“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, I say.  Delay not.”

He disappeared at once behind the neighbouring shack.  Paulina, trembling so that her fingers could hardly pin the shawl she put over her head, made her way through the crowd.  A few moments she stood before her door, as if uncertain which way to turn, her limbs trembling, her breath coming like sobs.  In this plight Rosenblatt came upon her.

“What is the matter with you, Paulina?” he cried.  “What is your business here?”

A swift change came over her.

“I am no dog of yours,” she said, her sullen face flaming with passion.

“What do you mean?” cried Rosenblatt.  “Get into your house, cat!”

“Yes! cat!” cried the woman, rushing at him with fingers extended.