him was his own flesh and blood--his son; yet he exclaimed with a scornful laugh, 'You went out daringly into the world; you have caused many a heart to sigh, and robbed many a peasant of his possessions. Think of my dream. Servant, close the door and draw the bolt; I will betake me to my rest. As long as I live, I had rather take in a stranger whom my eyes never beheld, than share my loaf with you.' Thus saying, he struck the servant of the blind man. 'I would do so to your master, if I were not ashamed to strike a blind man; take him, whom the sun hates, from before me!' Thus did the father exclaim, but the mother put a loaf in his hand as to a child. So the blind man went away, the peasants hooting and scoffing at him.

"For a whole year he endured great hardships. Early one morning when he was going through the forest to beg bread, some peasants who were gathering wood saw him, and one of them from whom he had taken a cow called to the others to help him. All of them had been injured by him, he had broken into the hut of one and stripped it; he had dishonoured the daughter of another; and a fourth, trembling like a reed with passion, said, 'I will wring his neck; he thrust my sleeping child into a sack, and when it awoke and cried, he tossed it out into the snow, so that it died.' Thus they all turned against Helmbrecht. 'Now take care of your hood.' The embroidery which the hangman had left untouched was now torn, and scattered on the road with his hair. They allowed the miserable wretch to make his confession, and one of them broke a fragment from the ground and gave it to the worthless man as gate money for hell fire. Then they hung him to a tree.