But 'Queen' Golda, despite her silk gown and flowery cap, did not
share her consort's majestic mood, still less the rosy happiness of
the children who sat round this fascinating board. Her heart was full
of a whispering fear that not all the brave melodies of the father
nor all the quaint family choruses could drown. All very well for the
little ones to be unconscious of the hovering shadow, but how could
her husband have forgotten the horrors of the Blood Accusation in the
very year he had led her under the Canopy?

And surely he knew as well as she that the dreadful legend was
gathering again, that the slowly-growing Jew-hatred had reached a
point at which it must find expression, that the _Pritzim_ (nobles) in
their great houses, and the peasants behind their high palings, alike
sulked under the burden of debts. Indeed, had not the Passover Market
hummed with the old, old story of a lost Christian child? Not murdered
yet, thank God, nor even a corpse. But still, if a boy _should_ be
found with signs of violence upon him at this season of the Paschal
Sacrifice, when the Greek Church brooded on the Crucifixion! O God of
Abraham, guard us from these fiends unchained!

But the first part of the elaborate ritual, pleasantly punctuated with
cups of raisin wine, passed peacefully by, and the evening meal,
mercifully set in the middle, was reached, to the children's vast
content. They made wry, humorous mouths, each jest endeared by annual
repetition, over the horseradish that typified the bitterness of the
Egyptian bondage, and ecstatic grimaces over the soft, sweet mixture
of almonds, raisins, apples, and cinnamon, vaguely suggestive of the
bondsmen's mortar; they relished the eggs sliced into salt water, and
then--the symbols all duly swallowed--settled down with more prosaic
satisfaction to the merely edible meats and fishes, though even to
these the special Passover plates and dishes and the purified knives
and forks lent a new relish.

By this time Golda was sufficiently cheered up to meditate her annual
theft of the _Afkuman_, that segment of Passover cake under Aaron's
pillow, morsels of which, distributed to each as the final food to be
tasted that night, replaced the final mouthful of the Paschal Lamb in
the ancient Palestinian meal.

II

But Elijah's goblet stood in the centre of the table untasted. Every
time the ritual cup-drinking came round, the children had glanced at
the great silver goblet placed