heart was even louder, more violent, than this blow. After a pause,
footsteps were heard passing slowly along the hallway.

The rabbi had not occupied this lonely house a long time. His
predecessor, almost a centenarian in years, had been laid to rest a few
months before. The new rabbi had been called, from a distant part of the
country. He was unmarried, and in the prime of life. No one had known
him before his coming. But his personal nobility and the profundity of
his scholarship made up for his deficiency in years. An aged mother had
accompanied him from their distant home, and she took the place of wife
and child.

"Who is there?" asked the rabbi, who had been busy at his desk even at
this late hour and thus had not missed hearing the knocker.

"It is I," the figure without responded, almost inaudibly.

"Speak louder, if you wish me to hear you," replied the rabbi.

"It is I, Ruben Klattaner's daughter," she repeated.

The name seemed to sound strange to the rabbi. He as yet knew too few of
his congregation to understand that this very day he performed the
marriage ceremony of the person who had just repeated her name.
Therefore he called out, after a moment's pause, "What do you wish so
late at night?"

"Open the door, rabbi," she answered, pleadingly, "or I shall die at
once!"