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.  “How dare he?  How dare he?” he muttered, with his head sunk in his hands.  “It is not his alone.  It belongs to us all.  It is as much yours and mine as it is his.”

Dorothea could only sob in answer.  She was too frightened to speak.  The authority of their parents in the house had never in her remembrance been questioned.

“Are you hurt by the fall, dear August?” she murmured at length, for he looked to her so pale and strange.

“Yes—­no.  I do not know.  What does it matter?”

He sat up upon the wolfskin with passionate pain upon his face; all his soul was in rebellion, and he was only a child and was powerless.

“It is a sin; it is a theft; it is an infamy,” he said slowly, his eyes fastened on the gilded feet of Hirschvogel.

“Oh, August, do not say such things of father!” sobbed his sister.  “Whatever he does, we ought to think it right.”

August laughed aloud.

“Is it right that he should spend his money in drink?—­that he should let orders lie unexecuted?—­that he should do his work so ill that no one cares to employ him?—­that he should live on grandfather’s charity, and then dare sell a thing that is ours every whit as much as it is his?  To sell Hirschvogel!  Oh, dear God!  I would sooner sell my soul!”

“August!” cried Dorothea with piteous entreaty.  He terrified her; she could not recognize her little, gay, gentle brother in those fierce and blasphemous words.