defiantly to Rosenblatt.

Rosenblatt hesitated, and then grunted out something that sounded
like "Slovak swine!"

"Slovak!" cried Jacob with generous enthusiasm. "We are all Slovak.
We are all Polak. We are all Galician. We are all brothers. Any man
who says no, is no friend of Jacob Wassyl."

Shouts of approval rose from the excited crowd.

"Come, brothers," shouted Jacob to Simon and Joseph, "come in.
There is abundant eating. Make way for my friends!" He crowded
back through the door, taking especial delight in honouring the
men despised of Rosenblatt.

The room was packed with steaming, swaying, roaring dancers, both
men and women, all reeking with sweat and garlic. Upon a platform
in a corner between two violins, sat Arnud before his cymbal,
resplendent in frilled shirt and embroidered vest, thundering on
his instrument the favourite songs of the dancers, shouting now and
then in unison with the melody that pattered out in metallic rain
from the instrument before him. For four hours and more, with
intervals sufficient only to quench their thirst, the players had
kept up their interminable accompaniment to dance and song. It was
clearly no place for hungry men. Jacob pushed his way toward the
inner room.

"Ho! Paulina!" he shouted, "two plates for men who have not eaten."

"Have not eaten!" The startling statement quickened Paulina's slow
movements almost to a run. "Here, here," she said, "bring them to
the window at the back."

Another struggle and Jacob with his guests were receiving through
the window two basins filled with luscious steaming stew.

As they turned away with their generous host, a man with a heavy
black beard appeared at the window.

"Another hungry man, Paulina," he said quietly in the Galician tongue.

"Holy Virgin! Where have these hungry men been?" cried Paulina,
hurrying with another basin to the window.

The man fumbled and hesitated as he took the dish.

"I have been far away," he said, speaking now in the Russian
tongue, in a low and tense voice.

Paulina started. The man caught her by the wrist.

"Quiet!" he said. "Speak no word, Paulina."

The woman paled beneath the dirt and tan upon her face.

"Who is it?" she whispered with parched lips.

"You know it is Michael Kalmar, your husband. Come forth.
I wait behind yon hut. No word to any man."

"You mean to kill me," she said, her fat body shaking as if with palsy.

"Bah! You Sow! Who would kill a sow? Come forth,