He spoke only once again that night, except to refuse the offer to ride inside the car. He preferred the footboard, he said, and explained that as a youth it had been his ambition to be a fireman.
"I wonder," he said suddenly, breaking the silence of nearly an hour.
"What do you wonder?" asked Malinkoff, who sat nearest to the window, where Cherry stood.
"I wonder what happened to that boy on the bicycle?"
CHAPTER XVII
ON THE ROAD
Israel Kensky died at five o'clock in the morning. They had made a rough attempt to dress the wound in his shoulder, but, had they been the most skilful of surgeons with the best appliances which modern surgery had invented at their hands, they could not have saved his life. He died literally in the arms of Irene, and they buried him in a little forest on the edge of a sluggish stream, and Cherry Bim unconsciously delivered the funeral oration.
"This poor old guy was a good fellow," he said. "I ain't got nothing on the Jews as a class, except their habit of prosperity, and that just gets the goat of people like me, who hate working for a living. He was straight and white, and that's all you can expect any man to be, or any woman either, with due respect to you, miss. If any of you gents would care to utter a few words of prayer, you'll get a patient hearing from me, because I am naturally a broad-minded man."