Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/217

 had passed him on his round, he had stopped, although Kuba had done his utmost to hold his breath. ‘What, you drink brandy?’ he had said, ‘then we have no use for you here at night; come for your discharge in a fortnight.’

The overseer had said it like everything else he said, short and sharp like a cut with a whip. Kuba knew that all remonstrance would be useless. He said nothing all that fortnight, but his wrath grew within him.

He had been looking everywhere for work. ‘My dear fellow, you are none too young,’ or ‘Do you think we keep our workmen for the benefit of the panel doctor?’ were the answers in the printing houses where they worked with steam.

Yesterday the manager of a factory had sent him away with the advice to apply for work as a scavenger. And he was only forty-seven! That had been as if some one had struck him in the face with his fist. It had happened in the suburb of Lieben, and all the afternoon he had wandered about at the back of the Karoline Valley. When he had returned home to Ziskov, his family had increased by two; his wife had been pre-maturely confined and presented him with