I rode slowly home, reflecting on the new turn in my love affairs, for it was plain that Bethulah had now been provided with a body-guard, of which she was as unconscious as of her body itself.
But for the apparent necessity of her making soul-ascensions under God's heaven, I supposed she would not have been allowed to take the air at all with such a creature of Satan hovering.
I stood sunning myself the next day on the same pine bridge, looking down on the swift current, and regretting there was no rail to lean on as one watched the fascinating flow of the beautiful river. It struck me as inordinately blue,—perhaps, I analyzed, by contrast with the long, sinuous weeds which here glided and tossed in the current like green water-snakes. These flexible greens reminded me of the Wonder Rabbi's eyes and his emerald seal; and I turned, with some sudden premonition of danger, just in time to dodge the attack of the same three ruffians, who must have been about to push me over.
In an instant I had whipped out my pistol from my hip pocket, and cried, "Stand, or I fire!"
The trio froze instantly in odd attitudes, which was lucky, as my pistol was unloaded. They looked almost comical in their air of abject terror. Their narrow, fanatical foreheads, with ringlets of piety hanging down below the velvet, fur-trimmed hats, showed them more accustomed to murdering texts than men. Had I not been still smouldering over yesterday's trick, I could have pitied them for the unwelcome job thrust upon their unskilled and apparently even unweaponed hands by the machinations of the Poison God and the orders of Ben David. One of them seemed quite elderly, and one quite young. The middle-aged one had a goitre, and perhaps that made me fancy him the most sinister, and keep my eye most warily upon him.
"Sons of Belial," I said, recalling a biblical phrase that might be expected to prick, "why do you seek my life?"
Two of them cowered under my gaze, but the elderly Chassid, seeing the shooting was postponed, spoke up boldly: "We are no sons of Belial. You are the begotten of Satan; you are the arch enemy of Israel."
"I?" I protested in my turn. "I am a plain God-fearing son of Abraham."
"A precious scion of the Patriarch's seed, who would delay the coming of the Messiah!"
Again that incomprehensible accusation.