d also submitted to some secret
treatment,--some devastating drug administered for months before the
examination,--but the effects were not pronounced enough, and he was
passed. For the first few weeks his company was stationed in Polotzk.
I saw my cousin drill on the square, carrying a gun, _on a Sabbath_. I
felt unholy, as if I had sinned the sin in my own person. It was easy
to understand why mothers of conscript sons fasted and wept and prayed
and worried themselves to their graves.

There was a man in our town called David the Substitute, because he
had gone as a soldier in another's stead, he himself being exempt. He
did it for a sum of money. I suppose his family was starving, and he
saw a chance to provide for them for a few years. But it was a sinful
thing to do, to go as a soldier and be obliged to live like a Gentile,
of his own free will. And David knew how wicked it was, for he was a
pious man at heart. When he returned from service, he was aged and
broken, bowed down with the sense of his sins. And he set himself a
penance, which was to go through the streets every Sabbath morning,
calling the people to prayer. Now this was a hard thing to do,
because David labored bitterly all the week, exposed to the weather,
summer or winter; and on Sabbath morning there was nobody so tired and
lame and sore as David. Yet he forced himself to leave his bed before
it was yet daylight, and go from street to street, all over Polotzk,
calling on the people to wake and go to prayer. Many a Sabbath morning
I awoke when David called, and lay listening to his voice as it passed
and died out; and it was so sad that it hurt, as beautiful music
hurts. I was glad to feel my sister lying beside me, for it was lonely
in the gray dawn, with only David and me awake, and God waiting for
the people's prayers.

The Gentiles used to wonder at us because we cared so much about
religious things,--about food, and Sabbath, and teaching the children
Hebrew. They were angry with us for our obstinacy, as they called it,
and mocked us and ridiculed the most sacred things. There were wise
Gentiles who understood. These were educated people, like Fedora
Pavlovna, who made friends with their Jewish neighbors. They were
always respectful, and openly admired some of our ways. But most of
the Gentiles were ignorant and distrustful and spiteful. They would
not believe that there was any good in our religion, and of course we
dared not teach them, becau