Part 6

But what most often filled Jaroslav’s mind was the story of the ‘Great Amber Road,’ an ancient route that hundreds of years before even Cech’s time ran from Pressburg straight up to the Baltic Sea. It had been little more than a trail for trappers and adventurers, at first, and led through dark forests full of wild beasts. But over it passed many traders in search of amber, in those days a strange, new treasure, found on the shores of the Baltic. Men risked their lives to get it, as they risk them now in wild countries for gold, and when they had found it they sold it at a great price to Roman and Greek merchants, who had it carved into ornaments and amulets, and often into cups and bowls, which were studded with jewels and used in the houses of princes.

Ages before Jaroslav’s time, barbaric people had broken loose across the country and stopped all trade. The Romans had disappeared and the Great Amber Road had been forgotten and stretches of it lost entirely. Nevertheless it must be there, if only one could find and follow it, and no doubt at the end there were still beds of the precious amber. Jaroslav longed to rediscover it, as men have longed to find the North Pole.

Flick spent most of the day chasing rabbits. There were hundreds of them in the fields and along the edge of the woods. Often they came down to the village and did great damage in the gardens by destroying the sugar beets, the lettuce and the cabbages. While Flick was romping after the rabbits, Jaroslav would grow restless, put down his violin and climb a tree. Then he would glance sadly down on the little house, the white pigeons on the roof, the garden, and the twisted plum tree. Before the war, life had been gay there. His father had made a good living by cutting and hauling timber. They had had a cow and a horse and even a cart. But their father had gone away with the army; the horse and the cow had been taken by the Austrians, and though they had been paid something for the cow, it was not enough to get another. Their mother had had to buy a goat, instead. There was far less milk than there used to be, and no butter at all. When the war was over their father came back from Russia, sick, and before the year was out he died.

It had been a very sad year, and it would have been much sadder except for the baby. It was Lidka who took care of him and the house, for their mother now had to work on a big farm, and was gone all day. When Jaroslav came down from the pastures, he weeded and spaded in the garden, because cabbages, potatoes and beans made a large part of their food.

Jaroslav and Lidka used often to talk of what they would do when they grew up. Jaroslav would have a trade and Lidka would make beautiful embroideries. Thus they would earn enough to make everything easy for their mother. They talked of the Great Amber Road, too, and tried to trace on the map where it must have run. For them the wealth of amber had the fascination that Captain Kidd’s treasure has had for American boys and girls. But it took a long time to grow up, and in the meantime it troubled Jaroslav that he could find no way of earning more than he did earn by guarding the village cows. On Saturday night, when he was paid for the week’s work, he never had more than six or eight crowns to take home. At such times he thought longingly of the Great Amber Road and the treasure that he felt sure lay at the end of it.

To-day was Saturday, and as he looked out over the sunny landscape he said to himself that there was no use in merely _dreaming_ of the Great Amber street. He must really start on his quest if he meant to succeed. ‘I’ll go to-morrow,’ he said, ‘while Mother and Lidka are at church. I can take the week’s wage with me, and when it is gone I will play for my meals.’

He had often noticed a faint streak of roadway between the hills, running north and south, which he felt would at least lead him in the direction in which he wished to go. Now he carefully noted certain landmarks and decided to find his way to them to-morrow.

That night he received nine crowns fifty, the most he had ever had for a week’s work, and he went home elated, rattling the handful of coins in his pockets.

He weeded and hoed in the garden until the great white moon seemed caught in the top of the pine tree, for he could not bear the thought that while he was away the slugs might make an end of the cabbages and potatoes.

Early the next morning Lidka and his mother went to church, leaving Jaroslav in charge of the baby. He took out his Sunday shirt of white linen and his vest of black cloth, embroidered with silver and green. Then he brushed his hair carefully. Flick sat thumping his tail. But the baby, who should have slept, waved his arms in the air and crowed in a frantic effort to lift his head from the pillow. Jaroslav took down his violin and rubbed it tenderly with his sleeve. Then he fell on his knees beside the cradle and began softly to play the Hillside Song.

