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 kind of liquid which would surely bring relief. But he did not fool Barka.

She read in his eyes after he had examined her hand and looked significantly at the tenant that no oil or salve would help her. She knew that she would never again rise to her feet a healthy woman. The tenant was right—the bone in her hand was decaying.

The tenant escorted the doctor outside. Matýsek went along chiefly to listen whether the coins he had given the doctor and to which Barka had to add a goodly sum, jingled in his pocket as when he himself had owned them. Barka remained in the room alone.

For a while she sat on the bed not knowing what had become of her thoughts, for her head seemed of a sudden, completely empty. She could not even conceive how Matýsek could possibly live without her. Who would tell him on Sundays what he should wear, whether the fur cloak or the top coat? Who would go beside him wearing the green jacket, to church? With whom would he talk, sip, smoke and who in his old age, would stay with him, wait on him, humor him?

She glanced out of the window into the little orchard where Matýsek, leaving to the tenant the further escorting of the doctor, had paused to give another little drill to the children who to-day for the first time had ventured outside.

It was a beautiful evening. On the summits of the snow-covered mountains glowed crowns of roses. The sky resembled a golden sea gradually paling until the