Occasionally they would wander into one or another of the Jewish cafés, where little Boots ascended to the seventh heaven of joy in sweet drinks while Marowitz gazed about him, carelessly, for a man with a dark beard and a marked ear. In one of these cafés, happening to pick up a Russian newspaper, he read an account of the crime with which this man Gratzberg was charged. It appeared that Gratzberg, while returning from the synagogue with his wife, had accidently jostled a young soldier. The soldier had struck him, and abused him for a vile Jew, and Gratzberg, knowing the futility of resenting the insult, had edged out of the soldier’s way, and was passing on when he heard a scream from his wife. The soldier, attracted by the woman’s comeliness, had thrown his arms around her, saying, “I will take a kiss from those Jewish lips to wipe out the insult to which I have been subjected.” In sudden fury Gratzberg rushed upon the soldier, and, with a light cane which he carried, made a swift thrust into his face. The soldier fell to the ground, dead. The thin point of the cane had entered his eye and pierced through into the brain. Gratzberg turned and fled, and from that moment no man had seen him. Marowitz laid down the paper and frowned. He sat for a long time, plunged in thought. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he muttered, “Duty is duty.” And, taking little Boots by the hand, he resumed his search for the man with the black beard and the marked ear. It was a long and tedious search, and almost barren in clues. Two men whom he approached—men whom he knew—remembered having seen a man who answered the description, but their recollection was too dim to afford him the slightest assistance. In the course of the week he had made a dozen visits to every café, restaurant, and meeting place in the neighbourhood, had conscientiously patrolled every street, both by day and by night, had gone into many stores, and followed the delivery of nearly all the Russian newspapers that came into that quarter. But without a glimpse of the man with the marked ear. There came a night when the heat grew so intense, and the atmosphere so humid and suffocating that nearly every house in the Ghetto poured out its denizens into the street to seek relief. Numerous parties made their way to the river, to lounge about the docks and piers, where a light breeze brought grateful relief from the intense heat. “Want to go down to the river, Boots?” asked Marowitz.