And he began to feel oppressed within that hollow tree, or perhaps it oppressed him to be on that couch of leaves and moss, which now so vainly began to be a couch. He laid himself down before, the tree just on the spot where in the old days he and Krista had buried his mother, that is to say, the sweet briar and the willow wands and the sweet marjoram, and out of it had made his mother. And here on that little tomb he felt more at peace.
And it was just as if he saw and heard around him everything that he saw and heard here in yonder distant past, when here he shepherded the sheep.
There stood the little Krista, whose piping treble sang the gloria to his violin, and who wept because he chased her from him, and because she was a a poor orphaned girl.
And he began anew to smile vacantly at everything, just, ah! just as he had seen the dead Krista coldly smile.
And then a cuckoo cuckooed and its note rang lonely through that lonely wood, where now but few birds sang, rang out as if in witness of a desolate world, and as if it tolled a dirge of endless woe. “Ah! ha! thou hast scarce anyone to whom to cuckoo now,” said Venik, and smiled to himself thereat.
Then a bat flew out and fluttered round the tree, just as if it sought something.
