"Come to bed, dear," sighed his sister. "Oh, August, do not lie and look like that! you frighten me. Do come to bed." "I shall stay here." "Here! all night!" "They might take it in the night. Besides, to leave it _now_!" "But it is cold! the fire is out." "It will never be warm any more, nor shall we." All his childhood had gone out of him, all his gleeful, careless, sunny temper had gone with it; he spoke sullenly and wearily, choking down the great sobs in his chest. To him it was as if the end of the world had come. His sister lingered by him while striving to persuade him to go to his place in the little crowded bedchamber with Albrecht and Waldo and Christof. But it was in vain. "I shall stay here," was all he answered her. And he stayed,--all the night long. V The lamps went out; the rats came and ran across the floor; as the hours crept on through midnight and past, the cold intensified and the air of the room grew like ice. August did not move; he lay with his face downward on the golden and rainbow-hued pedestal of the household treasure, which henceforth was to be cold for evermore, an exiled thing in a foreign city in a far-off land. Whilst yet it was dark his three elder brothers came down the stairs and let themselves out, each bearing his lantern and going to his work in stone-yard and timber-yard and at the salt-works. They did not notice him; they did not know what had happened. A little later his sister came down with a light in her hand to make ready the house ere morning should break. She stole up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder timidly. "Dear August, you must be frozen. August, do look up! do speak!" August raised his eyes with a wild, feverish, sullen look in them that she had never seen there. His face was ashen white: his lips were like fire. He had not slept all night; but his passionate sobs had given way to delirious waking dreams and numb senseless trances, which had alternated one on another all through the freezing, lonely, horrible hours. "It will never be warm again," he muttered, "never again!" Dorothea clasped him with trembling hands. "August! do you not know me?" she cried, in an agony. "I am Dorothea. Wake up, dear--wake up! It is morning, only so dark!" August shuddered all over. "The morning!" he echoed. He slowly rose up on to his feet. "I will go to grandfather," he said, very low. "He is always good: perhaps he could save it." Loud blows with the heavy iron knocker of the house-door drowned his words. A strange voice called aloud through the keyhole,-- "Let me in! Quick!--there is no time to lose! More snow like this, and the roads will all be blocked. Let me in! Do you hear? I am come to take the great stove." August sprang erect, his fists doubled, his eyes blazing. "You shall never touch it!" he screamed; "you shall never touch it!"