"I have sold Hirschvogel!" said Karl Strehla in the same husky,
dogged voice. "I have sold it to a traveling trader in such things
for two hundred florins. What would you?--I owe double that. He
saw it this morning when you were all out. He will pack it and
take it to Munich to-morrow."
Dorothea gave a low, shrill cry:--
"Oh, father!--the children--in midwinter!"
She turned white as the snow without; her words died away in her
throat.
August stood, half blind with sleep, staring with dazed eyes as
his cattle stared at the sun when they came out from their
winter's prison.
"It is not true! It is not true!" he muttered. "You are jesting,
father?"
Strehla broke into a dreary laugh.
"It is true. Would you like to know what is true too?--that the
bread you eat, and the meat you put in this pot, and the roof you
have over your heads, are none of them paid for, have been none of
them paid for for months and months; if it had not been for your
grandfather, I should have been in prison all summer and autumn;
and he is out of patience and will do no more now. There is no
work to be had; the masters go to younger men; they say I work
ill; it may be so. Who can keep his head above water with ten
hungry children dragging him down? When your mother lived it was
different. Boy, you stare at me as if I were a mad dog! You have
made a god of yon china thing.
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