Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/67

Rh didn't wish to talk about such things in a village where the people were so quarrelsome and poor, because it might put notions of insubordination into their heads.

Some days later George was sought by mounted police at command of the sub-prefect. A crime had been committed and suspicion pointed to him.

“How much better it would have been, Leiba thought, “if he had put up with him until the people came! Because now no one knew where he was.”

Although this had happened a long time ago, it all lived again tonight in his memory, accelerated with fever and suffering. He saw him grab at his clothes as if for a concealed weapon, he heard again the threat, and he suffered again just as he did then at the import of the words. Why did the memory happen to come back so vividly just now, he kept asking himself.

It was the night before Easter.

In the little village, some two kilometers away upon the hills, between the big ponds—he could hear the church bells ringing. And they sound so strangely when they echo through a brain made sensitive with fever. Sometimes the bells are very