st be shorn off, but what is to be done? It is a rule,
a law of our religion, and after all we are Jews. We might even, God
forbid, have a child conceived to us in sin, may Heaven watch over and
defend us."

She said nothing, but remained resting lightly in his arm, and his face
lay in the stream of her silky-black hair with its cool odor. In that
hair dwelt a soul, and he was conscious of it. He looked at her long and
earnestly, and in his look was a prayer, a pleading with her for her own
happiness, for her happiness and his.

"Shall I?" ... he asked, more with his eyes than with his lips.

She said nothing, she only bent her head over his lap.

He went quickly to the drawer, and took out a pair of scissors.

She laid her head in his lap, and gave her hair as a ransom for their
happiness, still half-asleep and dreaming. The scissors squeaked over
her head, shearing off one lock after the other, and Channehle lay and
dreamt through the night.

On waking next morning, she threw a look into the glass which hung
opposite the bed. A shock went through her, she thought she had gone
mad, and was in the asylum! On the table beside her lay her shorn hair,
dead!

She hid her face in her hands, and the little room was filled with the
sound of weeping!

A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER

The market lies foursquare, surrounded on every side by low, whitewashed
little houses. From the chimney of the one-storied house opposite the
well and inhabited by the baker, issues thick smoke, which spreads low
over the market-place. Beneath the smoke is a flying to and fro of white
pigeons, and a tall boy standing outside the baker's door is whistling
to them.

Equally opposite the well are stalls, doors laid across two chairs and
covered with fruit and vegetables, and around them women, with
head-kerchiefs gathered round their weary, sunburnt faces in the hottest
weather, stand and quarrel over each other's wares.

"It's certainly worth my while to stand quarrelling with _you_! A tramp
like you keeping a stall!"

Yente, a woman about forty, whose wide lips have just uttered the above,
wears a large, dirty apron, and her broad, red face, with the composed
glance of the eyes under the kerchief, gives support to her words.

"Do you suppose you have got the Almighty by the beard? He is mine as
well as yours!" answers Taube, pulling her kerchief lower about her
ears, and angrily stroking down her hair.

A new customer approached Yente'