"Where is my home, Where is my home? Waters through its meads are streaming, Mounts with rustling woods are teeming, Vales are bright with flow'rets rare, Oh, Earth's Eden, thou art fair! Thou art my home, my fatherland, Thou art my home, my fatherland!" News of still more imprisonments and executions followed daily. The older daughter of Prof. Masaryk was imprisoned, mainly as a punishment to her father, who was working so hard against the Central Powers abroad. Machar, one of the greatest poets of Bohemia, shared the same fate because of a poem published in the United States, without the poet's consent--a poem passed many years before by the Austrian censor! Strange rumors spread. Once Jozef and his particular friend, Jaroslav, walked out of the city in the direction of Blanik, a mountain around which are clustered many traditions. They were overtaken and offered a ride by a very old man. "Who are you and where are you going?" he asked. "We're students in the Lower Gymnasium," Jaroslav answered. "We're only out for a walk, for there is no school. We're going toward Blanik, but don't expect to get so far." "Better not," said the old man sternly. "Who knows but the old tale may be true that the Taborites never died but are hidden, as is said, in a cave there. They were to reappear at the time of Bohemia's greatest peril, you know. This may be it. There're lights in that mountain, I tell you; don't breathe a word of it; but also don't go there." Here he let the boys alight, and they walked on speculating on the tradition and as to just what the man meant by his last words. "Do you think that some of the Czechs go there to discuss things?" asked Jozef. Jaroslav did not know what to think. Both boys wondered and wondered whether some great help might not come to Bohemia from the mountain. School did not reopen, and food became very scarce. It seemed best that Jozef be sent back to his home in Slovakia in any makeshift way possible. This was done, and after a week's hard and varied travel, he reached home, almost starved. In Slovakia he found the same persecution of all suspected of lack of sympathy with the plans and purposes of the Central Powers. Four of his relatives had been taken to fight; of these two cousins had been killed, and one was reported to have been shot with an entire company that refused to advance against the Serbians. No one knew where the fourth relative, an uncle after whom Jozef had been named, was to be found, until Austria-Hungary was broken up and he returned home wounded. He had a story full of exciting incidents to tell and the villagers never tired of hearing it. [Illustration: "THE VILLAGERS NEVER TIRED OF HEARING IT"] One day a load of miserable looking prisoners passed in cars through the village. It was terrible to see them as they lay listlessly against each other. It was plain that it had been long since they had had anything to eat or drink.