The baby grew quiet and looked at Jaroslav with wide, dreamy eyes, but Jaroslav turned his head away. He could not look at the little fellow and think of leaving him.

The room was very still. Only the voice of the violin trembled in and out of the shadowy corners, and presently the baby dropped quietly to sleep.

Jaroslav rose, went to the cupboard, got a large piece of bread and cheese and some cold potatoes. These he tied into a clean handkerchief. Then he took a long look about the room. There were the pendulum clock, the shelves crowded with gayly painted china, his mother’s distaff in the corner, the carved chairs and the green porcelain stove, and on a painted chest several rude little figures modeled in clay and faintly streaked with color. They were so old that no one knew who had made them. Some many-times great-grandmother or great-grandfather had fashioned them centuries and centuries before, and had placed them on the hearth to bring good luck to the family. They were called _dedky_, or forefathers. Though no one believed in them any more, yet no one would think of destroying them or giving them away. They belonged in the family. When Jaroslav grew up and married he would take them with him to his new home, and perhaps for a time he might keep them on the hearthstone. He looked at them curiously now. What if he should take them in his pocket? They might bring him good luck.--But no, they might also be broken or lost, and that would be dreadful! He did not know exactly why, but he felt that he would rather leave the _dedky_ safely at home and trust to his own luck.

He touched the money in his pocket and felt sure of success. Then it occurred to him that his mother would need the money more than ever if he were not there to earn something the next week. So he took it from his pocket and put it on the table. ‘I have my violin; I shall not need anything else,’ he said proudly.

On a piece of paper he wrote: ‘Dear Mother: Do not worry if I don’t come back for several days. It’s all right. You will be glad in the end that I went.’

He turned for his cap, and Flick sprang to the door. But when Jaroslav stopped for one last look at the baby be realized that he ought not to leave him alone. Flick must stay on guard. This was harder than leaving the money, for Flick and he always did things together, and Jaroslav had counted on his company as much as if Flick had been another boy. ‘Here, Flick,’ he said softly, ‘on guard!’ But Flick could not believe it. He waved his tail frantically, snorting and scratching the door. ‘No, no, Flick, come back!’ said his master, and Flick, puzzled, and crestfallen, crept back with drooping tail and stretched himself beside the cradle. Then Jaroslav picked up his violin and went out alone.

In a little while his mother and Lidka came home from church. The baby was safe in his cradle, but there was only Flick to greet them. Not until she found Jaroslav’s note did his mother know what to make of his absence.

‘He must have gone to Aunt Ancha for the festival at Buchlovy,’ she said to Lidka. She was rather vexed that Jaroslav should have run off like that, for she would have to tell the neighbors that he would not be there to take the cows out the next day, and they would be very cross about it. She made cherry dumplings, as usual on Sunday, but neither she nor Lidka had much appetite. After dinner, hearing that the miller was to drive in the direction of Buchlovy, she decided to go with him and bring Jaroslav back.

So, while the boy was plodding along the highway, his mother arrived at Buchlovy and learned that he had not been there.

‘He is probably walking slowly on account of the heat,’ said Aunt Ancha. ‘By the time you have rested and had a cup of coffee he will be here.’

About six o’clock Jaroslav came to a small town through which a river flowed. On one side of the river was a hill crowned with an old castle. By the river were factories, and since the people who worked in them were free on Sunday, the streets were full of life and movement.

Jaroslav had eaten his luncheon long ago and was hungry again, but he was too shy to play to the crowd. It was quite different from the quiet of the woods and fields, where the only listeners were the rabbits and the cows. But at last on a corner of the square he stopped and raised his bow bravely. The strains of the Hillside Song rose faintly above the clatter of the street, for the pavement was of cobbles, and people hurried by noisily. Jaroslav changed from the Hillside Song to dance tunes and folk-songs, but the crowd were going to a moving-picture show where there was a band and a gramophone, so no one paid any attention to the child fiddling on the corner. At last he stole away unnoticed, with big unshed tears in his eyes. He did not so much mind being hungry, but no one had cared for his song and that made him feel very lonely.

