rried 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-colored 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 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 color 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 of this fair mountain-city, which he, like his
country-folks, called Sprugg, though the government and the world called
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 Patscher Kofl and the Brandjoch behind
them. For little Findelkind had never come so far 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!"

"Oh, yes, yes, yes, little saucebox! and take that," said the man,
giving him a box on the ear, being angry