He confessed afterwards, did the Lithuanian, that when he found himself alone with the Rebbe terror took hold of him. He grew cold all over, and the roots of his ear-locks pricked his temples like needles. An excellent joke, to be left alone with the Rebbe at Sliches-time before dawn! But a Lithuanian is dogged. He quivers and quakes like a fish--but he does not budge. At last the Rebbe, long life to him, rises in his turn. First he does what beseems a Jew. Then he goes to the wardrobe and takes out a packet--which proves to be the dress of a peasant: linen trousers, high boots, a pelisse, a wide felt hat, and a long and broad leather belt studded with brass nails. The Rebbe puts them on. Out of the pockets of the pelisse dangles the end of a thick cord, a peasant's cord. On his way out the Rebbe steps aside into the kitchen, stoops, takes a hatchet from under a bed, puts it into his belt, and leaves the house. The Lithuanian trembles, but he persists. * * * * * A fearful, Solemn-Day hush broods over the dark streets, broken not unfrequently by a cry of supplication from some little Minyan, or the moan of some sick person behind a window. The Rebbe keeps to the street side, and walks in the shadow of the houses. He glides from one to the other, the Lithuanian after him. And the Lithuanian hears the sound of his own heart-beats mingle with the heavy footfall of the Rebbe; but he follows on, and together they emerge from the town. * * * * * Behind the town stands a little wood. The Rebbe, long life to him, enters it. He walks on thirty or forty paces, and then he stops beside a small tree. And the Lithuanian, with amaze, sees the Rebbe take his hatchet and strike the tree. He sees the Rebbe strike blow after blow, he hears the tree creak and snap. And the little tree falls, and the Rebbe splits it up into logs, and the logs into splinters. Then he makes a bundle, binds it round with the cord, throws it on his shoulder, replaces the hatchet in his belt, leaves the wood, and goes back into the town. In one of the back streets he stops beside a poor, tumbledown little house, and taps at the window. "Who is there?" cries a frightened voice within. The Lithuanian knows it to be the voice of a Jewess, a sick Jewess. "I," answers the Rebbe in the peasant tongue. "Who is I?" inquires the voice further. And the Rebbe answers again in the Little-Russian speech: "Vassil." "Which Vassil? and what do you want, Vassil?" "I have wood to sell," says the sham peasant, "very cheap, for next to nothing." And without further ado he goes in. The Lithuanian steals in behind him, and sees, in the gray light of dawn, a poor room with poor, broken furniture. In the bed lies a sick Jewess huddled up in rags, who says bitterly: "Wood to sell--and where am I, a poor widow, to get the money from to buy it?" "I will give you a six-groschen worth on credit."