Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/274

 into the world thus and not otherwise? Thou knowest, forsooth, who is such a one, and who is not such a one.”

And then he gave the servant a trifle to salve his wounded pride. “Well, they all say it”, observed the servant apologetically. “All such boors as thou”, retorted Bartos. And then he turned toward the little girl, and inquired what they called her.

“Staza”, said the little damsel.

“You shall never go with him again, little Staza”, said Bartos, and took her by the hand. “You shall stay here with me and maminka. Would you like?”

“I should like.”

And from that day forth Bartos adopted little Staza as his own.

She had been with him six years and called him “tatinkatatínek [sic]”, and so she was nine years old when Loyka’s Frank brought the measure to Bartos, in order that by it Bartos might delve the grandfather’s grave.

T was a dreary mission for Frank to carry to the cemetery the measure for his grandfather’s grave. Hitherto he had not in the least realized that it was a burial-ground. He had been there when somebody was being interred, when they sang hymns to him, prayed above his coffin, and wept for him. But what effect have all such ceremonies upon a mere child? Issuing from the burial-ground he sees the laughing green fields, the flowery hedgerows, he sees the weasels run along the hedgerows, and forthwith yon grim cemetery is forgotten, and is no longer the truth.

But now he was carrying thither the measure for his grandfather’s grave. So, then, after all it was the truth. And then he saw how the crosses glowered above the wall into the surrounding district, how in the centre rose the red cross into the air, and on it the white-iron figure of the Christus; he saw, too, where dwelt the grave-digger and where was the bone-house-so, then, all that world of greenery around him was no longer true, only the cemetery spoke to him. Its speech was like the speech of some direful ogre; Frank scarcely understood the words, and was filled with a kind of vague horror at which the heart within him died away and his throat was half-choked with sobs.