blaze had spread to the
adjacent group of houses. He gathered that the Jews were running out of
the burning block on the other side "like rats." The crowd was mostly
composed of town roughs with a sprinkling of peasants. They were
mischievous but undecided. Among them were a number of soldiers, and
he was surprised to see a policemen, brightly lit from head to foot,
watching the looting of a shop that was still untouched by the flames.

He held back some men who had discovered a couple of women's figures
slinking along in the shadow beneath a wall. Behind his remonstrances
the Jewesses escaped. His anger against disorder was growing upon
him....

Late that night Benham found himself the leading figure amidst a party
of Jews who had made a counter attack upon a gang of roughs in a court
that had become the refuge of a crowd of fugitives. Some of the young
Jewish men had already been making a fight, rather a poor and hopeless
fight, from the windows of the house near the entrance of the court, but
it is doubtful if they would have made an effective resistance if it
had not been for this tall excited stranger who was suddenly shouting
directions to them in sympathetically murdered Russian. It was not that
he brought powerful blows or subtle strategy to their assistance, but
that he put heart into them and perplexity into his adversaries because
he was so manifestly non-partizan. Nobody could ever have mistaken
Benham for a Jew. When at last towards dawn a not too zealous governor
called out the troops and began to clear the streets of rioters, Benham
and a band of Jews were still keeping the gateway of that court behind a
hasty but adequate barricade of furniture and handbarrows.

The ghetto could not understand him, nobody could understand him, but it
was clear a rare and precious visitor had come to their rescue, and he
was implored by a number of elderly, dirty, but very intelligent-looking
old men to stay with them and preserve them until their safety was
assured.

They could not understand him, but they did their utmost to entertain
him and assure him of their gratitude. They seemed to consider him as
a representative of the British Government, and foreign intervention on
their behalf is one of those unfortunate fixed ideas that no persecuted
Jews seem able to abandon.

Benham found himself, refreshed and tended, sitting beside a wood fire
in an inner chamber richly flavoured by humanity and listening to a
disc