. It probably
made no great impression on his mind. After all, what did it mean,
exactly? Killed? and the question slipped out of his head unanswered,
together with the Rebbe, who was gradually forgotten.

And then the real horror began. They were two days hiding away in the
bath-house--he and some other little boys and a few older
people--without food, without drink, without Father and Mother. Meyerl
was not allowed to get out and go home, and once, when he screamed, they
nearly suffocated him, after which he sobbed and whimpered, unable to
stop crying all at once. Now and then he fell asleep, and when he woke
everything was just the same, and all through the terror and the misery
he seemed to hear only one word, Goyim, which came to have a very
definite and terrible meaning for him. Otherwise everything was in a
maze, and as far as seeing goes, he really saw nothing at all.

Later, when they came out again, nobody troubled about him, or came to
see after him, and a stranger took him home. And neither his father nor
his mother had a word to say to him, any more than if he had just come
home from Cheder as on any other day.

Everything in the house was broken, they had twisted his father's arm
and bruised his face. His mother lay on the bed, her fair hair tossed
about, and her eyes half-closed, her face pale and stained, and
something about her whole appearance so rumpled and sluttish--it
reminded one of a tumbled bedquilt. His father walked up and down the
room in silence, looking at no one, his bound arm in a white sling, and
when Meyerl, conscious of some invisible calamity, burst out crying, his
father only gave him a gloomy, irritated look, and continued to span the
room as before.

In about three weeks' time they sailed for America. The sea was very
rough during the passage, and his mother lay the whole time in her
berth, and was very sick. Meyerl was quite fit, and his father did
nothing but pace the deck, even when it poured with rain, till they came
and ordered him down-stairs.

Meyerl never knew exactly what happened, but once a Gentile on board the
ship passed a remark on his father, made fun of him, or something--and
his father drew himself up, and gave the other a look--nothing more than
a look! And the Gentile got such a fright that he began crossing
himself, and he spit out, and his lips moved rapidly. To tell the truth,
Meyerl was frightened himself by the contraction of his father's mouth,
the gri