"How should I leave thee, Dickon?" said the other, softly. "That could not be. But freedom lies not alone out under the skies, in wind and cold. Was any other more free than I, with my old master? Come, thou shalt be ruled by me--and we will make our way out from these ruffian parts together, and somewhere we shall light upon a gentle patron, and there I will carve new types and build a press, and thy stout arms shall turn the screw, and I will teach thee learning, and----" He broke off all at once, and gazed wistfully upward at the mounting volume of smoke and snapping sparks for a long time in silence. Dickon looked on him, speechless but with great things dawning confusedly in his head. CHAPTER IV. UP IN THE WORLD. Save the crackling of flame, and the small sound of branches overhead that were swayed a little by the draught from the fire on the forest floor, Dickon heard nothing while he waited for Andreas to finish the matter of which he had been speaking. For the rude smithy-bred boy there was little meaning in the other's promise to teach him learning. No more meaning was there for Dickon in the young scholar's craving for types and a press to begin printing anew. But the promise that Andreas would not part from him lingered in Dickon's ears, and uplifted his heart as he waited reverentially to hear again the gentle, convinced, and loving accents of the German youth. At last Andreas spoke--as if he had not paused, and yet with a strange new wailing weakness in his voice:-- "And if the saints willed, thus might we win our way back to Augsburg. But that may never be, for I shall die here, here where I lie, and thou wilt turn to wild beast or robber when I am gone, and brave, goodly Augsburg will press on, leading all men, with never a thought of poor little me, dead here in the forest." Dickon would have spoken in homely protest, but the change on his friend's face scared him to dumbness. Not even the flame-light could make it ruddy now. In the eyes there was a dimmed, far-away look which chilled Dickon's blood. "Aye, when I lie forgotten here,"--the thin, saddened voice went on in increasing slowness,--"there the old gray walls and tiled gables will be, with the storks making their nests in the spring, and the convent boys singing at daybreak in the streets, and the good housewives stopping in the market-place on their way home from mass, and the smell of new grass and blossoms in the air ... and when Christmas comes I shall not know it ... these eyes shall not look again on the Tannenbaum. Woe! woe!" "Is that the tree?" asked Dickon, some impulse to words and action stirring vaguely in his frightened heart. "Aye," groaned Andreas, "the beautiful tree with candles blazing on its branches and shining gifts." He followed on in a weak murmuring of foreign words, seemingly without meaning.