Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/156

HERE was an expression of weariness in the gesture with which Hilair Kabel tossed his coat over a scrub willow and in the sigh that accompanied it.

“At length at length after so many days of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst”, he breathed.

But the young man had little reason for such display of tedium on the sunny bank of the Hern River, only a mile and a half from the Gordon Hotel he had left that morning. Still expression was natural with Kabel—especially in verse. And in fact the lines he quoted from Poe were suggested less by any inward feeling than by the seene before him: a dilapidated frame structure partially encircled by young aspen and willow, for he continued in mimicking fashion:

Oh! fiddlesticks! Gloom assuredly but gloom sans grandeur sans glory.”

Nevertheless he stepped into the interior of the desolate building to enjoy its refreshing shade. There, on either side were heaps of saw-dust, sloping up and away from the doorway. but evidently nothing to sit on. A missing gable-end invited the young man to climb to the top and view the stream where it rushed head on from the direction of the railroad bridge. But, having gained that vantage point, he was disappointed to find the scene spoiled by a smoking passenger train pulling in toward Warren. Ejaculating a word of disgust, he retraced his steps towards the entrance, kicking vexatiously at the thin-stemmed fungi that protruded from the damp saw-dust. When he had reached the verge of the slope, the soft footing gave under his weight and he slid clear to the doorway. An avalanche of dank saw-dust followed him.

Looking up the slope whence he tobogganed, he espied something dark unearthed by his descent. It was a parcel wrapped in a piece of old mohair cloth containing a coarse and hard interior. The young poet’s mind leaped with eager anticipation mingled with vague dread at the possible contents of the strange bundle. Cautiously he removed the folds of the covering, and fairly gasped in surprise and amazement when he finally drew back the inner newspaper wrapping which disclosed the valuable contents. A golden chalice of a beautiful design and exquisite workmanship greeted his inquisitive eyes. And that was not all. Deeper in the folds was its counterpart—a similarly wrought ciborium.

“Well, if this isn’t going event Sir Galahad one better!” he complimented himself as he picked up the two cups, examining the engravings, the modest settings, and the quality of the gold in each. A ray of the lowering sun, coming