Sad tones vibrated through the quiet of the old house, notes soft and sorrowful like some remote mournful cry, notes deep with the tremor of affliction; the melody rose sobbing through the clear sunset like the flight of some bird of passage.
In the souls of the old people there rose like a storm the clamour of past sorrows. The song lamented the ruin of fair lands; they seemed to listen, as in a sad dream, to the bitter tears of those dying for their native land. They seemed to see Kosciusko, worn with the struggle, covered in blood, kneeling with a sword in hand.
Finis Poloniæ! Poland is no more! Ruin everywhere, death all around; a cry of sorrow rose; the children were torn from their unhappy land to pine away and die on alien soil!
The chords surged, full of grief, through the clear sunset. Then slowly, slowly, the melody died away as though tired with sorrow until the final chord finished softly, like a distant tremor, ending in deathlike silence.
The listeners seemed turned to stone. Roman leant his head upon his hand, and his eyes, full of pain, turned towards the flaming sunset. His chin trembled; his mind was full of bitter memories. The old men sat as though stunned, like some wounded creatures, their heads upon their breasts; the old mother cried softly, sighing, her eyes upon her Roman. As the young man turned his eyes towards the door he saw two bright tears in Magdalena’s blue eyes; amid a deep silence his own eyes gazed into the girl’s while the last crimson rays faded away from the woods.
The Fledgeling
By I. Al. Bratescu-Voineshti
One springtime a quail nearly dead with fatigue—she came from far-away Africa—dropped from her flight into a green corn-field on the edge of a plantation. After a few days of rest she began to collect twigs, dried leaves, straw, and bits of hay, and made herself a nest on a mound of earth, high up, so that the rain would not spoil it; then for seven days in succession she laid an egg, in all seven eggs, as small as sugar eggs, and she began to sit upon them.
Have you seen how a hen sits on her eggs? Well, that is how the quail did, but instead of sitting in a coop, she sat out of doors, among the grain; it rained, it pelted with rain, but she never moved, and not a drop reached the eggs. After three weeks there hatched out some sweet little birds, not naked like the young of a sparrow, but covered with yellow fluff, like chickens, only smaller, like seven little balls of silk, and they began to scramble through the corn, looking for food. Sometimes the quail caught an ant, sometimes a grasshopper, which she broke into pieces for them, and with their little beaks they went pic! pic! pic! and ate it up immediately.