who missed his own forests, inviting and cool and 
 sweet. By this time it was getting towards noon, and 
 the sun was hot, and he felt thirsty and very tired. 
 He was sad, too : he was glad to have satisfied those 
 poor hungry children, but their indifference to him 
 when they were satisfied was chilling and melancholy. 
 
 " But then we ought not to do a kindness that we 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 281 
 
 may be thanked," he said to himself. " It is a proper 
 punishment to me, because I wished to be thanked, 
 which was mean." 
 
 So he settled, as he usually did, that it was all his 
 own fault. 
 
 Happily^ for him, the ground was soft with summer 
 dust, and so he managed to get along the little path 
 that ran from the cottage through the lucern-fields, 
 and from there the path became grass, which was still 
 less trying to his little red stockings. 
 
 Yet he was anxious and troubled ; he felt heavily 
 weighted for his battle with the world without any 
 shoes on, and he felt he must look ridiculous. For the 
 first time, St. Martin did not seem to him so very 
 much of a hero, because St. Martin's gift was only a 
 cloak. Besides, without his sash, the band of his 
 knickerbockers could be seen ; and he was afraid this 
 was indecent. 
 
 Nevertheless, he went on bravely, if lamely. Believe 
 me, nothing sets the world more straight than thinking 
 that what is awry in it is one's self. 
 
 The wood, which was a well-known spinney famous 
 for pheasants, was reached before very long, though 
 with painful effort. It was chiefly composed of old 
 hawthorn-trees and blackthorn, with here and there a 
 larch or holly. The undergrowth was thick, and the 
 sunbeams were playing at bo-peep with the shadows. 
 Far away over the fields and thorns was a glimmer of 
 blue water, and close around were all manner of ferns, 
 of foxgloves, of grasses, of boughs. The tired little 
 Earl sank downward under one of the old thorns with 
 feet that bled. A wasp had stung him, too, through 
 24* 
 
282 ^^^ LITTLE EARL. 
 
 his stocking, and the stung place was smarting furiously. 
 ^' But how much more Christ and the saints suffered !" 
 thought Bertie, seriously and piously, without the 
 smallest touch of vanity. 
 
 Lying on the moss under all that greenery, he felt 
 refreshed and soothed, although the foot the wasp had 
 stung throbbed a good deal. 
 
 There were all sorts of pretty things to see: the 
 pheasants, who were lords of the manor till October 
 came round, did not mind him in the least, and swept 
 smoothly by with their long tails like court mantles 
 sweeping the grass. Blackbirds, those cheeriest of all 
 birds, pecked at worms and grubs quite near him. 
 Chaffinches were looking for hairs under the brambles 
 to make their second summer nest with. Any hairs 
 serve their purpose, — cows', horses', or dogs' ; and if 
 they get a tuft of hare-skin or rabbit-fur they are 
 furnished for the year. A pair of little white-throats 
 were busy in a low bush, gathering the catch-weed that 
 grew thickly there, and a goldfinch was flying away 
 with a lock of sheep's wool in his beak. There were 
 other charming creatures, too : a mole was hurrying to 
 his underground castle, a nuthatch was at work on a 
 rotten tree-trunk, and a gray, odd-looking bird was 
 impaling a dead field-mouse on one of the thorn- 
 branches. Bertie did not know that this gentleman 
 was but the gray shrike, once used in hawking ; indeed, 
 he did not know the names or habits of any of the 
 birds ; and he lay still hidden in the ferns, and watched 
 them with delight and mute amazement. There were 
 thousands of such pretty creatures in his own woods 
 and brakes at home, but then he was never alone ; he 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 283 
 
 was always either walking with Father Philip or riding 
 with William, and in neither case was he allowed to 
 stop and loiter and lie in the grass, and the sonorous 
 voice of the priest scattered these timid dwellers in the 
 greenwood as surely as did the tread of the pony's 
 hjofs and the barking of Ralph. 
 
 " When I am a man I will pass all ray life out of 
 doors, and I will get friends with all these pretty 
 things, and ask them what they are doing," he thought; 
 and he was so entranced in this new world hidden away 
 under the low hawthorn boughs of this spinney that he 
 quite forgot he had lost his shoes and did not know 
 where he would sleep when night came. He had quite 
 forgotten his own existence, indeed ; and this is just 
 the happiness that comes to us always, when we learn 
 to love the winged and four-footed brethren that 
 Nature has placed so near us, and whom, alas ! we so 
 shamefully neglect when we do not do even worse and 
 persecute them. Bertie was quite oblivious that he 
 was a runaway, who had started with a very fine idea 
 or finding out who it was that kept him in prison, and 
 giving him battle wherever he might be : he was much 
 more interested in longing to know what the great gray 
 shrike was, and why it hung up the mouse on the thorn 
 and flew away. If you do not know any more than 
 he did, I may tell you that the shrikes are like your 
 father, and like their game when it has been many 
 days in the larder. It is one of the few ignoble tastes 
 in which birds resemble mankind. 
 
