ights! oh, great soldiers! help me! Fight for me, for the
love of the saints! I have come all the way from Martinswand, and I am
Findelkind, and I am trying to serve St. Christopher like Findelkind of
Arlberg."

But his little swaying body and pleading hands and shouting voice and
blowing curls frightened the horses; one of them swerved and very nearly
settled the woes of Findelkind for ever and aye by a kick. The soldier
who rode the horse reined him in with difficulty. He was at the head
of the little staff, being indeed no less or more than the general
commanding the garrison, which in this city is some fifteen thousand
strong. An orderly sprang from his saddle and seized the child, and
shook him, and swore at him. Findelkind was frightened; but he shut his
eyes and set his teeth, and said to himself that the martyrs must have
had very much worse than these things to suffer in their pilgrimage. He
had fancied these riders were knights, such knights as the priest had
shown him the likeness of in old picture-books, whose mission it had
been to ride through the world succouring the weak and weary, and always
defending the right.

"What are your swords for, if you are not knights?" he cried,
desperately struggling in his captor's grip, and seeing through his
half-closed lids the sunshine shining on steel scabbards.

"What does he want?" asked the officer in command of the garrison, whose
staff all this bright and martial array was. He was riding out from the
barracks to an inspection on the Rudolfplatz. He was a young man, and
had little children himself, and was half amused, half touched, to see
the tiny figure of the little dusty boy.

"I want to build a monastery, like Findelkind of Arlberg, and to help
the poor," said our Findelkind, valorously, though his heart was beating
like that of a little mouse caught in a trap; for the horses were
trampling up the dust around him, and the orderly's grip was hard.

The officers laughed aloud; and indeed he looked a poor little scrap of
a figure, very ill able to help even himself.

"Why do you laugh?" cried Findelkind, losing his terror in his
indignation, and inspired with the courage which a great earnestness
always gives. "You should not laugh. If you were true knights, you
would not laugh; you would fight for me. I am little, I know,--I am very
little,--but he was no bigger than I; and see what great things he did.
But the soldiers were good in those days; they did n