“Poof! Nothing is impossible. That clock or none. Get thee home and I will send for it in half an hour, and pay thee the gulden.”
The little clock-maker stumbled out.
“Anything but that—anything but that!” he kept mumbling over and over to himself on his way home. But as he passed the neighbor’s house he saw the children at the window with their lighted candle and he heard Trude singing.
And so it happened that the servant who came from the Herr Graff carried the gift clock away with him; but the clock-maker would take but five of the thousand gulden in payment. And as the servant disappeared up the street the chimes commenced to ring from the great cathedral, and the streets suddenly became noisy with the many people going thither, bearing their Christmas offerings.
“I have gone empty-handed before,” said the little clock-maker, sadly. “I can go empty-handed once again.” And again he buttoned up his greatcoat.
As he turned to shut his cupboard door behind him his eyes fell on the Christmas apple and an odd little smile crept into the corners of his mouth and lighted his eyes.
“It is all I have—my dinner for two days. I will carry that to the Christ-child. It is better, after all, than going empty-handed.”
How full of peace and beauty was the great cathedral when Hermann entered it! There were a thousand tapers burning and everywhere the sweet scent of the Christmas greens—and the laden altar before the Holy Mother and Child. There were richer gifts than had been brought for many years: marvelously wrought vessels from the greatest silversmiths; cloth of gold and cloth of silk brought from the East by the merchants; poets had brought their songs illuminated on rolls of heavy parchment; painters had brought their pictures of saints and the Holy Family; even the King himself had brought his crown and scepter to lay before the Child. And after all these offerings came the little clock-maker, walking slowly down the long, dim aisle, holding tight to his Christmas apple.
The people saw him and a murmur rose, hummed a moment indistinctly through the church and then grew clear and articulate:
“Shame! See, he is too mean to bring his clock! He hoards it as a miser hoards his gold. See what he brings! Shame!”