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In the village, too, the serfs had retired, the brawling in "Paradise" had gradually ceased, and silent night had cast her mantle of sleep over Togarog. A dim rumbling of wagons, a clattering of horses' hoofs, a murmur of men's voices fell upon the air. Nearer and nearer came the sounds and the soldiers that produced them, until the village was reached.
"God be praised!" and he threw himself into the arms of his father. With a single impulse the entire company arose and welcomed the unexpected guests. Mordecai and his wife had travelled on foot from Togarog to Kief, and, after terrible hardships, had arrived in time for the Passover.
In its bare and smoke-begrimed public room, the people of Togarog assembled night after night, and discussed, as far as the autocratic government of the Czar Nicholas would allow, the political news of the day. Poor souls! They enjoyed little latitude in this direction. Items of information concerning the acts of the central government in St. Petersburg were few and vague.
The Rabbi told, for the hundredth time, of his memorable trip from Togarog to Kharkov; related how he and Jacob had been torn from their mother's fond embrace, how they had suffered, how they finally escaped from the guard that accompanied them, and how, after enduring the misery of hunger and thirst, Jacob disappeared to be seen no more.
It was long since there had been a bar-mitzvah in Togarog, and Israelites came from all the villages in the vicinity to witness the happy event. Happy appeared the mothers in the reflection that their sons, too, would some day be admitted to the holy rite. Like a finished scholar did Mendel recite his sidrah, that portion of the Torah or Law which was appropriate to the day.
What would the future have in store for them? General Drudkoff could now sleep in peace; the insurrection in Togarog was quelled. The wagons, with their helpless freight, reached Alexandrovsk shortly after daybreak. Their first stupor having passed, the children conversed with each other in whispers and tried in their own poor way to console one another.
"Jacob, my brother," he cried again; "do you not remember me, Mendel? Do you not remember our home in Togarog? Do you not recollect how we were both stolen away from home on the night of my bar-mitzvah; how we were taken to Kharkov by the soldiers, and how we escaped and fled into the country?
We are in Russia. On the high road from Tscherkask to Togarog, and not far from the latter village, there stood, in the year 1850, a large and inhospitable-looking inn. Its shingled walls, whose rough surface no paint-brush had touched for long generations, seemed decaying from sheer old age.
The Secretary left the room to fulfil the Governor's instructions, while Basilivitch remounted his horse and returned to his kretschma, to serve, with smiling countenance and friendly mien, the men whom he had devoted to irretrievable ruin. In a remote portion of Togarog, and separated from the main village by a number of wretched lanes, lay the Jewish quarter.
Great was the misery of the peasantry in that section of the Empire; greater still the hardships endured by the Jews, who were despoiled of their possessions and driven from their homes. In the village of Togarog the Jewish quarter was exactly as we last saw it poverty-stricken and dilapidated. Nothing appeared to be changed in it except the miserable inhabitants.
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