ur time of life, gone is gone!"

The cantor wrung his hands, threw himself down beside the table, and,
laying his head on his arms, he burst out crying like a child.

Next morning the whole town had heard of the misfortune--that the cantor
had lost his voice.

"It's an ill wind----" quoted the innkeeper, a well-to-do man. "He won't
keep us so long with his trills on Sabbath. I'd take a bitter onion for
that voice of his, any day!"

LATE

It was in sad and hopeless mood that Antosh watched the autumn making
its way into his peasant's hut. The days began to shorten and the
evenings to lengthen, and there was no more petroleum in the hut to fill
his humble lamp; his wife complained too--the store of salt was giving
out; there was very little soap left, and in a few days he would finish
his tobacco. And Antosh cleared his throat, spat, and muttered countless
times a day:

"No salt, no soap, no tobacco; we haven't got anything. A bad business!"

Antosh had no prospect of earning anything in the village. The one
village Jew was poor himself, and had no work to give. Antosh had only
_one_ hope left. Just before the Feast of Tabernacles he would drive a
whole cart-load of fir-boughs into the little town and bring a tidy sum
of money home in exchange.

He did this every year, since buying his thin horse in the market for
six rubles.

"When shall you have Tabernacles?" he asked every day of the village
Jew. "Not yet," was the Jew's daily reply. "But when _shall_ you?"
Antosh insisted one day.

"In a week," answered the Jew, not dreaming how very much Antosh needed
to know precisely.

In reality there were only five more days to Tabernacles, and Antosh had
calculated with business accuracy that it would be best to take the
fir-boughs into the town two days before the festival. But this was
really the first day of it.

He rose early, ate his dry, black bread dipped in salt, and drank a
measure of water. Then he harnessed his thin, starved horse to the cart,
took his hatchet, and drove into the nearest wood.

He cut down the branches greedily, seeking out the thickest and longest.

"Good ware is easier sold," he thought, and the cart filled, and the
load grew higher and higher. He was calculating on a return of three
gulden, and it seemed still too little, so that he went on cutting, and
laid on a few more boughs. The cart could hold no more, and Antosh
looked at it from all sides, and smiled contentedly.