CHAPTER XVII[ToC]
THE PRODIGAL SON
The New Year dawned upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it with growing pallor and perturbation.
'What is the matter, my dear?' asked the Reb anxiously.
'Oh, father,' she cried, 'read this! Bad news of Levi.'
A spasm of pain contorted the old man's furrowed countenance.
'Mention not his name!' he said harshly. 'He is dead.'
'He may be by now!' Hannah exclaimed agitatedly. 'You were right, Esther. He did join a strolling company, and now he is laid up with typhoid in the hospital in Stockbridge. One of his friends writes to tell us. He must have caught it in one of those insanitary dressing-rooms we were reading about.'
Esther trembled all over. The scene in the garret when the fatal telegram came announcing Benjamin's illness had never faded from her mind. She had an instant conviction that it was all over with poor Levi.