Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/374

 here and there, that he might timely take to flight if the servants ventured to approach.

And it happened on one occasion that the servants from the farm entered several villages close upon his heels, because the young hospodar had charged them with a message in which he declared that he would no longer be held up to the eyes of the world as a villain, and have his name bandied about from mouth to mouth as that of a God-forsaken reprobate.

Here old Loyka fumed furiously. “Only let him come himself and I’ll show him how I hold him up to the world as a villain,” said he, and from that time forth he avoided the villages and dwelt most willingly with Bartos at the cemetery.

I know not how it came about, whether Joseph took the message to mean that he was to come personally to his father, but so it was that he came to the cemetery, and all the servants with him who had ever been despatched after his father with any message. No sooner did old Loyka become aware of their approach than he was almost beside himself, and locked himself into the charnel house among the shin bones and skulls, only that he might see no one and need not have to speak to any one.

Then Joseph called in a loud voice in the cemetery to his father, bidding him come forth and return home; ay, he swore that he himself would not return home without him, that he would no longer endure to become the bye-word for a God-forsaken reprobate