Every time the train stopped, and he heard the banging, stamping, and shouting, his heart seemed to jump up into his mouth.  When the people came to lift the stove out, would they find him? and if they did find him, would they kill him?  The thought, too, of Hilda, kept tugging at his heart now and then, but he said to himself, “If I can take Hirschvogel back to her, how pleased she will be, and how she will clap her hands!” He was not at all selfish in his love for Hirschvogel; he wanted it for them at home quite as much as for himself.  That was what he kept thinking of all the way in the darkness and stillness which lasted so long.  At last the train stopped, and awoke him from a half sleep.  Karl felt the stove lifted by some men, who carried it to a cart, and then they started again on the journey, up hill and down, for what seemed miles and miles.  Where they were going Karl had no idea.  Finally the cart stopped; then it seemed as though they were carrying the stove up some stairs.  The men rested sometimes, and then moved on again, and their feet went so softly he thought they must be walking on thick carpets.  By and by the stove was set down again, happily for Karl, for he felt as though he should scream, or do something to make known that he was there.  Then the wrappings were taken off, and he heard a voice say, “What a beautiful, beautiful stove!”

[Illustration:  “Oh let me stay please let me stay”]

Next some one turned the round handle of the brass door, and poor little Karl’s heart stood still.

“What is this?” said the man.  “A live child!”

Then Karl sprang out of the stove and fell at the feet of the man who had spoken.

“Oh, let me stay, please let me stay!” he said.  “I have come all the way with my darling Hirschvogel!”

The man answered kindly, “Poor little child! tell me how you came to hide in the stove.  Do not be afraid.  I am the king.”

Karl was too much in earnest to be afraid; he was so glad, so glad it was the king, for kings must be always kind, he thought.

“Oh, dear king!” he said with a trembling voice, “Hirschvogel was ours, and we have loved it all our lives, and father sold it, and when I saw that it really did go from us I said to myself that I would go with it; and I do beg you to let me live with it, and I will go out every morning and cut wood for it and for all your other stoves, if only you will let me stay beside it.  No one has ever fed it with wood but me since I grew big enough, and it loves me; it does indeed!” And then he lifted up his little pale face to the young king, who saw that great tears were running down his cheeks.

“Can’t I stay with Hirschvogel?” he pleaded.

“Wait a little,” said the king.  “What do you want to be when you are a man?  Do you want to be a wood-chopper?”

“I want to be a painter,” cried Karl.  “I want to be what Hirschvogel was.  I mean the potter that made my Hirschvogel.”