There was not a sentiment, however incomprehensible, for which they were not ready to die or to damn.
"All Israel are brethren," and indeed there was a strange antique clannishness about these "Sons of the Covenant" which in the modern world, where the ends of the ages meet, is Socialism.

They prayed for one another while alive, visited one another's bedsides when sick, buried one another when dead.

No mercenary hands poured the yolks of eggs over their dead faces and arrayed their corpses in their praying-shawls.

No hired masses were said for the sick or the troubled, for the psalm-singing services of the "Sons of the Covenant" were always available for petitioning the Heavens, even though their brother had been arrested for buying stolen goods, and the service might be an invitation to Providence to compound a felony.

Little charities of their own they had, too--a Sabbath Meal Society, and a Marriage Portion Society to buy the sticks for poor couples--and when a pauper countryman arrived from Poland, one of them boarded him and another lodged him and a third taught him a trade.