“Then to chail!” said Shuder.
“Well—I wanted it,” said Lem reluctantly, and suddenly he broke down and began to ay. “I wanted to go to pop. I wanted to go to him. He said I could go where he is.”
“Rosa, hush!” said Shuder when his wife tried to speak again, and he began patiently, and with the little English he could command, to comfort Lem and let him know nothing dire was to happen to him.
Slowly, Lem's fear of some mysterious fate was lessened, and again and again he heard that Shuder, too, wished to find Saint Harvey. Not to harm him, Shuder assured Lem; only to get a “paper” that Saint Harvey had forgotten to leave. The importance of this paper to Shuder loomed vast as the Jew spoke of it again and again. In spite of his fear and hatred, Lem felt that the “paper” was something Shuder should not be robbed of—that it was some sort of Magna Charta of his life which Harvey had carried away by mistake.
“You won't get a policeman after me?” Lem begged.
“Sure, no! I gif you right by it. Sure, no!”
“Well, I ain't goin' to tell you. Pop he told me not to tell. But I can't help it if you go where I go, can I?”
“Nobody could,” said Shuder. “How could you?”
“Well, then, you let me go an' I'll go. I'll go right where he told me to, because that's what he said for me to do. And I can't help it if you follow me. Only you better get ready to walk a long ways, because it's sixty miles, I guess. Anyway, I guess it is.”
Shuder stroked his beard.