Our Little Czecho-Slovak Cousin
CHAPTER I
LAND OF PERSECUTION
There was mourning in the little village high up in the Tatras, as the Carpathian Mountains are called by the Slovaks. Nine men and women lay dead and four lay wounded behind carefully closed doors of the little homes. Scarcely a person except Magyar gendarmes was to be seen on the one main street. Now and then the curious, frightened face of a child peeped out from behind the shaded windows, and again quickly disappeared.
The day before, Magyar officers and priests had come to consecrate the little square church that had just been erected. It had cost the villagers many sacrifices, but they were proud of it. They had come dressed in their best and full of gayety to the services, never dreaming but that their beloved Slovak pastor would be allowed to assist. When they found, however, that he had been ignored, they pressed closely around those in charge and begged that he be allowed to take part, that they might feel that the church was actually their own.
Did they beg too hard? Was it because they were loyal to a leader who loved and sympathized with his own people? Was that why Magyar guns suddenly boomed, and why the ground lay covered with blood?
The news of the happening spread even to the little village in the more fertile plains, where Jozef lived. The twelve-year-old boy heard it discussed the very next day as he accompanied the haymakers to the fields. In order to hear, he found it necessary to keep close to the men and women, for they spoke only in half whispers, fearing spies sent out by the Notary, chief officer of the Commune, who seemed to count it among his duties to keep tab on their very thoughts. They knew that they could do nothing, and it gave them a cowed, dejected air. Never had a haying been so dismal.
The killing, dangerous as the topic was, drew the men to the tavern at night. They sat at the plain deal tables in small groups and drank and smoked their long pipes. Now and then one had something to say. Perhaps it concerned the fate of some woman who had resisted the officers during the mad effort at Slovak denationalization in 1892, when forcible transportation of children to purely Magyar districts had been undertaken. Or it may have dealt with the imprisonment of some editor who had had the courage to denounce some new injustice or atrocity.
