looks up at the sky. It is midnight. The
moon swims along so quietly and indifferently, the stars seem to frolic
and rock themselves like little children, and still Reb Selig hears, in
the "grandmother's" husky voice, "A girl!"

"Well, there will be no Kaddish! Verfallen!" he says, crossing the yard
again. "There's no getting it by force!"

But his trying to calm himself is useless; the fear that it should be a
girl only grows upon him. He loses patience, and goes back into the
house.

But the house is in a turmoil.

"What is it, eh?"

"A little boy! Tate, a boy! Tatinke, as surely may I be well!" with this
news the seven girls fall upon him with radiant faces.

"Eh, a little boy?" asked Reb Selig, as though bewildered, "eh? what?"

"A boy, Reb Selig, a Kaddish!" announced the "grandmother." "As soon as
I have bathed him, I will show him you!"

"A boy ... a boy ..." stammered Reb Selig in the same bewilderment, and
he leant against the wall, and burst into tears like a woman.

The seven girls took alarm.

"That is for joy," explained the "grandmother," "I have known that
happen before."

"A boy ... a boy!" sobbed Reb Selig, overcome with happiness, "a boy ...
a boy ... a Kaddish!"

* * * * *

The little boy received the name of Jacob, but he was called, by way of
a talisman, Alter.

Reb Selig was a learned man, and inclined to think lightly of such
protective measures; he even laughed at his Cheike for believing in such
foolishness; but, at heart, he was content to have it so. Who could tell
what might not be in it, after all? Women sometimes know better than
men.

By the time Alterke was three years old, Reb Selig's cough had become
worse, the sense of oppression on his chest more frequent. But he held
himself morally erect, and looked death calmly in the face, as though he
would say, "Now I can afford to laugh at you--I leave a Kaddish!"

"What do you think, Cheike," he would say to his wife, after a fit of
coughing, "would Alterke be able to say Kaddish if I were to die to-day
or to-morrow?"

"Go along with you, crazy pate!" Cheike would exclaim in secret alarm.
"You are going to live a long while! Is your cough anything new?"

Selig smiled, "Foolish woman, she supposes I am afraid to die. When one
leaves a Kaddish, death is a trifle."

Alterke was sitting playing with a prayer-book and imitating his father
at prayer, "A num-num--a num-num."

"Listen to him p