Now, as Moshé Grinwitz stood on the _Al Memor_ with his sacred burden, another terrible flash of lightning and appalling crash of thunder startled the worshippers. And Moshé's arms were nervously agitated, and a frightful thought came into his head. _Suppose he should drop the Holy Scroll!_ As this dreadful possibility occurred to him he trembled still more. The _Sepher Torah_ is to the Jew at once the most precious and the most sacred of possessions, and in the eyes of the "Congregation of Love and Mercy" their _Sepher Torah_ was, if possible, invested with a still higher preciousness and sanctity, because they had only one. They were too poor to afford luxuries; and so this single Scroll was the very symbol and seal of their brotherhood; in it lay the very possibility of their existence as a congregation. Not that it would be rendered "_Pasul_," imperfect and invalid, by being dropped; the fall could not erase any of the letters so carefully written on the parchment; but the calamity would be none the less awful and ominous. Every person present would have to abstain for a day from all food and drink, in sign of solemn grief. Moshé felt that if the idea that had flitted across his brain were to be realized, he would never have the courage to look his pious wife in the face after such passive profanity. The congregation, too, which honoured him, and which now waited to press devout kisses on the mantle of the Scroll, on its passage to the Ark--he could not but be degraded in its eyes by so negligent a performance of a duty which was a coveted privilege. All these thoughts, which were instinctively felt, rather than clearly conceived, caused Moshé Grinwitz to clasp the Sacred Scroll, which reached a little above his head, tightly to his breast. Feeling secure from the peril of dropping it, he made a step forward, but the bells jangled weirdly to his ears, and when he came to the two steps which led down from the platform, a horrible foreboding overcame him that he would stumble and fall in the descent. He stepped down one of the steps with morbid care, but lo! the feeling that no power on earth could prevent his falling gained tenfold in intensity. An indefinable presentiment of evil was upon him; the air was charged with some awful and maleficent influence, of which the convulsion of nature seemed a fit harbinger. And now his sensations became more horrible. The conviction of the impending catastrophe changed into a desire to take an active part in it, to have it done with and over. His arms itched to loose their hold of the _Sepher Torah_. Oh! if he could only dash the thing to the ground, nay, stamp upon it, uttering fearful blasphemies, and shake off this dark cloud that seemed to close round and suffocate him. A last shred of will, of sanity, wrestled with his wild wishes. The perspiration poured in streams down his forehead. It was but a moment since he had taken the Holy Scroll into his arms; but it seemed ages ago.