nd man!" thought Chayyim. "May the Almighty come to his aid!"

He gave his host a grateful look, and would gladly have fallen onto the
Gevir's thick neck, and kissed him.

"Well, and what are you about?" inquired his host.

"Thanks be to God, one lives!"

The maid handed him a glass of tea. He said, "Thank you," and then was
sorry: it is not the proper thing to thank a servant. He grew red and
bit his lips.

"Have some jelly with it!" Loibe-Baeres suggested.

"An excellent man, an excellent man!" thought Chayyim, astonished. "He
is sure to lend."

"You deal in something?" asked Loibe-Baeres.

"Why, yes," answered Chayyim. "One's little bit of business, thank
Heaven, is no worse than other people's!"

"What price are oats fetching now?" it occurred to the Gevir to ask.

Oats had fallen of late, but it seemed better to Chayyim to say that
they had risen.

"They have risen very much!" he declared in a mercantile tone of voice.

"Well, and have you some oats ready?" inquired the Gevir further.

"I've got a nice lot of oats, and they didn't cost me much, either. I
got them quite cheap," replied Chayyim, with more warmth, forgetting,
while he spoke, that he hadn't had an ear of oats in his granary for
weeks.

"And you are thinking of doing a little speculating?" asked Loibe-Baeres.
"Are you not in need of any money?"

"Thanks be to God," replied Chayyim, proudly, "I have never yet been in
need of money."

"Why did I say that?" he thought then, in terror at his own words. "How
am I going to ask for a loan now?" and Chayyim wanted to back the cart a
little, only Loibe-Baeres prevented him by saying:

"So I understand you make a good thing of it, you are quite a wealthy
man."

"My wealth be to my enemies!" Chayyim wanted to draw back, but after a
glance at Loibe-Baeres' shining face, at the blue jar with the jelly, he
answered proudly:

"Thank Heaven, I have nothing to complain of!"

"There goes your charitable loan!" The thought came like a kick in the
back of his head. "Why are you boasting like that? Tell him you want
twenty-five rubles for Ulas--that he must save you, that you are in
despair, that--"

But Chayyim fell deeper and deeper into a contented and happy way of
talking, praised his business more and more, and conversed with the
Gevir as with an equal.

But he soon began to feel he was one too many, that he should not have
sat there so long, or have talked in that way. It would have been b