"Do you know who it is?" I asked my school-fellow. "How can you ask?" he exclaimed with boyish indignation. "It is our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the Jews crucified." "No, Wladik," I answered with the utmost decision, "it isn't; it's Bocher David, who used to teach me until last spring." Wladik was very angry, and scolded me well for saying such a dreadful thing, but he could not convince me that I was wrong: I knew what I knew. When I went home in the evening I told my father about the picture. "Silly child," he said with a smile; "who could have painted it?" "Our Frau Graefin," I replied. My father looked grave. "Well, well," he said thoughtfully, "it is almost incredible...." "What?" I asked quickly. But he told me to be quiet. I should not then have understood what he meant; but I heard the story afterward when I was older--the sad story of that picture of Christ in the chapel at Barnow--and learned that it was also, as I had supposed, a portrait of my old teacher, Bocher David. It is a strange story, reader, and will seem all the more extraordinary to you, if you have been brought up in a Western home, and have been accustomed from your infancy to civilization and tolerance of others. It is also sad, very sad. But do not blame me for that, for my heart bleeds when I remember this over-true tale, which must be regarded as one of the dark riddles of life, and as the doing of that eternal, inscrutable Power that deals out darkness or light, happiness or misery, to the weak human heart.... I will now tell you the story. * * * * * The small town of Barnow lies in the middle of an immense plain. Close to it is the only hill for several miles around, and on the top of this little hill are the ruins of a castle where the lords of Barnow, or Barecki Starosts, used to live. The last of this race, an old man, weak in mind as in body, now lives in his cheerless house by the river-side; while the new lord of the manor, Graf Bortynski, lives in a new and splendid castle in the plain, far away from the one-storied cottages, the rickety little houses, the narrow, airless streets of Barnow, and all the want and misery of the people who inhabit them. But these inhabitants of Barnow are happy, their streets are light and airy, and their houses comfortable, in comparison with those who have to live in that part of the town which is built in the unhealthy marshes near the river. It is always dark and gloomy there, however brightly the sun may shine, and dark pestiferous vapors fill the air, although the meadows beyond may be full of flowers. And this wretched part of the town is the most thickly inhabited of all, for it is the Ghetto, the Jews' quarter, or, as they call it in Barnow, the "Gasse."