“I should like to drop down dead suddenly,” he would say with the air of a philosopher, who had thought it all out.  “I shouldn’t care to lie up in bed and mess about with medicine and doctors.  To make a long job of dying is so expensive.”

“So?” said Shosshi.

“Don’t worry, Bear!  I dare say the devil will seize you suddenly,” interposed Mrs. Belcovitch drily.

“It will not be the devil,” said Mr. Belcovitch, confidently and in a confidential manner.  “If I had died as a young man, Shosshi, it might have been different.”

Shosshi pricked up his ears to listen to the tale of Bear’s wild cubhood.

“One morning,” said Belcovitch, “in Poland, I got up at four o’clock to go to Supplications for Forgiveness.  The air was raw and there was no sign of dawn!  Suddenly I noticed a black pig trotting behind me.  I quickened my pace and the black pig did likewise.  I broke into a run and I heard the pig’s paws patting furiously upon the hard frozen ground.  A cold sweat broke out all over me.  I looked over my shoulder and saw the pig’s eyes burning like red-hot coals in the darkness.  Then I knew that the Not Good One was after me.  ‘Hear, O Israel,’ I cried.  I looked up to the heavens but there was a cold mist covering the stars.  Faster and faster I flew and faster and faster flew the demon pig.  At last the Shool came in sight.  I made one last wild effort and fell exhausted upon the holy threshold and the pig vanished.”

“So?” said Shosshi, with a long breath.

“Immediately after Shool I spake with the Rabbi and he said ’Bear, are thy Tephillin in order?’ So I said ’Yea, Rabbi, they are very large and I bought them of the pious scribe, Naphtali, and I look to the knots weekly.’  But he said, ‘I will examine them.’  So I brought them to him and he opened the head-phylactery and lo! in place of the holy parchment he found bread crumbs.”

“Hoi, hoi,” said Shosshi in horror, his red hands quivering.

“Yes,” said Bear mournfully, “I had worn them for ten years and moreover the leaven had denied all my Passovers.”

Belcovitch also entertained the lover with details of the internal politics of the “Sons of the Covenant.”

Shosshi’s affection for Becky increased weekly under the stress of these intimate conversations with her family.  At last his passion was rewarded, and Becky, at the violent instance of her father, consented to disappoint one of her young men and stay at home to meet her future husband.  She put off her consent till after dinner though, and it began to rain immediately before she gave it.

The moment Shosshi came into the room he divined that a change had come over the spirit of the dream.  Out of the corners of his eyes he caught a glimpse of an appalling beauty standing behind a sewing machine.  His face fired up, his legs began to quiver, he wished the ground would open and swallow him as it did Korah.