es which seemed to justify
the popular supposition. There could be no doubt, for example, that
when at the conclusion of the synagogue service the feminine stream
from the women's gallery poured out to mingle with the issuing males,
these two atoms drifted together with unnatural celerity. It appeared
to be established beyond question that on the preceding Feast of
Tabernacles the _Bube_ had lent and practically abandoned to the
hunchback's use the ritual palm-branch he was too poor to afford. Of
course this might only have been gratitude, inasmuch as a fortnight
earlier on the solemn New Year Day when, by an untimely decree, the
grandmother lay ill abed, Yossel had obtained possession of the
_Shofar_, and leaving the synagogue had gone to blow it to her. He had
blown the holy horn--with due regard to the proprieties--in the
downstairs room of her cottage so that she above had heard it, and
having heard it could breakfast. It was a performance that charity
reasonably required for a disabled fellow-creature, and yet what
medieval knight had found a more delicate way of trumpeting his
mistress's charms? Besides, how had Yossel known that the heroine was
ill? His eye must have roved over the women's gallery, and
disentangled her absence even from the huddled mass of weeping and
swaying womanhood.

One day came the crowning item of evidence. The grandmother had
actually asked the village postman to oblige her by delivering a
brown parcel at Yossel's lodgings. The postman was not a Child of the
Covenant, but Yossel's landlady was, and within an hour all Jewry knew
that Yenta had sent Yossel a phylacteries-bag--the very symbol of love
offered by a maiden to her bridegroom. Could shameless passion further
go?

III

The artist, at least, determined it should go no further. He put on
his hat, and went to find Yossel Mandelstein. But Yossel was not to be
found so easily, and the artist's resolution strengthened with each
false scent. Yossel was ultimately run to earth, or rather to Heaven,
in the _Beth Hamedrash_, where he was shaking himself studiously over
a Babylonian folio, in company with a motley assemblage of youths and
greybeards equally careless of the demands of life. The dusky home of
holy learning seemed an awkward place in which to broach the subject
of love. In a whisper he besought the oscillating student to come
outside. Yossel started up in agitation.

'Ah, your grandmother is dying,' he divined, with wha