and the Rabbi read on.

It

and kindly: "Peace be with you, sit ye down near me!" The two strangers sat down at the table, While the company conversed, he often cast a pleasant, petting word to his wife; and playing on the old saying that on this evening a Hebrew father of a family regards himself as a king, said to her, "Rejoice, oh my Queen !" But she replied, smiling sadly, "The Prince is wanting," meaning by that a son, who, as a passage in the Agade requires, shall ask his father, with a certain formula of words, what is the meaning of the festival? The Rabbi said nothing, but only pointed with his finger to a picture on the opened leaves of the Agade. was quaintly and touchingly drawn, showing how the three angels came to Abraham, announcing that he would have a son by his wife Sara, who, meanwhile, urged by feminine curiosity, is listening slyly to it all behind the tent-door. This little sign caused a threefold blush to rise to the cheeks of beautiful Sara, who looked down, and then glanced pleasantly at her husband, who went on chanting the wonderful story how Rabbi Jesua, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Asaria, Rabbi Akiba, and Rabbi Tarphen sat reclining in Bona-Brak, and conversed all night long of the Exodus from Egypt till their disciples came to tell them it was daylight, and that the great morning prayer was being read in the synagogue.

As Beautiful Sara listened with devotion while locking at her husband, she saw that in an instant his face assumed an expression as of agony or desi air, his cheeks and lips were deadly pale, and his eyes glanced like balls of ice; but almost immediately he became calm and cheerful as before, his cheeks and lips grew rudly, he looked about Lim gaily-nay, it seemed as if a mad and merry mood, such as was foreign to his nature, had seized him. Beautiful Sara was frightened as she had never been in all her life, and a cold shudder came over her-less from the momentary manifestation of dumb despair which she had seen in her husband's face, than from the joyousness which followed it, and which passed into rollicking jollity. The Rabbi cocked his cap comically, first on one ear, then on the other, pulled and twisted his beard funnily, sang the Agade texts like tavern-songs; and in the enuineration of the Egyptian plagues, where it is usual to dip the forefinger in the full wine-cup and cast the drops adhering to the earth, he sprinkled the young girls near him with the red wine, and there was great wailing over spoiled collars, and ringing laughter. At every instant Beautiful Sara became more awed at this convulsive merriment of her husband, and oppressed with nameless fears she gazed on the buzzing swarm of gaily glittering guests who comfortably

spread or rocked themselves here and there, nibbling the thin Passover cakes, drinking wine, gossiping, or singing aloud full of joy.

Then came the time for supper. All rose to wash, and beautiful Sara brought the great silver basin, richly adorned with embossed gold figures, which was presented to every guest, that he might wash his hands. As she held it to the Rabbi, he gave her a significant look, and quietly slipped out of the door. In obedience to the sign Beautiful Sara followed him, when he grasped her hand, and in the greatest haste hurried her through the dark lanes of Bacharach, out of the city gate to the highway which leads to Bingen along the Rhine.

It was one of the nights in spring which are indeed softly warm and starry withal, yet which inspire the soul with strange uncanny feelings. There was something of the churchyard in the flowers, the birds sang peevishly and as if vexing themselves, the moon cast spiteful yellow stripes of light over the dark stream as it went murmuring away, the lofty masses of the Rhine cliffs looked dimly like quivering giants' heads, the watchman on the tower of Castle Strahleck blew a melancholy tune, and with it rang in jarring rivalry the funeral bell of Saint Werner's. Beautiful Sara carried the silver ewer in her right hand, while the Rabbi grasped her left, and she felt that his fingers were ice-cold, and that his arm trembled;

but still she went on with him in silence, perhaps because she was accustomed to obey blindly and unquestioning-perhaps, too, because her lips were mute with fear and anxiety.

Below Castle Sonneck, opposite Lorch, about the place where the hamlet of Nieder Rheinbach now stands, there rises a cliff which arches out over the Rhine bank. The Rabbi ascended it with his wife, looked around on every side, and gazed on the stars. Trembling and shivering, as with the pain of death, Beautiful Sara looked at his pale face, which seemed spectre-like in the moon-rays, and seemed to express by turns pain, terror, piety, and rage. But when the Rabbi suddenly snatched from her hands the silver ewer and threw it far away into the Rhine, she could no longer endure her agony of uncertainty, and crying out, "Schadai, full of mercy!" threw herself at his feet, and conjured him to solve the dark enigma.

Unable at first to speak from excitement, the Rabbi moved his lips without uttering a sound, till at last he cried, "Dost thou see the Angel of Death? There below he sweeps over Bacharach. But we have escaped his sword. Praised be God!" And in a voice still trembling with excitement he told her that while he was happily and comfortably singing the Agade he glanced by chance under the table, and saw at his feet the bloody

corpse of a little child. "Then I knew," continued the Rabbi, "that our two guests were not of the community of Israel, but of the assembly of the godless, who had plotted to bring that corpse craftily into the house so as to accuse us of child-murder, and stir up the people to plunder and murder us. Had I given a sign that I saw through that work of darkness I should simply have brought destruction on the instant to me and mine, and only by craft did I preserve our lives. Praised be God! Grieve not, Beautiful Sara. Our relations and friends will also be saved. It was only my blood which the wretches wanted. I have escaped them, and they will be satisfied with y silver and gold. Come with me, Beautiful Sara, to another land. We will leave bad luck behind us, and that it may not follow us I have thrown to it the silver ewer, the last of my possessions, as an offering. The God of our fathers will not forsake us. Come down, thou art weary. There is Dumb William standing by his boat; he will this morning row us up the Rhine."

Speechless, and as if every limb was broken, Beautiful Sara lay in the arms of the Rabbi, who slowly bore her to the bank. There stood William, a deaf and dumb youth, but yet beautiful as a picture, who, to maintain his old fostermother, who was a neighbour of the Rabbi, was