Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/277

 apparently, to throw out of the grave the loosened clods of earth, Bartos went directly to the gate, and said in a peaceful manner, “My dear Frank, perhaps it is grandfather, eh?” “It is grandfather”, responded Frank in a voice still half drowned in tears. “Grandfather, grandfather”, repeated Bartos to himself while opening the gate. “Ah! welladay, none escape the bed I make them here. Some of us fight longer than others against being sleepy, but each sleeps once.”

Frank stepped into the burial-ground and handed over the measure. “The measure!” said Bartos, “your grandfather could just get under my chin, he was amongst the tallest men in the village, I know his measure. And where, pray, would you like the grave to be?” he inquired of Frank. “Take a look round, I will be with you almost immediately and set myself to delve the grave.”

Bartos departed into his house in quest of sundry other implements, and now Frank cast his eyes here and there in search of a suitable spot. But he saw none, because even a grown-up person when overtaken by some real and sudden sorrow, is as one entranced so soon as anything is given him on which to come to a decision.

Here Staza led him by the hand, and said, “Do you know what, Frank, the people from Frishets lie by yonder wall, which faces Frishets; take a peep, yonder in that corner is the highest spot of ground, you can see it from the gate, and if you were to stand upon the grave in that corner you could catch a glimpse of Frishets.”

It is hard to make out what internal connection these words had with one another; but they appeared to Frank to be so consecutive and reasonable that he agreed at once. “Well, then, there in the corner let the grave be”, he said.

“And if you put a cross there it will be visible as far as your house; and if you plant a sapling there it will soon grow big enough to be visible also as far as your house”, observed Staza, almost enthusiastically. And now, all at once, Frank discovered so many good reasons why the grave should be in that corner that nothing in the world would have induced him to permit of its being dug in any other spot.

“Yonder”, said Staza, when Bartos returned, and there they began to delve.

These few and briefly spoken words had already deprived the cemetery in Frank’s imagination of much of its horror. Bartos Rh