It was twilight on the road when he passed out of the town. He thought sharply of his mother and Lidka, of Flick and the baby, and all the dear familiar objects in the room. ‘I’ll walk all night, so that I can get back sooner,’ he thought, and quickened his pace and went bravely on. As darkness came down he began to feel very tired. His feet burned and his eyes were heavy with sleep. Besides, he had begun to have misgivings about his quest. The farther he got from home, the less real the quest seemed. Those of whom he asked directions had shaken their heads and said they knew nothing of the Great Amber Road.

In the blue distance a rapidly moving light appeared. It must be an automobile. There had been few automobiles during the war, but now and then one passed through the village, and Jaroslav had an almost terrified interest in them. He stepped aside into the bushes to see this one pass. Just before it reached him there was a report like the crack of a pistol; the great machine gasped and sighed helplessly, and then slowed down to a stop. Jaroslav stood in the shadow and watched breathlessly. He saw a man get out of the car, open a box at the side and take out a lantern. After lighting it, with much grunting and some angry muttering he proceeded to jack up a wheel and put on a new tire.

All this was of the most vivid interest to Jaroslav. He had never seen a man quite like this one, and he was a little afraid. The man looked like one who _knew_ things, and Jaroslav longed to go forward and ask him about the Great Amber Road and what he thought of the whole plan; but he did not know how to speak to this stocky, gray-haired figure in the linen duster. Nevertheless, when he saw the man begin to put up his tools, Jaroslav realized that if he did not make the effort he would soon have lost his chance forever. An idea came to him. Putting his violin to his shoulder, he began softly to play the Hillside Song. This seemed the right time and place for it, and Jaroslav put his whole soul into it.

At the first notes the man started and stood up. He neither moved nor spoke, but stared in the direction from which the sound came until it floated away over the lonely road to the dark woods.

‘Hello, there!’ he cried in a strong voice, ‘come out here!’ He held the lantern at arm’s length and Jaroslav emerged timidly from the darkness into the circle of light. What the man saw was a very dusty, tired little boy with big circles round his eyes and damp dark hair falling over his forehead. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded shortly.

‘Sir,’ faltered Jaroslav, ‘are we on the Great Amber Road?’

‘Great-Grandmother!’ snorted the man, ‘we are on the road to Brno!’

‘Then I am not going north, after all,’ stammered Jaroslav, startled by the thought that he would have to begin his journey all over again.

‘Where do you want to go?’ asked the man.

‘To the Baltic.’

‘To the Baltic! What’s the matter, son?’ he asked, looking more closely, and then, seeing that the hand which held the violin trembled, he added kindly, ‘Jump up and tell me all about it.’

So Jaroslav, who had never been in an automobile, climbed in, awestruck, and sat down on the soft leather cushions. Instead of starting the car, the man lighted a cigar. ‘Run away from home, have you?’ he asked as he blew out the match. Then Jaroslav began at the beginning, and told of his father’s illness and death, of the loss of the cow, the birth of the baby, and the necessity of his earning enough to help his mother at once without waiting to grow up; of the amber treasure which seemed to him the only resource, and of the doubts of his ever finding it that had come to him as he walked that night.

‘Did you ever hear of the Great Amber Road, Sir?’ asked Jaroslav eagerly.

‘Oh, yes, I’ve heard of it,’ answered the man with a chuckle, ‘and I know lots of men who are walking up and down it wearing out shoe leather trying to get rich quick. But you keep off that road, son! What you need is to learn to do something well. The world doesn’t want amber cups nowadays, and in order to make money you must give people what they do want, whether it is bricks or hats or music.’

‘But I don’t know how to make anything,’ said Jaroslav sadly. ‘I would be willing to wait until I was grown up if only I could get a cow now.’

