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 192 KOSEXTHAL

coppers into the other plates, and prepared to recite the Afternoon Prayer. He wanted to pause a little between the words of his prayer, to attend to their meaning, to impress upon himself that this was the Eve of the Day of Atonement! But idle thoughts kept coming into his head, as though on purpose to annoy him, and his mind was all over the place at once ! The words of the prayers got mixed up with the idea of oats, straw, wheat, and barley, and however much trouble he took to drive these idle thoughts away, he did not succeed. "Blow the great trumpet of our deliverance!" shouted Berel, and remembered the while that Ivan owed him ten measures of wheat. "... lift up the ensign to gather our exiles ! . . . " "and I made a mistake in Stephen's account by thirty kopeks . . . " Berel saw that it was impossible for him to pray with attention, and he began to reel off the Eighteen Benedictions, but not till he reached the Confession could he collect his scattered thoughts, and realize what he was saying. When he raised his hands to beat his breast at "We have trespassed, we have robbed," the hand remained hanging in the air, half-way. A shudder went through his limbs, the letters of the words "we have robbed" began to grow before his eyes, they became gigantic, they turned strange colors red, blue, green, and yellow now they took the form of large frogs they got bigger and bigger, crawled into his eyes, croaked in his ears : You are a thief, a robber, you have stolen and plundered ! You think nobody saw, that it would all run quite smoothly, but you are wrong! We shall stand before the Throne of Glory and cry : You are a thief, a robber!