But the steam was screaming itself so loudly that no
one, had there been any one nigh, would have heard him; and in
another minute or so the train stopped with a jar and a jerk, and
he in his cage could hear men crying aloud, "Munchen! Munchen!"
Then he knew enough of geography to know that he was in the heart
of Bavaria. He had had an uncle killed in the Bayerischenwald by
the Bavarian forest guards, when in the excitement of hunting a
black bear he had overpassed the limits of the Tyrol frontier.
That fate of his kinsman, a gallant young chamois hunter who had
taught him to handle a trigger and load a muzzle, made the very
name of Bavaria a terror to August.
"It is Bavaria! It is Bavaria!" he sobbed to the stove; but the
stove said nothing to him; it had no fire in it. A stove can no
more speak without fire than a man can see without light. Give it
fire, and it will sing to you, tell tales to you, offer you in
return all the sympathy you ask.
"It is Bavaria!" sobbed August; for it is always a name of dread
augury to the Tyroleans, by reason of those bitter struggles and
midnight shots and untimely deaths which come from those meetings
of jager and hunter in the Bayerischenwald. But the train stopped;
Munich was reached, and August, hot and cold by turns, and shaking
like a little aspen leaf, felt himself once more carried out on
the shoulders of men, rolled along on a truck, and finally set
down, where he knew not, only he knew he was thirsty--so thirsty!
If only he could have reached his hand out and scooped up a little
snow!
He thought he had been moved on this truck many miles, but in
truth the stove had been only taken from the railway station to a
shop in the Marienplatz.
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