It is hard to live in a cage, be it large or small. Like a wild bird, the free human spirit beats its wings against any bars. "Why, Mother, why is it that we must not go outside the Pale?" asked Mashke. "Because the Czar and those others who have the power to make the laws do not love our people; they hate us and all our ways," was the reply. "But why do they hate us, Mother?" persisted the child with big, earnest eyes. "Because we are different; because we can never think like them and be like them. Their big Russia is not yet big enough to give people of another sort a chance to live and be happy in their own way." Even in crowded Polotzk, though, with police spying on every side, there were happy days. There were the beautiful Friday afternoons when Mashke's father and mother came home early from the store to put off every sign of the work-a-day world and make ready for the Sabbath. The children were allowed to wear their holiday clothes and new shoes. They stepped about happily while their mother hid the great store keys and the money bag under her featherbed, and the grandmother sealed the oven and cleared every trace of work from the kitchen. How Mashke loved the time of candle prayer! As she looked at the pure flame of her candle the light shone in her face and in her heart. Then she looked at the work-worn faces of her mother and grandmother. All the lines of care and trouble were smoothed away in the soft light. They had escaped from the prison of this unfriendly land with its hard laws and its hateful Pale. They were living in the dim but glorious Past, when their father's fathers had been a free nation in a land of their own. But Mashke could not escape from the prison in that way. She was young and glad to be alive. Her candle shone for light and life to-day and to-morrow and to-morrow! There were no bars that could shut away her free spirit from the light. How glad she was for life and sunlight on the peaceful Sabbath afternoons when, holding to her father's hand, she walked beyond the city streets along the riverside to the place where in blossoming orchards birds sang of the joyful life of the air, and where in newly plowed fields peasants sang the song of planting-time and the fruitful earth. Her heart leaped as she felt herself a part of the life that flowed through all things--river, air, earth, trees, birds, and happy, toiling people.