What is it to you? Be thankful I can get bread for you. Get on your
legs, I say, and go to bed."
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 wolfskin before the
stove. He had been struck backward, and his head had fallen on the
hard bricks where the wolfskin 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 downward with a fixed and bitter
seriousness.
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