elf and stumbled forward, reverent and bareheaded, looking for the
altar to cling to when the soldiers should enter to seize him, his
uplifted eyes fell on the great tomb.

The tomb seems entirely to fill the church as, with its twenty-four
guardian figures round it, it towers up in the twilight that reigns here
even at midday. There is a stern majesty and grandeur in it which dwarfs
every other monument and mausoleum. It is grim, it is rude, it is
savage, with the spirit of the rough ages that created it; but it is
great with their greatness, it is heroic with their heroism, it is
simple with their simplicity.

As the awestricken eyes of the terrified child fell on the mass of stone
and bronze the sight smote him breathless. The mailed warriors standing
around it, so motionless, so solemn, filled him with a frozen, nameless
fear. He had never a doubt but that they were the dead arisen. The
foremost that met his eyes were Theodoric and Arthur--the next, grim
Rodolf, father of a dynasty of emperors. There, leaning on their swords,
the three gazed down on him, armored, armed, majestic, serious, guarding
the empty grave, which to the child, who knew nothing of its history,
seemed a bier; and at the feet of Theodoric, who alone of them all
looked young and merciful, poor little desperate Findelkind fell with a
piteous sob, and cried, "I am not mad! Indeed, indeed, I am not mad!"

He did not know that these six figures were but statues of bronze. He
was quite sure they were the dead arisen, and meeting there around that
tomb on which the solitary kneeling knight watched and prayed,
encircled, as by a wall of steel, by these his comrades. He was not
frightened; he was rather comforted and stilled, as with a sudden sense
of some deep calm and certain help.

Findelkind, without knowing that he was like so many dissatisfied poets
and artists much bigger than himself, dimly felt in his little tired
mind how beautiful and how gorgeous and how grand the world must have
been when heroes and knights like these had gone by in its daily
sunshine and its twilight storms. No wonder Findelkind in heaven had
found his pilgrimage so fair when, if he had needed any help, he had
only had to kneel and clasp these firm mailed limbs, these strong
cross-hilted swords, in the name of Christ and of the poor!

Theodoric seemed to look down on him with benignant eyes from under the
raised visor, and Findelkind, weeping, threw his small arms close