Jossel went home, sighing, but silenced. Zillah however, was not so easily subdued. "But my Brum will read it as truly as an angel!" she cried, pressing the boy's head to her breast. "And suppose he does make a mistake! Haven't I heard the congregation correct Winkelstein scores of times?" "Hush!" said Jossel, "you talk like an Epicurean. Satan makes us all err at times, but we must not play into his hands. The _Din_ (judgment) is that only those who see may read the Law to the congregation." "Brum will read it much better than that snuffling old Winkelstein." "Sha! Enough! The _Din_ is the _Din_!" "It was never meant to stop my poor Brum from--" "The _Din_ is the _Din_. It won't let you dance on its head or chop wood on its back. Besides, the synagogue refuses, so make an end." "I _will_ make an end. I'll have _Minyan_ (congregation) here, in our own house." "What!" and the poor man stared in amaze. "Always she falls from heaven with a new idea!" "Brum shall not be disappointed." And she gave the silent boy a passionate hug. "But we have no Scroll of the Law," Brum said, speaking at last, and to the point. "Ah, that's you all over, Zillah," cried Jossel, relieved,--"loud drumming in front and no soldiers behind!" "We can borrow a Scroll," said Zillah. Jossel gasped again. "But the iniquity is just the same," he said. "As if Brum made mistakes!" "If you were a Rabbi, the congregation would baptize itself!" Jossel quoted. Zillah writhed under the proverb. "It isn't as if you went to the Rabbi; you took the word of the Beadle." "He is a learned man." Zillah donned her bonnet and shawl. "Where are you going?" "To the minister." Jossel shrugged his shoulders, but did not stop her. The minister, one of the new school of Rabbis who preach sermons in English and dress like Christian clergymen, as befitted the dignity of Dalston villadom, was taken aback by the ritual problem, so new and so tragic. His acquaintance with the vast casuistic literature of his race was of the shallowest. "No doubt the Beadle is right," he observed profoundly. "He cannot be right; he doesn't know my Brum." Worn out by Zillah's persistency, the minister suggested going to the Beadle's together. Aware of the Beadle's prodigious lore, he had too much regard for his own position to risk congregational odium by flying in the face of an exhumable _Din_. At the Beadle's, the _Din_ was duly unearthed from worm-eaten folios, but Zillah remaining unappeased, further searching of these Rabbinic scriptures revealed a possible compromise. If the portion the boy recited was read over again by a reader not blind, so that the first congregational reading did not count, it might perhaps be permitted. It would be of course too tedious to treat the whole _Sedrah_ thus, but if Brum were content to recite his own particular seventh thereof, he should be summoned to the Rostrum. So Zillah returned to Jossel, sufficiently triumphant. VI