I am the king."
August, in an instinct of homage, cast his great battered black
hat with the tarnished gold tassels down on the floor of the room,
and folded his little brown hands in supplication. He was too
intensely in earnest to be in any way abashed; he was too lifted
out of himself by his love for Hirschvogel to be conscious of any
awe before any earthly majesty. He was only so glad--so glad it
was the king. Kings were always kind; so the Tyrolese think, who
love their lords.
"Oh, dear king!" he said, with trembling entreaty in his faint
little voice, "Hirschvogel was ours, and we have loved it all our
lives; and father sold it. And when I saw that it did really go
from us, then I said to myself I would go with it; and I have come
all the way inside it. And last night it spoke and said beautiful
things.
"And I do pray you to let me live with it, and I will go out every
morning and cut wood for it and you, if only you will let me stay
beside it. No one ever has fed it with fuel but me since I grew
big enough, and it loves me,--it does indeed; it said so last
night; and it said that it had been happier with us than if it
were in any palace--"
And then his breath failed him, and, as he lifted his little,
eager, pale face to the young king's, great tears were falling
down his cheeks.
Now, the king liked all poetic and uncommon things, and there was
that in the child's face which pleased and touched him.
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