"I don't know myself what I'm doing, kind soul. That is my boy, and he won't come home, or he can't. What am I to do with him?" complained Mattes to the peasant, whom he knew.
"Has he gone crazy? Give him a kick! Ai, you little lazy devil, get up!" Feivke did not move from the spot, he only shivered silently, and his teeth chattered.
"Ach, you devil! What sort of a boy have you there, Matke? A visitation of Heaven! Why don't you beat him more? The other day they came and told tales of him—Agapa said that—"
"I don't know, either, kind soul, what sort of a boy he is," answered Mattes, and wrung his bands in desperation.
Early next morning Mattes hired a conveyance, and drove Feivke to the town, to the asylum for the sick poor. The smith's wife came out and saw them start, and she stood a long while in the doorway by the Mezuzeh.
And on another fine autumn morning, just when the villagers were beginning to cart loads of fresh earth to secure the village against overflowing streams, the village boys told one another the news of Feivke's death.
THE LAST OF THEM
They had been Rabbonim for generations in the Misnagdic community of Mouravanke, old, poverty-stricken Mouravanke, crowned with hoary honor, hidden away in the thick woods. Generation on generation of them had been renowned far and near, wherever a Jewish word was spoken, wherever the voice of the Torah rang out in the warm old houses-of-study.
People talked of them everywhere, as they talk of miracles when miracles are no more, and of consolation when all hope is long since dead—talked of them as great-grandchildren talk of the riches of their great-grandfather, the like of which are now unknown, and of the great seven-branched, old-fashioned lamp, which he left them as an inheritance of times gone by.
For as the lustre of an old, seven-branched lamp shining in the darkness, such was the lustre of the family of the Rabbonim of Mouravanke.