k him like a blow, his head began to swim, his legs to tremble.

"Are you speaking of my mother?" he stammered. "Is my mother dead?"

"Yes, poor woman, she has given up the ghost. But" (and here he took out
his knife and began to cut the rope) "here is your little sister, Janko,
that is, I mean, your reverence; my memory is as weak as a chicken's,
and I always forget whom I am talking to. I've brought your reverence's
little sister; where shall I put her down?"

And with that he lifted up the basket in which the child was sleeping
soundly with the goose beside her. The bird seemed to be acting the part
of nurse to her, driving off the flies which tried to settle on her
little red mouth.

The autumn sunlight fell on the basket and the sleeping child, and Mate
was standing with his watery blue eyes fixed on the priest's face,
waiting for a word or a sign from him.

"Dead!" he murmured after a time. "Impossible. I had no feeling of it."
He put his hand to his head, saying sadly, "No one told me, and I was
not there at the funeral."

"I was not there either," said Mate, as though that would console the
other for his absence; and then added, as an afterthought:

"God Almighty took her to Himself, He called her to His throne. He
doesn't leave one of us here. Bother those frogs, now I've trodden on
one!"

There were any amount of them in the weedy courtyard of the Presbytery;
they came out of the holes in the damp walls of the old church.

"Where shall I put the child?" repeated Mr. Billeghi, but as he received
no answer, he deposited her gently on the small veranda.

The priest stood with his eyes fixed on the ground; it seemed to him as
though the earth, with the houses and gardens, Mate Billeghi and the
basket, were all running away, and only he was standing there, unable to
move one way or the other. From the Ukrica woods in the distance there
came a rustling of leaves, seeming to bring with it a sound that spoke
to his heart, the sound of his mother's voice. He listened, trembling,
and trying to distinguish the words. Again they are repeated; what are
they?

"Janos, Janos, take care of my child!"

But while Janos was occupied in listening to voices from a better land,
Mate was getting tired of waiting, and muttering something to himself
about not getting even a "thank you" for his trouble, he prepared to
start.

"Well, if that's the way they do things in these parts, I'll be off," he
grumbled, and cracking