 The shrike flew away to look for some more mice, 
 or frogs, or little snakes, or cockroaches, or beetles, for 
 he is a very useful fellow indeed in the woods, though 
 
284 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 the keepers are usually silly and wicked enough to try 
 and kill him. His home and his young ones were 
 above in the thicket, and he had stuck all round their 
 nests insects of all kinds: still, he was a provident 
 bird, and was of opinion that every one should work 
 while it is day. 
 
 When the shrike flew away after a bumble-bee, the 
 little Earl fell asleep : what with fatigue, and excite- 
 ment, and the heat of the sun, a sound, dreamless 
 slumber fell upon him there among the birds and the 
 sweet smell of the May buds ; and the goldfinch sang 
 to him, while he slept, such a pretty song that he 
 heard it though he was so fast asleep. The goldfinch, 
 though, did not sing for him one bit in the world ; he 
 sang for his wife, who was sitting among her callow 
 brood hidden away from sight under the leaves, and 
 with no greater anxiety on her mind than fear of a 
 possible weasel or rat gnawing at her nest from the 
 bottom. 
 
 When the little Earl awoke, the sun was not full 
 and golden all about him as it had been ; there were 
 long shadows slanting through the spinney, and there 
 was a great globe descending behind the downs of the 
 western horizon. It was probably about six in tlie 
 evening. Bertie could not tell, for, unluckily for him, 
 he had always had a watch to rely upon, and had never 
 been taught to tell the hour from the "shepherd's 
 hour-glass" in the field-flowers, or calculate the time 
 of day from the length of the shadows. Even now, 
 though night was so nigh, the thought of where he 
 should find a bed did not occur to him, for he was 
 absorbed in a little boy who stood before him, — a very 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 285 
 
 miserable little black-haired, brown-cheeked boy, who 
 was staring hard at him. 
 
 " Now, he, I am sure, is as poor as Dick and Tarn," 
 thought the little Earl, "and I have nothing left to 
 give him." 
 
 The little boy was endeavoring to hide behind his 
 back a bright bundle of ruffled feathers, and in his 
 other hand he held a complicated arrangement of twine 
 and twigs with a pendent noose. 
 
 That Bertie did know the look of, for he had seen 
 his own keepers destroy such things in his own woods, 
 and had heard them swear when they did so. So his 
 land-owner's instincts awoke in him, though the laud 
 was not his. 
 
 " Oh, little boy," he said, rubbing his eyes and 
 springing to his feet, " what a wicked, wicked little 
 boy you are ! You have been snaring a pheasant !" 
 
 The small boy, who was about his age, looked 
 frightened and penitent : he saw his accuser was a little 
 gentleman. 
 
 " Please, sir, don't tell on me," he said, with a 
 whimper. "I'll gie ye the bird if ye won't tell on 
 me." 
 
 " I do not want the bird," said Bertie, with magis- 
 terial gravity. " You are a wicked little boy to offer 
 it to me. It is not your own, and you have killed it. 
 You are a thief T 
 
 "Please, sir," whimpered the little poacher, "dad 
 alius tooked 'em like this." 
 
 " Then he is a thief too," said Bertie. 
 
 " He was a good un to me," said the small boy, and 
 then fairly burst out sobbing. " He was a good uji to 
 
286 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 me, and he's dead a year come Lady-day, and mother 
 she's main bad, and little Susie's got the croup, and 
 there's nowt to eat to home ; and I hear Susie cryin', 
 cryin', cryin', and so I gae to cupboard where dad's 
 old tackle be kep, and I gits out this here, and says I 
 to myself, maybe I'll git one of them birds i' spinney, 
 'cos they make rare broth, and we had a many on 'em 
 when dad was alive, and Towser." 
 
 "Who was Towser?" 
 
 "He was our lurcher; keeper shot him; he'd bring 
 of 'em in his mouth like a Chrisen ; and gin ye'll tell 
 on me, they'll clap me in prison like they did dad, and 
 it's birch rods they'd give yer, and mother's nowt but 
 me." 
 
