“RAIGS, bottles a’d ole ia-a, raigs ! ” The harsh, strident call rang clear and strong on the afternoon air. Old Rachel dropped her knitting, a flutter of excitement stirring her heart. Two long weeks she had been listening for that cry, and now that it had come the voice was that of a stranger.

What did it mean ? Where was little Iky, with his song-call, sweeter to her poor old ears than matin psalm or choir chant ? What had become of old Aaron, raucous of voice, whom she herself had established in business ? Vainly she had been watching the alley behind her spacious home. Why had the ragcarts ceased to come that way ?

There was nothing for her to do in the magnificent home her sons had reared. Hirelings ministered to her children’s wants. To her a little knitting or embroidery was permitted ; and oh, how she loathed it all! Yet she had learned, in the years of her toil and privation, how futile it is to cry out against the established order of things.

Her sons were prosperous merchants, whose fingers glittered with diamonds large as hailstones. Her daughters adorned the best Hebrew society and did credit to their satins. Assuredly their old mother should not humiliate them by reminding them and others of the cruel days of their childhood. She had everything the flesh could desire. Why was she not content ?

Again that cry, “Raigs, bottles a’d ole ia-a, raigs! ” resounded far down the alley. Rachel arose and tiptoed to the back window of her room. Softly she turned the ivory blinds and peered out. There was no one in sight. The man must have stopped at the alley gate of some mansion farther down the street, to barter with a servant for a few old bottles or discarded clothes. Would he turn, after he had made his purchase, and go the other way ? Tears sprang to the old woman’s eyes. She longed to tear off the velvet house gown, the lace mitts that did their best to conceal her hard, misshapen hands, the cap of ribbons and lace that covered her scant gray locks. Her soul was filled with a wild yearning to pursue the filthy cart and its unwashed, unkempt driver. He would take her to her friends, — friends against whom the doors of her home were forever barred.

To them she had gone, a blooming young woman, when death had stricken down the strong prop of her home. They had watched over her brood of little ones, while she, clad in rags that ill concealed her comeliness, had wandered from alley to alley, a bag of coppers in her pocket and a stout sack over her shoulder. Jehovah, who watches over the fatherless, had prospered her, and in time a donkey and cart had to be procured. It wrung her soul to part with the shining yellow coins, the price of the new outfit; but her children were growing, and must be put to school. Again the Lord prospered her, and she sent out numerous carts, each one bringing to her at nightfall its precious freight. With her own hands she had sorted out the cotton and woolen rags, the bottles and fragments of iron, the garments that with a little mending could be sold to the second-hand-clothing dealer.

Then another change had come. Her sons had grown to manhood almost before she realized it, and prosperity had run with open arms to meet them.

At first the cook, Myra, with a few extra coppers in her pocket, had connived at clandestine meetings at the alley gate, or stolen visits in Iky’s cart to the far-away Little Jerusalem. But young Gabriel’s gold coins were more persuasive than old Rachel’s pennies, and so the lonely exile had been driven to content herself with listening daily for the well-known cry, — the slender plank that spanned the gulf between her and the past.

Now for two weeks no ragpicker’s cart had invaded the neighborhood of her home. Strain her keen ears as she would, no call was borne even from the neighboring alleys. Had Gabriel forbidden her old friends to come near his house ? Had he perhaps even done violence to them ?

Tortured with fear and yearning, she waited and listened. Then a greater fear clutched at her heart, and a reckless longing for liberty dashed to earth the walls of prudence and self-control that she had reared about herself.

As the cart clattered over the alley stones she turned, and, with trembling limbs and palpitating heart, fled down the back stairs and out across the bit of lawn, uttering a low, gurgling cry, whereat the ragpicker started and brought his horse up with a sudden jerk. Who in this fashionable neighborhood possessed that call ?

To his amazement, a little stooped woman in lace cap and velvet gown stood in the gateway, beckoning to him. In Yiddish such as he had not heard since he left his mother’s knee she greeted him, demanded his name and news of her friends.

A pestilence had broken out among the ragpickers, he told her, — a dread disease that carried them away like chaff before the flail. Iky’s mother had already perished, and now the poor boy lay tossing in wild delirium, with no one to give him so much as a cup of cold water.

Suddenly Rachel straightened herself to her full height, and all the servile resignation was gone from her haughty old face.

“I will go back to mine own people ! ” she cried. “These be flesh of my flesh, and blood of my blood, and yet are they strangers to me. Would I had reared them as honest ragpickers! Go thou but to the next alley and wait. I will join thee.”

A half hour later the ragpicker lifted to the seat of his cart a little old creature wrapped in a dingy black shawl. No lace mitts covered her wrinkled hands. Her feet felt again the austere caress of sabots that had lain for years at the bottom of her chest of sacred things. Under the seat of the cart was a basket filled with food and wine for her suffering people. Rachel thought not, cared not, for the consternation that would fill the cold, handsome house when sons and daughters returned at nightfall to find the mother gone. Her people were in distress, and she was going to them.

“Raigs, raigs, got any raigs! ” The cry burst from her lips before she could suppress it. A light of ecstasy shone in her faded brown eyes. Oh, this was heaven, heaven itself! The captive was returning to Jerusalem. As the old, beloved call quivered on the air, a welldressed man on the pavement stopped and stared at the cart. It was Gabriel, and at his side was a handsome woman, a Gentile, who would willingly barter her faith for the Hebrew’s gold.

“Quick! down the alley! Don’t spare the nag. My son has discovered me. He will take me back, ” the old woman whispered, full of terror, yet unsubdued.

Away they went, through alleys and side streets. No more rags were purchased that day. At dusk the filthy, dilapidated houses of Little Jerusalem were before them. Palaces these, yea, and temples, wherein the returned exile could worship forever.

Oh, the joy of ministering to the sick, of listening to their strident patois of German and Hebrew, of mixing cooling drinks for their fevered throats! Two days and nights she toiled among her people, and then the pestilence laid its burning fingers on her heart. There was no one left to minister to her. All were sick or dead. No one resisted when an officer in blue uniform, with Gabriel at his heels, entered the low door of the hovel.

“ Mother, what does this mean ? How dare you ” —

“Nay, my son, rebuke me not,” the parched lips murmured. “I am come out of exile to mine own people. Already the gates of Zion stand ajar, and thy father beckons. Return thou to the Babylon of thy love; but for me the years of captivity are consumed.”

Emilie Ruck de Schell.