I climbed up the wheel and plumped myself down between two flour-sacks. "Is it far?" I asked.
He smiled. "Nay, if it was far I should scarcely have asked you up."
Then we both fell silent. For my part, despite the jolting of the vehicle, the lift was grateful to my spent limbs, and the blue sky and the rustling leaves and the near prospect of at last seeing the Baal Shem contributed to lull me into a pleasant languor. But my torpor was not so deep as that into which my new friend appeared to fall, for though as we approached a village another vehicle dashed towards us, my shouts and the other driver's cries only roused him in time to escape losing a wheel.
"You must have been thinking of a knotty point of Torah (Holy Law)," said I.
"Knotty point," said he, shuddering; "it is Satan who ties those knots."
"Oho," said I, "though a Shochet, you do not seem fond of rabbinical learning."
"Where there is much study," he replied tersely, "there is little piety."
At this moment, appositely enough, we passed by the village Beth-Hamidrash, whence loud sounds of "pilpulistic" (wire-drawn) argument issued. The driver clapped his palms over his ears.
"It is such disputants," he cried with a grimace, "who delay the redemption of Israel from exile."
"How so?" said I.