"Of—of—the woods . . . ."
"Ha—ha—ha—I have good dogs with the flock!"
I wanted a Mezuzah, some talisman, a protection against evil spirits, and that fool offered me barking dogs! All at once he whistled loudly, and his dogs set up a barking that nearly made me deaf. The flock was panic-stricken. I thought at first that the earth had opened her mouth, and packs of dogs were breaking out from hell.
The noise the dogs made broke the awful hush of the night, and my fears were somewhat dispelled.
But there were other reasons why I liked to hear the dogs bark. I was myself the owner of a dog, which I had raised on the sly in my father's house. Imagine the horror of my brother Solomon, who as a real Jewish lad was very much afraid of a dog!
In that way we spent a few days, hiding under the open sky, disguised in our Shaatnez clothes. Soon enough the time came when my parents had to understand what they would not understand when the rabbi wanted to give me up in place of the famous Avremel. For they caught my oldest brother Simhah, may he rest in peace. And Simhah was a privileged person; he was not only the Shohet of the community and a great Lamdan, but also a married man, and the father of four children to boot. Only then, it seems, my parents understood what the rabbi had understood before: that it was not fair to deliver up my brother when I, the ignorant fellow, the lover of dogs, might take his place. A few days later mother came and took us home. As to the rest, others had seen to it.—
Here the old man stopped for a while. He was puffing and snorting, tired from the hard walk uphill. Having reached the summit, he turned around, looked downhill, straightened up, and took a deep breath. "This is an excellent way of getting rid of your tired feeling," said he. "Turn around and look downhill: then your strength will return to you."—
IV
We had left the coach far behind, and had to wait till it overtook us. Meanwhile I looked downhill into the valley below: it was a veritable sea of slush. The teams that followed ours sank into it, and seemed not to be moving at all. The oblique rays of the setting sun, reflected and radiating in every direction, lent a peculiar glitter to the slushy wagons and the broken sheet of mire, as if pointing out their beauty to the darkening sky. So much light wasted, I thought. But on the summit of the hill on which I was standing, the direct rays of the sun promised a good hour more of daylight.
The old man drew breath, and continued his story:—