Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/551

 COUNTRY FOLK 547

the cart behind it. There was a glorious noise and commotion! Feivke was foremost among those who, in a cloud of dust and at the peril of their life, had dashed to seize the colt by the reins.

His mother washed him, looked him over from the low-set leather hat down to his great, black feet, stuffed a packet of food into his hands, and said :

"Go and be a good and devout boy, and God will forgive you."

She stood on the threshold of the house, and looked after her two men starting for a distant Minyan. The bearing of seven children had aged and weakened the once hard, obstinate woman, and, left standing alone in the doorway, watching her poor, barefoot, perverse- natured boy on his way to present himself for the first time before God, she broke down by the Mezuzeh and wept.

Silently, step by step, Feivke followed his father between the desolate stubble fields. It was a good ten miles' walk to the large village where the Minyan as- sembled, and the fear and the wonder in Feivke's heart increased all the way. He did not yet quite under- stand whither he was being taken, and what was to be done with him there, and the impetus of the brown colt's career through the village had not as yet sub- sided in his head. Why had Father put on his black mended cloak ? Why had he brought a Tallis with him, and a white shirt-like garment? There was certainly some hour of calamity and terror ahead, something was preparing which had never happened before.