they led them to the same goal—to a godly life on earth, and a just reward in the world beyond. And though after their ordination many miles separated them, still the friends did not forget each other, but exchanged letters from time to time. These, it is true, were fewer and fewer as years went on, yet their intercourse had never ceased entirely. Sometimes they met at a place settled upon beforehand, and such a meeting was always a holiday for both, which they remembered long after. For want of means they both had to walk on foot to their respective railway stations and back, and yet they were happier than many a well-fed prelate, with the soft cushions of a spring-carriage at his disposal.
Father Neducha at first did not even wish to accept of a living, from Christian humility; but as no priest with whom he was placed as curate satisfied him in point of godliness, he at last accepted a small living, rivalling in its poverty that of Záluz̓í. His parishioners looked up to him as to a saint. He never took any meat, coffee, or spirituous drink, lived very moderately, and gladly shared the little he had with the poor. He never went to visit a sick person otherwise than on foot, even in hail, rain, and snow that no one would have driven a dog out in. And many were the nights he spent by the bed-sides of the sick and dying, comforting, teaching, and preparing them for the solemn change. His leisure hours he liked best to spend amongst the children in the school. In short, he considered life on earth to be only a preparation for eternity; and whenever he entered a house, there seemed to enter with him a palpable saintliness, which filled young and old with love and awe.
Father Cvok knew no one in the whole world whom he loved and respected so much as Neducha. When he
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