length on the grass, and murmurs, "Good! good!"

At last he is silent, and listens to the quiet rustle of the trees. It
seems to him that the trees also wonder at his coming so soon, and he
looks at them beseechingly, as though he would say:

"Trees--you, too! I couldn't help it ... it drew me...."

And soon he fancies that the trees have understood everything, and
murmur, "Good, good!"

And Avrohom already feels at home in the orchard. He rises from the
ground, and goes to every tree in turn, as though to make its
acquaintance. Then he considers the hut that stands in the middle of the
orchard.

It has fallen in a little certainly, but Avrohom is all the better
pleased with it. He is not particularly fond of new, strong things, a
building resembling a ruin is somehow much more to his liking. Such a
ruin is inwardly full of secrets, whispers, and melodies. There the
tears fall quietly, while the soul yearns after something that has no
name and no existence in time or space. And Avrohom creeps into the
fallen-in hut, where it is dark and where there are smells of another
world. He draws himself up into a ball, and remains hid from everyone.

* * * * *

But to remain hid from the world is not so easy. At first it can be
managed. So long as the fruit is ripening, he needs no one, and no one
needs him. When one of his children brings him food, he exchanges a few
words with it, asks what is going on at home, and how the mother is, and
he feels he has done his duty, if, when obliged to go home, he spends
there Friday night and Saturday morning. That over, and the hot stew
eaten, he returns to the orchard, lies down under a tree, opens the
Tales of Jerusalem, goes to sleep reading a fantastical legend, dreams
of the Western Wall, Mother Rachel's Grave, the Cave of Machpelah, and
other holy, quiet places--places where the air is full of old stories
such as are given, in such easy Hebrew, in the Tales of Jerusalem.

But when the fruit is ripe, and the trees begin to bend under the burden
of it, Avrohom must perforce leave his peaceful world, and become a
trader.

When the first wind begins to blow in the orchard, and covers the ground
thereof with apples and pears, Avrohom collects them, makes them into
heaps, sorts them, and awaits the market-women with their loud tongues,
who destroy all the peace and quiet of his Garden of Eden.

On Sabbath he would like to rest, but of a Sabbath the