"Morejne," he moaned, "morejne, my daughters were growing up; it was necessary to marry them; I had no money to pay the taxes with for the whole year!"
"Get up and calm yourself," said Meir.
Shmul did not listen. With his lips sweeping the dusty boards, he kept on moaning.
"Morejne! save me. I am lost, body and soul."
"You have not lost your soul, Shmul. The Eternal will weigh your poverty against your sin; that is if you do not take the money with which bad people tempted you."
This time Shmul lifted his face from the floor. The lean and ashy-pale face, covered with dust and twitching with nervous terror, presented a picture of the deepest human misery.
He looked at Meir with despairing eyes, and pointing at the miserable room, he groaned:
"Morejne! how shall we be able to live without that money?"
Fully half-an-hour passed before Meir left the cottage, where the outcast Shmul accused himself, wailed and moaned in a voice that gradually became lower till it almost sank to a whisper. The ruddy glow from the street fell upon one corner of the dark entrance. There, coiled up between the goats, his head resting upon a projecting board, with the red light of the fire upon his face, slept Lejbele. Neither noise nor the glare of the fire, not even the lamentations of his unhappy father, had disturbed his innocent sleep among his friends, the goats.
Next morning an unusual stir prevailed amongst the inhabitants of the town. The common topic of all their conversation was the conflagration at the Kamionka estate. The whole house was reduced to ashes; nearly all the outbuildings had been burned down; the barns and ricks with all the year's harvest had been devoured by the flames.