Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/267

 dragging his bandaged leg. ‘I won’t stop in the room with you,’ he said, ‘I can’t answer for myself. But some day we shall have a reckoning. You had no business to make a cripple of me.’

He left the room.

No one besides Martin had heard this conversation. It reverberated in his soul like a knell; it took away his joy in life. Sometimes he thought of other things, but he never forgot. He felt like a man who conceals a guilty deed of which he will reap the fruits some day. He lived in anticipation of this, and always went out alone. He was not afraid. A sweet humility had taken possession of him, and sometimes his arms would droop by his side with the poignancy of an obstinately recurring resolve. Some day, when he should meet Novák alone in the solitude of the woods he would say to him: ‘I am not going to defend myself—shoot!’

He wanted to get even with him, to wipe out the impression which the sorrowful voice had left on his soul when it said: ‘You had no business to shoot at me—you had no business to make me a cripple.’

Sometimes his soul would melt as though a