 " I do not know who owns this property," said Ber- 
 tie, in his little sedate way, "so I could not tell the 
 owner, and I should not wish to do it if I could ; but 
 still it is a very wicked thing to snare birds at all, and 
 when they are game-birds it is robbery.^' 
 
 " I know as how they makes it so," demurred the 
 poacher's son. " But dad said as how " 
 
 "No one makes it so," said Bertie, with a little 
 righteous anger; "it is so: the birds are not yours, 
 and so, if you take them, you are a thief." 
 
 The boy put his thumb in his mouth and dangled 
 his dead pheasant. 
 
 A discussion on the game-laws was beyond his pow- 
 ers, nor was even Bertie conscious of the mighty sub- 
 ject he was opening, though the instincts of the land- 
 owner were naturally in him, and it seemed to him so 
 shocking to find a boy with such views as this as to 
 meum and iuurriy that he almost fancied the sun would 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 287 
 
 tall from the sky. The sun, however, glowed on, low 
 down in the wood beyond a belt of firs, and the green 
 downs, and the gray sea; and the little sinner stood 
 before him, fascinated by his appearance and fright- 
 ened at his words. 
 
 "Do you know who owns this coppice?" asked Ber- 
 tie ; and the boy answered him, reluctantly, — 
 
 « Yes : Sir Henry." 
 
 " Then, what you must do," said Bertie, " is to go 
 directly with that bird to Sir Henry, and beg his par- 
 don, and ask him to forgive you. Go at once. That 
 is what you must do." 
 
 The boy opened eyes and mouth in amaze. 
 
 " That I won't never do," he said, doggedly : " I'd 
 be took up to the lodge afore I'd open my mouth." 
 
 " Not if I go with you," said Bertie. 
 
 " Be you one of the fam'ly, sir ?" 
 
 " No," said Bertie, and then was silent in some con- 
 fusion, for he bethought him that, without any shoes 
 on, he might also be arrested at the lodge gates. 
 
 "I thought as not, 'cos you're barefoot," said the 
 brown-cheeked boy, with a little contempt supplying 
 the place of courage. "Dunno who you be, sir, but 
 seems to I as you've no call to preach to me ; you be 
 a-trespassin' too." 
 
 Bertie colored. 
 
 " I am not doing any harm," he said, with dignity ; 
 "you are: you have been stealing. If you are not really 
 a wicked boy, you will take the pheasant straight to 
 that gentleman, and beg him to forgive you, and I 
 dare say he will give you work." 
 
 " There's no work for my dad's son," said the little 
 
288 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 poacher, half sadly, half sullenly : " the keepers are all 
 agen us : 'tis as much as mother and me and Susie can 
 do to git a bit o' bread." 
 
 " What work can you do ?" 
 
 " I can make the gins," said the little sinner, touch- 
 ing the trap with pride. '' Mostwhiles, I never corae^ 
 out o' daylight ; but all the forenoon Susie was going 
 off her head, want o' summat t' eat." 
 
 " I'm sorry for Susie and you," said the little Earl, 
 with sympathy. "But indeed, indeed, nothing can ex- 
 cuse a theft, or make God " 
 
 " The keepers !" yelled the boy, with a scream like 
 a hare's, and he dashed head-foremost into the bushes, 
 casting on to Bertie's lap the gin and the dead bird. 
 Bertie was so surprised that he sat perfectly mute and 
 still : the little boy had disappeared as fast as a rabbit 
 bolts at sight of a ferret. Two grim big men with 
 dogs and guns burst through the hawthorn, and one 
 of them seized the little Earl with no gentle hand. 
 
 "You little blackguard! you'll smart for this," yelled 
 the big man. "Treadmill and birch rod, or I'm a 
 Dutchman." 
 
 Bertie was so surprised, still, that he was silent. 
 Then, with his little air of innocent majesty, he said, 
 simply, "You are mistaken: I did not kill the bird." 
 
 Now, if Bertie had had his usual nicety of apparel, 
 or if the keeper had not been in a fuming fury, the 
 latter would have easily seen that he had accused and 
 apprehended a little gentleman. But no one in a vio- 
 lent rage ever has much sense or sight left to aid him, 
 and Big George, as this keeper was called, did not 
 notice that his dogs were smelling in a friendlv way at 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 289 
 
 his prisoner, but only saw that he had to do with a 
 pale-faced lad without shoes, and very untidy and 
 dusty-looking, who had snares and a snared pheasant 
 at his feet. 
 
 Before Bertie had even seen him take a bit of cord 
 out of his pocket, he had tied the little Earl's hands 
 behind him, picked up the pheasant and the trap, 
 and given some directions to his companion. The 
 real culprit was already a quarter of a mile off, bur- 
 rowing safely in the earth of an old fox killed in 
 February, — a hiding-place with which he was very 
 familiar. 
 
