Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/215

Rh promised redemption and grace. And the people in the Temple trembled. The clang of the shofar had not died away when the voice of a boy was heard: “The Cossacks! The Cossacks! They have surrounded the Temple!”

The boy's voice fell like a sword. The cantor stopped his sweetest singing. There was silence. Then a babel of frightened questions. Voice fell upon voice. Arms shook in wild excitement. A body fell. A woman’s hand drew back the curtain of the balcony above. Someone shrieked: “We must hide.” Plunged from ecstatic heights of meditation, faces distorted, they tried to bend down and hide.

The voice of old Rabbi Zaddik fell upon them like a restraining hand. He told them to be calm and pray on to their God who would not desert them. He would be the one the Cossacks sought. They were all in the hands of God.

Then a man spoke whom they adored like a saint, because he was filled with the wisdom of the Talmud; they reverenced him as a judge in Israel.

Already Reb Chajim, at a signal from the Rabbi, had cleared his throat, and taken up the singing where he broke off; already the replies of the con-