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 “Someone from here can go up there tomorrow to get them for you.”

“I too thought of that. I will ask the tenant to let the children go for them.”

“Well, well, they’d be of little use there,” burst out Matýsek. “They wouldn’t get much and would bring you only brush and bad fruit, ripe, unripe, red, greenall in a bunch. You’d hardly relish that sort of thing. And who knows whether the little imps would ever reach Bezděz. They’d ramble where their fancy suited them and would boldly insist they had actually been there. They’d be of no use except to carry the load. Someone wise and dependable should go with them. Do you know what? I myself shall go with them. No one else can put them through their paces as well as I can.”

Barka had him just where she wanted him. He was prepared for a three days’ journey, and in the meantime she could set out on hers—to eternity. Already her mild eye was looking into the depths of that eternity, but her lips still smiled. She had sojourned here long enough in happiness, enjoyment and plenty beside her husband who loved her as no man ever loved a woman.

“You’re the best man on earth, after all,” she whispered to him. “Since we belong to each other, I have never heard a hard word from you. You have never yet done me an injury and you have never once been angry with me. May God bless you for that a hundred thousand times.”