could cast out devils. The respect for him grew, but Rabbi
Gershon was incredulous, saying such things could only be done by a
scholar; and, becoming again out of patience with this ignorant
incubus upon his honorable house, he bought his sister a small inn in
a village far away on the border of a forest. While his wife managed
the inn, the Baal Shem built himself a hut in the forest and retired
there to study the Law day and night; only on the Sabbath did he go
out, dressed in white, and many ablutions did he make, as becomes the
pure and the holy.

It was here that he reached his thirty-sixth year, but still he did
not reveal himself, for he had not meditated sufficiently nor found
out his first apostles. But in his forty-second year he began freely
to speak and to gather disciples, wandering about Podolia and
Wallachia, and teaching by discourse and parable, crossing streams by
spreading his mantle upon the waters, and saving his disciples from
freezing in the wintry frosts by touching the trees with his
finger-tips, so that they burnt without being consumed.

And now he was become the chief of a mighty sect, that ramified
everywhere, and the head of a school of prophets and wonder-workers to
whom he had unveiled the secret of the Name.

IV

So strange and marvellous a story, so full of minute detail, and for
the possible truth of which my Cabalistic studies had prepared me,
roused in me again the ever-smouldering hope of becoming expert in
these traditional practices of our nation. Why should not I, like
other Rabbis, have the key of the worlds? Why should not I, too,
fashion a fine fat calf on the Friday and eat it for my Sabbath meal?
or create a soulless monster to wait upon me hand and foot? The
Talmudical subtleties had kept me long enough wandering in a blind
maze. I would go forth in search of light. I would gird up my loins
and take my staff in my hand and seek the fountain-head of wisdom, the
great Master of the Name himself; I would fall at his feet and beseech
him to receive me among his pupils.

Travelling was easy enough:--in every town a Beth-Hamidrash into which
the wanderer would first make his way; in every town hospitable
entertainers who would board and lodge a man of learning like myself,
rejoicing at the honor. Even in the poorest villages I might count
upon black bread and sheep's cheese and a bed of fir branches. But
when I came to make inquiries I found that the village in Volhynia,