 Bertie, meanwhile, was quite silent. He was think- 
 ing to himself, "If I tell them another boy did it, they 
 will go and look for him, and catch him, and put him 
 in prison ; and then his mother and Susie will be so 
 miserable, — more miserable than ever. I think I 
 ought to keep quiet. Jesus never said anything when 
 they buffeted him." 
 
 "Ah, you little gallows-bird, you'll get it this time!" 
 said the keeper, knotting the string tighter about his 
 wrists, and speaking as if he had had the little Earl 
 very often in such custody. 
 
 " You are a very rude man," said Bertie, with the 
 angry color in his cheeks ; but Big George heeded him 
 not, being engaged in swearing at one of his dogs, — a 
 young one, who was trotting after a rabbit. 
 
 " I know who this youngster is. Bob," he said to his 
 companion : " he's the Radley shaver over from Black- 
 gang." 
 
 Bertie wondered who the Radley shaver was that 
 resembled him. 
 
 V t 25 
 
290 ^^^ LITTLE EARL. 
 
 *' He has the looks on hira," said the other, pru- 
 dently. 
 
 " Sir Henry's dining at Chigwell to-night, and he'll 
 have started afore we get there," continued Big George. 
 " Go you on through spinney far as Edge Pool, and 
 I'll take and lock this here . Radley up till morning. 
 Blast his impudence, — a pheasant ! think of the likes 
 of it ! A pheasant ! If 't had been a rabbit, 't had 
 been bad enough." 
 
 Then he shook his little captive vigorously. 
 
 Bertie did not say anything. He was not in trepi- 
 dation for himself, but he was in an agony of fear lest 
 the other boy should be found in the spinney. 
 
 "March along afore me," said Big George, with 
 much savageness. " And if you tries to bolt, I'll blow 
 your brains out and nail you to a barn-door along o' 
 the owls." 
 
 The little Earl looked at him with eyes of scorn and 
 horror. 
 
 " How dare you touch Athene's bird ?'* 
 
 "How dare I what, you little saucy blackguard?" 
 thundered Big George, and fetched him a great box on 
 the ears which made Bertie stagger. 
 
 "You are a very bad man," he said, breathlessly. 
 " You are a very mean man. You are big, and so you 
 are cruel: that is very mean indeed." 
 
 " You've the gift of the gab, little devil of a Rad- 
 ley," said the keeper, wrathfully ; " but you'll pipe 
 another tune when you feel the birch and pick oakum." 
 
 Bertie set his teeth tight to keep his words in : he 
 walked on mute. 
 
 "You've stole some little geraraan's togs as well 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 291 
 
 as my pheasant," said Big George, surveying him. 
 " Why didn't you steal a pair of boots when you was 
 about it ?" 
 
 Bertie was still mute. 
 
 " I will not say anything to this bad man," he 
 thought, " or else he will find out that it was not I." 
 
 The sun had set by this time, leaving only a sil- 
 very light above the sea and the downs : the pale 
 long twilight of an English day had come upon the 
 earth. 
 
 Bertie was very white, and his heart beat fast, and 
 he was growing very hungry; but he managed to stum- 
 ble on, though very painfully, for his courage would 
 not let him repine before this savage man, who was 
 mixed up in his mind with Bluebeard, and Thor, and 
 Croquemitaine, and Richard III., and Nero, and all 
 the ogres that he had ever met with in his reading, 
 and who seemed to grow larger and larger and larger 
 as the sky and earth grew darker. 
 
 Happily for his shoeless feet, the way lay all over 
 grass-lands and mossy paths ; but he limped so that 
 the keeper swore at him many tima«!, and the little 
 Earl felt the desperate resignation of the martyr. 
 
 At last they came in sight of the keeper's cottage, 
 standing on the edge of the preserves, — a thatched and 
 gabled little building, with a light glimmering in its 
 lattice window. 
 
 At the sound of Big George's heavy tread, a woman 
 and some children ran out. 
 
 " Lord ha' mercy ! George !" cried the wife. "What 
 scarecrow have you been and got?" 
 
 " A Radley boy," growled George, — " one of the 
 
292 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 cussed Radley boys at last, — and a pheasant snared 
 took in bis very band I" 
 
 " Yon don't mean it !" cried bis wife ; and tbe small 
 children yelled and jumped. " Wbat'll be done with 
 bim, dad ?" cried tbe eldest of tbem. 
 
 " I'll jjut bim in fowl-bouse to-nigbt," said Big 
 George, " and up be'll go afore Sir Henry fust tbing 
 to morrow. Clear off, young uns, and let me run bim 
 in." 
 
