Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/368

 Doubtless some laughed, some who knew him well pitied him. And many only pretended to pity him.

Then again he also walked with the musicians, and when he came into some village and stood on the green, he enquired whether they had any vejminkar there that he might have a look at him; or said he “Let the vejminkar be brought to me on the green, and we will come to an understanding about everything.” And more to the same effect. Soon old Loyka belonged to the roving figures of the neighbourhood about whom people talk or do not talk, whom we half laugh at and do not laugh at, who add a peculiar feature to those districts much as the eagle adds a character to the woodland above which it wanders lonely, and above which it utters from time to time a cry which pierces to the bones.

And so Frank led his father to all the places with which he had previously become acquainted through his own vagabond’s mode of life.

In some places, too, the respectable portion of the citizens came out to meet them, inviting old Loyka for friendship sake into their houses, for, in truth, Loyka had been the best known and most highly respected man of the neighbourhood. But Loyka never accepted such invitations, though modestly thanking his friends for all their kind intentions. “I never go on to any farmstead,” he would say.