in the beginnings he seemed to learn with
rare ease, he often slipped away into the forest that bordered the
village, and there his teacher would find him after a long search,
sitting fearlessly in some leafy glade. His dislike for the customary
indoor studies became so marked that at last he was set down as
stupid, and allowed to follow his own vagrant courses. No one
understood that the spirits of Heaven were his teachers.

As he grew older, he was given a post as assistant to the
school-master, but his office was not to teach--how could such an
ignorant lad teach?--but to escort the children from their homes to
the synagogue and thence to the school. On the way he taught them
solemn hymns, which he had composed and which he sang with them, and
the sweet voices of the children reached Heaven. And God was as
pleased with them as with the singing of the Levites in the Temple,
and it was a pleasing time in Heaven. But Satan, fearing lest his
power on earth would thereby be lessened, disguised himself as a
werwolf, which used to appear before the childish procession and put
it to flight. The parents thereupon kept their children at home, and
the services of song were silenced. But Israel, recalling his father's
dying counsel, persuaded the parents to entrust the children to him
once more. Again the werwolf bounded upon the singing children, but
Israel routed him with his club.

In his fourteenth year the supposed unlettered Israel was appointed
caretaker in the Beth-Hamidrash, where the scholars considered him the
proverbial ignoramus who "spells Noah with seven mistakes." He dozed
about the building all day and got a new reputation for laziness, but
at night when the school-room was empty and the students asleep,
Israel took down the Holy Books; and all the long night he pored over
the sacred words. Now it came to pass that, in a far-off city, a
certain holy man, Rabbi Adam, who had in his possession celestial
manuscripts (which had only before him been revealed to Abraham our
Father, and to Joshua, the son of Nun) told his son on his death-bed
that he was unworthy to inherit them. But he was to go to the town of
Ukop and deliver them to a certain man named Israel whom he would find
there, and who would instruct him, if he proved himself fit. After his
father's death the son duly journeyed to Ukop and lodged with the
treasurer of the synagogue, who one day asked him the purpose of his
visit.

"I am in search of a wif