"A Jew!" he exclaimed, with great surprise; "and he carries a firelock! what on earth can he want?"
Well might Taras wonder, for a Jew bearing arms had never crossed his vision. Men of that persuasion in the East have a horror of weapons of any kind, and any humble Israelite who may be met with occasionally in the mountain-wilds is but a pedlar, trudging with his bundle of stuffs from homestead to homestead with no ground of safety but the goodness of the God of Abraham or the knowledge of his own abject poverty. But the son of Jacob now coming hither carried his head high, and his back was bowed by no other burden than the musket, the barrel of which caught sparkles from the rising sun. He was young, tall, and broad-shouldered; and if his ample caftan gave sorry proof of the difficult path he had come by, there was no weariness in his movements. With undaunted step he approached the hetman.
"I greet you, Taras." he said. "I recognised you at first sight, although I daresay you have forgotten me; you used to be kind to me when I was a boy."
Taras gave a searching glance at the face before him, sharp-featured, gloomy, and furrowed as with terrible experience. "Nashko!" he cried, "is it you? Little Nashko, the son of the innkeeper at Ridowa?"
He held out both his hands, and the Jew caught them, his face trembling with delight. "I could hardly be sure of such a welcome," he said. "It is I indeed--your old friend Nashko, son of Berish!"
"But how is it?" cried Taras, making him sit beside him. "When I left my own village, twelve years ago, I cut you a reed-pipe to console you, and now----"
"Now," continued the Jew, with a dark smile, "it is a wonder I am not grey-haired, to judge from this face of mine. I am but four-and-twenty, Taras, but an old man through sorrow and despair."
"Things have gone ill with you? You have suffered wrong, and come to me to redress it?"
Nashko shook his head, yet added quickly, with a scrutinising look in Taras's face. "And if it were so, would you help me, though I am a Jew?"
"Can you doubt it?" exclaimed Taras, warmly. "Does the wrong-doer inquire into his victim's faith? How, then, should I? As they inflict wrong where they list, it is for me to right it wherever I find it. And I would help you, even if I hated the Jews. But I do not hate you, because, from a child upward, I have striven to be just. And whenever I heard people speak ill of them, I thought of you, Nashko, and of your father. Old Berish lived among us honestly and like one of ourselves. He drew a modest livelihood from his tavern, and tilled his fields with diligence. The people of Ridowa respected him, therefore, as they would any other good man among them. And were not you as merry-hearted and plucky a boy as any in the village? The only difference was that you wore no cross, but the Jewish fringe.[[6]] And I always thought, it is not the difference of race; but the Jews behave to us just as we behave to them. Say on, then; what can I do for you?"