at and chest, and _these_ hurt, they
are bound to do so. It is simply hemorrhoids."

So Ezrielk went on intoning and chanting, and the Kamenivke Jews licked
their fingers, and nearly jumped out of their skin for joy when they
heard him.

Two years passed in this way, and then came a change.

It was early in the morning of the Fast of the Destruction of the
Temple, all the windows of the Great Shool were open, and all the
tables, benches, and desks had been carried out from the men's hall and
the women's hall the evening before. Men and women sat on the floor, so
closely packed a pin could not have fallen to the floor between them.
The whole street in which was the Great Shool was chuck full with a
terrible crowd of men, women, and children, although it just happened to
be cold, wet weather. The fact is, Ezrielk's Lamentations had long been
famous throughout the Jewish world in those parts, and whoever had ears,
a Jewish heart, and sound feet, came that day to hear him. The sad
epidemic disease that (not of our days be it spoken!) swallows men up,
was devastating Kamenivke and its surroundings that year, and everyone
sought a place and hour wherein to weep out his opprest and bitter
heart.

Ezrielk also sat on the floor reciting Lamentations, but the man who sat
there was not the same Ezrielk, and the voice heard was not his.
Ezrielk, with his sugar-sweet, honeyed voice, had suddenly been
transformed into a strange being, with a voice that struck terror into
his hearers; the whole people saw, heard, and felt, how a strange
creature was flying about among them with a fiery sword in his hand. He
slashes, hews, and hacks at their hearts, and with a terrible voice he
cries out and asks: "Sinners! Where is your holy land that flowed with
milk and honey? Slaves! Where is your Temple? Accursed slaves! You sold
your freedom for money and calumny, for honors and worldly greatness!"

The people trembled and shook and were all but entirely dissolved in
tears. "Upon Zion and her cities!" sang out once more Ezrielk's
melancholy voice, and suddenly something snapped in his throat, just as
when the strings of a good fiddle snap when the music is at its best.
Ezrielk coughed, and was silent. A stream of blood poured from his
throat, and he grew white as the wall.

The doctor declared that Ezrielk had lost his voice forever, and would
remain hoarse for the rest of his life.

"Nonsense!" persisted Reb Yainkel. "His voice is breaki