But Irma continued to struggle, till Kalman, running to her side, cried, "Let my sister go!"
"Go away, Kalman. I am not hurting your sister. It's only fun. Go away," said Sprink.
"She does not think it fun," said the boy quietly. "Let her go."
"Oh, go away, you leetle kid. Go away and sit down. You think yourself too much."
It was Rosenblatt's harsh voice. As he spoke, he seized the boy by the collar and with a quick jerk flung him back among the crowd. It was as if he had fired some secret magazine of passion in the boy's heart. Uttering the wild cry of a mad thing, Kalman sprang at him with such lightning swiftness that Rosenblatt was borne back and would have fallen, but for those behind. Recovering himself, he dealt the boy a heavy blow in the face that staggered him for a moment, but only for a moment. It seemed as if the boy had gone mad. With the same wild cry, and this time with a knife open in his hand, he sprang at his hated enemy, stabbing quick, fierce stabs. But this time Rosenblatt was ready. Taking the boy's stabs on his arm, he struck the boy a terrific blow on the neck. As Kalman fell, he clutched and hung to his foe, who, seizing him by the throat, dragged him swiftly toward the door.
"Hold this shut," he said to a friend of his who was following him close.
After they had passed through, the man shut the door and held it fast, keeping the crowd from getting out.
"Now," said Rosenblatt, dragging the half-insensible boy around to the back of the house, "the time is come. The chance is too good. You try to kill me, but there will be one less Kalmar in the world to-night. There will be a little pay back of my debt to your cursed father. Take that—and that." As he spoke the words, he struck the boy hard upon the head and face, and then flinging him down in the snow, proceeded deliberately to kick him to death.
But even as he threw the boy down, a shrill screaming pierced through the quiet of the night, and from the back of the house a little girl ran shrieking. "He is killing him! He is killing him!"
It was little Elizabeth Ketzel, who had been let in through the back window to hear Kalman sing, and who, at the first appearance of trouble, had fled by the way she had entered, meeting Rosenblatt as he appeared dragging the insensible boy through the snow. Her shrieks arrested the man in his murderous purpose. He turned and fled, leaving the boy bleeding and insensible in the snow.