"Do you think that some of the Czechs go there to discuss things?" asked Jozef. Jaroslav did not know what to think. Both boys wondered and wondered whether some great help might not come to Bohemia from the mountain.
School did not reopen, and food became very scarce. It seemed best that Jozef be sent back to his home in Slovakia in any makeshift way possible. This was done, and after a week's hard and varied travel, he reached home, almost starved. In Slovakia he found the same persecution of all suspected of lack of sympathy with the plans and purposes of the Central Powers.
Four of his relatives had been taken to fight; of these two cousins had been killed, and one was reported to have been shot with an entire company that refused to advance against the Serbians. No one knew where the fourth relative, an uncle after whom Jozef had been named, was to be found, until Austria-Hungary was broken up and he returned home wounded. He had a story full of exciting incidents to tell and the villagers never tired of hearing it.
"THE VILLAGERS NEVER TIRED OF HEARING IT"
One day a load of miserable looking prisoners passed in cars through the village. It was terrible to see them as they lay listlessly against each other. It was plain that it had been long since they had had anything to eat or drink.
The villagers were forbidden to give them food or to satisfy their thirst, but the kind-hearted Slovak maidens found a way to help nevertheless. How the idea spread not many of the girls knew, but there was a sudden interchange of knitting material. It must have contained a message, for the girls, far thinner than they had been before the War, met before the Church and proceeded past the cars in a body, as if to view the horrible sight. But most of them raised their eyes only for a moment. It was when each threw some crusts of bread soaked in wine in to the famishing prisoners—bread that each had denied herself from her own scanty allowance.
The prettiest girl of all blocked the way as long as she could to a Magyar officer, while the prisoners, weak as they were, fell like beasts on the unexpected treat.
"We want to see bad men. We show them we think them bad," the girl said to the officer in broken Hungarian, smiling sweetly.
He smiled in return and, nodding his approval of the sentiment, let the girls stay long enough for all evidences of what they had done, except the brighter looks of the prisoners, to have vanished.