Was Hirschvogel going
north or south? This at least he would soon know.
August had often hung about the little station, watching 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 managed 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 the stove in the great covered
truck, and wedged, unseen and undreamt of by any human creature,
amidst the 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.
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