Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/175

 LONG the Upper Moldau wended way among narrow streets a fair-haired youth. I only refer to the colour of his hair at present that, the reader may remember him by this characteristic until more marked ones occur. I am well aware that I shall be expected to add interesting and exact details of character; but certain it is that girls know the colour of hair, eyes, and face before they manage to express themselves about a single other substantial masculine characteristic. And my chief wish is to win the ear of girlhood.

This young man always walked along at a particular hour and at a somewhat rapid pace. In these streets there is a “benediction” of children, who having but little room in their stifling homes, play about the streets in considerable groups. These children well knew the hour when the fair-haired youth passed that way. If he did not come exactly at the stroke of the clock, they at once began to cast anxious glances in the direction from which he came and they cried out, “He is not yet coming!” They did not know either his name or his occupation, but as soon as ever one of them called out, “He has just come!” the others well knew that it was our hero who had come, and perhaps they would take up the challenge with a “He hasn’t come! ” But if a child caught sight of him before the others, it called out with all its might, “He is coming now!” and all the others exclaimed after the first, “Now he is coming! now he is coming!”

For these children he was nameless; they called him only by the words “him” or “he”. To them he was only “he who has come” or “who has not come”, who either is coming or will not come at all. When he came among them, they called out in a medley of voices, “Throw us a kreuzer, throw us a kreuzer!” The young man generally had a kreuzer in his hand ready to throw it among them, and then smiled and hurried on, frequently without even looking back at the animated knot of children who wrangled over their small prize with shouts and laughter. The shouts and laughter were still audible as the young man entered at the end of the street a house of better appearance than those which surrounded it.

Here he ran up the stairs to the first floor and stopped before a pair of lofty glazed doors, which led to a passage, touched the