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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
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