"God alone knows what the place was where we stopped to change horses. And Rochke, peace be upon her? Well, what need to talk? She's happier than you or me. Oh, but what an ornament to the race she would have been! Such eyes, the little one, holy, like an old woman's! But wait, the story's not finished yet. Can it be believed? The officials there, they wanted us to continue the journey with the dead child! The smirched of soul, the godless ones! Wanted us to go on with the dead child! And when even they saw it was against God and Man, they wanted to bury her there and then, in unconsecrated ground! Oi! Oi! has it been heard of since Moses? But always put your trust in the Above One and all will be well with you. Know that! Think of us, in the wilderness, with a dead baby, and no holy ground to bury her and not a friend anywhere. The cart had gone on to the next stage, with Dorah and Channah. Think of us! "It was then the Above One came to our help. A Jewish merchant was on the road with a load of dried fruit. He stopped, God be thanked, at the station, and we told him how things lay with us. And would you believe it? Not a penny he would take--not much was there to give--but he took the baby away and gave her holy burial in his own town! Be his years long in the land! May his seed multiply to the fourth and fifth generation! And so all is well with Rochke, peace be upon her!" Reb Monash obviously drew much consolation for the whole episode from the fact that the Above One had shown him this signal favour, and the last offices had been performed unimpeachably over Rochke's body. But perhaps Philip was too young to be comforted by the thoughts of the propriety with which the incident had closed. He could only see very clearly the figures of his mother, blank-eyed, her hands empty, standing alone in Babylon, in that bleak Russian night. CHAPTER II Philip had not yet recovered from the dull dismay with which he had found himself installed as a scholar in the Infants' Class of the Bridgeway Elementary School. He had attained the age of five. Within quite recent memory he had been breeched. He still remembered the pocket in his skirt which was crammed with "stuffs"--the main merchandise of his companions, snippets of prints, calicoes, alpacas and linen rags picked up below the maternal needles and generally on the doorsteps of Angel Street. Reb Monash was by no means hostile to the idea that Philip should acquire a Gentile education, on the broad understanding that it should not outshadow Philip's accomplishment in Hebrew lore. It went without saying that labour on the Saturday should be anathema under any concatenation of the links of Fate. Moreover, the law of the land, in the person of the "School Board," had been eyeing him significantly.