Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/581

 THE LAST OF THEM 577

"You will sit here."

He himself went and sat down behind the pulpit among the strangers, the Sabbath guests.

For the first minute people were lost in astonishment ; the next minute the house-of-study was filled with wailing. Old and young lifted their voices in lamenta- tion. The young Eav looked like a child sitting behind the tall desk, and he shivered and shook as though with fever.

Then the old Eav stood up to his full height and commanded :

"People are not to weep !"

All this happened about the Solemn Days. Mou- ravanke remembers that time now, and speaks of it at dusk, when the sky is red as though streaming with fire, and the men stand about pensive and forlorn, and the women fold their babies closer in their aprons.

At the close of the Day of Atonement there was a report that the old Eav had breathed his last in robe and prayer-scarf.

The young Charif did not survive him long. He died at his father's the tailor, and his funeral was on a wet Great Hosannah day. Aged folk said he had been summoned to face the old Eav in a lawsuit in the Heavenly Court.