He hid himself in the grand portico, which he had so often passed through to go to mass or compline 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 of other boys 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 toward 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 Brenner into Italy.  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.  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.