Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/246

 was filled with a kind of vague horror at which the heart within him died away and his throat was half choked with sobs.

The gate by which one entered the burial ground was a wicket gate, and painted the same colour as the great cross in the centre of the cemetery. When Frank had reached the gate he stopped outside it, and looked through the wicket into the cemetery. He looked upon it as upon that horrible Unknown, with which he must now make himself acquainted. He looked first at one grave and then at another, and then thought to himself “Perhaps grandfather’s will look pretty much like that one.” Then he looked to see what state the graves were in. Some had half collapsed into the ground, some were covered with a fair green mound, on some were flowers, others were railed off, at the head of some stood a cross, at the head of others only a staff with a lath nailed across it to form a cross, at the head of a third was only a stave without any lath across it. In one corner of the burial ground lay a few unburied bones.

Although it was a warm day at the beginning of June, and the air was clear and full of pleasant sounds, winter seemed to have entangled Frank in its icy folds. That icy winter breathed from the cemetery and from each and every grave within it. It seemed to Frank as though with the measure for his grandfather’s grave he had taken upon himself