His plan, in brief, was to separate the parents and the children. With the old Jews, he knew nothing could be done. They would go to the stake or the dungeon, and would not recant; but if, he reasoned, the young Jews could be removed from parental influence, could be caught, so to speak, before their characters were formed, and be placed in charge of priests or other Christian officials, they would be unable to resist, but would succumb to the powerful pressure brought to bear upon them and would become genuine Christians. This fiendish plan he proceeded, with icy deliberation, to put into execution. What cared he for the cruelty or violent dissolution of natural relations, for the tears of terrified children, for the immeasurable woes and heart-breakings of bereaved parents. His tyrant’s view of statecraft approved the plan and other considerations had no weight. Then were legions of brutal emissaries sent into the provinces reserved for the habitation of the children of Jacob. Their conduct resembled that of brigands rather than of officers of the law. In numbers so great as to defy resistance, they would fall upon some unsuspecting Hebrew settlement, generally at dead of night; would burst into the houses, and with utter disregard of all considerations of justice or frenzied appeals for mercy, would tear the weeping and terror-stricken children from the arms of their screaming and frantically resisting parents, would throw them into the ready standing wagons and would carry them off, never more to return. It would take the pen of a Dante and the brush of their own Verestchagin fitly to depict the awful scenes which occurred on the occasions of these visitations, the demoniacal brutality of the despot’s henchmen, the helpless terror of the childish victims, and the unutterable, paralyzed agony of the wretched fathers and mothers who saw their beloved ones dragged away to that which for them was worse than death, and could do nothing to save them from their fate. The same fate befell our Saul Isaac. It was a cold midwinter night. The Rabbinowitz family were sleeping peacefully, all unsuspecting of evil. Suddenly the sound of powerful blows upon the door caused them to awake in terror. Too well they knew what those sounds meant, although there had been no report that the “_chappers_,” as they were called, were coming to their province. Hastily the agonized parents sought to find some place of concealment for their son. A second later the door fell beneath the shower of blows rained upon it, and several ruffianly looking men, dressed in uniform, burst into the room. Without showing any warrant or offering a word of explanation, they seized the shrinking lad. Roughly they thrust aside Israel, who would have protested, and flung off Malka Feige, who clung to them in a half-insane effort to rescue her boy. The lad himself they tossed into the wagon, into the midst of twenty or more other lads, who already cowered there, and drove off.