Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/334

 Again said the mayor, “Take it not so to heart, pantata; perhaps your son will grow wiser, and all will yet be well.”

“Not take it to heart! Already it is late, dear neighbour, already it is quite pitch-dark in those chambers, ay, it is dark there in broad daylight.” And here it seemed again as though he once more came to himself a little.

And not long after this he said, “I know what would do me good for this one day, and where I could sleep. If some one would lead me to the burial-ground to the grave of my father. But where is there any to be found to lead me thither? There is not one.”

“If you wish it, pantata, we will go at once”, said Vena. “I will conduct you thither; I will stay with you there as long as you please.”

“So be it, so be it”, said Loyka, and laughed, and looked from one to another, and in fact allowed himself to be conducted by Vena in the direction of the cemetery. Almost all that group of neighbours followed him at a few paces distance, and accompanied him to the outskirts of the village.

And Loyka went with Vena to the burial-ground.

But close behind them, even to the burial-ground itself, went two small souls in great sorrow and tribulation: they were Frank and Staza.

GAIN the moon shone out, when they came to the cemetery, just as long ago when Frank and Staza first passed the night in his grandfather’s grave. And because the cemetery stood on an eminence there at times stole over it a warm breeze in whose breath the white-iron figure of the Christus rattled upon the ruddy cross, several of the lesser crosses clattered with their arms, and sometimes creaked on its hinges a rusty little door, behind which lay concealed the inscription above some dead man’s bones.

This clattering of the arms of the crosses, the rattling of the Christus, and the creaking of the rusty doorlets was the only unrest which the dead gave to view—how little was it all compared with that with which they had so tormented one another in life!

Besides this, however, a breeze also ran above the graves and stirred the tall grasses and here and there a flower; but this unrest