Star, and his voice almost deserted him.
"That can't be done in such a hurry, my dear Jack; one can't tell--one
can never tell, you know--and I'm a lone man. Veitel Oxhead has the
key, and he is now standing in the corner mumbling his eighteen-prayer,
and he must not be interrupted. And Jaekel the Fool is here too, but he
is making water; I'm a lone man."

"The devil take the Jews!" cried the drummer, and, laughing loudly at
this, his one and only joke, he trudged off to the guard-room and lay
down on the bench.

While the Rabbi stood with his wife before the locked gate, there rose
from behind it a snarling, nasal, somewhat mocking voice. "Starry--don't
groan so much. Take the keys from Oxheady's coat pockets, or else go
stick your nose in the keyhole, and so unlock the gate. The people have
been standing and waiting a long time." "People!" cried the anxious
voice of the man called Nose Star, "I thought there was only one! I beg
you, Fool--dear Jaekel Fool--look out and see who is there."

A small, well-grated window in the gate opened, and there appeared in
it a yellow cap with two horns, and the funny, wrinkled, and twisted
jest-maker's face of Jaekel the Fool. The window was immediately shut
again, and he cried angrily, "Open the gate--it is only a man and a
woman."

"A man and a woman!" groaned Nose Star. "Yes, but when the gate's opened
the woman will take her skirt off, and become a man; and then there'll
be two men, and there are only three of us!"

"Don't be a hare," replied Jaekel the Fool. "Be a man and show courage!"

"Courage!" cried Nose Star, laughing with bitter vexation. "Hare! Hare
is a bad comparison. The hare is an unclean animal. Courage! I was not
put here to be courageous, but cautious. When too many come I am to give
the alarm. But I alone cannot keep them back. My arm is weak, I have a
seton, and I'm a lone man. If one were to shoot at me, I should be a
dead man. Then that rich man, Mendel Reiss, would sit on the Sabbath at
his table, and wipe the raisin-sauce from his mouth, and rub his belly,
and perhaps say, 'Tall Nose Star was a brave fellow after all; if it had
not been for him, perhaps they would have burst open the gate. He let
himself be shot for us. He was a brave fellow; too bad that he's dead!'"

Here the voice became tender and tearful, but all at once it rose to a
hasty and almost angry tone. "Courage! and so that the rich Mendel Reiss
may wipe away the raisin-sauce from his