aler.

A beardless youth came running out of the back room. David laughed.
'Herr Cantberg told me that you were a Bundist,' he explained to the
shopkeeper. 'And I came to meet a kindred spirit. But I was warned
Herr Cantberg is always wrong. Good-morning.'

'Stop!' cried the youth. 'Go in, Reb Yitzchok; let me deal with this
fire-eater.' And as the corpulent man retired with an improbable
alacrity, he continued gravely: 'This time Herr Cantberg was not more
than a hundred versts from the truth.'

David smiled. '_You_ are the Bundist.'

'Hush! Here I am the son-in-law. I study Talmud and eat _Kest_ (free
food). What news from Warsaw?'

'I want both you and your father-in-law,' said David evasively--'his
money and your muscles.'

'He gives no money to the Cause, save unwillingly what I squeeze out
of Cantberg.' The youth permitted himself his first smile. 'When he
deals with that bourgeois at the telephone, I always egg him on to
stand out for more and more, and my profit is half the extra roubles
we extort. But as for myself, my life, of course, is at the disposal
of headquarters.'

David was moved by this refreshing simplicity. He felt a little
embarrassment in explaining that headquarters to him meant
_Samooborona_, not Bund. The youth's countenance changed completely.

'Defend the Jews!' he cried contemptuously. 'What have we to do with
the Jewish bourgeoisie?'

'The Bund is exclusively Jewish, is it not?'

'Merely because we found the rest of the Revolutionary body too clumsy
for words. It was always getting caught, its printing-presses exhumed,
its leaders buried. So we split off, the better to help our
fellow-working-men. But we are a Labour party, not a Jewish party. We
have the whole Russian Revolution on our shoulders; how can we throw
away our lives for the capitalists of the Milovka Ghetto? Then there
are the elections at hand--I have to work for the Left. Ah, here come
some of our bourgeois; ask _them_, if you like. I will keep my
father-in-law out of the shop.'

Two men in close confabulation strolled in, a third disconnected, but
on their heels. With five Jews the concourse soon became a congress.

One of the couple turned out to be a Progressive Pole. He mistook
David for a Zionist, and denounced him for a foreigner.

'We of the P.P.P.,' he said, 'will peacefully acquire equal rights
with our fellow-Poles--nay, we shall be allowed to become Poles
ourselves. But you Zionists are less citize