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Here was Filina's opportunity to give Lesina good advice, namely, to take his wife, her mother, and Palko, and move before the winter to his cottage in the Gemer mountains. He told him also that Madame Slavkovsky meant to give him some trees from a piece of land that needed to be replanted. In the meantime he could find some other place where he would like to stay.
Slavkovsky was somewhat buried in thought. They almost had to force him into conversation. After their meal the boys again began to play, and asked the two boys of the assistant manager to help them. Mr. Slavkovsky walked along the lane till, from a turn in it, he could overlook the beautiful, but now neglected garden. Suddenly he took off his hat and prayed.
Thus Stephen Pribylinsky died and only Stephen Slavkovsky remained. I could not return home and live with you, as our father planned. Eva was your wife and I loved her. I did not really know God and the Lord Jesus then, nor understood His Holy Law; but this much I knew, that it would have been a constant and a great temptation for us all. Thus, I chose to die to you."
This time, the father and daughter sat there together; no longer a prodigal, she had returned first to the heavenly, and then to the earthly father. She had come home and was accepted. He wanted to step aside, but they had been waiting for him. "We knew that you would pass by," said Slavkovsky, and made room for his brother beside himself. "Mary has a request to make of you." "Me?"
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, because about ten of them were pictures of herself, but she was dressed in all kinds of strange costumes. In one of the pictures she had on a loose dress like a cloak and a crown on her head. Under the picture was printed, "Mary Slavkovsky as Marie Stuart." The boy rested his curly head on his small palms, and thought.
There on Ondrejko's little bench, under the window, wrapped up in a shawl, Madame Slavkovsky sat in the moonlight. Her hands were twined around her knees, and she was thoughtfully looking into the beautiful starry night. He coughed, that she might not be startled. She turned her head, and with a motion indicated her wish that he should take a place beside her. He obeyed.
"I have come, Madame Slavkovsky, to talk with you," he began seriously. "It is time to make an end to the sin, which for years you have already committed as to my little charge. The doctor told me that you are his mother, and my lord is his father.
Soon it was known at all three sheepfolds that Madame Slavkovsky had bought Lord Gemer's estate and that she would deed it to Ondrejko if Lord Gemer would give up her son to her. No one doubted that he would do this, and since the present manager gave notice to leave, because he had been called to manage a different estate, the lady hoped that she would find some other responsible man.
Slavkovsky finished, and out of Bacha's breast came a deep sigh. "You died for us, and until recently I worried very much about it, that I had become a murderer and was like Cain." "You? And why?" "Did I not drown you the second time in that swamp, by driving you to America? Eva loved you more. Had it not been for me, you could have lived as happily as in Paradise.
Perhaps nowhere and never before, were those beautiful lines sung so impressively. When she stopped, Bacha Filina stood near her and very seriously said, "Thank you, Madame Slavkovsky, for that precious song. You have shown me great kindness thereby. Your beautiful ballad opened a deep wound in my heart which was not quite healed.
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