 Bertie looked up in Big George's face. 
 
 " I bad nothing to do with killing tbe bird," be said, 
 in a firm though a faint voice. " You quite mistake. 
 I am Lord Avillion." 
 
 " Stop your pipe, or I'll choke yer," swore Big 
 George, enraged by what be termed tbe " darned 
 cheek" of a Eadley boy ; and without more ado be 
 laid hold of tbe little Earl's collar and lifted him into 
 tbe fowl-house, tbe door of which was held open 
 eagerly by bis eldest girl. 
 
 There was a great flapping of wings, screeching of 
 hens, and piping of chicks at the interruption, where 
 all tbe inmates were gone to roost, and one cock set up 
 bis usual salutation to tbe dawn. 
 
 " That's better nor you'll sleep to-morrow night," 
 said Big George, as be tumbled Bertie on to a truss 
 of straw that lay there, when be went out himself, 
 slammed the door, and both locked and barred it on 
 tbe outside. 
 
 Bertie fell back on tbe straw, sobbing bitterly : bis 
 feet were cut and bleeding, his whole body ached like 
 one great bruise, and be was sick and faint with hun- 
 ger. " If the world be as difficult as this to live in," 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 293 
 
 he thought, " how ever do some people manage to live 
 almost to a hundred years in it?" and to his eight-year- 
 old little soul the prospect of a long life seemed so hor- 
 rible that he sobbed again at the very thought of it. It 
 was quite dark in the fowl-house ; the rustling and 
 fluttering of the poultry all around sounded mysteri- 
 ous and unearthly ; the strong, unpleasant smell made 
 him faint, and the pain in his feet grew greater every 
 moment. He did not scream or go into convulsions ; 
 he was a brave little man, and proud ; but he felt as 
 if the long, lonely night there would kill him. 
 
 Half an hour, perhaps, had gone by when a woman's 
 voice at the little square window said, softly, " Here 
 is bread and water for you, poor boy; and I've put 
 some milk and cheese, too, only my man mustn't know 
 it." 
 
 Bertie with great effort raised himself, and took what 
 was pushed through the tiny window ; a mug of milk 
 being lowered to him last by a large red fat hand, 
 on which the light of a candle held without was glow- 
 ing. 
 
 " Thanks very much," said the little Earl, feebly. 
 " But, madam, I did not kill that bird, and indeed I 
 am Lord Avillion." 
 
 The good woman went within to her lord, and said 
 timidly to him, " George, are you sartin sure that there's 
 a Radley boy? He do look and speak like a little 
 gem man, and he do say as how he is one." 
 
 Big George called her bad names. 
 
 " A barefoot gem man !" he said, with a sneer. " You 
 thunderin' fool ! it's weazened-faced Vic Radley, as 
 have been in our woods a hundred times if wirnce, 
 25* 
 
294 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 though never could I slap eyes on him quick enougti 
 to pin him." 
 
 The good housewife took up her stocking-meudiug 
 and said no more. Big George's arguments were 
 sometimes enforced with the fist, and even with tho 
 pewter pot or the poker. 
 
 Meanwhile, the little Earl in the hen-house was so 
 hungry that he drank the milk and ate the bread and 
 cheese. Both were harder and rougher things thau 
 any he had ever tasted ; but he had now that hunger 
 which had made the boy on the stile relish the turnip, 
 and, besides, another incident had occurred to give him 
 relish for the food. 
 
 At the moment when he had sat down to drink the 
 milk, there had tumbled out from behind the straw a 
 round black-and-white object, unsteady on its legs, and 
 having a very broad nose and a very woolly coat. The 
 moon had risen by this time, and was shining in through 
 the little square window, and by its beams Bertie could 
 see this thing was a puppy, — a Newfoundland puppy 
 some four months old. He welcomed it with as much 
 rapture as ever Robert Bruce did the spider. It had 
 evidently been awakened from its sleep by the smell of 
 the food. It was a pleasant, companionable, warm and 
 kindly creature ; it knocked the bread out of his hand, 
 and thrust its square mouth into his milk, but he shared 
 it willingly, and had a hearty cry over it that did him 
 good. 
 
 He did not feel all alone, now that this blundering, 
 toppling, shapeless, amiable baby-dog had found its 
 way to him. He caressed it in his arms and kissed it 
 a great many times, and it responded much more grate- 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 295 
 
 fully than the human baby had done in Jim Bracken's 
 cottage, and finally, despite his bleeding feet and his 
 tired limbs, he fell asleep with his face against the pup's 
 woolly body. 
 
