ers_, the Jewish man-gatherers who collected the tribute of
young Jews for the Little Father. But as Simon began to loom through
the red fog, 'A gun on the Sabbath!' he cried. It was as if the bullet
had gone through all his conceptions of life and of Simon.

Hannah snatched at the side-issue. 'I read in Josephus--Simon's prize
for Hebrew, you know--that the Jews fought against the Romans on
Sabbath.'

'Yes; but they fought for themselves--for our Holy Temple.'

'But it's for ourselves now,' said Simon. 'Didn't you always say we
are English?'

S. Cohn opened his mouth in angry retort. Then he discovered he had no
retort, only anger. And this made him angrier, and his mouth remained
open, quite terrifyingly for poor Mrs. Cohn.

'What is the use of arguing with him?' she said imploringly. 'The War
Office has been sensible enough to refuse him.'

'We shall see,' said Simon. 'I am going to peg away at 'em again, and
if I don't get into the Mounted Infantry, I'm a Dutchman--and of the
Boer variety.'

He seemed any kind of man save a Jew to the puzzled father. 'Hannah,
you must have known of this--these clothes,' S. Cohn spluttered.

'They don't cost anything,' she murmured. 'The child amuses himself.
He will never really be called out.'

'If he is, I'll stop his supplies.'

'Oh,' said Simon airily, 'the Government will attend to that.'

'Indeed!' And S. Cohn's face grew black. 'But remember--you may go,
but you shall never come back.'

'Oh, Solomon! How can you utter such an awful omen?'

Simon laughed. 'Don't bother, mother. He's bound to take me back.
Isn't it in the papers that he promised?'

S. Cohn went from black to green.

VII

Simon got his way. The authorities reconsidered their decision. But
the father would not reconsider his. Ignorant of his boy's graceless
existence, he fumed at the first fine thing in the boy's life. 'Tis a
wise father that knows his own child.

Mere emulation of his Christian comrades, and the fun of the thing,
had long ago induced the lad to add volunteering to his other
dissipations. But, once in it, the love of arms seized him, and when
the call for serious fighters came, some new passion that surprised
even himself leapt to his breast--the first call upon an idealism,
choked, rather than fed, by a misunderstood Judaism. Anglicization had
done its work; from his schooldays he had felt himself a descendant,
not of Judas Maccabaeus, but of Nelson and Wellington; and no