Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/343

 more than once it happened that even those walls themselves began to whisper. For the pellet of earth falling over them and fraying to pieces was also a whispering, and the leaflet falling from above and trembling was also a whispering, and such unexpected whisperings made the children pause abashed, and so many a time they broke off in the middle of their conversation only listening, looking at one another, and holding one another by the hand.

They oftest trusted themselves to converse aloud when the woodland above them yonder also carried on its own conversation, when the wind unloosed its mouth, and when those organ pipes which Staza had first heard in the woodland had their bellows full distended. Then a word was easily spoken, even the walls no longer seemed to spy upon them, having too much to occupy them in the hurly-burly of the woods above them, even the pebble ceased to whisper, nor could you hear the rustling of the lizard or the dropping of the morsels of soil. Then only articulate sounds uttered outloud could withstand the din, and thus also Frank and Staza conversed aloud.

Here and there the brambles trailed over the rocky walls in every kind of amicable embrace. In places the mullen’s tall stem shot upwards as if with some definite aim. “I have got so far at all events,” it seemed to say. At one of the corners of the rocky