the daylight and the dark held
equal sway within the Klaus, the lamps before the platform increasing
the former to the east and the latter to the west. Maxim and Yisroel
stood in the western part, enveloped in shadow. The Cantor had just
finished "Incense," and was entering upon Ashre, and the melancholy
night chant of Minchah and Maariv gradually entranced Maxim's emotional
Roumanian heart.

The low, sad murmur of the Cantor seemed to him like the distant surging
of a sea, in which men were drowned by the hundreds and suffocating with
the water. Then, the Ashre and the Kaddish ended, there was silence. The
congregation stood up for the Eighteen Benedictions. Here and there you
heard a half-stifled sigh. And now it seemed to Maxim that he was in the
hospital at night, at the hour when the groans grow less frequent, and
the sufferers fall one by one into a sweet sleep.

Tears started into his eyes without his knowing why. He was no longer
afraid, but a sudden shyness had come over him, and he felt, as he
watched Yisroel repeating the Kaddish, that the words, which he, Maxim,
could not understand, were being addressed to someone unseen, and yet
mysteriously present in the darkening Shool.

When the prayers were ended, one of the chief members of the
congregation approached the "Mandchurian," and gave Yisroel a coin into
his hand.

Yisroel looked round--he did not understand at first what the donor
meant by it.

Then it occurred to him--and the blood rushed to his face. He gave the
coin to his companion, and explained in a half-sentence or two how they
had come by it.

Once outside the Klaus, they both cried, after which they felt better.

"A livelihood!" the same thought struck them both.

"We can go into partnership!"

AT THE MATZES

It was quite early in the morning, when Sossye, the scribe's daughter, a
girl of seventeen, awoke laughing; a sunbeam had broken through the
rusty window, made its way to her underneath the counterpane, and there
opened her eyes.

It woke her out of a deep dream which she was ashamed to recall, but the
dream came back to her of itself, and made her laugh.

Had she known whom she was going to meet in her dreams, she would have
lain down in her clothes, occurs to her, and she laughs aloud.

"Got up laughing!" scolds her mother. "There's a piece of good luck for
you! It's a sign of a black year for her (may it be to my enemies!)."

Sossye proceeds to dress herself. She