The Three Comrades | Page 4

be woven. Two paths led to those huts; the one up and down over the rocks--the other through the valley, easier but more dangerous, because there was a stretch of swamp into which, if somebody fell, he could never get out by himself. One who knew how, could get over by jumping from rock to rock and to clumps of grass, but it seemed as if some black power wanted to pull one down.
"Once our parents had us carry our wool. Going, we went the upper way, as we were told, but after we delivered the wool to the weavers, Stephen handed me an apple, which the weaver's wife had given him, saying he had another in his bag from his mother. Mother gave me nothing for the journey because I didn't take leave of her, and she didn't even see me when I grabbed my bag. And now, even the weaver's wife had not given me anything. It made me sad. I got angry, threw the apple away, and would rather have cried. Here was evidence, I thought, that what the great-aunt said was true. Nobody cared for me, at home, nor anywhere else. Everybody liked Stephen, and it always would be so.
"I used to hear some people say that the Devil is walking on the earth, though we do not see him, and whispers to us what we should think and do. If it is true, I don't know, but that he was with me that time and gave me bad, gruesome advice, is sure. Only he could have told me that. When we left the weavers, I said to Stephen, 'Going over the mountain is too far. Let us go by the lower and more convenient path; it is nearer.'
"'But mother said we must go only over the hill,' objected Stephen, 'and father called also from the yard, 'Do not go by the lower way.'"
"Well, however it was, when we came where the paths divided we went on the lower path anyway. I claimed that my feet hurt, I had stubbed my big toe, and had a thorn in my heel. Stephen was sorry for me, and thought that when we explained it to mother she would see the reason, and father also, why we took the lower path after all.
"Truly it was fine to run there, like on carpets, till we came to the swamp. 'You must now jump from rock to rock,' said I, and I ran ahead. We came near the opposite side. There was only one more jump. Because I was larger, and my feet longer I managed to jump over, but I knew that Stephen could not jump over. There were bunches of grass and I advised him to run over them. He listened to me, came over two or three, but the third one began to move under him and he jumped back on the rock.
"'Stay there,' I called to him. 'Not far from here lives the forester; I will run for him and he will help you.' I ran as fast as I could but not to the forester's house.
"'Petrik, do not leave me. I am afraid,' called Stephen after me, and right after that followed a cry:
"'Mother mine!'
"Thus I have heard him day and night, as in the past years, so even till today, and I shall perhaps in the hour of death and in the whole of eternity. I was still a small boy, but a bad one, and at that moment hard as a rock. 'Surely he will fall in and will drown,' I consoled myself. 'Nobody will give him any more apples, and people will love me and me only.' No old criminal could have felt worse than I felt then. I began to run still faster till my legs broke down under me and my breath failed. Yes; I ran through the woods alone, forsaken, as once Cain did when he killed his brother and ran away from the face of God. Suddenly a great pain gripped me that could not be expressed, because the voice that whispered to me before, 'Drown him in that swamp,' now whispered to me, 'You dare not go home. What will you say when they ask you about Stephen?' Tired and hungry as I was I threw myself on the ground and started to cry bitterly till I fell asleep.
"At day-break the drivers passed by with their wagons for lumber. They found me and, recognizing me, laid me sleeping on a wagon and took me as far as our hut. There they awakened me, laid me down, and half-sleeping I didn't realize at once what had happened the day before. I ran to the hall and opened the door.
"The rays of the rising sun struck our bedroom first--the same