calculation we shall change places. We shall spend more nights in
the meadows of those who have more horses. That will make 'fair
stealing.'"

The plan of Jacob was accepted, not as a proposition, but as an
order. Since that time we began to "steal with justice." And our
patrons slept peacefully, delighted with their unpunished thievery,
till a Gentile boy, one Serge Ivanovich, joined us on one of his own
"nights." He was the son of the village elder, and a cousin of
Peter Khlopov. He was compelled to obey Jacob, but the next morning
he blabbed about it all over the village.

Of course, our patrons were angry. Jacob took the whole blame on
himself, and suffered punishment for all of us. Then "Jacob's
Klaus" was closed, because our patrons gave up sending us out "for
the night."

Well, if you please, their dissatisfaction was not entirely
groundless: they found themselves fooled by us, and cheated in a
way. For every one of them had been thinking that his horse would
bring him some profit every night, equal to the value of the horse's
browsing. Seven nights, seven times that profit; thirty nights,
thirty times that profit. . . . All at once these "profits" had
vanished: it turned out that every horse had been browsing at the
expense of his own master; so the expected profits became a total
loss. Of course, stealing is stealing. But then, they argued, had
the Zhid youngsters any right to meddle with their affairs? Was it
their property that was being stolen? As one of my Gentile
acquaintances told me once: "The trouble with the Jews is that they
are always pushing themselves in where they are not wanted at all."