blinking, stumbling cattle, ringing their throat bells, out into the sweet intoxication of the sudden sunlight, and lived up with them in the heights among the Alpine roses, with only the clouds and the snow summits near.  But he was always thinking, thinking, thinking, for all that; and under his little sheepskin winter coat and his rough hempen summer shirt his heart had as much courage in it as Hofer’s ever had,—­ great Hofer, who is a household word in all the Innthal, and whom August always reverently remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck and ran out by the foaming water mill and under the wooded height of Berg Isel.

August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told the children stories, his own little brown face growing red with excitement as his imagination glowed to fever heat.  That human being on the panels, who was drawn there as a baby in a cradle, as a boy playing among flowers, as a lover sighing under a casement, as a soldier in the midst of strife, as a father with children round him, as a weary, old, blind man on crutches, and, lastly, as a ransomed soul raised up by angels, had always had the most intense interest for August, and he had made, not one history for him, but a thousand; he seldom told them the same tale twice.  He had never seen a storybook in his life; his primer and his Mass book were all the volumes he had.  But nature had given him Fancy, and she is a good fairy that makes up for the want of very many things! only, alas! her wings are so very soon broken, poor thing! and then she is of no use at all.

“It is time for you all to go to bed, children,” said Dorothea, looking up from her spinning.  “Father is very late to-night; you must not sit up for him.”

“Oh, five minutes more, dear Dorothea!” they pleaded; and little rosy and golden Ermengilda climbed up into her lap.  “Hirschvogel is so warm, the beds are never so warm as he.  Cannot you tell us another tale, August?”

“No,” cried August, whose face had lost its light, now that his story had come to an end, and who sat serious, with his hands clasped on his knees, gazing on to the luminous arabesques of the stove.

“It is only a week to Christmas,” he said suddenly.

“Grandmother’s big cakes!” chuckled little Christof, who was five years old, and thought Christmas meant a big cake and nothing else.

“What will Santa Claus find for ’Gilda if she be good?” murmured Dorothea over the child’s sunny head; for, however hard poverty might pinch, it could never pinch so tightly that Dorothea would not find some wooden toy and some rosy apples to put in her little sister’s socks.

“Father Max has promised me a big goose, because I saved the calf’s life in June,” said August; it was the twentieth time he had told them so that month, he was so proud of it.

“And Aunt Maila will be sure to send us wine and honey and a barrel of flour; she always does,” said Albrecht.  Their Aunt Maila had a chalet and a little farm over on the green slopes towards Dorp Ampas.