"Did you not see him yourself at the gentile ceremony raising his hands?"
"You wrong the Christians," protested Aronson. "They are not all cruel and there is much sweetness of love in their doctrine."
"Not cruel!" rejoined Cohen. "How have they not poured out our blood in the ages!"
"Jehovah hath stored it up," added a gentler voice, piteously. It was Abraham Barentzen, the patriarch of the colony, who had not spoken before, but kept looking at the backslider kindly, as if more in sorrow than bitterness.
"Sweetness of love!" cried Silberstein. "Love indeed and enough. How they love each other! Sect embracing sect! Pah!"
"They hate us; they mock us, and our children court them," droned another in a minor key.
"They call us cheats and usurers," cried Cohen, "because we make wealth out of the waste they cast away."
"Psh!" said old Barentzen, raising his hands. "Be just. Those are only the few."
"Perhaps it is some gentle girl that is tempting Saul Aronson, even as the Philistine women of old weakened the faith of Samson," said Rabofsky, keenly.
"Are there not black-eyed daughters of Israel," cried old Barentzen, mild-voiced and reproving, "who will make him a home? If he wants a wife comely, buxom, well-dowered, modest, a good housekeeper and free from tittle-tattle, are there not such by scores in the neighborhood?"