Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/171

Rh covered with blood and wounds, was rubbing his neck. Stana, white as a piece of linen, was standing in one comer. She evidently could not pull herself together from the fright.

Then the head man of the village arrived, the clerk with a gun and a bottle of ink, and the school master with the broken leg of a chair.

“What’s the trouble?”

Zivko was scratching his back.

“This is it—that criminal Nicodemus has fallen upon the village—and our house. And if it had not been for him—he points to Trino—I would have lost my head and God only knows what would have happened.”

“Where are they? Follow me, people, with your weapons! Let’s pursue them. Quick! Catch them!” shrieked the town clerk.

“They have escaped,” was the reply.

“By the devil’s mother one escaped—the others were caught,” explained Trino.

He pointed to the door of my room.

“My dear little brother, they have jumped out through the window,” I answered.

“Yes, by the devil’s mother. Isn’t your soldier under the window?”