Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/20

 But when there is some one with whom we can chatter about possible and impossible things, dear me, how the task does fly! How quickly we get on with it, so that the dwellers of the plains cannot take their eyes off us.

The gossips are on pins and needles, and can hardly wait for the bellringer. What an age the man is taking to-day before coming down, and limping out of the church door! He is really getting too old. The priest ought to look out for a smarter man!

At last he appears on the threshold.

‘Whom have we lost to-day, goody?’ they cry in chorus, and with a noise that drowns even the rattling and screeching of the keys in the lock, which usually searches marrow and bones.

‘What? You don’t mean to say you don’t know?’ asks the cunning bellringer, holding up his hands. He is still a jolly old soul, although his head is as white as an apple-tree in the spring; it is covered with snowy curls, and he is bent with the burden of years.

‘How do I account for this? There’s something uncanny about it. You will see I am right when I say that the old prophecy will come true. If such an extraordinary