Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/344

 wall clung a single unlucky briar bush—clung in such a way that it could neither ascend or descend, but hung clinging in mid-air above a perpetual abyss. More fortunately fared a single birch above it which grew symmetrically upwards, and striking its roots into several crevices of the rocky wall maintained itself on its giddy platform.

But one sound was here which never languished and continually sated the ear with its gentle music. From one end of the rocky glen bubbled to the surface a spring of water pure as silver and our ravine offered to it its own lowest parts, in which the spring might arrange its water courses, and here it arranged them most tranquilly, like a good housewife. Where it suited best, it had fishes eyes (a plant), where you least of all expected it, it had strawberries stowed away, and where only that was possible it had some bush, in order that it might be a mirror to the bush.

And this streamlet greatly tranquillised the savage wildness of the ravine. This streamlet seemed to make a charming chamber of that rock-bound tomb, a chamber which especially entertained and welcomed Staza. And so when Frank said “Let us go to the ravine,” Staza at first remembered only its blank walls of rock with their scanty blackberry bushes, the wild sweet briar, and the long lank birch tree, and then she felt as though she must try very hard to be brave enough to go. But soon after this she