Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/346

 if he tarried several days in a village he posted guards here and there, that he might timely take to flight if the servants ventured to approach.

And it happened on one occasion that the servants from the farm entered several villages close upon his heels, because the young hospodar had charged them with a message in which he declared that he would no longer be held up to the eyes of the world as a villain, and have his name bandied about from mouth to mouth as that of a God-forsaken reprobate.

Here old Loyka fumed furiously. “Only let him come himself and I’ll show him how I hold him up to the world as a villain”, said he, and from that time forth he avoided the villages and dwelt most willingly with Bartos at the cemetery.

I know not how it came about, whether Joseph took the message to mean that he was to come personally to his father, but so it was that he came to the cemetery, and all the servants with him who had ever been dispatched after his father with any message. No sooner did old Loyka become aware of their approach than he was almost beside himself, and locked himself into the charnel-house among the shin-bones and skulls, only that he might see no one and need not have to speak to any one.

Then Joseph called in a loud voice in the cemetery to his father, bidding him come forth and return home; ay, he swore that he himself would not return home without him, that he would no longer endure to become the byword for a God-forsaken reprobate among the populace, and that if his father refused he should be dragged home forcibly.

“And how do you mean to accomplish it?” inquired Bartos, who had appeared during this scene on the threshold of his dwelling.

“I shall have the doors forced”, responded Joseph.

“How so?” inquired Bartos calmly.

“Oh, you know all about it”, said Joseph to Bartos. “It is you who are the cause of all this, and I will suffer it no longer. It is you who purposely retain my father in your house to make capital out of him. It is you who are purposely coupling my brother with that young vagabond”

Further Joseph did not proceed in his harangue.

“What is it you called Staza”, Bartos asked Joseph, and at the same time uttered a yell so menacing that the servants who were with Joseph recoiled several paces. But scarcely had Bartos pronounced the words before he had already gripped Joseph under