When he collected his wits he decided to wait till he found out everything for himself. For the first time, perhaps, he felt himself a coward. He quailed before the thought that what he had heard from the learned peddler might prove true, and he cringingly begged his own mind to put off the culminating agony of believing it. Nevertheless, when he saw Shaya, at the supper-table, his heart whispered to him, in dismay: "An appikoros!" and the unuttered word enveloped the prodigy in a forbidding, sinister atmosphere. He now hated Shaya; he felt as though he feared him. "Where have you been so late, papa?" Flora inquired. "Deep in the earth. You care much where your papa is, do you?" he snarled. "Papa!" she said deprecatingly; "are you mad?" He made no response. "Have you been to the Mariv service?" Shaya intervened. "I studied at the Souvalk Synagogue to-day." Asriel remained grimly uncommunicative. The young people, reinforced by Tamara, made several other attempts at conversation, but the dogged taciturnity of the head of the family cast a spell of misery over them all, and the meal passed in unsupportable silence. "See if papa ain't getting on to what you are doing, Shayie," Flora said, when the two were alone. "Pshaw! is it the first time you see him out of humor? He must have had some trouble with a tenant or janitor." "He must have," she assented gloomily. "But what if he gets wind? I'm worrying the life out of myself about it." "So am I. I love your father just the same as if he were my own papa. I wish the wedding were over, don't you?" he asked in his childish way. X On the following morning Asriel repaired to the Souvalk Synagogue to attend the service (his usual place of worship he had not the heart to visit), and, incidentally, to ascertain how Shaya had spent his time there the day before. To his consternation he learned that his "daughter's bridegroom" had not been seen there for weeks. Asriel held his counsel, and took to shadowing the young man. He now had no doubt as to the accuracy of Reb Tzalel's story. But it gave him no pain. It was Shaya no longer; it was not his daughter's bridegroom; it was not the prodigy he had imported,--it was an appikoros. But then Asriel's heart withered at the notion of being the victim of systematic deception. Shaya was an appikoros and a secret, sneaking enemy. "That youngster trick Asriel Stroon!" He panted with hatred and thrilled with a detective-like passion to catch Shaya in the act of some grave violation of the Mosaic Law. He went about the various synagogues where the young man was supposed to study the Talmud, with a keen foretaste of his vicious joy at finding that he had been playing truant. Yet each time his fervent expectations were realized he would, instead of triumph, experience an overpowering sense of defeat.