Near the town of Lubavitch there was a small village with a Jewish-owned inn. On his many travels throughout the area, Rabbi Shmuel, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe, passed the village many times, but he never stopped in that particular inn. One day, however, the Rebbe asked his driver to stop his carriage at the inn and the Rebbe went inside. No one was home except the two small children of the owners. The Rebbe asked where their parents had gone, but the children replied only that they were on some sort of errands from which they would probably return soon.
"What subjects are you learning in school?" the Rebbe asked.
"I learn Torah," replied the elder of the two.
"And I can read Psalms," chimed in the younger.
"That is very good," said the Rebbe. The Rebbe opened the nearby book of Psalms and he and the children began to read aloud together.
When the mother returned later she was amazed to find the Rebbe sitting at her table surrounded by her children reciting Psalms with them. But as she stood there, she was disquieted by the melancholy tone of the Rebbe's voice, and without knowing why, she began to weep.
The reading of Psalms continued for some time, and then the Rebbe rose as if to leave. But as he reached the door handle, he suddenly turned around and returned to his seat, bidding the children to resume their recitation. The group read together several more pages and the Rebbe stood again, wished them farewell and drove away in his carriage.
The woman's nerves were on edge. She anxiously waited for her husband's return. The innkeeper had gone off to some of the neighboring villages to collect debts owed to him by his peasant customers. But the hours passed and night fell without his arrival. Discomfort turned to fear as the family began to imagine the evil that could have happened.
Finally, in the wee hours of the morning they heard a knock on the door. The poor woman, shaking from fear, ran to open the door. To her horror, her husband fell in, fainting on the doorstep. When he finally was able to open his eyes and speak, he related the following hair-rising tale:
At the house of one of his debtors the peasant asked him to accompany him to the barn where he would measure out grain which was to be his payment. The two men walked together to the barn, but when they were inside, the peasant suddenly bolted the door announcing to the Jew that he was going to kill him. It took only a few more seconds for the Jew to realize that this was no joke; the peasant has every intention to carry out his terrible threat. The innkeeper fell to his knees and begged for his life, sobbing that he was the sole support of a wife and innocent little children. But the farmer had no intention of being swayed. "I always do what I say, and I am going to kill you now!" was the bellowing reply.
The poor Jew asked for a few minutes to pray to his Creator, and the peasant nodded absent-mindedly as he combed the barn looking for his axe. Then he remembered that he left it in the house.
He bound the Jew hand and foot with a heavy rope and ran to the farmhouse to retrieve the weapon. Not a minute has passed when the peasant's wife returned from her work in the fields. When she opened the barn door there was the Jew trussed up like a calf waiting for the slaughter. He implored the woman to untie him, promising her everything he could think of, but she was caught in a quandary. On the one hand, she found it hard to resist his tearful entreaties, on the other hand, she was deathly afraid of her husband who would murder her on the spot if he knew she had freed his quarry. Finally, she agreed and quickly undid his bonds, telling him to go hide amongst the sheaves in the field. For, when her husband found him missing he would surely search up and down the road until he found him. For his part, the grateful Jew instructed the woman to run back to the field, and pretend to be first returning only when she saw her husband coming.
While the Jew hid in the field between the high grasses and sheaves of wheat, he could hear the peasant's heavy breathing as he frantically searched for him. He could see the glint of the farmer's axe, and his heart beat in terror as he imagined being found. But miraculously, the peasant did not find him in spite of searching the farm and all the surrounding roads and pathways. The Jew, meanwhile, lay in the field, barely breathing, for fear of discovery. Finally, after midnight he gathered the courage and strength to crawl out from his hiding place and slowly began his furtive journey home.
His wife listened in increasing wonder to the recital of his tale. When he had finished she told him of the visit of the Rebbe, and they both understood what had happened. During the first reading of the Psalms the Jew had survived the encounter in the barn; and when the Rebbe returned a second time he had been saved from the peasant in the field.
