“See what you have made of us, of the poor child,” she often argued, pointing to the almost grown grandson. “Since he left school, he works for you, and what will be the end?”

At this, Zelig’s heart would suddenly clutch, as if conscious of some indistinct, remote fear. His answers touching the grandson were abrupt, incoherent, as of one who replies to a question unintelligible to him, and is in constant dread lest his interlocutor should detect it.

Bitter misgivings concerning the boy began to mingle with the reveries of the old man. At first he hardly gave a thought to him. The boy grew noiselessly. The ever-surging tide of secular studies that runs so high on the East Side caught this boy in its wave. He was quietly preparing himself for college. In his eagerness to accumulate the required sum, Zelig paid little heed to what was going on around him; and now, on the point of victory, he became aware with growing dread of something abrewing out of the common. He sniffed suspiciously; and one evening he overheard the boy talking to grandma about his hatred of Russian despotism, about his determination to remain in the States. He ended by entreating her to plead with grandpa to promise him the money necessary for a college education.

Old Zelig swooped down upon them with wild eyes. “Much you need it, you stupid,” he thundered at the youngster in unrestrained fury. “You will continue your studies in Russia, durak, stupid,” His timid wife, however, seemed suddenly to gather courage and she exploded: “Yes, you should give your savings for the child’s education here. Woe is me, in the Russian universities no Jewish children are taken.” Old Zelig’s face grew purple. He rose, and abruptly seated himself again. Then he rushed madly, with a raised, menacing arm, at the boy in whom he saw the formidable foe—the foe he had so long been dreading.

But the old woman was quick to interpose with a piercing shriek: “You madman, look at the sick child; you forget from what our son died, going out like a flickering candle.”

That night Zelig tossed feverishly on his bed. He could not sleep. For the first time it dawned upon him what his wife meant by pointing to the sickly appearance of the child. When the boy’s father died, the physician declared that the cause was tuberculosis.

He rose to his feet. Beads of cold sweat glistened on his forehead, trickled down his cheeks, his beard. He stood pale and panting. Like a startling sound the thought entered his mind—the boy, what should be done with the boy?

The dim, blue night gleamed in through the windows. All was shrouded in the city silence, which yet has a peculiar, monotonous ring in it. Somewhere, an infant awoke with a sickly cry which ended in a suffocating cough. The grizzled old man bestirred himself, and with hasty steps he tiptoed to the place where the boy lay. For a time he stood gazing on the pinched features, the under-sized body of the lad; then he raised one hand, passed it lightly over the boy’s hair, stroking his cheeks and chin. The boy opened his eyes, looked for a moment at the shrivelled form bending over him, then he petulantly closed them again. “You hate to look at granpa, he is your enemy, eh?” The aged man’s voice shook and sounded like that of the child’s awaking in the night. The boy made no answer; but the old man noticed how the frail body shook, how the tears rolled, washing the sunken cheeks.

For some moments he stood mute, then his form literally shrank to that of a child’s as he bent over the ear of the boy and whispered hoarsely: “You are weeping, eh? Granpa is your enemy, you stupid! To- morrow I will give you the money for the college. You hate to look at granpa; he is your enemy, eh?”