great laugh. "A fine monk, you! And who wants more of these lazy
drones? Not I."

Findelkind never answered: he remembered the priest had said
that the years he lived in were very hard ones, and men in them
had no faith.

Ere long he came to a big walled house, with turrets and grated
casements,--very big it looked to him,--like one of the first
Findelkind's own castles. 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