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 neighbours'.
Findelkind said never a word; he was as dumb as Theodoric had
been to him; he felt stupid, heavy, half blind; his father pushed
him some bread, and he ate it by sheer instinct, as a lost animal
will do; the cart jogged on, the stars shone, the great church
vanished in the gloom of night.
As they went through the city toward the riverside along the
homeward way, never a word did his father, who was a silent man
at all times, address to him. Only once, as they jogged over the
bridge, he spoke.
"Son," he asked, "did you run away truly thinking to please God
and help the poor?"
"Truly I did!" answered Findelkind, with a sob in his throat.
"Then thou wert an ass!" said his father. "Didst never think of
thy mother's love and of my toil? Look at home."
Findelkind was mute. The drive was very long, backward by the
same way, with the river shining in the moonlight, and the
mountains half covered with the clouds.
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