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ing down. Before he came to the Eighteen Benedictions, he gave another look at his son, and it seemed madness to think of him as a heretic, to think that Sholem ought by rights to be thrown into a ditch and stoned to death.
Sholem, for his part, was conscious for the first time of his father's will: for the first time in his life, he not only loved his father, but was in very truth subject to him.
The flaming red sun dropt quietly down behind the horizon just before the old man broke down with emo- tion over "Thou art One," and took the sky and the earth to witness that God is One and His Name is One, and His people Israel one nation on the earth, to whom He gave the Sabbath for a rest and an inheritance. The Rav wept and swallowed his tears, and his eyes were closed. Sholem, on the other hand, could not take his eye off the manuscript that stuck out of his father's girdle, and it was all he could do not to snatch it and run away.
They said nothing on the way home in the dark, they might have been coming from a funeral. But Sholem's heart beat fast, for he knew his father would throw the manuscript into the fire, where it would be burnt, and when they came to the door of their house, he stopped his father, and said in a voice eloquent of tears :
"Give it me back, Tatishe, please give it me back !"
And the Rav gave it him back without looking him in the face, and said :
"Look here, only don't tell Mother! She is ill, she mustn't be upset. She is ill, not of you be it spoken !"
