"Give me, please, a glass water," he said, and the doctor seized his hand.
"Never mind!" Abe cried inexorably. "Leave him alone, doctor. He should finish what he's got to say."
Harkavy nodded and sipped some water.
"Then comes the package for the chief of police," he went on; "and they put it first in a pail of water. Then they open it, Mr. Potash, and it don't harm nobody; but them roshers want to put it on to somebody, so they make me a proposition they would give me a couple hundred rubles and a ticket to America—and I took 'em up. For stealing that wine I could get five years yet; so what should I do? They give me the money and I run away; and the dead moujik they are telling everybody is me, which I am blew up to pieces by the package."
"And you let the old man bury the moujik and think it was you?" Morris asked.
Harkavy nodded.
"Over and over again he is telling me I am no good and he wishes I was dead," he said. "I wish I was, Mr. Perlmutter—I wish I was!"
He commenced to cry weakly and Morris handed him the water.
"But when I hear last week the old man, my father, is here," he continued, "I couldn't help myself—I am hanging around Madison Street trying I should get one look at him only. I didn't see him till just now."
He struggled to raise himself from the lounge.