Harkavy pondered the question for some minutes. "If you wish it, Mr. Perlmutter," he said, "I would do so; but I must got to go away by eleven o'clock sure." "Good!" Morris exclaimed. "Then I'll see you to-morrow morning at nine o'clock." They shook hands on the appointment and Morris turned away and ascended the high stoop of an old-fashioned tenement. In the vestibule he encountered a boy whose right cheek was apparently distorted by a severe toothache. "Do a family by the name Levin live here?" Morris asked. The boy nodded and disgorged a huge lump of toffee, whereat the toothache disappeared. "Dat's me fader," he said. "Fourt' floor front east. He ain't in, dough." "Your father!" Morris cried. "Why, the people I am coming to see they are greenhorns." "Oh, yeh," the youngster replied; "dat's me fader's uncle. He lives wid us." "All right," Morris said. "Take me up there." The youngster resumed his swollen cheek and escorted Morris up three flights of slippery brassbound stairs. Without the formality of knocking, they entered an apartment on the fourth floor where a woman stood washing dishes. "Mrs. Levin?" Morris said. The woman nodded. "I want to see your man's uncle," Morris continued. Without looking up the woman cried in stentorian tones: "Mees-taire!" In response a bent figure, clad in an alpaca caftan, appeared from an interior bedroom. He wore a velvet skullcap, and a thin gray beard straggled from his chin; his nose was surmounted by a pair of steel spectacles. "_Sholom alaicham!_" Morris cried, according the Rabbi that greeting, as ancient as the Hebrew tongue itself--"Peace be with you." "_Alaicham sholom!_" the Rabbi answered, and then he resorted to the Yiddish jargon: "Do you look for me?" "I look for the _Rav_ Elkan Levin," Morris said in a tongue to which he had long been unaccustomed. "I am the servant of the philanthropist Steuermann." "Steuermann?" the _Rav_ Levin repeated. "I do not know him." "In America," Morris said, "his name is honored over the governor's. He sends me to you to speak for the unfortunate _Tzwee_ Kovalenko." "_Tzwee_ Kovalenko," the old man cried, and his beard stood out as his invisible lips tightened, while his nose became sharp and hawk-like. "A _mishna meshuna_ to him, the same as he sent to my son." "No," Morris declared; "he did not send it to your son. It was another that did it." The old man sank trembling into a nearby chair and clutched the edge of the table. "You tell this to me who saw with my own eyes his body!" he said in shaking tones. "Yes, _Baron_; I saw my own child like a slaughtered beast, all blood--not a face, but a piece of flesh. I saw him, and you tell me this!" "None the less," Morris went on, "if your son did die it was a _kapora_ not meant for him. It was intended for the chief of police." The _Rav_ shook his head.