Encouraged by large promises, they shouldered sullenly the
Nuernberg 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 looks 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
mountaineer, used to hanging head-downward 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 splendid 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
off 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 not poor four-footed carriers their employers dared
not thrash them, though most willingly would they have done so.
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