THE LAST OF THEM 571
over a difficult legal problem with wrinkled brows, his eyes piercing the page, his fingers stiffening round the handle of his stick, and he motionless; and when sud- denly he found the solution, he gave a shout "ISTu !" and came down so hard on the desk with his stick that the whole house-of-study shook. It happened just when the people were standing quite quiet, repeating the Eighteen Benedictions.
Then it was told how this same lad became Rav in Mouravanke, how his genius descended to his children and children's children, till late in the generations, gathering in might with each generation in turn. They rose, these giants, one after the other, persistent investi- gators of the Law, with high, wrinkled foreheads, dark, bushy brows, a hard, cutting glance, sharp as steel.
In those days Mouravanke was illuminated as with seven suns. The houses-of -study were filled with students; voices, young and old, rang out over the Gemorehs, sang, wept, and implored. Worried and tired-looking fathers and uncles would come into the Shools with blackened faces after the day's pitch- burning, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, range themselves in leisurely mood by the doors and the stove, cock their ears, and listen. Jewish drivers, who convey people from one town to another, snatched a minute the first thing in the morning, and dropped in with their whips under their arms, to hear a passage in the Gemoreh expounded. And the women, who washed the linen at the pump in summer-time, beat the wet clothes to the melody of the Torah that came floating into the street through the open windows, sweet as a long- expected piece of good news.
