Hardly had the greeting left his lips when a wild flying figure in a rich furred coat dashed round the corner and almost into his arms, half-spilling the wine.
'In God's name, Reb Aaron!' panted the refugee, and fell half-dead across the threshold.
The physician dragged him hastily within, and slammed the door, just as two moujiks—drunken leaders of the chase—lurched past. The mother, who had sprung forward at the sound of the fall, frenziedly shot the bolts, and in another instant the hue and cry tore past the house and dwindled in the distance.
Ben Amram raised the white bloody face, and put Elijah's goblet to the lips. The strange visitor drained it to the dregs, the clustered children looking on dazedly. As the head fell back, it caught the light from the festive candles of the Passover board. The face was bare of hair; even the side curls were gone.
'Maimon the Meshummad!' cried the mother, shuddering back. 'You have saved the Apostate.'
'Did I not say the door must be opened?' replied Ben Amram gently. Then a smile of humour twitched his lips, and he smoothed his white beard. 'Maimon is the only Jew abroad to-night, and how were the poor drunken peasants to know he was baptized?'
Despite their thrill of horror at the traitor, David and his brothers and sisters were secretly pleased to see Elijah's goblet empty at last.
III
Next morning the Passover liturgy rang jubilantly through the vast, crowded synagogue. No violence had been reported, despite the passage of a noisy mob. The Ghetto, then, was not to be laid waste with fire and sword, and the worshippers within the moss-grown, turreted quadrangle drew free breath, and sent it out in great shouts of rhythmic prayer, as they swayed in their fringed shawls, with quivering hands of supplication. The Ark of the Law at one end of the great building, overbrooded by the Ten Commandments and the perpetual light, stood open to mark a supreme moment of devotion. Ben Amram had been given the honour of uncurtaining the shrine, and its richly clad scrolls of all sizes, with their silver bells and pointers, stood revealed in solemn splendour.
Through the ornate grating of their gallery the gaily-clad women looked down on the rocking figures, while the grace-notes of the cantor on his central daïs, and the harmoniously interjected 'poms' of his male ministrants flew up to their ears, as though they were indeed angels on high. Suddenly, over the blended passion of cantor and congregation, an ominous sound broke from without—the complex clatter of cavalry, the curt ring of military orders. The swaying figures turned suddenly as under another wind, the women's eyes grew astare and ablaze with terror. The great doors flew open, and—oh, awful, incredible sight—a squadron of Cossacks rode slowly in, two abreast, with a heavy thud of hoofs on the sacred floor, and a rattle of ponderous sabres. Their black conical caps and long beards, their great side-buttoned coats, and pockets stuffed with protrusive cartridges, their prancing horses, their leaded knouts, struck a blood-curdling discord amid the prayerful, white-wrapped figures. The rumble of worship ceased, the cantor, suddenly isolated, was heard soaring ecstatically; then he, too, turned his head uneasily and his roulade died in his throat.