ebele holds
the spoon lower, and the food sticks in his throat.

After supper Lebele has to say grace aloud and in correct Hebrew,
according to custom. If he mumbles a word, his father calls out:

"What did I hear? what? once more, 'Wherewith Thou dost feed and sustain
us.' Well, come, say it! Don't be in a hurry, it won't burn you!"

And Lebele says it over again, although he _is_ in a great hurry,
although he longs to run out into the street, and the words _do_ seem to
burn him.

When it is dark, he repeats the Evening Prayer by lamplight; his father
is always catching him making a mistake, and Lebele has to keep all his
wits about him. The moon, round and shining, is already floating through
the sky, and Lebele repeats the prayers, and looks at her, and longs
after the street, and he gets confused in his praying.

Prayers over, he escapes out of the house, puzzling over some question
in the Talmud against the morrow's lesson. He delays there a while
gazing at the moon, as she pours her pale beams onto the Gass. But he
soon hears his father's voice:

"Come indoors, to bed!"

It is warm outside, there is not a breath of air stirring, and yet it
seems to Lebele as though a wind came along with his father's words, and
he grows cold, and he goes in like one chilled to the bone, takes his
stand by the window, and stares at the moon.

"It is time to close the shutters--there's nothing to sit up for!"
Lebele hears his father say, and his heart sinks. His father goes out,
and Lebele sees the shutters swing to, resist, as though they were being
closed against their will, and presently there is a loud bang. No more
moon!--his father has hidden it!

A while after, the lamp has been put out, the room is dark, and all are
asleep but Lebele, whose bed is by the window. He cannot sleep, he wants
to be in the street, whence sounds come in through the chinks. He tries
to sit up in bed, to peer out, also through the chinks, and even to open
a bit of the shutter, without making any noise, and to look, look, but
without success, for just then his father wakes and calls out:

"What are you after there, eh? Do you want me to come with the strap?"

And Lebele nestles quietly down again into his pillow, pulls the
coverlet over his head, and feels as though he were buried alive.

THE CHARITABLE LOAN

The largest fair in Klemenke is "Ulas." The little town waits for Ulas
with a beating heart and extravagant hopes. "Ulas,