Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/461

The People in Country and Toivn 425 out by the hair. Gotelind lost her bridal gown : in a hedge they found her, scared, tattered, despised. But on the necks of the thieves were bound the hides of the cattle they had stolen, as a fee for the judge. Nine the hangman hung ; the tenth he left alive, by hangman's right, and this tenth was Schlingdengau Helmbrecht. The hangman revenged his father on him he picked him his eyes out ; he revenged his mother, and chopped him a hand and a foot off. So the blind Helmbrecht on a crutch was led home to his father's house. Hear how his father greeted him : " Dieu salue, Sir Blind Man. Be off with you, Monsieur Blind Man ; if you loiter, I '11 have you clubbed off by my man ; get away with you from the door." So shouted his father ; .yet his mother put a loaf of bread into his hand, as if he were a child. And so the blind man went away ; and the peasants called after him and taunted him. A year he suffered want. Once early in the morning he was going through the forest to beg bread, when some peas- ants who were gathering wood saw him ; from one of them he had stolen a cow which had. seven times calved, and now that peasant called the others to help him. He had wronged them all : one's hut he had broken into and plundered ; another's daughter he had disgraced ; the fourth quivered with fury and said, " I '11 kill him like a hen he stuffed my sleeping baby at night into a bag, and when it awoke and cried, he shook it out into the snow, where it would have died had I not come to its help." All turned then toward Helmbrecht : " Now look out for thy cap ! " The embroid- ery which once the hangman had left untouched was torn in pieces and scattered with his hair along the road. His confession they let the wretch utter, and one broke a clod from the earth and put it in the gentleman's hand as an entrance fee to hell fire. Then they hanged him on a tree. If there are still at home, with father and mother, children who want to be knights, let them be warned by Helmbrecht's fate.