He looked down on the child, and as he did so smiled once more.

“Rise up, my little man,” he said, in a kind voice; “kneel only to your God.  Will I let you stay with your Hirschvogel?  Yes, I will, you shall stay at my court, and you shall be taught to be a painter—­in oils or on porcelain as you will—­and you must grow up worthily, and win all the laurels at our Schools of Art, and if when you are twenty-one years old you have done well and bravely, then I will give you your Nuernberg stove, or, if I am no more living, then those who reign after me shall do so.  And now go away with this gentleman, and be not afraid, and you shall light a fire every morning in Hirschvogel, but you will not need to go out and cut the wood.”

Then he smiled and stretched out his hand; the courtiers tried to make August understand that he ought to bow and touch it with his lips, but August could not understand that anyhow; he was too happy.  He threw his two arms about the king’s knees, and kissed his feet passionately; then he lost all sense of where he was, and fainted away from hunger, and tire, and emotion, and wondrous joy.

As the darkness of his swoon closed in on him, he heard in his fancy the voice from Hirschvogel saying: 

“Let us be worthy our maker!”

He is only a scholar yet, but he is a happy scholar, and promises to be a great man.  Sometimes he goes back for a few days to Hall, where the gold ducats have made his father prosperous.  In the old house-room there is a large white porcelain stove of Munich, the king’s gift to Dorothea and ’Gilda.

And August never goes home without going into the great church and saying his thanks to God, who blessed his strange winter’s journey in the Nuernberg stove.  As for his dream in the dealers’ room that night, he will never admit that he did dream it; he still declares that he saw it all and heard the voice of Hirschvogel.  And who shall say that he did not? for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?

X

RAB AND HIS FRIENDS

Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.

When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron Church.  “A dog-fight!” shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got up!  And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don’t we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it?  Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they “delight” in it, and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight.  They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog