"
"I don't believe it," I said stoutly. "I almost know it is n't true." I
did not, of course, say that I believed he had been in that very kitchen
all afternoon, on his way back to his own country. Nevertheless, after I
went to bed, this idea of punishment and Purgatory came back on me
crushingly. I remembered the account of Dives in torment, and shuddered.
But Mr. Shimerda had not been rich and selfish; he had only been so
unhappy that he could not live any longer.
XV
OTTO FUCHS got back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reported that
the coroner would reach the Shimerdas' sometime that afternoon, but the
missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundred miles
away, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few hours' sleep at
the livery barn in town, but he was afraid the gray gelding had strained
himself. Indeed, he was never the same horse afterward. That long trip
through the deep snow had taken all the endurance out of him.
Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had taken a
homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on his only horse to help his
fellow-countrymen in their trouble. That was the first time I ever saw
Anton Jelinek. He was a strapping young fellow in the early twenties then,
handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us like a miracle
in the midst of that grim business.
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