198 ROSENTHAL
was Moisheh Chalfon's voice. The voice was low, sweet, and sad. Berel gave a side glance at where Moisheh Chalfon was standing, and it seemed to him that Moisheh Chalfon was doing the same to him, only Moisheh Chalfon was looking not into his eyes, but deep into his heart, and there reading the word Thief! And Moisheh Chalfon is permitting the people to pray together with him, Berel the thief!
"Mercy, mercy, compassionate God!" cried Berel's heart in its despair.
They had concluded Maariv, recited the first four chapters of the Psalms and the Song of Unity, and the people went home, to lay in new strength for the morrow.
There remained only a few, who spent the greater part of the night repeating Psalms, intoning the Mish- nah, and so on; they snatched an occasional doze on the bare floor overlaid with a whisp of hay, an old cloak under their head. Berel also stayed the night in the house-of-study. He sat down in a corner, in robe and Tallis, and began reciting Psalms with a pleasing pathos, and he went on until overtaken by sleep. At first he resisted, he took a nice pinch of snuff, rubbed his eyes, collected his thoughts, but it was no good. The covers of the book of Psalms seemed to have been greased, for they continually slipped from his grasp, the printed lines had grown crooked and twisted, his head felt dreadfully heavy, and his eyelids clung together; his nose was forever drooping towards the book of Psalms. He made every effort to keep awake, started up every
