"The Graf's judges pronounced Lea guilty, and condemned her to be broken on the wheel in the market-place, and there beheaded. The wooden block in front of the Dominican monastery was placed there for this purpose. "But Lea did not die on the scaffold; she died peacefully in her own house forty years later, surrounded by her children and grandchildren; for Austrian military law was proclaimed in the district before Graf Bortynski's people had had time to execute the sentence pronounced upon Lea, and an Austrian Government official, whose duty it was to try criminal cases, examined the evidence against her. Samuel went to him and told him the whole story, and he, after due inquiry, set Lea free. "The wooden block is still standing. It reminds us of the old dark days of our oppression. But it also reminds us of the noble and heroic action by which a weak woman saved the community.... "And eighty years after that, my friends--eighty years after that--when we were once more in danger of losing our lives, who was it that saved us? Not a woman this time; but a timid little man whom no one could have imagined capable of a courageous action, and whose name I have only to mention to send you into a fit of laughter. It was little Mendele.... Ah, see now how you are chuckling! Well, well, I can't blame you, for he is a very queer little man. He knows many a merry tale, and tells them very amusingly. And then it is certainly a very strange thing to see a gray-haired man no taller than a child, and with the ways and heart of a child. He used to dance and sing all day long. I don't think that any one ever saw him quiet. Even now he does not walk down a street, but trots instead; he does not talk, but sings, and his hands seem to have been given him for no other use but to beat time. But--what of that? It is better to keep a cheerful heart than to wear a look of hypocritical solemnity. Mendele Abenstern is a great singer, and we may well be proud of having him for our _chazzan_ (deacon). It is true that he sometimes rattles off a touching prayer as if it were a waltz, and that when reading the Thorah he fidgets about from one leg to the other as if he were a dancer at a theatre. But these little peculiarities of his never interfere with our devotions, for we have been accustomed to Mendele and his ways for the last forty years, and if any one happens to get irritated with him now and then, he takes care not to vent it on the manikin. He can not help remembering, you see, that little Mendele can be grave enough at times, and that the poor _chazzan_ once did the town greater service by his gift of song than all the wise and rich could accomplish by their wisdom or their wealth. "I will tell you how that came to pass.