like arrows
from bows. When they got to the village, this was the scene which
confronted them:--

Nachman Veribivker's house was surrounded by peasants, men and women,
boys and girls. The clerk, Kuratchka, and Opanas the village elder and
his wife, and the magistrate and the policeman--all were there, talking
and shouting together. Nachman and his wife were in the middle of the
crowd, arguing and waving their hands. Nachman was bent low and was
wiping the perspiration from his face with both hands. By his side stood
his older children, gloomy and downcast. Suddenly, the whole picture
changed. Some one pointed to the two children. The whole crowd,
including the village elder and the magistrate, the policeman and the
clerk, stood still, like petrified. Only Nachman looked at the people,
straightened out his back, and laughed. His wife threw out her hands and
began to weep.

The village elder and the clerk and the magistrate and their wives
pounced on the children.

"Where were you, you so-and-so?"

"Where were we? We were down by the mill."

* * *

The two friends, Feitel as well as Fedoka, got punished without knowing
why.

Feitel's father flogged him with his cap. "A boy should know." What
should a boy know? Out of pity his mother took him from his father's
hands. She gave him a few smacks on her own account, and at once washed
him and dressed him in his new trousers--the only new garment he had for
the Passover. She sighed. Why? Afterwards, he heard his father saying to
his mother: "May the Lord help us to get over this Festival in peace.
The Passover ought to have gone before it came." Feitel could not
understand why the Passover should have gone before it came. He worried
himself about this. He did not understand why his father had flogged
him, and his mother smacked him. He did not understand what sort of a
Passover eve it was this day in the world.

* * *

If Feitel's Jewish brains could not solve the problems, certainly
Fedoka's peasant brains could not. First of all his mother took hold of
him by the flaxen hair, and pulled it. Then she gave him a few good
smacks in the face. These he accepted like a philosopher. He was used to
them. And he heard his mother talking with the peasants. They told
curious tales of a child that the Jews of the town had enticed on the
Passover eve, hidden in a cellar a day and a night, and were about to
make away with, when his cries were heard by passers-by. They rescued