Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/357

 As we know Frank and Staza followed Loyka at a distance hither to the cemetery. Even now in the cemetery they kept several paces apart, so that Loyka had no notion of their presence. When Frank first heard his father on the village green, he was half bewildered, and knew not what was happening, and understood nothing of it all. When he here heard him pray that strange prayer by the cross his flesh crept and he shivered, for so much he understood of it all as to perceive that his brother Joseph was the cause. But when he heard his father laugh so wildly, he could bear it no longer, but gave way to an uncontrollable flood of tears. He had never so wept since the death of his grandfather.

This time Staza was beside him and feeling ill at ease might also have given way to tears, because crying is infectious among children. But Staza had hitherto never associated with children, Frank was her single companion, and so what would have equally constrained another child in her place to cry, had on her a different effect. She saw and heard weeping in plenty at the cemetery, but at the same time she saw and heard how the rest of the people mingled singing with the weeping. And thus this sequence of ideas formed itself in her little soul. Old Loyka beside the cross appeared to her like the corpse, which Vena had brought to its burial. Frank appeared to her like those who wept over the