o sit up.

"Easy there!" the doctor commanded. "Two of you take him inside and put
him on a lounge if you have one."

Abe and Morris followed Pincus and the head cutter as they supported the
half-conscious Harkavy into the firm's office. Ten minutes later the old
man was restored to consciousness.

"_Wo ist er?_" he murmured. "_Mein kind!_"

"It's all right," the doctor replied, and then he turned to the office.
"Come out here, you, and talk to the old man."

Pincus came running from the office and reassured his uncle, who, under
the ministrations of the doctor, grew rapidly stronger until he was
sufficiently recovered to be placed on a chair.

"Keep him quiet while I attend to the other fellow," said the doctor;
"and don't let him talk."

He went at once to the office, where Harkavy sat on the edge of the
lounge.

"Here! What are you doing?" he cried. "You shouldn't let that fellow do
any talking."

"That's all right, doctor," Abe said calmly. "He should go on talking
now if it would kill him even. Go ahead, Harkavy."

"And so," Harkavy continued, "after I am stealing the wine they took me
to the police office. There was a place! But, anyhow, Mr. Potash, I
could tell you all about it afterward. Inside the backyard was a dead
moujik which he is got run over by a train. His face is all damaged so
you couldn't tell who he was at all."

He faltered and waved his hand.

"Give me, please, a glass water," he said, and the doctor seized his
hand.

"Never mind!" Abe cried inexorably. "Leave him alone, doctor. He should
finish what he's got to say."

Harkavy nodded and sipped some water.

"Then comes the package for the chief of police," he went on; "and they
put it first in a pail of water. Then they open it, Mr. Potash, and it
don't harm nobody; but them _roshers_ want to put it on to somebody, so
they make me a proposition they would give me a couple hundred rubles
and a ticket to America--and I took 'em up. For stealing that wine I
could get five years yet; so what should I do? They give me the money
and I run away; and the dead moujik they are telling everybody is me,
which I am blew up to pieces by the package."

"And you let the old man bury the moujik and think it was you?" Morris
asked.

Harkavy nodded.

"Over and over again he is telling me I am no good and he wishes I was
dead," he said. "I wish I was, Mr. Perlmutter--I wish I was!"

He commenced to cry weakly and Morris handed him the water.