knew her for the Jewess, the
wife of the silversmith.

"Father!" she breathed, in the pitiful idiom of that land of orphans.

"Ye-es," said Robert Lucas vaguely, and put a hand on her head.

Never before, in all the orderly level of his life, had a human being
chosen him for champion and savior. He was aware of something within
him that surged, some spate of force and potency in his blood; he
stood upright with a start to confront the policeman who was on the
woman's heels. The man was grinning still, fatuously and consciously,
like a buffoon who knows he will be applauded; Lucas fronted his
smiling security with a still fury that wiped the mirth from his face
and left him gaping.

"Get back!" said Lucas. He spoke in a low tone, and the crowd jostled
nearer to hear.

The policeman stared at him, amazed and uncomprehending.

"Sir," he stammered; "Excellency--this Jewess she----"

He stopped. Lucas was pointing at him with the flute across the bowed
head of the woman, who crouched over her child at his feet.

"You shall report the matter to the Governor," said Lucas, in the
same tone of icy anger. "And I will report it to the Minister."

He touched the woman. "Get up," he said. "Come with me."

He had to repeat it before she understood; she was numb with terror.
She rose with difficulty to her feet, clasping the child, whose wail
was now weak with exhaustion. The peering crowd made a ring of brute
faces about them, full of menace and mystery, but the new power in
him moved them to right and left at his gesture, and they gave him
passage, with the woman behind him, across the road. The stupefied
policeman watched them go, and then ran off to place the matter in
the hands of his superior.

Lucas was at his door when the officer whom the policeman had fetched
touched him on the elbow. He was a young man; if he had been older
Lucas's difficulties might have been increased. He peered in the
darkness, and was visible as a narrow, black-moustached face, with
heavy eyebrows and a brutal mouth. The one thing that deterred him
from brisk action was the fact that Lucas was a foreigner, whose
rights and liabilities were therefore uncertain.

"This woman," he said, "is arrested."

Lucas was unlocking the door. He turned with his hand on the key, and
the woman touched his arm. Perhaps that touch aided him to use big
words. As a resident in Tambov he knew the officer by sight, and had
always been a little daunted by his