—right away!” She swung her arms and beat her breast, and then leaped from the railing to the stone floor below. Still she gasped: “I’ll bring the rope right away!”
“Then merely the eleven,” said the leader sharply. “But quick—quick!” Upon the eight pillars the Cossacks quickly put up a scaffold.
While the women wept and cried for mercy, the men, dressed in their grave clothes, cowered in the comers and covered their heads in order to shut out the sight.
And now the congregation called aloud seven times—as in the hour of death—the ancient words of their faith: “Hear Israel! the Eternal, our God, the eternally One!”
That was their salvation, their consolation, their faith. And the shrieks of the dying deadened the voice of prayer—and the words of both were the same.
The murderers stamped upon the altar, broke the sacred shrines, threw the roll of the Torah upon the floor, and stole the gold and silver.
And still the Jews prayed on, the immortal death-prayer of their race for the eleven who were
