“If they are not spies, they must be criminals, and when they are found to have sojourned for the night with us, we shall be in a worse plight than ever.”
“Unless you can show us any stronger reason for your staying with us,” said the Rabbi at last to Cyril, and as he spoke he clinked imaginary coins from one hand into the other, “we cannot receive you into our camp.”
Cyril reflected for a moment, then decided not to be tempted into injudicious confidences. None knew better than he that among the Jews, as among people of other nationalities, good and bad are mixed together, and it was, to say the least, unlikely that every member of this banished community should be of the former description. To be robbed and murdered in the hours of darkness, or to be detained in the morning that their hosts might win favour by betraying them, would be for the little group of fugitives worse than going on farther that night, tired as they were.
“If what I have offered you is not enough,” he said sullenly, “we can’t pay any more. How far is the next village?”
“There are no more on this side of the mountains. The nearest house is the hotel on the top of the pass; but it has not yet been opened for the summer, and only the proprietor and one old servant live there.”
“And how are we to find our way to it?” asked Cyril. “Look here, if you will send some one with us as a guide, we will pay him the ten piastres, and trust to the innkeeper’s charity to let us lie down in some outhouse for the night.”
“I will go!” cried the youth who had tracked them. “There must be something wrong about them,” he added in a low voice, which was still quite audible to Cyril, “for them to be willing to camp with us at all, and see how quiet they are—not in the least like other Christians. Let me see what they do.”
“And art thou to be murdered and left in the snow for the sake of the ten piastres?” cried a black-wigged dame who had pressed into the group. “Thou shalt not go with the strangers, Nathan.”
“I will leave five piastres with you,” said Cyril to the Rabbi, wondering whether it would have proved more effective if he had blustered and demanded hospitality, instead of entreating it; “the rest I will give to the young man when he has brought us safely to the inn.”
“That is fair,” said the Rabbi, breaking in upon the renewed protests of Nathan’s mother. “Find the lantern for thy son, woman, instead of talking. He can take care of himself.”