o help you, and to fill your life with the sunshine it
needs, I want you to help me, to inspire me when I falter, to complete
my life, to make me happier than I had ever dreamed. Be my wife, Esther.
Let me save you from yourself."

"Let me save you from yourself, Raphael. Is it wise to wed with the gray
spirit of the Ghetto that doubts itself?"

And like a spirit she glided from his grasp and disappeared in the
crowd.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PRODIGAL SON.

The New Year dawned upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special
matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the
midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the
Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the
breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it with growing pallor and
perturbation.

"What is the matter, my dear?" asked the Reb, anxiously.

"Oh, father," she cried, "read this! Bad news of Levi."

A spasm of pain contorted the old man's furrowed countenance.

"Mention not his name!" he said harshly "He is dead."

"He may be by now!" Hannah exclaimed agitatedly. "You were right,
Esther. He did join a strolling company, and now he is laid up with
typhoid in the hospital in Stockbridge. One of his friends writes to
tell us. He must have caught it in one of those insanitary
dressing-rooms we were reading about."

Esther trembled all over. The scene in the garret when the fatal
telegram came announcing Benjamin's illness had never faded from her
mind. She had an instant conviction that it was all over with poor Levi.

"My poor lamb!" cried the Rebbitzin, the coffee-cup dropping from her
nerveless hand.

"Simcha," said Reb Shemuel sternly, "calm thyself; we have no son to
lose. The Holy One--blessed be He!--hath taken him from us. The Lord
giveth, and the Lord taketh. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Hannah rose. Her face was white and resolute. She moved towards the
door.

"Whither goest thou?" inquired her father in German.

"I am going to my room, to put on my hat and jacket," replied Hannah
quietly.

"Whither goest thou?" repeated Reb Shemuel.

"To Stockbridge. Mother, you and I must go at once."

The Reb sprang to his feet. His brow was dark; his eyes gleamed with
anger and pain.

"Sit down and finish thy breakfast," he said.

"How can I eat? Levi is dying," said Hannah, in low, firm tones. "Will
you come, mother, or must I go alone?"

The Rebbitzin bega