ent as a shadow. That
year they all led a dismal life. The elder children, girls, went out to
service in the neighboring towns, to make their own way among strangers.
The peasants had become sharper and worse than formerly, and the smith's
strength was not what it had been. So his wife resolved to send the two
men of the family, Mattes and Feivke, to a Minyan this Yom Kippur.
Maybe, if _two_ went, God would not be able to resist them, and would
soften His heart.

One morning, therefore, Mattes the smith washed, donned his mended
Sabbath cloak, went to the window, and blinked through it with his red
and swollen eyes. It was the Eve of the Day of Atonement. The room was
well-warmed, and there was a smell of freshly-stewed carrots. The
smith's wife went out to seek Feivke through the village, and brought
him home dishevelled and distracted, and all of a glow. She had torn him
away from an early morning of excitement and delight such as could
never, never be again. Mikita, the son of the village elder, had put his
father's brown colt into harness for the first time. The whole
contingent of village boys had been present to watch the fiery young
animal twisting between the shafts, drawing loud breaths into its
dilated and quivering nostrils, looking wildly at the surrounding boys,
and stamping impatiently, as though it would have liked to plow away the
earth from under its feet. And suddenly it had given a bound and started
careering through the village with the cart behind it. There was a
glorious noise and commotion! Feivke was foremost among those who, in a
cloud of dust and at the peril of their life, had dashed to seize the
colt by the reins.

His mother washed him, looked him over from the low-set leather hat down
to his great, black feet, stuffed a packet of food into his hands, and
said:

"Go and be a good and devout boy, and God will forgive you."

She stood on the threshold of the house, and looked after her two men
starting for a distant Minyan. The bearing of seven children had aged
and weakened the once hard, obstinate woman, and, left standing alone in
the doorway, watching her poor, barefoot, perverse-natured boy on his
way to present himself for the first time before God, she broke down by
the Mezuzeh and wept.

Silently, step by step, Feivke followed his father between the desolate
stubble fields. It was a good ten miles' walk to the large village where
the Minyan assembled, and the fear and the wonder