COUNTEY FOLK 549
"It's no great thing to say Amen !" his father replied encouragingly. "When you hear the other people say it, you can say it, too! Everyone must say Amen, then God will forgive them," he added, recalling again his wife and her admonitions.
Feivke was silent, and once more followed his father step by step. What will they ask him, and what is he to answer? It seemed to him now that they were go- ing right over away yonder where the pale, scarcely- tinted sky touched the earth. There, on a hill, sits a great, old God in a large sheepskin cloak. Everyone goes up to him, and He asks them questions, which they have to answer, and He shakes His head to and fro inside the sheepskin collar. And what is he, a wild, ignorant little boy, to answer this great, old God ?
Feivke had committed a great many transgressions concerning which his mother was constantly admonish- ing him, but now he was thinking only of two great transgressions committed recently, of which his mother knew nothing. One with regard to Anishka the beggar. Anishka was known to the village, as far back as it could remember, as an old, blind beggar, who went the round of the villages, feeling his way with a long stick. And one day Feivke and another boy played him a trick: they placed a ladder in his way, and Anishka stumbled and fell, hurting his nose. Some peas- ants had come up and caught Feivke. Anishka sat in the middle of the road with blood on his face, wept bit- terly, and declared that God would not forget his blood that had been spilt. The peasants had given the little Zhydek a sound thrashing, but Feivke felt
