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Each member strolled in casually, ordered a glass of tea, and drifted upstairs. The landlord, uneasily sniffing peril and profit, and dismally apprehending pistol lessons, left the inn to his wife, and stole up likewise to the fateful bedroom. Here, after protesting fearfully that they would ruin him by this conspirative meeting, he added that he was not out of sympathy with the times, and volunteered to stand sentinel. Accordingly, he was posted at the ragged window-curtain, where, with excess of caution, he signalled whenever he saw a Christian, in uniform or no. At every signal David’s oratory ceased as suddenly as if it had been turned off at the main, and the gaberdined figures, distributed over the two beds and the one chair, gripped one another nervously. But David was used to oratory under difficulties. He lived on the same terms with the police as the most desperate criminals, and a foreigner who should have witnessed the secret meetings at which tactics were discussed, arms distributed, scouts despatched, and night-watches posted, would have imagined him engaged in a rebellion instead of in an attempt to strengthen the forces of law and order.

He had come to Milovka, he explained, to warn them that the Black Hundreds were soon to be loosed upon the Jewish quarter. But no longer must the Jew go like a lamb to the shambles. Too long, when smitten, had he turned the other cheek, only to get it smitten too. They must defend themselves. He was there to form a branch of the Samooborona. Browning revolvers must be purchased. The wood-choppers must be organized as a column of axe-bearers. There would be needed also an ambulance corps, with bandages, dressings, etc.

The shudder at the first mention of the pogrom was not so violent as that which followed the mention of bandages. Each man felt warm blood trickling down his limbs. To what end, then, had he escaped the conscription? The landlord at the window wiped the cold beads off his brow, and was surprised to find his hand not scarlet.

‘Brethren,’ Koski the timber-merchant burst out, ‘this is a Haman in disguise. To hold firearms is the surest way of provoking—-‘

‘I don’t say you shall hold firearms!’ David interrupted. ‘It is your young men who must defend the town. But the Kahal (congregation) must pay the expenses–say, ten thousand roubles to start with.’

‘Ten thousand roubles for a few pistols!’ cried Mendel the horse-dealer. ‘It is a swindle.’

David flushed. ‘We have to buy three pistols for every one we get safely into the town. But one revolver may save ten thousand roubles of property, not to mention your life.’

‘It will end our lives, not save them!’ persisted the timber-merchant. ‘This is a plot to destroy us!’

A growl of assent burst from the others.

‘My friends,’ said David quietly. ‘A plot to destroy you has already been hatched; the question is, are you going to be destroyed like rats or like men?’

‘Pooh!’ said the horse-dealer. ‘This is not the first time we have been threatened, if not with death, at least with extra taxes; but we have always sent Shtadlonim (ambassadors). We will make a collection, and the president of the Kahal shall go at once to the Governor, and present it to him’–here Mendel winked–‘to enable him to take measures against the pogrom.’

‘The Governor is in the plot,’ said David.

‘He can be bought out,’ said the timber-merchant.

‘Pogroms are more profitable than presents,’ rejoined David drily. ‘Let us rather prepare bombs.’ A fresh shudder traversed the beds and the chairs, and agitated the window-curtain.

‘Bombs! Presents!’ burst forth the old Rabbi. ‘These are godless instruments. We are in the hands of the Holy One–blessed be He! The Shomer (Guardian) of Israel neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.’

‘Neither does the Shochet (slaughterer) of Israel,’ said David savagely.

‘Hush! Epicurean!’ came from every quarter at this grim jest; for the Shomer and the Shochet are the official twain of ritual butchery.