t Bacha that he
would have to be a very hard man to refuse.

Disturbed from his meditation, Bacha looked for a while into the
beautiful inquiring eyes, then with a deep breath he began:

"Many years ago I was a boy like you two. I'm telling you this that
you may know what you should never become, if the Lord God is not to
be very angry at you. I will tell you today something about myself
which I have not yet told anybody on earth," began Filina. He stopped
a moment and the boys waited eagerly for him to go on.

"When I was five years old my mother died. My father brought another
mother in the house. She was a young, beautiful woman, a widow. With
her came a son from her first marriage. We called him Stephen, and
when I look at you, Ondrejko, I always have him before me as he
entered our hut for the first time. On his head he had a hat with a
long band, a cloak thrown over his shoulder, an embroidered shirt, and
narrow trousers. He was like a picture of a saint--so beautiful and so
lovely.

"I was my father's youngest child. The older ones died, so I never had
a brother, and suddenly he came--and was to be my brother. You love
each other--I know. That also reminds me of my childhood. I began to
love him more than I could my own brother. We were of equal age, but
I was strong and he weak; I was wild and he tame; I was ugly and he
beautiful. In spite of this we loved each other, and our parents were
well satisfied. They could leave him under my care--because they knew
I was able to defend him--and could leave me under his care, because
when he was with me I was much more tame.

"Would that it had remained so always. But a proverb says, not in
vain, that 'Where the Devil cannot go himself he will send an old
woman.' And he sent her to us. It was your father's Aunt, your
great-aunt, Petrik. She came once to us and asked me aside if the new
mother liked me, and was sorry for me that I was a poor orphan. Said
she, 'Who has a step-mother has also a stepfather. Your father doesn't
love you as much as he does Stephen.' She didn't stay long with us.
Just as she came, so she went, but she took with her my love for
Stephen. Because I was so wild and always did something wrong, my wise
father had to punish me often; but Stephen was never punished because
he always did what was pleasing in the sight of father and mother.
From that time on I always remembered the words of the great-aunt
that I was punished and he not because they