“Eh, hey, it is midnight on earth,” the miller mused, and with a great yawn he turned and walked rapidly down the hill, thinking of his flock as he went. He saw his roubles as if they had been alive, passing from hand to hand and from business to business, grazing and multiplying. He laughed to recall that some fools thought they worked for themselves. And when the time was ripe, he, the owner of the flock, would drive it and its increase back into his iron chest.
These thoughts were all pleasant ones, but the recollection of the Jew spoilt them again. The miller was provoked because that son of Israel had seized all the grazing for himself, leaving his poor roubles nowhere to feed and nothing to grow fat on, like a flock of sheep in a field where Jewish goats had already been pasturing. Every one knew they never could fatten there!
“Oh, I wish the devil would get him, the foul brute!” the miller said to himself, and he decided it was the thought of the Jew that depressed him so. That’s what was wrong with the world. Those infernal Jews prevented Christians from collecting their lawful profits.
Half way down the hill, where the peaceful, drowsy sound of the water in the mill-race came unintermittently to his ears, the miller suddenly stopped and struck his forehead with the palm of his hand.
“Ha! What a joke it would be! It would be a grand joke, I swear! This the Day of Atonement. What if the Hebrew devil should take a fancy to our inn-keeper Yankel? But he won’t! It couldn’t possibly happen. The town is crammed with Jews, and Yankel is a tipsy old wretch, as bony as a hedgehog. Who would want him? No,” thought the miller, “I’m not lucky enough for Khapun to choose our Yankel out of thousands of others.”
Then, like a nest of ants in a turmoil, another train of thought began to pass through his head.
“Ah, Philip, Philip!” he said to himself. “It isn’t right for a Christian to think such things! Recollect yourself! Yankel would leave children behind him, as well as debts. And another reason why it is sinful: Yankel has never done you any harm. If others have reason to blame the old inn-keeper, you yourself are not guiltless of usury.”
But the miller hastily sent other and angrier thoughts to attack these last unpleasant reflections that had begun to bite his conscience like vicious dogs.
“But after all, a Sheeny is only a Sheeny, and isn’t in the same class with Christians at all. Even if I do lend money—and I do, there’s no use denying it—it’s better for Christians to pay interest to a brother Christian than to a heathen Jew.”
At that moment the last notes of the bell pealed out from the belfry.