Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/278

 Both the little boys, not even understanding what it was all about, knelt down beside their grandfather. Apolena, sobbing aloud, leaned against the casement of the door. The neighbors, deeply moved and frowning, pressed forward.

Young Nešněra stood there in painful anxiety and only at Schlosser’s beckoning did he recover.

“Let go of me, father, and don’t make any scenes! It’s all useless!”

“I will not let go,” shrieked the old man wildly.

“Let go by fair means!” threateningly shouted the son, incensed that he should be forced into such a humiliating position in the presence of the “master.”

“Neither by fair means nor foul!”

But young Nešněra, though he was smaller than his father, with his iron hands tore loose his father’s hands clinging to his knees, and pushed him away so roughly that the old man tottered and fell to the floor. Then he quickly followed Schlosser and the manager out to the courtyard and they hastened to enter the carriage.

Old Nešněra picked himself up from the floor and with clenched fists, flying locks of gray, looking more like a specter than a man, ran out after his son. The neighbors who had stepped aside for the gentlemen intercepted his way, fearing that something would happen.

“Let me go, let me go! I’d rather kill him with my own hands than to have him—” ejaculated the old man in a voice resembling the roaring of an animal