no near relations and but few friends, while
the girls who had coquetted with Maxim before he left would never waste
so much as a look on him now he was half-blind; and Struli's plans for
marrying and emigrating to America were frustrated: a cripple would not
be allowed to enter the country.

All their dreams and hopes finally dissipated, and there remained only
one black care, one all-obscuring anxiety: how were they to earn a
living?

They had been hoping all the while for a pension, but in their service
book was written "on sick-leave." The Russo-Japanese war was
distinguished by the fact that the greater number of wounded soldiers
went home "on sick-leave," and the money assigned by the Government for
their pension would not have been sufficient for even a hundredth part
of the number of invalids.

Maxim showed a face with two wide open eyes, to which all the passers-by
looked the same. He distinguished with difficulty between a man and a
telegraph post, and wore a smile of mingled apprehension and confidence.
The sound feet stepped hesitatingly, keeping behind Israel, and it was
hard to say which steadied himself most against the other. Struli limped
forward, and kept open eyes for two. Sometimes he would look round at
the box on Maxim's shoulders, as though he felt its weight as much as
Maxim.

Meantime the railway carriages had emptied and refilled, and the
locomotive gave a great blast, received an answer from somewhere a long
way off, a whistle for a whistle, and the train set off, slowly at
first, and then gradually faster and faster, till all that remained of
it were puffs of smoke hanging in the air without rhyme or reason.

The two felt more depressed than ever. "Something to eat? Where are we
to get a bite?" was in their minds.

Suddenly Yisroel remembered with a start: this was the anniversary of
his mother's death--if he could only say one Kaddish for her in a Klaus!

"Is it far from here to a Klaus?" he inquired of a passer-by.

"There is one a little way down that side-street," was the reply.

"Maxim!" he begged of the other, "come with me!"

"Where to?"

"To the synagogue."

Maxim shuddered from head to foot. His fear of a Jewish Shool had not
left him, and a thousand foolish terrors darted through his head.

But his comrade's voice was so gentle, so childishly imploring, that he
could not resist it, and he agreed to go with him into the Shool.

It was the time for Afternoon Prayer,