“For my mother’s sake!” implored Mascha. “She’s dying!” “Bah! If she dies it will be one Jewess the less. Your people are our curse. Go home and die too!” And the woman spat upon her contemptuously, and turning her back upon the supplicant, continued feeding the dog. Mascha, crestfallen and dejected, was walking slowly away when she suddenly felt a heavy hand upon her shoulder. “Now, girl; what do you want here?” inquired a rough, coarse voice. Glancing up quickly, she recognised the sinister features and shifty feline eyes of Ivan Osnavitsch, the _ispravnik_.[2] “I want bread; my mother is starving,” she replied. “Starving? Like all the other dogs that infest the Ghetto kennels, eh? Well, you’ve no right to beg of Christians. The law of the Mir forbids it, and I ought to take you to prison as a vagabond. If you want food you should go to the Governor. His Excellency has received relief for distribution, and if you call upon him he may probably give you some. Tell him that I sent you.” “Oh, thank you,” she replied, gratefully; “I’ll go at once.” Turning, she directed her steps hurriedly towards the palace of the Government, about a mile from the town on the Lubkovo road, while the _ispravnik_ laughed, muttering as he watched her retreating figure: “His Excellency is a connoisseur of pretty faces. He will thank me for sending her.” Feeling that not a moment was to be lost, Mascha walked quickly along the muddy highway, that ran through a bare, barren country, beside the sedgy bank of the swiftly-flowing Soj. Only by repute was General Martianoff, the Governor of Mstislavl, known to her. She knew that by the inhabitants of the Ghetto he was dreaded as a cruel, drunken, and depraved official, and she had heard the Rabbi warn them against breaking any of the thousand tyrannical laws which comprise the _Swod_, or penal code. A Russian District Governor is locally as much of an autocrat as his Imperial Master, the Tzar. He can do exactly what he pleases with the poor, cringing wretches over whom he is given authority. He can condemn Jew or Gentile to prison without trial; he can order any one who displeases him to be knouted, and with his colleague, the _ispravnik_, and his myrmidons, can enforce inhuman tortures not a whit the less terrible than those of the Spanish Inquisition. General Martianoff, an average specimen of the _nachalniki_, ruled his district with the knout, and hating Jews, considered death without torture too good for them. He had even ordered unoffending Hebrews to be flogged because their children omitted to doff their caps to Government officials whom they met in the streets! It was of this harsh, inhuman Governor that my poor, trusting sister, famished and desperate, sought aid for her dying mother.