 When he awoke, he could not remember what had 
 happened. He called for Deborah, but no Deborah 
 was there. The moon, now full, was shining still 
 through the queer little dusky place ; the figures of the 
 fowls, rolled up in balls of feathers and stuck upon 
 one leg, were all that met his straining eyes. He pulled 
 the puppy closer and closer to him : for the first time 
 in his life he felt really frightened. 
 
 " I never touched the pheasant," he cried, as loud as 
 he could. " I am Lord Avillion ! You have no right 
 to keep me here. Let me out! let me out! let me 
 out!" 
 
 The fowls woke up, and then cried and cackled and 
 crowed, and the poor pup whined and yelped dolefully, 
 but he got no other answer. Everybody in Big George's 
 cottage was asleep, except Big George himself, who, 
 with his revolver, his fowling-piece, and a couple of 
 bull-dogs, was gone out again into the woods. 
 
 At home, Bertie in his pretty bed, that had belonged 
 to the little Roi de Rome, had always had a soft light 
 burning in a porcelain shade, and his nurse within easy 
 call, and Ralph on the mat by the door. He had 
 never been in the dark before, and he could hear 
 unseen things moving and rustling in the straw, and 
 he felt afraid of the white moonbeams shifting hither 
 and thither and shining on the shape of the big Brahma 
 cock till the great bird looked like a vulture. Once a 
 rat ran swiftly across, and then the fowls shrieked, and 
 
296 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 Bertie could not help screaming with them ; but in a 
 minute or two he felt ashamed of himself, for he thought, 
 " A rat is God's creature as much as I am ; and, as I 
 have not done anything wrong, I do not think they 
 will be allowed to hurt me." 
 
 Nevertheless, the night was very terrible. "Without 
 the presence of the puppy, no doubt, the little Earl 
 would have frightened himself into convulsions and 
 delirium ; but the pup was so comforting to him, so 
 natural, so positively a thing real and in no wise of 
 the outer world, that Bertie kept down, though with 
 many a sob, the panics of unreasoning terror which 
 assailed him as the moon sailed away past the square 
 loop-hole, and a great darkness seemed to wrap him up 
 in it as though some giant were stifling him in a magic 
 cloak. 
 
 The pup had not long been taken from its mother, 
 and had been teased all day by the keeper's children, 
 and was frightened, and whimpered a good deal, and 
 cuddled itself close to the little Earl, who hugged it 
 and kissed it in paroxysms of loneliness and longing 
 for comfort. 
 
 With these long, horrible black hours, all sorts of 
 notions and terrors assailed him ', all he had ever read 
 of dungeons, of enchanted castles, of entrapped princes, 
 of Prince Arthur and the Duke of Rothsay, of the 
 prisoner of Chillon and the Iron Mask, of every kind 
 of hero, martyr, and wizard-bewitched captive, crowded 
 into his mind with horrifying clearness, thronging on 
 him with a host of fearful images and memories. 
 
 But this was only in his weaker moments. When 
 he clasped the puppy and felt its warm wet tongue 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 297 
 
 lick his hair, he gathered up his courage : after all, he 
 thought, Big George was certainly only a keeper, — not 
 an ogre, or an astrologer, or a tyrant of Athens or of 
 Rome. 
 
 So he fell off again, after a long and dreadful waking- 
 time, into a fitful slumber, in which his feet ached and 
 his nerves jumped, and the frightful visions assailed 
 him just as much as when he was awake ; and how 
 that ghastly night passed by him, he never knew very 
 well. 
 
 When he again opened his eyes there was a dim gray 
 light in the fowl-house, and sharp in his ear was ring- 
 ing the good-morrow of the Brahma chanticleer. 
 
 It was daybreak. 
 
 A round red face looked in at the square hole, and 
 the voice of the keeper's wife said, "Little gemman, 
 Big George will be arter ye come eight o'clock, and 
 't '11 go hard wi' yer. Say now, yer didn't snare the 
 bird?" 
 
 " No," said Bertie, languidly, lying full length on 
 the straw ; he felt shivery and chilly, and very stiff 
 and very miserable in all ways. 
 
 " But yer know who did !" persisted the woman. 
 " Now, jist you tell me, and I'll make it all square 
 with George, and he'll let you out, and we'll gie ye 
 porridge, and we'll take ye home on the donkey." 
 
 The little Earl was silent. 
 
 " Now, drat ye for a obstinate ! I can't abide a 
 obstinate," said the woman, angrily. " Who did snare 
 the bird ? jist say that ; 't is all, and mighty little." 
 
