is dead a long
time ago."

A mysterious smile played about the merchant's thin lips.

"I know how. Sometimes God permits those who have died to talk with
and teach their grandchildren, Freida," he continued, after another
pause, "do you know what the Senior did when he saw that Todros would
eat him up, and that he would die before the good times would come?"

"No, what did he do?"

"He shut himself up in a room, and he sat there without eating or
drinking or sleeping, and--he only wrote. And what did he write? That
nobody yet knows, because he hid what he had written, and when he
felt that his end was near, he said to his sons: 'I have written down
everything that I have known and felt, and what I intended to do; but
I have hidden my writings from you, because now such times are at
hand that all is useless for the present. The Todros rule, and they
will rule for a long time, and they will do this that neither you,
nor your sons, nor your grandsons will care to see my writing, and
even were they to see it, they would tear it into pieces, and scatter
it to the winds for annihilation, ant they would say that Michael the
Senior was kofrim (heretic), and they would excommunicate him as they
did the second Moses. But there will come a time when my
great-grandson will wish for what I had written--to ask for guidance
in his thoughts and actions in order to free the Jews from Todros'
captivity, and to lead them to that sun from which the other nations
receive the warmth. Thus, my great-grandson who desires to have my
writings, will find the writings, and you have only to tell the
eldest son of that family on your deathbed that it exists, and that
there are many wise things written down. It must be thus from
generation to generation. I command you thus. Remember to be obedient
to this one, whose soul deserved to be immortal! (It was the teaching
of Moses Majmonides, in regard to the immortality of the soul, that
every man, according to the culture of his mind and moral perfection,
could attain immortality, and that annihilation was the punishment
for misdeeds)."

Hersh stopped speaking. Freida sat motionless looking into her
husband's face with intense curiosity.

"Shall you search for that writing?" she asked softly.

"I shall search for it," said her husband, "and I shall find it,
because I am that great-grandson of whom Michael Senior spoke when
dying. I shall find that writing--you must help me to find it."

The w