lly into the
plates and thence negligently backwards into the hand of his infant, who
stuffed the treasure into his pockets. Sugarman fidgeted about uneasily;
not one surreptitious seizure escaped him, and every one pricked him
like a needle. Soon his soul grew punctured like a pin-cushion. The
Shalotten _Shammos_ was among the worst offenders, and he covered his
back-handed proceedings with a ceaseless flow of complimentary
conversation.

"Excellent fish, Mrs. Sugarman," he said, dexterously slipping some
almonds behind his chair.

"What?" said Mrs. Sugarman, who was hard of hearing.

"First-class plaice!" shouted the Shalotten _Shammos_, negligently
conveying a bunch of raisins.

"So they ought to be," said Mrs. Sugarman in her thin tinkling accents,
"they were all alive in the pan."

"Ah, did they twitter?" said Mr. Belcovitch, pricking up his ears.

"No," Bessie interposed. "What do you mean?"

"At home in my town," said Mr. Belcovitch impressively, "a fish made a
noise in the pan one Friday."

"Well? and suppose?" said the Shalotten _Shammos_, passing a fig to the
rear, "the oil frizzles."

"Nothing of the kind," said Belcovitch angrily, "A real living noise.
The woman snatched it out of the pan and ran with it to the Rabbi. But
he did not know what to do. Fortunately there was staying with him for
the Sabbath a travelling Saint from the far city of Ridnik, a _Chasid_,
very skilful in plagues and purifications, and able to make clean a
creeping thing by a hundred and fifty reasons. He directed the woman to
wrap the fish in a shroud and give it honorable burial as quickly as
possible. The funeral took place the same afternoon and a lot of people
went in solemn procession to the woman's back garden and buried it with
all seemly rites, and the knife with which it had been cut was buried in
the same grave, having been defiled by contact with the demon. One man
said it should be burned, but that was absurd because the demon would be
only too glad to find itself in its native element, but to prevent Satan
from rebuking the woman any more its mouth was stopped with furnace
ashes. There was no time to obtain Palestine earth, which would have
completely crushed the demon."

"The woman must have committed some _Avirah_" said Karlkammer.

"A true story!" said the Shalotten _Shammos_, ironically. "That tale has
been over Warsaw this twelvemonth."

"It occurred when I was a boy," affirmed Belcovitch indignantly.