sh boys?" I asked him. "No," he answered passionately. "I
think I should have gone crazy if they had been."

I glanced at him quickly. He did not smile as he said it, nor was there
anything too melodramatic about his manner.

"Why do you say that? That you would have gone crazy?"

"Don't you see? You're a Jew, ain't you?"

I said, "Yes."

"Well, I couldn't talk about it to you at all if you wasn't. And if they
had been Jews--my own people--and had gone back on me like that, it
would've been just a little too much. They were just tough kids--and so
they didn't know any better. If they had been Jews they wouldn't have
taught me to steal, they wouldn't have done what they--God, my father
and mother were right about it, for sure!"

"Your father and mother? Why, what had they to do with it?"

"Oh, you know how parents are. They used to warn me against going with
those tough kids. They seemed to know from the beginning that
something'd happen out of it. They said--you know, it's like old
folks--that Christian boys would never want to go with me unless to gain
their own ends--and then to desert me, see? They wanted me to go with
the Jewish boys I'd been going with all my life, before then. But I
laughed and didn't listen. And--and when I had to pay back for all the
things I stole, it was--well, it was the Jewish boys I knew who clubbed
together and earned money by odd jobs after school--and if it wasn't for
them, I'd be in the workhouse."

"But all Christian boys aren't like the ones you went with," I argued.

"No, I suppose not. But I like to think that all Jewish boys are like
the ones on this street. They made a good Jew of me!"

I turned on him quickly. "Did they? How?"

"They made me proud of being one of them. They made me feel the close
something-or-other--well, I ain't much when it comes to speeches but you
know what I mean."

Perhaps I did, but I would not admit it to myself. Perhaps I did see the
faith reborn in him through the faith that other boys had given him.
Perhaps, too, I could picture something of the welling joy that had come
to his parents when he returned to the only right path that their
simple, unquestioning eyes could see. And how jealously they must be
guarding him now, to keep him in that code which was their life's law
and had become his daily lesson!

"Don't you see?" he begged. "Can't you? Why, a fellow's just _got_ to
have a side to fight on--and to fight for. And he's got to belie