"Profane mocker," he muttered at length, "go to thy work and thy wine and thy pleasure, if thou wouldst desecrate the sacred Sabbath-day; but tempt not others to sin with thee. Begone; and may the Holy One, blessed be He, blast thee with His lightnings." "The Holy One blasteth only that which is holy," grimly rejoined the dwarfish stranger, exhibiting the Scroll, while a low sound of applause went up from the audience. "Said I not, ye were a sport and a mockery unto Him? Ye assemble in your multitude for prayer, and the vapour of your piety but prepares the air for the passage of His arrows. Ye adorn His Scroll with bells and chains, and the gilded metal but draws His lightnings." He looked around the room and a cat-like gleam of triumph stole into his wonderful eyes as he noted the effect of his words. He paused, and again for a moment the tense, awful silence reigned, emphasized by the loud but decreasing patter of the rain. This time it was broken in a strange, unexpected fashion. "_Yisgadal, veyiskadash shemé rabbo_," rang out a clear, childish voice from the rear of the synagogue. A little orphan child, who had come to repeat the _Kaddish_, the Hebrew mourners' unquestioning acknowledgment of the Supreme Goodness, had fallen into a sleep, overcome by the heat, and had slept all through the storm. Awakening now amid a universal silence, the poor little fellow instinctively felt that the congregation was waiting for him to pronounce the prayer. Alone of the male worshippers he had neither seen the blaspheming hunchback nor listened to his words. The hunchback's handsome face was distorted with a scowl; he stamped his broad splay-foot, but hearing no verbal interruption, the child, its eyes piously closed, continued its prayer-- "_In the world which He hath created...._"