Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/355

 This proposal pleased the mayor.

“If he did not recover, what help? We should have done what we could. At all events, Frank would gain a constant occupation and all pretexts would be removed from old Loyka for tormenting himself further.”

“Grave-digger, the more I reflect about it, the more I like it. And for my part, I am almost convinced that Loyka will recover.”

And the mayor rubbed his hands and said to Bartos, “You would be the cause of this also.” They so contrived it that Joseph Loyka sent that same day for the mayor, and came to terms with him about the price of the farm, which the mayor bought in his own name. A few days after the terms of the agreement were made out in writing, and soon after the grave-digger brought Frank’s money, which in great part defrayed the cost of the farm.

And here the mayor desired that Bartos should also sign his name as a witness to the agreement. But Bartos absolutely refused his signature, fearing lest Joseph might hear that he was the cause of it all and might yet revoke the agreement at the last moment—a notion which was not altogether devoid of foundation.

And so it came to pass that Joseph decamped from Frishets, not being able to support the ridicule which assailed him on an estate where he could support no one near himself—not even his own father. He sneaked off without giving his neighbours one farewell embrace, as though he had never in his life been on intimate terms with them. He sneaked off in the early hours of the morning, when he thought that every one was still asleep, and he could consequently most easily elude the mockery and taunts of the village—the last taunts and mockery.

He eluded them for that day. He migrated to a distant quarter of the country where people knew him not. But taunts and mockery were raised like dust behind him, when it was learnt how he had eluded them. The “Kalounkarska”, which they had intended to sing at his departure was now sung by the irritated youths of Frishets through the long hours of the evening, and before the farmstead long into the night.