Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/234

 In order that no one should be surprised that highwaymen should fall on a gravedigger, I must say at once that he was well known to carry money about his person. In those days strong boxes and savings banks were not yet invented. People, therefore, who were possessed of wealth lodged their money with Bartos, because he dwelt in a cemetery, and because he was so strong. It became the custom of the neighbourhood to have their money buried in the ground by Bartos at his abode. Thus Bartos seldom or never went to or from a village without carrying silver in his pockets, sometimes a hundred pieces or more. Just as any one wanted money or was flush of it, Bartos brought it or carried it away. Hence we may see also that people built on his tried honesty as on a rock.

If he went to more distant villages at night-fall, and had to go by a wood, and he was apprehensive of danger, he laid himself somewhere behind the bushes, teamed the money into his boots, and so slept till morning. Or if it was cold he laid himself somewhere beside a dung hill, thrust his feet into it, and slept thus.

Once they almost had him. Hereupon he turned round, and cried out “If you do not decamp, I will plunge this knife into your bodies.” The chaps took fright and fled, but Bartos had merely a splinter of wood in his hands in place of a knife.