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 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 towards 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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