The old man sank trembling into a nearby chair and clutched the edge of
the table.

"You tell this to me who saw with my own eyes his body!" he said in
shaking tones. "Yes, _Baron_; I saw my own child like a slaughtered
beast, all blood--not a face, but a piece of flesh. I saw him, and you
tell me this!"

"None the less," Morris went on, "if your son did die it was a _kapora_
not meant for him. It was intended for the chief of police."

The _Rav_ shook his head.

"It stands in the _Gemera_" he said, in the singsong tone of the
Talmudical reader: "If one flings a stone for pleasure and it strikes
another so that he dies, the one also shall die."

He rose to his feet and waved one hand with a flapping motion. "An eye
for an eye!" he cried in shrill tones. "A tooth for a tooth!"

Morris shrank back and turned to the woman, who had not raised her head
from the dishwashing.

"You tell him," he said, "that the philanthropist Steuermann invites him
to come to the address I shall give you--to-morrow at ten o'clock. Tell
him you know that when Steuermann commands, governors obey."

"What is it my business?" Mrs. Levin replied. "Tell him yourself."