Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/342

 and shakes down upon the little blond head a few faded blossoms of the shrub, which in mountainous regions blooms as late as June. Unconsciously the child raises her head. For a moment she looks at the quivering leaves, and then at the trembling branches and the yellowish blossoms.

It seems as though she can not understand how any such thing is possible,—for she looks surprised, amazed, as a plain countryman would look at a clever feat of jugglery incomprehensible to him.

A moment later she slowly lifts up her little hand, as though she were trying if it were possible to reach the branches, the leaves, and the blossoms; then the hand falls slowly down to the stem of the shrub, which she embraces with her little fingers. She seems to feel a firm support. Holding the stem fast, she rises slowly, and again lifts up her hand as though she were going to pick the nearest half-faded blossom.

At least she fixes her dark blue eyes with great eagerness upon it; but a moment later her fickle gaze again wanders about the churchyard, thoughtlessly, it seems, until it remains fastened on a cottage about thirty paces distant from the shrub,—the dwelling of the man who, in this solitude, prepares and guards the last resting-place for the human beings brought hither to moulder into atoms.

It is a miserable hut, built of unburnt bricks and covered with thatch. Two gigantic ash-trees, overshadowing the only window, protect the interior from the scorching heat of the sun. From this cabin, in front of which the child used to play, she has come toddling—for the first time in her life—as far as the churchyard wall, to the bush of lilacs, the only one of its kind in the cemetery. She looks at the cottage for some time as though she expected some one to come and caress her fer behaving so well. But after a few minutes,—which to the child are long,—as no one comes from the hut, she again turns her eyes toward the nearest surroundings, lifts up her head, looks at the nearest flower, and stretches her little hand to reach it. But the blossom is a little too high; she strives to catch at it, but her grasp is too short,