l not regret it!"

And he drew a picture for them of the sort of people the children would
become.

But it was no use.

"_We_ haven't got to manage the world," they answered him. "We have
lived without all that, and our children will live as we are living now.
We have no call to make Gentiles of them!"

"We know, we know! People needn't come to us with stories," they would
say in another house. "We don't intend to sell our souls!" was the cry
in a third.

"And who says I have sold mine?" Reb Shloimeh would ask sharply.

"How should we know? Besides, who was talking of you?" they answered
with a sweet smile.

Reb Shloimeh reached home tired and depressed. The old wife had a shock
on seeing him.

"Dear Lord!" she exclaimed, wringing her hands. "What is the matter with
you? What makes you look like that?"

The teachers, who were there waiting for him, asked no questions: they
had only to look at his ghastly appearance to know what had happened.

Reb Shloimeh sank into his arm-chair.

"Nothing," he said, looking sideways, but meaning it for the teachers.

"Nothing is nothing!" and they betook themselves to consoling him. "We
will find something else to do, get hold of some other children, or else
wait a little--they'll ask to be taken back presently."

Reb Shloimeh did not hear them. He had let his head sink on to his
breast, turned his look sideways, and thoughts he could not piece
together, fragments of thoughts, went round and round in the drooping
head.

"Why? Why?" He asked himself over and over. "To do such a thing to _me_!
Well, there you are! There you have it!--You've lived your life--like a
man!--"

His heart felt heavy and hurt him, and his brain grew warm, warm. In one
minute there ran through his head the impression which his so nearly
finished life had made on him of late, and immediately after it all the
plans he had thought out for setting to right his whole past life by
means of the little bit left him. And now it was all over and done!
"Why? Why?" he asked himself without ceasing, and could not understand
it.

He felt his old heart bursting with love to all men. It beat more and
more strongly, and would not cease from loving; and he would fain have
seen everyone so happy, so happy! He would have worked with his last bit
of strength, he would have drawn his last breath for the cause to which
he had devoted himself. He is no longer conscious of the whereabouts of
his limbs, he feels his