Chapter XXVI - Page 2

people those are! They know such a lot; good Christians, very likely; and here am I.... Ah! well, perhaps it's my own fault. I should have liked to say a word to them, but I didn't know how to do it."

From the distance, beyond the town, there came the sound of a long, plaintive whistle. Sultan raised his head, and listened. Large drops fell from his muzzle into the pail.

"Eat away," said Soloveitchik, "That's the train!"

Sultan heaved a sigh.

"I wonder if men will ever live like that! Perhaps they can't," said Soloveitchik aloud, as he shrugged his shoulders, despairingly. There, in the darkness he imagined that he could see a multitude of men, vast, unending as eternity, sinking ever deeper in the gloom; a succession of centuries without beginning and without end; an unbroken chain of wanton suffering for which remedy there was none; and, on high, where God dwelt, silence, eternal silence.

Sultan knocked against the pail, and upset it. Then, as he wagged his tail, the chain rattled slightly.

"Gobbled it all up, eh?"

Soloveitchik patted the dog's shaggy coat and felt its warm body writhe in joyous response to his touch. Then he went back to the house.

He could hear Sultan's chain rattle, and the yard seemed less gloomy than before, while blacker and more sinister was the mill with its tall chimney and narrow sheds that looked like coffins. From the window a broad ray of light fell across the garden, illuminating in mystic fashion the frail little flowers that shrank beneath the turbulent heaven with its countless banners, black and ominous, unfolded to the night.

Overcome by grief, unnerved by a sense of solitude and of some irreparable loss, Soloveitchik went back into his room, sat down at the table, and wept.