Poor Dorothea! how anxious she would
be! How she would run over the town and walk up to grandfather's
at Dorf Ampas, and perhaps even send over to Jenbach, thinking he
had taken refuge with Uncle Joachim! His conscience smote him for
the sorrow he must be even then causing to his gentle sister; but
it never occurred to him to try and go back. If he once were to
lose sight of Hirschvogel, how could he ever hope to find it
again? how could he ever know whither it had gone--north, south,
east, or west? The old neighbor had said that the world was small;
but August knew at least that it must have a great many places in
it: that he had seen himself on the maps on his schoolhouse walls.
Almost any other little boy would, I think, have been frightened
out of his wits at the position in which he found himself; but
August was brave, and he had a firm belief that God and
Hirschvogel would take care of him. The master-potter of Nurnberg
was always present to his mind, a kindly, benign, and gracious
spirit, dwelling manifestly in that porcelain tower whereof he had
been the maker.
A droll fancy, you say? But every child with a soul in him has
quite as quaint fancies as this one was of August's.
So he got over his terror and his sobbing both, though he was so
utterly in the dark. He did not feel cramped at all, because the
stove was so large, and air he had in plenty, as it came through
the fretwork running round the top.
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