The builder did not answer.
“Say, Grandpa, you never were a child, were you?”
“I was, but not here.”
“Were you not always in our house, Grandpa?” asked the child, indefatigable.
Ulwing smiled.
“We came from a great distance, far, far away, Uncle Sebastian and I. By coach, as long as our money lasted, then on foot. In those days the summers were warmer than they are now. At night we wandered by moonlight....”
He relapsed into silence. His mind looked elsewhere than his eyes. The fortress of Pest! Then the bastions and walls of Pest were still standing. And he entered the city through one of its old gates.
“It was in the morning and the church bells were ringing,” he said deep in thought.
Suddenly it seemed to him that he saw the town of times gone by, not as a reality, but as an old, old fading picture. White bewigged citizens in three-cornered hats were walking the streets. Carts suspended on chains. Soldiers in high shakos. And how young and free the Danube was! Its waters shone more brightly and its shore swarmed with ship-folk. Brother Sebastian went down to the bank. He himself stopped and looked at a gaudy, pretty barge, into which men were carrying bags across two boards. They went on one, returned by the other. A clerk was standing on the shore, counting tallies on a piece of wood for every bag. The half-naked dockers shone with sweat. They carried their loads on their shoulders just as their fore-fathers had carried them here on the Danube for hundreds of years. The boards bent and swayed under their weight. The clerk swore. “There are too few men.” He looked invitingly at Christopher Ulwing. But Christopher did not touch the bags. His attention was attracted by something in the sand which entered his eyes like a pinprick, the glittering blade of an axe. He remembered clearly every word he said. “Knock those two boards together. In an hour we can slide the whole cargo into the barge.”
Down at the shore, brother Sebastian jumped into a boat. He pointed with his staff towards Buda. He called his brother, waving his hand.