They came to the Eruv, the Rav looked in all his pockets, found his
handkerchief, tied it round his neck, and glanced at his son with a kind
of prayer in his eye. Sholem tied his handkerchief round his neck.

When they were outside the town, the old man coughed once and again and
said:

"What is all this?"

But Sholem was determined not to answer a word, and his father had to
summon all his courage to continue:

"What is all this? Eh? Sabbath-breaking! It is--"

He coughed and was silent.

They were walking over a great, broad meadow, and Sholem had his gaze
fixed on a horse that was moving about with hobbled legs, while the Rav
shaded his eyes with one hand from the beams of the setting sun.

"How can anyone break the Sabbath? Come now, is it right? Is it a thing
to do? Just to go and break the Sabbath! I knew Hebrew grammar, and
could write Hebrew, too, once upon a time, but break the Sabbath! Tell
me yourself, Sholem, what you think! When you have bad thoughts, how is
it you don't come to your father? I suppose I am your father, ha?" the
old man suddenly fired up. "Am I your father? Tell me--no? Am I perhaps
_not_ your father?"

"For I _am_ his father," he reflected proudly. "That I certainly am,
there isn't the smallest doubt about it! The greatest heretic could not
deny it!"

"You come to your father," he went on with more decision, and falling
into a Gemoreh chant, "and you tell him _all_ about it. What harm can it
do to tell him? No harm whatever. I also used to be tempted by bad
thoughts. Therefore I began driving to the Rebbe of Libavitch. One
mustn't let oneself go! Do you hear me, Sholem? One mustn't let oneself
go!"

The last words were long drawn out, the Rav emphasizing them with his
hands and wrinkling his forehead. Carried away by what he was saying, he
now felt all but sure that Sholem had not begun to be a heretic.

"You see," he continued very gently, "every now and then we come to a
stumbling-block, but all the same, we should not--"

Meantime, however, the manuscript folio of verses had been slipping out
from under Sholem's Four-Corners, and here it fell to the ground. The
Rav stood staring, as though startled out of a sweet dream by the cry of
"fire." He quivered from top to toe, and seized his earlocks with both
hands. For there could be no doubt of the fact that Sholem had now
broken the Sabbath a second time--by carrying the folio outside the town
limit. And worse still, he had