His heart beat loud against his side,
but he plucked up his courage, and knocked as loud as his heart
was beating.
He knocked and knocked, but no answer came. The house was
empty. But he did not know that; he thought it was that the
people within were cruel, and he went sadly onward with the road
winding before him, and on his right the beautiful impetuous gray
river, and on his left the green Mittelgebirge and the mountains
that rose behind it. By this time the day was up; the sun was
glowing on the red of the cranberry shrubs, and the blue of the
bilberry-boughs: he was hungry and thirsty and tired. But he did
not give in for that; he held on steadily; he knew that there was
near, somewhere near, a great city that the people called Sprugg,
and thither he had resolved to go. By noontide he had walked
eight miles, and came to a green place where men were shooting at
targets, the tall, thick grass all around them; and a little way
farther off was a train of people chanting and bearing crosses,
and dressed in long flowing robes.
The place was the Hottinger Au, and the day was Saturday, and
the village was making ready to perform a miracle-play on the
morrow.
Findelkind ran to the robed singing-folk, quite sure that he
saw the people of God. "Oh, take me, take me!" he cried to them;
"do take me with you to do heaven's work."
But they pushed him aside for a crazy little boy that spoiled
their rehearsing.
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