was a horse, but at the
selfsame time it was Moisheh Chalfon as well. Berel wondered: how is it
possible for it to be at once a horse and a man? But his own eyes told
him it was so. He wanted to dismount, but the horse bears him to a shop.
Here he climbed down and asked for a pound of sugar. Berel kept his eyes
on the scales, and--a fresh surprise! Where they should have been
weighing sugar, they were weighing his good and bad deeds. And the two
scales were nearly equally laden, and oscillated up and down in the
air....

Suddenly they threw a sheet of paper into the scale that held his bad
deeds. Berel looked to see--it was the hundred-ruble-note which he had
appropriated at Moisheh Chalfon's! But it was now much larger, bordered
with black, and the letters and numbers were red as fire. The piece of
paper was frightfully heavy, it was all two men could do to carry it to
the weighing-machine, and when they had thrown it with all their might
onto the scale, something snapped, and the scale went down, down, down.

At that moment a man sleeping at Berel's head stretched out a foot, and
gave Berel a kick in the head. Berel awoke.

Not far from him sat a grey-haired old Jew, huddled together, enfolded
in a Tallis and robe, repeating Psalms with a melancholy chant and a
broken, quavering voice.

Berel caught the words:

"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright:
For the end of that man is peace.
But the transgressors shall be destroyed together:
The latter end of the wicked shall be cut off...."

Berel looked round in a fright: Where is he? He had quite forgotten that
he had remained for the night in the house-of-study. He gazed round with
sleepy eyes, and they fell on some white heaps wrapped in robes and
prayer-scarfs, while from their midst came the low, hoarse, tearful
voices of two or three men who had not gone to sleep and were repeating
Psalms. Many of the candles were already sputtering, the wax was melting
into the sand, the flames rose and fell, and rose again, flaring
brightly.

And the pale moon looked in at the windows, and poured her silvery light
over the fantastic scene.

Berel grew icy cold, and a dreadful shuddering went through his limbs.

He had not yet remembered that he was spending the night in the
house-of-study.

He imagined that he was dead, and astray in limbo. The white heaps which
he sees are graves, actual graves, and there among the graves sit a few
sinful souls,