"Who is there?" cries a frightened voice within. The Lithuanian knows it to be the voice of a Jewess, a sick Jewess.
"I," answers the Rebbe in the peasant tongue.
"Who is I?" inquires the voice further. And the Rebbe answers again in the Little-Russian speech:
"Vassil."
"Which Vassil? and what do you want, Vassil?"
"I have wood to sell," says the sham peasant, "very cheap, for next to nothing."
And without further ado he goes in. The Lithuanian steals in behind him, and sees, in the gray light of dawn, a poor room with poor, broken furniture.
In the bed lies a sick Jewess huddled up in rags, who says bitterly:
"Wood to sell—and where am I, a poor widow, to get the money from to buy it?"
"I will give you a six-groschen worth on credit."