Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/75

 be for ever on the look-out. It was always on the cards that one of the frontier-police might be hidden by the wayside and suddenly spring upon her, inspect her basket, and if she did not pay the duty, take her off to the magistrate.

But she had not had much choice at the time. When a man dies and leaves his wife an empty cottage and five hungry children, a woman cannot be too particular. She must take what comes along and be glad of profits, however small. How should she have refused from mere niceness what was very profitable, and certainly not bad or dishonest?

Old Martinka saw nothing wrong in her trade, and all the people in our mountains share her view. Nowadays the trade has lost much of its profit and is a poor one, but thirty or more years ago it was a very different matter; a nice little fortune could be made by it, and it was not only a poor beggar or tramp in the last ditch who took to it, but many of the better class who looked upon it as a means of adding to their income. They considered smuggling a trade like any other, with only this difference that it was forbidden officially. Martinka had been acquainted with the smugglers even before her husband’s death, as he had