He had never known his mother, and therefore had wandered about with his father from babyhood. Kohol was moved to pity, householders bought up all the books in order to bury the father, which they did almost for nothing, and even gave him a nice grave. The orphan was taken into the Talmud Torah and told to sleep in the house-of-study; he ate "days,"[41] as he was still doing when my story begins. In half a year's time he went through measles in the house-of-study, and then small-pox, and got a face as pitted as a grater. The next year brought a new misfortune. In the house-of-study was an old split stove, of which Yössil was the official heater. This oven was a useless old thing and gave out no heat. By day things were bearable; at night the stove went down to freezing-point. Yössil's rags, given him by the householders on some holiday, were hardly enough to clothe him, never sufficient for extra covering at night. One day Yössil thought the matter over, and stole the key of the wood store-room. He commenced to steal wood, and every day he heated the stove more, and sat by the fire and warmed himself. At last, as people said, God punished him for his theft: the stove suddenly burst, and a piece flew out and broke his foot. The town Röfeh cured it, but it remained shorter than the other, and Yössil limped from that day forward. And he was no genius, not even specially diligent. Who would fix on him? Whom was he likely to attract? Not even a water-carrier would take him for a son-in-law. Meantime, as though to spite him, his eyes would burn like hot coals, his heart beat and yearned and sickened after something. He often felt dizzy, there was a sound as of bells in his ears, and he shook as in a fever, hot and cold, hot and cold. But who troubles about an orphan? The householders feel they have done their part in giving him free meals. What sort of meals? Well, what merit is there to be secured in feeding a boy like that? A boy who won't learn, sits over a book, and is all the time wool-gathering? You speak to him and he doesn't hear. And all of a sudden he starts up and jumps away from his place, leaves the book open, and runs about the house-of-study like a mad thing, upsets the reading-desks, upsets the people, like one possessed. A madcap, a scatter-brain. Tendons, bones, mouldy bread, the day before yesterday's porridge--and _that's_ a waste! What's the use of him? He may thank his stars that he's an orphan. A boy of that sort in a family is apprenticed to a workman, but nobody wants to undertake a strange child. Who would care to be responsible for it? Besides, the father was a learned man, who recited Torah in his last moments, and who died like a saint in the seventh month, after making a very clear confession of sins; and who would dare apprentice the child of such an one to a workman?[42] Who would undertake to answer for it to the dead?