f a certain clergyman, who had been beguiled by her paramour
into joining the great English conspiracy to hound down Melchitsedek
Pinchas,--all of whom he would shoot presently and had in the meantime
enshrined like dead flies in the amber of immortal acrostics. The wind
began to shake the shutters as they finished supper and presently the
rain began to patter afresh against the panes. Reb Shemuel distributed
the pieces of _Afikuman_ with a happy sigh, and, lolling on his pillows
and almost forgetting his family troubles in the sense of Israel's
blessedness, began to chant the Grace like the saints in the Psalm who
sing aloud on their couches. The little Dutch clock on the mantelpiece
began to strike. Hannah did not move. Pale and trembling she sat riveted
to her chair. One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight. She
counted the strokes, as if to count them was the only means of telling
the hour, as if her eyes had not been following the hands creeping,
creeping. She had a mad hope the striking would cease with the eight and
there would be still time to think. _Nine_! She waited, her ear longing
for the tenth stroke. If it were only ten o'clock, it would be too late.
The danger would be over. She sat, mechanically watching the hands. They
crept on. It was five minutes past the hour. She felt sure that David
was already at the corner of the street, getting wet and a little
impatient. She half rose from her chair. It was not a nice night for an
elopement. She sank back into her seat. Perhaps they had best wait till
to-morrow night. She would go and tell David so. But then he would not
mind the weather; once they had met he would bundle her into the cab and
they would roll on leaving the old world irrevocably behind. She sat in
a paralysis of volition; rigid on her chair, magnetized by the warm
comfortable room, the old familiar furniture, the Passover table--with
its white table-cloth and its decanter and wine-glasses, the faces of
her father and mother eloquent with the appeal of a thousand memories.
The clock ticked on loudly, fiercely, like a summoning drum; the rain
beat an impatient tattoo on the window-panes, the wind rattled the doors
and casements. "Go forth, go forth," they called, "go forth where your
lover waits you, to bear you of into the new and the unknown." And the
louder they called the louder Reb Shemuel trolled his hilarious Grace:
_May He who maketh Peace in the High Heavens, bestow Peace upon us and