which, however, were not recognised as being right, either by his people
or his superiors.

This lasted quite a long time, but finally it stopped. The
accusations were discontinued, and intrigues ceased, because the
object of these attacks became himself silent, and morally
disappeared. Grown prematurely old, and tired of lights, Hersh shut
himself up in the circle of private life, and occupied himself with
business transactions, These, however, did not go as smoothly as did
those of others, because he did not possess--as did others--the
sympathy of his brethren. What he felt, and about what he thought, in
those last years of his life, no one knew, for he told no one
anything. Only before his death he had a long conversation with his
wife.

The children were too small to be entrusted with the secret of his
disappointed desires, wasted efforts, and smothered griefs. He left
these as a legacy to his children through his wife. Did Freida
understand and remember the words of her dying husband? Was she
willing, and was she able, to remember them, and repeat them to his
descendants? It is not known. Only this is certain--that only she
knew the place where the Senior's will was hidden--the old writings
which were the heritage not only of the Ezofowich family but of the
whole Israelitic nation--a neglected and forgotten heritage, but in
which--who knows!--were treasures a hundredfold richer than those
which filled the chests of that wealthy family.

Therefore the Senior's last thoughts and wishes slept in some
hiding-place, waiting for a bold descendant who would be courageous
enough to bring them into life. But in the meantime there remained in
the town not one soul longing for the light--not one heart which
throbbed for something more than his own wife, his own children, and
before all, his own riches.

There was plenty of noise arising from the care and haste whose only
aim was to gain money; there was darkness because of mystic fears and
dreams there was narrowness and suffocating because of merciless,
grinding, dead orthodoxy.

The common people of the same faith throughout the whole country
considered the people of Szybow as powerful, both materially and
morally, wise, orthodox, almost holy.

Over the whole deep-sunk social valley hung a cloud. This cloud was
composed of the darkest elements which exist in human kind, which
are: respect for the letter from which the spirit has departed, dense
ignorance, suspicio