 " I will not say that," said Bertie ; and the woman 
 slammed a wooden door that there was to the loop- 
 
298 ^^^ LITTLE EARL. 
 
 hole, and told him he was a mule and a pig, and that 
 she was not going to waste any more words about hira ; 
 she should let the birds out by the bars. What she 
 called the bars, which were two movable lengths of 
 wood at the bottom of one of the walls, did in point 
 of fact soon slip aside, and the fowls all cackled and 
 strutted and fluttered after their different manners, and 
 bustled through the opening towards the daylight and 
 the scattered corn, the Brahma cock having much ado 
 to squeeze his plumage where his wives had passed. 
 
 " The puppy's hungry," said Bertie, timidly. 
 
 " Drat the puppy !" said the woman outside ; and 
 no more compassion was wrung out of her. The little 
 Earl felt very languid, light-headed, and strange ; he 
 was faint, and a little feverish. 
 
 " Oh, dear, pup ! what a night !" he murmured, with 
 a burst of sobbing. 
 
 Yet it never occurred to him to purchase his liberty 
 by giving up little guilty Dan. 
 
 Some more hours rolled on, — slow, empty, desolate, 
 — filled with the whine of the pup for its mother, and 
 the chirping of unseen martins going in and out of the 
 roof above-head. 
 
 " I suppose they mean to starve me to death," 
 thought Bertie, his thoughts clinging to the Duke of 
 Rothsay's story. 
 
 He heard the tread of Big George on the ground 
 outside, and his deep voice cursing and swearing, and 
 the children running to and fro, and the hens cackling. 
 Then the little Earl remembered that he was born of 
 brave men, and must not be unworthy of them ; and 
 he rose, though unsteadily, and tried to pull his dis- 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 299 
 
 ordered dress together, and tried, too, not to look 
 afraid. 
 
 He recalled Casablanca on the burning ship : Casa- 
 blanca had not been so very much older than he. 
 
 The door was thrust open violently, and that big 
 grim black man looked in. " Come, varmint !" he 
 cried out ; " come out and get your merits : birch and 
 bread-and- water and Scripture-readin' for a good month, 
 I'll go bail ; and 't 'ud be a year if I wur the beak." 
 
 Then Bertie, on his little shaky shivering limbs, 
 walked quite haughtily towards him and the open air, 
 the puppy waddling after him. " You should not be 
 so very rough and rude," he said : " I will go with you. 
 But the puppy wants some milk." 
 
 Big George's only answer was to clutch wildly at 
 Bertie's clothes and hurl him anyhow, head first, into 
 a little pony-cart that stood ready. " Such tarnation 
 cheek I never seed," he swore ; " but all them Eadley 
 imps are as like one to f other as so many ribston- 
 pippins, — all the gift o' the gab and tallow-faces !" 
 
 Bertie, lying very sick and dizzy in the bottom of 
 the cart, managed to find breath to call out to the 
 woman on the door-step, " Please do give the puppy 
 something ; it has been so hungry all night." 
 
 " That's no Eadley boy," said the keeper's wife to 
 her eldest girl as the cart drove away. " Only a little 
 gemman 'ud ha' thought of the pup. Strikes me, lass, 
 your daddy's put a rod in pickle for hisself along o' 
 his tantrums and tivies." 
 
 It was but a mile and a half from the keeper's cot- 
 tage to the mansion of the Sir Henry who was owner 
 of these lands ; and the pony spun along at a swing 
 
300 '^^E LITTLE EARL. 
 
 trot, and Big George, smoking and rattling along, 
 never deigned to look at his prisoner. 
 
 "Another poachin' boy, Mr. Mason?" said the woman 
 who opened the lodge gates; and Big George answered, 
 heartily, — 
 
 "Ay, ay, a Eadley imp caught at last. Got the bird 
 on him, and the gin too. What d'ye call that?" 
 
 " I call it like your vigilance, Mr. Mason," said the 
 lodge-keeper. " But, lawks ! he do look a mite !" 
 
 Big George spun on up the avenue with the air of a 
 man who knew his own important place in the world, 
 and the little cart was soon pulled up at the steps of a 
 stately Italian-like building. 
 
 " See Sir Henry to wunce : poachin' case," said Big 
 George to the footman lounging about the doorway. 
 
 "Of course, Mr. Mason. Sir Henry said as you waff 
 to go to him directly." 
 
 "Step this way," said one of the men; and Big 
 George proceeded to haul Bertie out of the cart as un- 
 ceremoniously as he had thrown him in ; but the little 
 Earl, although his head spun and his shoeless feet 
 ached, managed to get down himself, and staggered 
 across the hall. 
 