The man puffed silently for some time. Then he startled Jaroslav by asking abruptly, ‘Any rabbits where you live?’

‘Oh, yes,’ cried Jaroslav, ‘millions of them. They get into the gardens and they----’

‘That’s good,’ said the man, cutting him short. ‘Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I have a hat factory in Brno, and I need all the rabbit skins I can get. I’ll buy the cow and you can catch rabbits for me until she’s paid for. I’ll take the skins on account. My agent goes through your part of the country twice a month and he will collect them. What do you think of that plan, son? Beats amber, doesn’t it?’

‘Can I really catch enough rabbits to pay for a cow?’ gasped Jaroslav. ‘Then I don’t need to go to the Baltic!’ he cried, shrilly, as the truth burst upon him. ‘I can go home!’ and seizing his cap he jumped wildly out of the car.

‘Hold on!’ shouted the man, astonished. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to walk all night so that I can begin catching rabbits to-morrow.’ Then, remembering that he had not thanked his friend, he began to stammer his happiness.

‘Get in,’ said the man tersely, ‘where do you think this car is going?’

As they sped through the night on that wonderful ride, the man told Jaroslav of a school in Brno where boys learned all sorts of trades, and not only to run cars like the one they were in, but even to make them. When Jaroslav got out on the edge of the village, and panted home in the starlight, his life had taken a definite turn.

But this story is not to tell of how the cow really arrived in two weeks’ time, or of how Jaroslav gradually paid for it in rabbit skins, or of how at last he went to the technical school in Brno. It is to tell only of his home-coming, of how he reached the house about the same time as his mother, coming from Buchlovy; of how she forgave him at sight of his radiant face; of how Lidka brought him the first summer apples in her apron, and of how, as he sat on the bench which was built around the porcelain stove, he told them of his great adventure. And all the while the baby slept, and Flick lay on the floor with his nose between his master’s feet, and the _dedky_ winked at one another in the candlelight.

_Note_: It is a fact that an ancient road led from Pressburg (now the capital of Slovakia) to the Baltic. It was also called Great Amber Road and was used chiefly by Wendish Traders. The swamp west of Pressburg marked the No Man’s Land between Roman Pannonia and the realm of Slavs.

THE LOST BROOK

When Masha came to visit her cousins in the mountains, Treska thought she had never seen such beautiful clothes as those that Masha wore, and Masha thought she had never seen so sad a village as the one in which Treska lived.

She herself came from a land bright with wheat fields, where the pink and white poppies grow shoulder high, and where the little plastered houses are painted gayly and have red tiled roofs.

Here a cold rain was falling, and the mist swept low over the forests of black fir. Masha did not know that the clouds hid beautiful mountains. She saw only their gray edges, caught and torn on the tops of the dark trees. The houses were all of wood, unpainted and built like log cabins, except that they had broad eaves and high shingled roofs. The battened chinking between the logs was whitewashed, so that looking down upon the village as the girls came over the hill it seemed like a collection of striped black-and-white boxes with pointed covers.

Once inside Treska’s house it was as cosy as possible, with geraniums in the windows, a pendulum clock, bright plates on the wall, and blue-and-red checkered coverings over the feather beds, which were piled nearly to the low-beamed ceiling. There were benches on two sides of the room, and a table set with soup plates. From the oven came the delicious smell of huckleberry buns, which Treska’s mother was baking in honor of Masha’s coming.

Masha was in holiday costume because she had come on the train. Treska looked her over with envy. She wore a white linen cap with a broad band of brocaded ribbon, and a frill of lace round her face. Her collar and full white sleeves were edged with black embroidery, and her bodice of crimson and green silk was trimmed with gold lace. There were bunches of yellow flowers on her short orange skirt, and with her dark blue apron heavily embroidered, and a golden and green ribbon tied about her waist and falling to the hem of her dress in front, she looked like a big bouquet.

