Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/379

 them to go with him, partly out of curiosity, to see what would happen, partly because they thought that the father and son might yet be reconciled, now that the son made such a point of it; and an affair of such importance was worth the trouble of a man’s being a witness to it.

And so they trailed out of Frishetts, and Joseph at their head, towards the cemetery, so that they had the appearance of a procession of people carrying some one to the grave, whereas they went for a man in order to bring him from the grave and back to his own home.

When they reached the cemetery the neighbours remained in the rear, Joseph advanced to the dwelling of the gravedigger, and shouted “Bartos, now we are here, so let out my father.”

Bartos issued from his house, which had also a door into the fields, halted in front of the threshold, and seeing in reality half the village at Joseph’s back, enquired jestingly “Are you come to pay me a visit, neighbours? I am delighted, I am delighted, but you must only come one by one, because men do not enter these precincts all at once.”

“We are come for my father,” said Joseph. “I’ll teach thee, thou son of a spade, that I know how to keep my word.”

“For your father? You have him there,” said Bartos, and pointed vaguely all over the cemetery.