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 The locomotive gave a shrill whistle; the engine-driver slackened speed. The baron was almost at the last station. The train stopped. Not far from the small station-house a gig from the castle was waiting for him. He had a good hour’s drive before him still, and he was very glad of it, that he might have more time to collect his thoughts. It was in the afternoon, and the sun blazed fiercely; the crops in the elds were ripening beautifully, and the skylarks were singing in the heights above as loud and joyously as their little throats allowed them. The baron sat down in his gig, and drove, not over fast, along the dusty high-road. The way led by Suchdol. It was the very day that Father Cvok paid his visit to Ledecký.

Leaving Suchdol in a brown study, Father Cvok missed the footpath to Záluz̓í. It was no wonder, for that whole day he had not been himself. Father Neducha’s letter in the morning, the long explanation with Ledecký, and then the invitation after dinner from the old baroness to the latter to come to her for an important conversation, which he felt sure would only be about himself and Pepíc̓ek,--all this was a burden much too great for his strength. He came to a stop every few minutes, like an overburdened horse, and a wild storm of conflicting thoughts raged in his head. He followed Ledecký mentally into the business-room of that old Jezebel; and though he was not a man of very lively imagination, yet he could picture to himself how she, burning with rage, passed her verdict on him and little Pepíc̓ek, and how she perhaps even threatened him with the bishop; how she raged against Jenny, and swore she would set the police after her—in short, one frightful thought after another rose in his mind till it became like a dark