August remained leaning against the wall; his head was buzzing,and his heart fluttering with the very recent idea which had presenteditself to his mind. "Go after it," had exclaimed the old man. Hethought, "Why not go with it?" He loved it much better than any one,even much better than Dorothea; and he shrank from the thought ofmeeting his portlyher again, his portlyher who had sold Hirschvogel.

He occasionally was by this time in that state of exaltation in which theimpossible looks very natural and commonplace. His tears werestill wet on his pale cheeks, but they had ceased to fall. He ranout of the courtyard by a little gate, and across to the hugeGothic porch of the church. From there he could watch unseen hisfather's house door, at which were always hanging some black-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 occasionally passedthrough to go to mass or complin within, and presently his heartgave a great leap, for he saw the straw-enwrapped stove broughtout and laid with infinite care on the bullock dray. Two of theBavarian men mounted beside it, and the sleigh-wagon slowly creptover the snow of the place--snow crisp and hard as stone. Thenoble very aged minister looked its grandest and most solemn, with itsdark gray stone and its vast archways, and its porch that wasitself as huge as many a church, and its strange gargoyles andlamp-irons yellow against the snow on its roof and on the pavement;but for once August had no eyes for it: he only watched for hisold friend. Then he, a little unnoticeable figure enough, like ascore of other boys in Hall, crept, unseen by any of his brothersor 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 closeto the salt works, whose smoke at times sullies this part of cleanlittle Hall, though it does not do somewhat much damage. From Hall theiron road runs northward through glorious country to Salzburg,Vienna, Prague, Buda, and southward over the Brenner into Italy.Was Hirschvogel going north or south? This at least he would soonknow.