Lem was in a panic. Fear, such as he had never experienced, cowed him. To the mind of youth the strange foreigner seems a thing to be jeered and hooted in the open day, but in the homes and churches and synagogues of the foreigners are believed to lurk strange mysteries; deep, unfathomable, blood-curdling, weird ways and doings, especially dire when wrought upon boys. Lem, in Shuder's grasp, did not see the poor shack with its grotesque furnishings rescued from purchases of offcast second-hand things. He did not see the tawdry intimate surroundings of a poor Jew struggling to wrest comfort and life from a none too friendly environment. Lem saw a perilous twilight in which might be worked strange tortures, awful incantations, black wizardry. Lem was scared stiff.
“Stealink!” said Shuder bitterly. The poor man was, indeed, almost in tears. His natural anger was all but lost in a feeling of hopelessness that he would ever be able to protect his property in this land of scorn.
“You should gif him by a policemans right avay,” said Rosa. “He should go to chail. Stealink at night!”
“Vait!” said Shuder, upraising his free hand. “Boy, vere is your fadder?”
“I don't know,” Lem whimpered. “How do I know where he is? He don't have to tell me, does he? You let me go, I tell you!”
“Should you tell me vere is your fadder, I let you go,” said Shuder. “Stop viggling. I don't hurt you. Why you steal my chunk?”
“I did n't steal it. I just took some.”
“Why?” Shuder insisted.
Lem looked up at the Jew.
“I won't tell,” he said.