THREE WHO ATE 273
robes nothing was lacking for their journey from the living to the dead.
They kept on bringing messages into the Shool from the Gass, but nobody wanted to listen or to ask questions, lest he should hear what had happened in his own house. No matter how long I live, I shall never forget that night, and all I saw and heard.
But the Day of Atonement, the day that followed, was more awful still.
And even now, when I shut my eyes, I see the whole picture, and I think I am standing once more among the people in the Shool.
It is Atonement Day in the afternoon.
The Rabbi stands on the platform in the centre of the Shool, tall and venerable, and there is a fascination in his noble features. And there, in the corner of the Shool, stands a boy who never takes his eyes off the Rabbi's face.
In truth I never saw a nobler figure.
The Rabbi is old, seventy or perhaps eighty years, but tall and straight as a fir-tree. His long beard is white like silver, but the thick, long hair of his head is whiter still, and his face is blanched, and his lips are pale, and only his large black eyes shine and sparkle like the eyes of a young lion.
I stood in awe of him when I was a little child. I knew he was a man of God, one of the greatest authori- ties in the Law, whose advice was sought by the whole world.
I knew also that he inclined to leniency in all his decisions, and that none dared oppose him.
