Bimbi. Stories for children

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THE LIBRARY

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THE UNIVERSITY

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Education

GIFT OF

Dr. Gordon E, Hein

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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
0 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.

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