Treska had fine clothes, too, but they were more sober in color and pattern than Masha’s, and she never wore them except on grand occasions. Rather shyly she opened the big painted chest, which stood against the wall, to show Masha her own pretty things--the gold beads and netted cap, worked with disks of bright silk, and the dark cambric handkerchief, which she wore over it when she went to church, and which was so long that it covered her flowered bodice like a shawl, and reached to her scarlet skirt and deep blue apron.

Though Treska went barefooted, her father was by no means a poor man. He owned large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. During the summer months he lived in a shepherd’s hut across the valley, where he had a great sheepfold on the edge of the forest. Sometimes the whole family went to the hut and camped out there for days at a time. Treska loved that.

The next morning Masha’s aunt suggested that the two girls should go mushroom hunting for the day and spend the night at the hut. She gave them a lunch of black bread and smoked sheep’s-milk cheese and some poppy-seed cakes. They started off merrily, each carrying an earthen pot for strawberries.

It was a glorious day. Masha stood speechless at sight of jagged mountain peaks, glistening with snow in all their crevices. She had never seen anything so beautiful, so mysterious and terrible.

Below them spread the blue-black forests, reaching down to the fields where the patches of grain and corn and ploughed ground looked like a rag carpet spread over the hills. The fields were full of flowers and the mushrooms grew thickly among them along the edges of the wood.

The pack on Treska’s back began to fill out. At night the girls would sit by the fire and split the mushrooms and string them in festoons to dry.

Passing through the fields they met Janko, Treska’s brother, guarding sheep, and with him Suzanne, a little girl from their own Village.

‘Come on,’ called Treska. ‘We’re going up the hill to pick strawberries.’

Janko shook his head. ‘I can’t leave the sheep,’ he said, swinging his feet as he sat on the fence rail. He was a licensed shepherd now, and very proud of the brass badge, which he wore pinned to the front of his tunic with a long thorn.

But Suzanne joined them and together the three girls climbed slowly up to a high, cleared piece of land where the strawberries grew thick and red around the old gray stumps. Across the clearing slipped a little brook as clear as the sky, but so hidden that Masha nearly stepped into it before she saw it. Along its border forget-me-nots spread a faint blue network over the grass.

Stopping to take a drink, Masha was startled to see that the brook came suddenly to an end. It did not spread into a pool, for the grass was quite dry all about it, and there was no hole visible in the ground. The brook simply disappeared! Dipping her hand into the water, Masha felt it drawn gently downward, so it must be that the brook went underground.

‘Oh! girls,’ she cried, ‘come here! The brook has come to an end!’

‘I know,’ said Treska wisely; ‘it must have run into an underground river. They say there are such rivers in these mountains--perhaps lakes, too.’

‘Why, it’s like a fairy tale!’ cried Masha, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘To think of rivers and lakes and perhaps whole countries underground! I wish we could go down, too, with the brook.’

After a while they wandered slowly down the hill, the sun beating hot on their shoulders.

‘Let’s go into the woods and eat our lunch,’ said Treska.

A path, which came up through the forest, led toward deep shade, and they followed it. And then something happened that made them forget all about their lunch, for turning a bend in the path they came abruptly upon a tiny hut in the woods, and close to it, in a bare wall of rock, a deep black cavern.

‘A cave!’ they cried together.

Cautiously they turned toward the entrance. They saw a vaulted space like the porch of a church, and beyond it a high wooden gate, which stood ajar. Peering between the bars they could make out a long hallway in the rock, which vanished into darkness, but which had, as far as they could see, a walk of planks.

‘Why,’ said Treska, ‘this must be the famous cave in the mountain that people come to see. Suzanne, we ought to show it to Masha. I’m sure you’ve never seen anything like it, have you, Masha?’

Masha, who came from a flat and rockless country, never had.

‘But it’s too dark to go far,’ she objected, shrinking back.

‘Just to the end of this hall,’ coaxed Suzanne. ‘If there’s a gate and sidewalls there must be something beyond.’