id a lad older than himself. "Get
out of the way with you, Liebchen." And the man who carried the cross
knocked him with force on the head, by mere accident; but Findelkind
thought he had meant it.

Were people so much kinder five centuries before, he wondered, and felt
sad as the many-coloured robes swept on through the grass, and the crack
of the rifles sounded sharply through the music of the chanting voices.
He went on, footsore and sorrowful, thinking of the castle doors that
had opened, and the city gates that had unclosed, at the summons of the
little long-haired boy whose figure was painted on the missal.

He had come now to where the houses were much more numerous, though
under the shade of great trees,--lovely old gray houses, some of wood,
some of stone, some with frescoes on them and gold and colour and
mottoes, some with deep barred casements, and carved portals, and
sculptured figures; houses of the poorer people now, but still memorials
of a grand and gracious time. For he had wandered into the quarter
of St. Nicholas in this fair mountain city, which he, like his
country-folk, called Sprugg, though the government calls it Innspruck.

He got out upon a long, gray, wooden bridge, and looked up and down the
reaches of the river, and thought to himself, maybe this was not Sprugg
but Jerusalem, so beautiful it looked with its domes shining golden in
the sun, and the snow of the Soldstein and Branjoch behind them. For
little Findelkind had never come so far as this before. As he stood on
the bridge so dreaming, a hand clutched him, and a voice said:

"A whole kreutzer, or you do not pass!"

Findelkind started and trembled.

A kreutzer! he had never owned such a treasure in all his life.

"I have no money!" he murmured, timidly, "I came to see if I could get
money for the poor."

The keeper of the bridge laughed.

"You are a little beggar, you mean? Oh, very well! Then over my bridge
you do not go.

"But it is the city on the other side?"

"To be sure it is the city; but over nobody goes without a kreutzer."

"I never have such a thing of my own! never! never!" said Findelkind,
ready to cry.

"Then you were a little fool to come away from your home, wherever that
may be," said the man at the bridge-head. "Well, I will let you go, for
you look a baby. But do not beg; that is bad."

"Findelkind did it!"

"Then Findelkind was a rogue and a vagabond," said the taker of tolls.

"Oh, no--no--no!"