t seemed a
lover's inaccuracy. 'I will come and pray at once.'

'No, no, she is not dying,' said Schneemann hastily, adding in a grim
murmur, 'unless of love.'

'Oh, then, it is not about your grandmother?'

'No--that is to say, yes.' It seemed more difficult than ever to
plunge into the delicate subject. To refer plumply to the courtship
would, especially if it were not true, compromise his grandmother
and, incidentally, her family. Yet, on the other hand, he longed to
know what lay behind all this philandering, which in any case _had_
been compromising her, and he felt it his duty as his grandmother's
protector and the representative of the family to ask Yossel straight
out whether his intentions were honourable.

He remembered scenes in novels and plays in which undesirable suitors
were tackled by champions of convention--scenes in which they were
even bought off and started in new lands. Would not Yossel go to a new
land, and how much would he want over and above his fare? He led the
way without.

'You have lived here all your life, Yossel, have you not?' he said,
when they were in the village street.

'Where else shall a man live?' answered Yossel.

'But have you never had any curiosity to see other parts? Would you
not like to go and see Vienna?'

A little gleam passed over Yossel's dingy face. 'No, not Vienna--it is
an unholy place--but Prague! Prague where there is a great Rabbi and
the old, old underground synagogue that God has preserved throughout
the generations.'

'Well, why not go and see it?' suggested the artist.

Yossel stared. 'Is it for that you tore me away from my Talmud?'

'N--no, not exactly for that,' stammered Schneemann. 'Only seeing you
glued to it gave me the idea what a pity it was that you should not
travel and sit at the feet of great Rabbis?'

'But how shall I travel to them? My crutches cannot walk so far as
Prague.'

'Oh, I'd lend you the money to ride,' said the artist lightly.

'But I could never repay it.'

'You can repay me in Heaven. You can give me a little bit of your _Gan
Iden_' (Paradise).

Yossel shook his head. 'And after I had the fare, how should I live?
Here I make a few _Gulden_ by writing letters for people to their
relatives in America; in Prague everybody is very learned; they don't
need a scribe. Besides, if I cannot die in Palestine I might as well
die where I was born.'

'But why can't you die in Palestine?' cried the artist with a new
burst