for me. But I'm sorry to tell you
that I refuse to go before the committee according you
arranged to, as I received a letter without any name
threatening me that I should not dare to call for the
committee to tell the truth for I will be put into mischief
and trouble. It is stated also that the same gentleman does
not require the truth. He helps only those he likes to. So I
will not call and wish you my dear gentleman not to trouble to
come. Therefore if you wish to assist me in somehow is very
good and I will certainly gratify you and if not I will have
to do without it, and will have to trust the Almighty. So
kindly do not trouble about it as I do not wish to enter a
risk, I remain your humble and grateful servant,

'ISRAEL QUARRIAR.

'P.S.--Last Wednesday a man called on my landlord and asked
him some secrets about me, and told him at last that I shall
have to state according I will be commanded to and not as I
wish. I enclose you herewith the same letter I received, it is
written in Jewish. Please not to show it to anyone but to
tear it at once as I would not trust it to any other one. I
would certainly call at the office and follow your advice. But
my life is dearer. So you should not trouble to come. I fear
already I gratify you for kind help till now, in the future
you may do as you wish.'

CHAPTER V

LAST STAGE OF ALL

This letter seemed decisive. I did not trouble Mr. Conn to English the
Yiddish epistle. My imagination saw too clearly Quarriar himself
dictating its luridly romantic phraseology. Such counter-plots, coils,
treasons, and stratagems in so simple a matter! How Quarriar could
even think them plausible I could not at first imagine; and with my
anger was mingled a flush of resentment at his low estimate of my
intellect.

After-reflection instructed me that he wrote as a Russian to whom
apparently nothing mediaeval was strange. But at the moment I had only
the sense of outrage and trickery. All these months I had been fed
upon lies. Day after day I had been swathed with them as with
feathers. I had so pledged my reputation as a reader of character that
he would appear with his three younger children, bear every test, and
be triumphantly vindicated. And in that moment of hot anger and
wounded pride I had almost slashed through my canvas and mutilated
be