_Ha!_ I will listen to what he has to say. "The town hung by a hair from the first," said the narrator, "because it was started in a part where no Jewish town was allowed to be! It was not till the first Minyan was complete that people held a meeting and decided to reckon themselves as belonging to a town in the neighborhood. On this pretense they built a bath, a Shool, and after that, a men's bath, and bought a piece of land for a burial ground. "And when all that was finished, they sent people of backstair influence to have it all endorsed." "Head downward?" "Isn't that always the way with us? How should it be otherwise?" "I don't know!" "However, that's how it was! And the thing was not so underhand as you suppose. "There was a Jew who was very rich, and this rich Jew, as is usually the case, was a little, not to say very much, in with the authorities, and everything was in his name; it was _his_ Shool, _his_ bath, _his_ women's bath--even to _his_ burial ground--and nothing was said; as I tell you, he was a person of influence! "And when the paper came from high quarters, he was to transcribe it in the name of the community and stop paying sop-money to the local police." "And then the rich man said: 'To my account'?" "No, my dear sir, such rich people didn't exist in those days. 'To my account' was a thing unknown; but hear what happened, what things may come to pass! "It was not the Gevir, but the envoy who caused the trouble. He made off, half-way, with the money and the papers, and left the freshly-baked community like a grass-widow with a family." "Did they send another?" "Not so soon as all that! Before it was known that the first had absconded, or anything about it, the Gevir died and left, among other things, an heir who was a minor; he couldn't sign a paper till he was twenty-one!" "So they hurried up?" "Of course, as soon as he was twenty-one, they meant to send another envoy, and perhaps two." "And meanwhile it was entered in the communal records?" "That's where it is! The records remembered and the people forgot! Some say the record was burnt, that the trustee took the record, said Havdoleh over it, set fire to a little brandy, and--good-bye! "The community, meanwhile, was growing; Jews, praise God, soon multiply. And they come in from other places; one person brings in a son-in-law, another a daughter-in-law, in a word, it grew. And the Gevir's heirs disappeared as though on purpose! The widow married again and left, one son after another went to seek his fortune elsewhere, to take a look 'round. The youngest remained. Kohol appointed him a guardian and married him, and gave him an experienced partner." "Who led him about by the nose?" "According to the law of Moses and of Israel!