r and
closer round the bronzed knees of the heroic figure and sobbed aloud,
"Help me! help me! Oh, turn the hearts of the people to me, and help me
to do good!"

But Theodoric answered nothing.

There was no sound in the dark, hushed church; the gloom grew darker
over Findelkind's eyes; the mighty forms of monarchs and of heroes grew
dim before his sight. He lost consciousness and fell prone upon the
stones at Theodoric's feet, for he had fainted from hunger and emotion.

When he awoke it was quite evening: there was a lantern held over his
head; voices were muttering curiously and angrily; bending over him were
two priests, a sacristan of the church and his own father. His little
wallet lay by him on the stones, always empty.

"Liebchen, were you mad?" cried his father, half in rage, half in
tenderness. "The chase you have led me! and your mother thinking you
were drowned! and all the working day lost, running after old women's
tales of where they had seen you! Oh, little fool! little fool! what
was amiss with Martinswand that you must leave it?"

Findelkind slowly and feebly rose and sat up on the pavement, and looked
up, not at his father, but at the knight Theodoric. "I thought they
would help me to keep the poor," he muttered feebly as he glanced at his
own wallet. "And it is empty, empty!"

"Are we not poor enough?" cried his father with paternal impatience,
ready to tear his hair with vexation at having such a little idiot for
son. "Must you rove afield to find poverty to help, when it sits cold
enough, the Lord knows, at our own hearth? Oh, little ass! little dolt!
little maniac! fit only for a madhouse! talking to iron figures and
taking them for real men!--What have I done, O Heaven, that I should be
afflicted thus?"

And the poor man wept, being a good, affectionate soul, but not very
wise, and believing that his boy was mad. Then, seized with sudden rage
once more at thought of his day all wasted and its hours harassed and
miserable through searching for the lost child, he plucked up the light,
slight figure of Findelkind in his own arms, and with muttered thanks
and excuses to the sacristan of the church, bore the boy out with him
into the evening air, and lifted him into a cart which stood there with
a horse harnessed to one side of the pole, as the country-people love to
do, to the risk of their own lives and their neighbors'. Findelkind said
never a word: he was as dumb as Theodoric had been to h