And the Cossacks hanged them on the balcony. The Shabbes’ candles were still burning and the bread was waiting for a blessing. The woman recognized in the dead men, her husband and her brother-in-law. And she read the words aloud: “Hanged!” Her face became like stone and she could not look away from the balcony where they were swinging; for four and twenty hours she could not look away.
Night came. The tall candles burned lower. The air was heavy with the breath of praying men. It came, the great hour of the falling of judgment. And there was not one among the men who was not wearing the sacred robe in which to appear before his God. Many an one seemed scarcely to be recognizable, his features had changed so under the reverence of prayer. And it really seemed as if in the hearts of these men who had been faithful in so many wanderings—even in the money lender—there was hidden a priest. But among none of them could be found the descendents of the Macabees who had arisen in wrath and slain their enemies. And no one breathed with the soul of Samson, whose mighty shoulders shook down the temple of the Philistines. Not one of
