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 the ground, to know how he would carry on. They say the dead see and hear everything that happens around them before the priest sprinkles their grave. What, dear God, would I see and hear? He will not want to give me up to death and will get anger God Himself by his stubbornness.”

From that time Barka meditated on nothing else than how to contrive to have Matýsek let her go to her grave without too great an ado and too much sorrow and longing for her.

“If I could only last till the time of berries, then I’d take myself off without his knowing,” she prayed again and again. So fervently and intensely did she pray for this that, though her hand was now nothing but a mass of wounds and her body only skin and bones, nevertheless she lived through the spring and summer. Everyone who came to see her parted with her forever, for, leaving, they knew they would never again see her alive. Only Matýsek as yet noticed nothing. He had become accustomed to seeing her on the bed all the time and whenever he became thoughtful over her condition, Barka quickly had some joke ready to lead him out of his mood. Well she knew how to turn everything to its cheery phase. It was a trait that stayed with her to her last moment.

On the afternoon just before Holy Mother’s Day, before August fifteenth, Matýsek was just finishing a cage for the parish priest, who had ordered it for a rare bird. Matýsek was pleased with it and hopped about