b stood dark and mute like the grave.

The crowd broke up into many groups. One of these, the largest,
crossed the gates of the precincts; shouting and struggling, it
poured into the moonlit square, where it looked like a monster bird
flapping its huge wings It was mostly composed of poorly-dressed men
with long beards and maliciously gleaming eyes. Children of different
ages flittered to and fro among them, picking up stones and mud. They
all thronged towards one point; a single man surrounded by a
bodyguard of friends. Pushed and knocked about, they resisted with
their arms and shoulders until, yielding to the pressures they
finally gave way, and were swallowed up by the crowd. Then a shower
of stones fell upon the back of the man whom, until now, they had
screened; dozens of hands grasped his garments and tore them into
strips; upon his bare head fell mud and handfuls of gravel picked out
of the gutter. In his ears thundered the yells and groans of the
infuriated mob; before his face flashed the clenched fists and
inflamed faces of his assailants, and beyond, as if veiled in a
blood-red mist, silent and closely shuttered, appeared the house of
his fathers.

Towards that house, as if to a haven of salvation, he directed his
steps as quick as the grasping hands and the children crowding round
his feet would let him. From his compressed lips came no sound either
of complaint or entreaty; he did not seem to feel the hands that
smote him or the stones, which pelted his body, and which might maim
or kill him at any moment. With breast and shoulders he tried
desperately to push aside the mob. It was not himself he defended,
but the treasure he carried; now and then he touched his breast to
make sure it was still there. Suddenly a burly figure, dressed in a
coarse shirt, and with a thick stick in his bands, barred his way,
and shouted:

"Fools, what are you doing? Why do you not take the loathsome writing
from him? The Rabbi Isaak has ordered it to be torn from him; he has
bidden it in his breast!"

In an instant the young man, who had been assailed from the back and
sides only, found himself attacked in front also. Rough and dark
bands reached at his breast; his convulsively clenched arms were
wrenched asunder, and they began to tear his garments. Then he raised
his pale face towards the moonlit sky with a despairing cry:

"Jehovah!"

He felt a lithe and supple body creep up from under his feet, and a
pair of hot l