Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/337

 trollable flood of tears. He had never so wept since the death of his grandfather.

This time Staza was beside him, and, feeling ill at ease, might also have given way to tears, because crying is infectious among children. But Staza had hitherto never associated with children, Frank was her single companion, and so what would have equally constrained another child in her place to cry, had on her a different effect. She saw and heard weeping in plenty at the cemetery, but at the same time she saw and heard how the rest of the people mingled singing with the weeping. And thus this sequence of ideas formed itself in her little soul. Old Loyka beside the cross appeared to her like the corpse which Vena had brought to its burial. Frank appeared to her like those who wept over the corpse consequently she must be one of those who song above it. And, indeed, no sooner had Frank begun to cry than she began to sing,

Both Staza’s singing and Frank’s weeping were one and the other, as it were, in tears. But in both was interwoven something which it is impossible to express in words. Any one who had seen and heard it would have shuddered, and been cut to the heart. In the cemetery waved the warm night wind, in the heavens hung the moon, by the clattering cross stood a despairing father, and at a little distance by another trembling cross knelt Frank who wept aloud, and Staza who wept in singing the words of which exhorted all to peace.

Old Loyka, somewhat roused by this from his own sombre fancies, turned and listened. He seemed as though he were on the watch, as though he sought out for himself some new pathway, and now was deliberating whether he should take it.

“Dost hear, Vena? Dost hear?” said he to Vena. “I once heard that melody in the hall of our house; but there were harps with it.”

The reader will recollect that it was during the dance after the funeral of Frank’s grandfather that Frank and Staza suddenly sang the song from the hall to the sound of harps and violins.

“Dost hear, dost hear it?” he again repeated after a pause. “For my part, I had no notion the song was so merry a one when there