Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/174

 us, his friends. He greeted me, as he shook my hand, with a silent smile.

"A cross-examination, Papa Declich, that's all. And now there will be a very long silence, a lifelong annuity, as in your case".

My strength was exhausted, I sank down on the bed.

 

A few carts were proceeding slowly through the “Long Mile".

The "LongMile", is a high-road leading from the foot of the White Mountain to Kněževes. A broad white line, without a bend, and so long that it seems to reach somewhere to the end of the world. It is bordered with poplars. From my childhood I have loved high-roads, those arteries of our country-side, and this "Long Mile" has always been especially dear to me.

But here I remembered it it [sic] a curious kind of way. A number of carts were passing along it, covered with a grey awning; the horses were proceeding at a walking pace, and perhaps slept as they went; the drivers, with their extinguished pipes between their teeth, were dreaming to the sluggish creaking of the wheels, a grey dust covered them, covered the horses, covered the carts, the goal of their journey is somewhere in the boundless distance,—and so they move on from poplar to poplar, softly, monotonously,—at the most, a driver, through force of habit, mutters his drowsy: "hia".

I thought of that high-road, of those grey carts, and I compared them with our days in number 60. They pass on drowsily and sluggishly,—whither? Somewhere or other. When will they arrive? God knows. The way is unending.

Every day I did my few miles, otherwise I lay down. Shivering