"And the peasants who carted the spirit?" asked Abram.
Jankiel laughed.
"They are safe; their souls and bodies and everything that belongs to them is pledged to my innkeepers."
"Hush!" whispered again the phlegmatic, therefore cautious, Kalman.
Eliezer trembled more and more. A ray of light had pierced his dreamy brain.
"Meir! Meir!" he whispered, "how can I get away? I am afraid to cross the room; they might think I had overheard their secrets."
With one hand Meir pushed the table from the window, and with the other helped his friend to push through. In a second Eliezer had disappeared from the room. Meir drew himself up and murmured:
"I will show myself now, and let them know that somebody has overheard their conversation."
Then he opened the low door and entered into the next room. There, near the wall, on three chairs closely drawn together, sat three men. A small table stood between them. Kalman, in his satin garment, looked calm and self-possessed. Jankiel and Abraham rested their elbows on the table. The first was red with excitement and his eyes glittered with malicious, greedy light; the latter looked pale and troubled, and kept his eyes fixed on the floor; but nothing was capable of disturbing the smiling equanimity of Kalman. When Meir entered the room, he heard distinctly his uncle's words:
"And if the whole place burns down with the spirit vaults?"