Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/310

 the sunlight; the young heart of little Staza was a proof of this: unconsciously she wished to compensate herself for all from which, equally unconsciously, she had been hitherto excluded.

But later Frank ceased to wonder at her gaiety; he also was himself saturated with it. When he went to the cemetery for Staza all the way thither he rejoiced beforehand at the thought of her enjoyment, and looked forward to her skips of delight and cries of pleasure, sometimes he half skipped about himself when he thought how she would skip about, sometimes he half began to carol when he thought how she would sing and carol.

And so Frank began to acquire in the parish the reputation of a vagabond who could scarcely be tethered to his home, and we cannot gainsay the correctness of this opinion, he was a vagabond, and became more and more of one every day, so that already he found very little pleasure in his home, and was glad if only he could sneak away out of sight somewhere behind the barn. Sometimes when he went with Staza and they could not ensconce themselves in the two chambers by the coach-house he turned away with her at his side, and they explored some choice nook outside the village. If any one had inquired of Frank what his home looked like, he would only have described those two chambers in the court-yard—nothing else belonged to his conception of home, and no one was associated with these chambers—neither father nor mother nor brother. All that appertained to them was that they were empty, and that he was in them and that Staza was in them with him.

Later his parents wished to attach him to his home, but it was already too late. They set him work to do afield, and there he went willingly enough. But if he had to work in the court-yard. he soon sought the easiest means of escape into the country; and when once he was out of doors and in the country outside, any one might be sure of finding him on the road to the burial-ground, unless he were hiding by the hedgerow or in some newly delved grave.

And now even Joseph began to chaff him for his vagabond ways, and his parents could not deny that their elder son had some foundation for his sarcasms. But we know very well that Joseph was always the spoilt child of the house, and that Frank was the fifth wheel of the coach; and therefore Joseph’s oracular sentences carried no great weight with them. And when Joseph told his father and mother quite seriously that they were teach-