"Must she die?" asked Miriam. "No _doctor_, I say," answered the gravedigger slowly, "but a holy rabbi might save her. Old Moses Freudenthal's funeral is to take place to-day, and our rabbi is going to attend. Ask him to see the child, and bless it. He is a holy man--perhaps he is strong enough to save it, and perhaps he will give you advice." So saying, he went away to prepare the grave. His wife followed him. "I may as well dig two graves," said he, as he struck his spade into the ground. "You mean for the child?" asked his wife. "Poor Miriam--God spare her!..." "Yes," he answered, "it makes my heart ache. But no man can save her. They say that the Great Death is coming again. God will spare us. He will only take the 'child of atonement' that we have delivered up to Him." "In God's name," cried the woman, "why should an innocent life be taken." The man shrugged his shoulders, and asked: "Would you pretend to be more holy than our holy rabbi? Are you more just than the great Reb Grolce, the wonder-working rabbi of Sadagora, who has ordained it so?" The woman was silent. * * * * * What had the wonder-working rabbi ordained? And why did they call the child a "child of atonement"? * * * * * ... Mysteriously, irresistibly, the destroying-angel of the Lord brought an unknown plague into every land in the terrible year 1831. It was called the cholera. It came from the far East, and spread onward to the far West, devastating the towns, and filling the cemeteries. It fell heavily on the dirty, poverty-stricken villages in the Podolian plain. Countless numbers of the inhabitants died like flies, and enough were not left to bury the dead. No remedies saved life; no precautions protected it. Stolid resignation, or else angry desperation, possessed the people. And God permitted all this misery, and from God no help came! They called upon Him and He did not hear!... Why? Why? Was it not _their_ God whom they implored, the God of their fathers, the almighty, the just, and the only God? Had He no longer ears to hear, or arms to help? Why did He suddenly turn against His own people? Why did He not protect the good and the just among them? The minds of the unhappy people began to waver. They had but one beacon to direct their lives--their faith; and their faith betrayed them. They could not comprehend it. Then another thought occurred to them--a fearful and crushing thought, and yet it brought comfort. Was not their God a God of vengeance? Was He not a jealous God, who exacted, for every offense, a fearful and inexorable atonement? And now, when He caused the evil and the good to suffer alike, was it not probably because the wicked sinned, and the good allowed their sins to pass unpunished?