"I want to see your man's uncle," Morris continued. Without looking up
the woman cried in stentorian tones: "Mees-taire!"

In response a bent figure, clad in an alpaca caftan, appeared from an
interior bedroom. He wore a velvet skullcap, and a thin gray beard
straggled from his chin; his nose was surmounted by a pair of steel
spectacles.

"_Sholom alaicham!_" Morris cried, according the Rabbi that greeting, as
ancient as the Hebrew tongue itself--"Peace be with you."

"_Alaicham sholom!_" the Rabbi answered, and then he resorted to the
Yiddish jargon: "Do you look for me?"

"I look for the _Rav_ Elkan Levin," Morris said in a tongue to which he
had long been unaccustomed. "I am the servant of the philanthropist
Steuermann."

"Steuermann?" the _Rav_ Levin repeated. "I do not know him."

"In America," Morris said, "his name is honored over the governor's. He
sends me to you to speak for the unfortunate _Tzwee_ Kovalenko."

"_Tzwee_ Kovalenko," the old man cried, and his beard stood out as his
invisible lips tightened, while his nose became sharp and hawk-like. "A
_mishna meshuna_ to him, the same as he sent to my son."

"No," Morris declared; "he did not send it to your son. It was another
that did it."