out, the east flushes, a narrow pink stream flows lengthwise over his
head, and still the flame flickers onward into the town, enters his own
street. There is his house. The door, he sees, is open. Apparently he
forgot to shut it. And, lo and behold! the flame goes in, the flame goes
in at his own house door! He follows, and sees it disappear beneath the
bed. All are asleep. He goes softly up to the bed, stoops down, and sees
the flame spinning round underneath it, like a top, always in the same
place; takes his dressing-gown, and throws it down under the bed, and
covers up the flame. No one hears him, and now a golden morning beam
steals in through the chink in the shutter.

He sits down on the bed, and makes a vow not to say a word to anyone
till Sabbath is over--not half a word, lest it cause desecration of the
Sabbath. _She_ could never hold her tongue, and the children certainly
not; they would at once want to count the treasure, to know how much
there was, and very soon the secret would be out of the house and into
the Shool, the house-of-study, and all the streets, and people would
talk about his treasure, about luck, and people would not say their
prayers, or wash their hands, or say grace, as they should, and he would
have led his household and half the town into sin. No, not a whisper!
And he stretches himself out on the bed, and pretends to be asleep.

And this was his reward: When, after concluding the Sabbath, he stooped
down and lifted up the dressing-gown under the bed, there lay a sack
with a million of gulden, an almost endless number--the bed was a large
one--and he became one of the richest men in the place.

And he lived happily all the years of his life.

Only, his wife was continually bringing up against him: "Lord of the
World, how could a man have such a heart of stone, as to sit a whole
summer day and not say a word, not a word, not to his own wife, not one
single word! And there was I" (she remembers) "crying over my prayer as
I said God of Abraham--and crying so--for there wasn't a dreier left in
the house."

Then he consoles her, and says with a smile:

"Who knows? Perhaps it was all thanks to your 'God of Abraham' that it
went off so well."

IT IS WELL

You ask how it is that I remained a Jew? Whose merit it is?

Not through my own merits nor those of my ancestors. I was a
six-year-old Cheder boy, my father a countryman outside Wilna, a
householder in a small way.

No,