This caused great excitement and incredulity, but just on that account it was believed (because three such honorable people related it)! And the three fiddlers were wined and dined, and for the entire winter they remained in Criznócz, and went from banquet to banquet, telling the people of the gay life of their buried fathers.
And each time they told the story, it had increased in size and become more important. Sometimes Zahrada, sometimes Safranyik, thought of something new which they tacked on to it, something which it was necessary that the living nobility learn about their ancestors, and the feasts in their honor grew more elaborate and costly.
At last the affair reached the ears of the honorable Samuel Szirotka, an ancestor of our present pastor, and he summoned the people together and sharply told them what is what.
“Blessed brothers in Christ! In this community I, alone, am paid to talk to you about what happens on the other side of the grave. And I say to the others who are taking my duty upon their shoulders to go to the devil and get out—if they do not they will be sorry.”
And thus the three fiddlers were driven away—but the story still remains—and the strange thing about it is that it keeps growing and growing.
WALTHER NETTO
THE SWINE HERD
A TALE OF THE BALKAN MOUNTAINS[12]
APPROACH of evening in a land of black mountains. Fine, cold rain like a winding sheet. A highway crawling along the narrow valley, about half way up the height, like a man bent over a stone, or a goat; from afar it looks like a woolen thread stretched across a cliff.