m by personally
seeking a nearby restaurant, and after an interval of ten minutes,
during which Abe and Morris took turns with Max and Alex in fanning the
patient, he returned with a pot of steaming coffee. Uncle Mosha drank
three cups in rapid succession and heaved a great sigh.

"You ain't got maybe a cigar about you, Max?" he said.

"Smoke this, Uncle Mosha," Alex Kronberg cried, pulling a large satiny
invincible from his waistcoat pocket and thrusting it at his uncle. For
one hesitating minute the old man looked from Alex to the cigar, but at
last its glossy perfection overcame his scruples.

"Much obliged, Alex," he said.

"That's all right," Alex mumbled as he struck a match. "How do you feel
now, uncle?"

"First rate," Uncle Mosha replied as he blew out great clouds of smoke;
"although I ought to feel a whole lot worse, Alex, when I see Maxie
Gershon here. Twenty-five years ago I seen him last and he looks the
same fat-faced feller with the black eyes. Only to think he now comes
back and takes away half my house from me."

"I ain't come back to do no such thing!" Max cried. "I could assure you,
Mr. Kronberg, although me and Alex Kronberg is going as partners
together, I never knew until I seen you here that you was any relation
of his. As for your house, Mr. Kronberg, I don't know nothing about it
at all."

"Don't you?" Uncle Mosha exclaimed. "Well, I'll tell you. It's like
this."

"_Stigun!_" Aaron hissed. "Don't open your mouth, Uncle Mosha."

"What d'ye mean, don't open my mouth?" Uncle Mosha retorted. "D'ye think
I'm a crook? If I got a house which it don't belong to me at all, then I
don't want it."

He turned his back on Aaron and straightway he narrated the full
circumstances surrounding his purchase of the Madison Street house.

"Certainly I ain't no lawyer nor nothing," he continued, "but when old
Max Baum died you was due to get just as much as your Uncle Nathan out
of his estate, and if Nathan Baum swindled me out of my money by
claiming he owns the whole thing that couldn't give me no right to your
share, ain't it?"

Max nodded.

"Then what ain't mine I don't want at all," Uncle Mosha continued; "and
so, Maxie, you and me gives Leon Sammet here a deed of the house and
Leon pays us the balance of eight thousand dollars. Out of that you get
four thousand three hundred and seventy-five dollars, because me, I
already got seven hundred and fifty dollars. Are you agreeable to fix it
that w