That autumn the smith's wife was brought to bed of a seventh child, and before she was about again, the cold, damp days were upon them, with the misty mornings, when a fish shivers in the water. And the days of her confinement were mingled for the lonely village Jewess with the Solemn Days of that year into a hard and dreary time. She went slowly about the house, as in a fog, without help or hope, and silent as a shadow. That year they all led a dismal life. The elder children, girls, went out to service in the neighboring towns, to make their own way among strangers. The peasants had become sharper and worse than formerly, and the smith's strength was not what it had been. So his wife resolved to send the two men of the family, Mattes and Feivke, to a Minyan this Yom Kippur. Maybe, if two went, God would not be able to resist them, and would soften His heart.
One morning, therefore, Mattes the smith washed, donned his mended Sabbath cloak, went to the window, and blinked through it with his red and swollen eyes. It was the Eve of the Day of Atonement. The room was well-warmed, and there was a smell of freshly-stewed carrots. The smith's wife went out to seek Feivke through the village, and brought him home dishevelled and distracted, and all of a glow. She had torn him away from an early morning of excitement and delight such as could never, never be again. Mikita, the son of the village elder, had put his father's brown colt into harness for the first time. The whole contingent of village boys had been present to watch the fiery young animal twisting between the shafts, drawing loud breaths into its dilated and quivering nostrils, looking wildly at the surrounding boys, and stamping impatiently, as though it would have liked to plow away the earth from under its feet. And suddenly it had given a bound and started careering through the village with the cart behind it. There was a glorious noise and commotion! Feivke was foremost among those who, in a cloud of dust and at the peril of their life, had dashed to seize the colt by the reins.
His mother washed him, looked him over from the low-set leather hat down to his great, black feet, stuffed a packet of food into his hands, and said:
"Go and be a good and devout boy, and God will forgive you."
She stood on the threshold of the house, and looked after her two men starting for a distant Minyan. The bearing of seven children had aged and weakened the once hard, obstinate woman, and, left standing alone in the doorway, watching her poor, barefoot, perverse-natured boy on his way to present himself for the first time before God, she broke down by the Mezuzeh and wept.
Silently, step by step, Feivke followed his father between the desolate stubble fields. It was a good ten miles' walk to the large village where the Minyan assembled, and the fear and the wonder in Feivke's heart increased all the way. He did not yet quite understand whither he was being taken, and what was to be done with him there, and the impetus of the brown colt's career through the village had not as yet subsided in his head. Why had Father put on his black mended cloak? Why had he brought a Tallis with him, and a white shirt-like garment? There was certainly some hour of calamity and terror ahead, something was preparing which had never happened before.
They went by the great Kozlov wood, wherein every tree stood silent and sad for its faded and fallen leaves. Feivke dropped behind his father, and stepped aside into the wood. He wondered: Should he run away and hide in the wood? He would willingly stay there for the rest of his life. He would foregather with Nasta, the barrel-maker's son, he of the knocked-out eye; they would roast potatoes out in the wood, and now and again, stolen-wise, milk the village cows for their repast. Let them beat him as much as they pleased, let them kill him on the spot, nothing should induce him to leave the wood again!
But no! As Feivke walked along under the silent trees and through the fallen leaves, and perceived that the whole wood was filled through and through with a soft, clear light, and heard the rustle of the leaves beneath his step, a strange terror took hold of him. The wood had grown so sparse, the trees so discolored, and he should have to remain in the stillness alone, and roam about in the winter wind!
Mattes the smith had stopped, wondering, and was blinking around with his sick eyes.
"Feivke, where are you?"