Mendel hastily drained his coffee-cup.

“A hoax!” he murmured, from behind the cup.

“Yes, I believe some one is having a lark with you.”

“Nonsense!” cried Mendel vehemently, as he put down his coffee-cup and picked up the letter from the table.  “Don’t I know my own brother Yankov’s writing.  Besides, who else would know all the little things he writes about?”

Daniel was silenced, but lingered on after Miriam had departed to her wearisome duties.

“I shall write at once, accepting Yankov’s offer,” said his father.  “Fortunately we took the house by the week, so you can always move out if it is too large for you and Miriam.  I can trust you to look after Miriam, I know, Daniel.”  Daniel expostulated yet further, but Mendel answered: 

“He is so lonely.  He cannot well come over here by himself because he is half paralyzed.  After all, what have I to do in England?  And the mother naturally does not care to leave me.  Perhaps I shall get my brother to travel with me to the land of Israel, and then we shall all end our days in Jerusalem, which you know has always been my heart’s desire.”

Neither mentioned Bessie Sugarman.

“Why do you make so much bother?” Miriam said to Daniel in the evening.  “It’s the best thing that could have happened.  Who’d have dreamed at this hour of the day of coming into possession of a relative who might actually have something to leave us.  It’ll be a good story to tell, too.”

After Shool next morning Mendel spoke to the President.

“Can you lend me six pounds?” he asked.

Belcovitch staggered.

“Six pounds!” he repeated, dazed.

“Yes.  I wish to go to America with my wife.  And I want you moreover to give your hand as a countryman that you will not breathe a word of this, whatever you hear.  Beenah and I have sold a few little trinkets which our children gave us, and we have reckoned that with six pounds more we shall be able to take steerage passages and just exist till I get work.”

“But six pounds is a very great sum—­without sureties,” said Belcovitch, rubbing his time-worn workaday high hat in his agitation.

“I know it is!” answered Mendel, “but God is my witness that I mean to pay you.  And if I die before I can do so I vow to send word to my son Daniel, who will pay you the balance.  You know my son Daniel.  His word is an oath.”

“But where shall I get six pounds from?” said Bear helplessly.  “I am only a poor tailor, and my daughter gets married soon.  It is a great sum.  By my honorable word, it is.  I have never lent so much in my life, nor even been security for such an amount.”

Mendel dropped his head.  There was a moment of anxious silence.  Bear thought deeply.

“I tell you what I’ll do,” said Bear at last.  “I’ll lend you five if you can manage to come out with that.”

Mendel gave a great sigh of relief.  “God shall bless you,” he said.  He wrung the sweater’s hand passionately.  “I dare say we shall find another sovereign’s-worth to sell.”  Mendel clinched the borrowing by standing the lender a glass of rum, and Bear felt secure against the graver shocks of doom.  If the worst come to the worst now, he had still had something for his money.