in Feivke's heart
increased all the way. He did not yet quite understand whither he was
being taken, and what was to be done with him there, and the impetus of
the brown colt's career through the village had not as yet subsided in
his head. Why had Father put on his black mended cloak? Why had he
brought a Tallis with him, and a white shirt-like garment? There was
certainly some hour of calamity and terror ahead, something was
preparing which had never happened before.

They went by the great Kozlov wood, wherein every tree stood silent and
sad for its faded and fallen leaves. Feivke dropped behind his father,
and stepped aside into the wood. He wondered: Should he run away and
hide in the wood? He would willingly stay there for the rest of his
life. He would foregather with Nasta, the barrel-maker's son, he of the
knocked-out eye; they would roast potatoes out in the wood, and now and
again, stolen-wise, milk the village cows for their repast. Let them
beat him as much as they pleased, let them kill him on the spot, nothing
should induce him to leave the wood again!

But no! As Feivke walked along under the silent trees and through the
fallen leaves, and perceived that the whole wood was filled through and
through with a soft, clear light, and heard the rustle of the leaves
beneath his step, a strange terror took hold of him. The wood had grown
so sparse, the trees so discolored, and he should have to remain in the
stillness alone, and roam about in the winter wind!

Mattes the smith had stopped, wondering, and was blinking around with
his sick eyes.

"Feivke, where are you?"

Feivke appeared out of the wood.

"Feivke, to-day you mustn't go into the wood. To-day God may yet--to-day
you must be a good boy," said the smith, repeating his wife's words as
they came to his mind, "and you must say Amen."

Feivke hung his head and looked at his great, bare, black feet. "But if
I don't know how," he said sullenly.

"It's no great thing to say Amen!" his father replied encouragingly.
"When you hear the other people say it, you can say it, too! Everyone
must say Amen, then God will forgive them," he added, recalling again
his wife and her admonitions.

Feivke was silent, and once more followed his father step by step. What
will they ask him, and what is he to answer? It seemed to him now that
they were going right over away yonder where the pale, scarcely-tinted
sky touched the earth. There, on a hill, sits a great, o