med the Hebrew rites for the dead, which his
neighbors taught him. He took a knife and made a deep gash in his
shabby coat; then he removed his shoes, seated himself on the floor,
and bowed his poor old head, tearless, benumbed.

The shop stared when the old man appeared after the prescribed three
days' absence. Even the Pole dared not come near him. A film seemed to
coat his glaring eye; deep wrinkles contracted his features, and his
muscular frame appeared to shrink even as one looked. From that day on,
he began to starve himself more than ever. The passion for sailing back
to Russia, "to die at home at last," lost but little of its original
intensity. Yet there was something now which by a feeble thread bound
him to the New World.

In a little mound on the Base Achaim, the "House of Life," under
a tombstone engraved with old Hebrew script, a part of himself lay
buried. But he kept his thoughts away from that mound. How long and
untiringly he kept on saving! Age gained on him with rapid strides.
He had little strength left for work, but his dream of home seemed
nearing its realization. Only a few more weeks, a few more months!
And the thought sent a glow of warmth to his frozen frame. He would
even condescend now to speak to his wife concerning the plans he had
formed for their future welfare, more especially when she revived her
pecuniary complaints.

"See what you have made of us, of the poor child," she often argued,
pointing to the almost grown grandson. "Since he left school, he works
for you, and what will be the end?"

At this, Zelig's heart would suddenly clutch, as if conscious of some
indistinct, remote fear. His answers touching the grandson were abrupt,
incoherent, as of one who replies to a question unintelligible to him
and is in constant dread lest his interlocutor should detect it.

Bitter misgivings concerning the boy began to mingle with the reveries
of the old man. At first, he hardly gave a thought to him. The boy grew
noiselessly. The ever-surging tide of secular studies that runs so high
on the East Side caught this boy in its wave. He was quietly preparing
himself for college. In his eagerness to accumulate the required sum,
Zelig paid little heed to what was going on around him; and now, on
the point of victory, he became aware with growing dread of something
abrewing out of the common. He sniffed suspiciously; and one evening
he overheard the boy talking to grandma about his hatred of Rus