_That_ night no one left the Shool.

After the prayers they recited the Hymn of Unity, and after that the
Psalms, and then chapters from the Mishnah, and then ethical books....

And I also stand among the congregation and pray, and my eyelids are
heavy as lead, and my heart beats like a hammer.

"U-Malochim yechofezun--and the angels fly around."

And I fancy I see them flying in the Shool, up and down, up and down.
And among them I see the bad angel with the thousand eyes, full of eyes
from head to feet.

That night no one left the Shool, but early in the morning there were
some missing--two of the congregation had fallen during the night, and
died before our eyes, and lay wrapped in their prayer-scarfs and white
robes--nothing was lacking for their journey from the living to the
dead.

They kept on bringing messages into the Shool from the Gass, but nobody
wanted to listen or to ask questions, lest he should hear what had
happened in his own house. No matter how long I live, I shall never
forget that night, and all I saw and heard.

But the Day of Atonement, the day that followed, was more awful still.

And even now, when I shut my eyes, I see the whole picture, and I think
I am standing once more among the people in the Shool.

It is Atonement Day in the afternoon.

The Rabbi stands on the platform in the centre of the Shool, tall and
venerable, and there is a fascination in his noble features. And there,
in the corner of the Shool, stands a boy who never takes his eyes off
the Rabbi's face.

In truth I never saw a nobler figure.

The Rabbi is old, seventy or perhaps eighty years, but tall and straight
as a fir-tree. His long beard is white like silver, but the thick, long
hair of his head is whiter still, and his face is blanched, and his lips
are pale, and only his large black eyes shine and sparkle like the eyes
of a young lion.

I stood in awe of him when I was a little child. I knew he was a man of
God, one of the greatest authorities in the Law, whose advice was sought
by the whole world.

I knew also that he inclined to leniency in all his decisions, and that
none dared oppose him.

The sight I saw that day in Shool is before my eyes now.

The Rabbi stands on the platform, and his black eyes gleam and shine in
the pale face and in the white hair and beard.

The Additional Service is over, and the people are waiting to hear what
the Rabbi will say, and one is afraid to draw one's breath