Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/205

Rh “If I could only speak with her! I want to hear her say that she has been unfaithful to me. The gentlemen in the city are the cause of this. The last days he did not go near the house. Without sleep, he ran about the highways, across the meadows, into the city, without any plan. His clothes were torn, his hair disheveled and uncombed.

“I will murder him! I will murder him! Jagica is mine and nobody else’s,” he shrieked, running through forest and field, then breaking into sobs—or trilling shrilly one of his old songs.

On the evening before St. Catherine’s Day—which was the wedding day, he disappeared. People said he had gone into the city. There was a sigh of relief, because they feared trouble on the wedding day.

The next morning the wedding procession started from Jagica’s house. The bride was pale and her eyes showed she had been weeping. With difficulty she held erect upon her head the crown, trimmed with gold-paper flowers. She wrapped her wedding mantle about her as if she shivered. When the procession reached the highway, the musicians blew a ringing blast. Suddenly Janko