 "A Badley boy!" said Big George, displaying him 
 with much pride. " All the spring and all the winter 
 I've been after that weazen-faced varmint, and now 
 ['ve got him." 
 
 "Sir Henry waits," said a functionary; and Big 
 George marched into a handsome library, dragging 
 his captive behind him, towards the central writing- 
 table, at which a good-looking elderly gentleman was 
 sitting. 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 301 
 
 Arrived before his master, the demeanor of Big 
 George underwent a remarkable change; he cringed, 
 and he pulled his lock of hair, and he scraped about 
 with his leg in the humblest manner possible, and 
 proceeded to lay the dead pheasant and the trap and 
 gear upon the table. 
 
 " Took him in the ac', Sir Henry," he said, with 
 triumph piercing through deference. " I been after 
 him ages ; he's a Radley boy, the little gallows-bird ; 
 he's been snarin' and dodgin' and stealin' all the winter 
 long, and here we've got him." 
 
 " He is very small, — quite a child," said Sir Henry, 
 doubtingly, trying to see the culprit. 
 
 "He's stunted in his growth along o' wickedness, 
 sir," said Big George, very positively ; " but he's old 
 in wice ; that's what he is, sir, — old in wice." 
 
 At that moment Bertie managed to get in front of 
 him, and lifted his little faint voice. 
 
 " He has made a mistake," he said, feebly : " I never 
 killed your birds at all, and I am Lord Avillion." 
 
 "Good heavens I you thundering idiot!" shouted 
 Sir Henry, springing to his feet. " This is the little 
 Earl they are looking for all over the island, and all 
 over the country ! My dear little fellow, how can I 
 ever " 
 
 His apologies were cut short by Bertie dropping 
 down in a dead faint at his feet, so weak was he from 
 cold, and hunger, and exhaustion, and unwonted ex- 
 posure. 
 
 It was not very long, however, before all the alarmed 
 household, pouring in at the furious ringing of their 
 master's bell, had revived the little Earl, and brought 
 
302 THE LITTLE EARL. 
 
 him to his senses none the worse for the momentary 
 eclipse of them. 
 
 "Please do not be angry with your man," murmured 
 Bertie, as he lay on one of the wide leathern couches. 
 " He meant to do his duty ; and please —will you let 
 me buy the puppy ?" 
 
 Of course Sir Henry would not allow the little Earl 
 to wander any farther afield, and of course a horseman 
 was sent over in hot haste to apprise his people, misled 
 by the boat-lad, who, frightened at his own share in 
 the little gentleman's escape, had sworn till he was 
 hoarse that he had seen Lord Avillion take a boat for 
 Eye. 
 
 So Bertie's liberty was nipped in the bud, and very 
 sorrowfully and wistfully he strayed out on to the rose- 
 terrace of Sir Henry's house, awaiting the coming of 
 his friends. The puppy had been fetched, and was 
 tumbling and waddling solemnly beside him ; yet he 
 was very sad at heart. 
 
 " What are you thinking of, my child ?" said Sir 
 Henry, who was a gentle and learned man. 
 
 Bertie's mouth quivered. 
 
 " I see," he said, hesitatingly, — " I see I am nothing. 
 It is the title they give me, and the money I have got, 
 that make the people so good to me. When I am only 
 me, you see how it is." 
 
 And the tears rolled down his face, which he had 
 heard called "wizen" and "puny" and likened to 
 tallow. 
 
 "My dear little fellow," said his grown-up com- 
 panion, tenderly, " there comes a day when even kings 
 are stripped of all their pomp, and lie naked and stark; 
 
THE LITTLE EARL. 303 
 
 it is then that which they have done, not that wliieh 
 they have been, that will find them grace and let them 
 rise again." 
 
 "But I am nothing!" said Bertie, piteously. "You 
 see, when the people do not know who I am, they 
 think me nothing at all," 
 
 " I don't fancy Peggy and Dan will think so when 
 we tell them everything," said the host. " We are all 
 of us nothing in ourselves, my child ; only, here and 
 there we pluck a bit of lavender, — that is, we do some 
 good thing or say some kind word, — and then we get 
 a sweet savor from it. You will gather a great deal 
 of lavender in your life, or I am mistaken." 
 
 " I will try," said Bertie, who understood. 
 
 So, off the downs that day, and in the pleasant haw- 
 thorn woods of the friendly little Isle, he plucked two 
 heads of lavender, — humility and sympathy. Believe 
 me, they are worth as much as was the raoly of Ulysses. 
 
 THE END. 
 
v^^/v^y / \J