Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/231

 timid glance at the bone-house, to see whether something was not there also glowering from the window, and then lastly he must fain cast a glance at the dwelling of the gravedigger to see whether there was a light in the window or whether those windows also were lost in ghostly phantasies.

At eventide and at nightfall few of the villagers cared to take a walk hither, and anyone whose road led along the ridge of the hill or on either side of it, preferred to diverge I know not how many miles through lanes and byeways rather than allow himself to be surprised at night in the neighbourhood of the burial ground. As to dwelling here day after day and night after night, for a whole year, for all one’s life—you might have built a golden palace on the spot and I know not whether you would have found in the whole country-side a man to inhabit it.

Logic sometimes makes strange skips. All will perceive that a place which everyone shuns after dark is one of perfect security. A child might stand a siege there, and the puniest could put to flight the staunchest hearted. And yet every grown-up person would have considered himself a poor creature if he had settled there as gravedigger. And yet on the other hand, he thought to himself that the gravedigger ought to be a perfect Hercules to bear calmly all the horrors of the place—the glowering of the crosses over the wall, the thumping