Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/358

 she must be one of those who sang above it. And, indeed, no sooner had Frank began to cry, than she began to sing

(Rest in peace ye faithful spirits of the dead; ye are inheritors of the heavenly kingdom). Both Staza’s singing and Frank’s weeping were one and the other, as it were, in tears. But in both was interwoven something which it is impossible to express in words. Anyone who had seen and heard it would have shuddered, and been cut to the heart. In the cemetery waved the warm night wind, in the heavens hung the moon, by the clattering cross stood a despairing father, and at a little distance by another trembling cross knelt Frank who wept aloud, and Staza who wept in singing the words of which exhorted all to peace.

Old Loyka, somewhat roused by this from his own sombre fancies, turned and listened. He seemed as though he were on the watch, as though he sought out for himself some new pathway, and now was deliberating whether he should take it.

“Dost hear, Vena? Dost hear?” said he to Vena. “I once heard that melody in the hall of our house; but there were harps with it.”

The reader will recollect that it was during the dance after the funeral of Frank’s grandfather, that