"U-Malochim yechofézun—and the angels fly around."
And I fancy I see them flying in the Shool, up and down, up and down. And among them I see the bad angel with the thousand eyes, full of eyes from head to feet.
That night no one left the Shool, but early in the morning there were some missing—two of the congregation had fallen during the night, and died before our eyes, and lay wrapped in their prayer-scarfs and white robes—nothing was lacking for their journey from the living to the dead.
They kept on bringing messages into the Shool from the Gass, but nobody wanted to listen or to ask questions, lest he should hear what had happened in his own house. No matter how long I live, I shall never forget that night, and all I saw and heard.
But the Day of Atonement, the day that followed, was more awful still.
And even now, when I shut my eyes, I see the whole picture, and I think I am standing once more among the people in the Shool.
It is Atonement Day in the afternoon.
The Rabbi stands on the platform in the centre of the Shool, tall and venerable, and there is a fascination in his noble features. And there, in the corner of the Shool, stands a boy who never takes his eyes off the Rabbi's face.
In truth I never saw a nobler figure.
The Rabbi is old, seventy or perhaps eighty years, but tall and straight as a fir-tree. His long beard is white like silver, but the thick, long hair of his head is whiter still, and his face is blanched, and his lips are pale, and only his large black eyes shine and sparkle like the eyes of a young lion.