“I mean the Day of Atonement one year ago.”
“Oh, that’s what you’re thinking of! Yes, it was Saturday last year.”
“When will the Day of Atonement be this year?”
“I can’t say when it will be. There’s no Jew near here now, so I don’t know.”
“Look at the sky. It’s clear and bright, just as it was that night.”
And the miller glanced in terror at the window of the Jewish hut, afraid of seeing again those Hebrew children nodding their heads and humming their prayers for their daddy whom Khapun was carrying away over the hills and dales.
But no! All that was over. Probably not a bone was left of Yankel by now; his orphans had wandered away into the wide world, and their hut was as dark as a tomb. The miller’s heart was as full of darkness as the deserted Jewish khata.
“I didn’t save the Jew,” he thought. “It was I who made his children orphans, and now what dreadful things am I plotting against the widow’s daughter?”
“Would it be right for us to do it?” he asked of Kharko.
“Why not? Of course there are some people who won’t eat honey. Perhaps you are one of them.”