Mechanically she halted at the butcher-shop. Throwing herself on the vacant bench, she buried her face in her shawl and burst out in a loud, heart-piercing wail: “Woe is me! Bitter is me!” “Hanneh Hayyeh! What to you happened?” cried Mr. Sopkin in alarm. His sympathy unlocked the bottom depths of her misery. “Oi-i-i! Black is my luck! Dark is for my eyes!” The butcher and the neighbors pressed close in upon her. “Gewalt! What is it? Bad news from Aby in France?” “Oi-i-i! The murderer! The thief! His gall should burst as mine is bursting! His heart should break as mine is breaking! It remains for me nothing but to be thrown out in the gutter. The landlord raised me five dollars a month rent. And he ripped yet my wounds by telling me he raised me the rent because my painted-up flat is so much more worth.” “The dogs! The blood-sucking landlords! They are the new czars from America!” “What are you going to do?” “What should I do? Aby is coming from France any day, and he’s got to have a home to come to. I will have to take out from my eating the meat and the milk to save together the extra five dollars. People! Give me an advice! What else can I do? If a wild wolf falls on you in the black night, will crying help you?” With a gesture of abject despair, she fell prone upon the bench. “Gottuniu! If there is any justice and mercy on this earth, then may the landlord be tortured like he is torturing me! May the fires burn him and the waters drown him! May his flesh be torn from him in pieces and his bones be ground in the teeth of wild dogs!” Two months later, a wasted, haggard Hanneh Hayyeh stood in the kitchen, folding Mrs. Preston’s wash in her basket, when the janitor--the servant of her oppressor--handed her another note. “From the landlord,” he said in his toneless voice. Hanneh Hayyeh paled. She could tell from his smirking sneer that it was a second notice of increased rental. It grew black before her eyes. She was too stunned to think. Her first instinct was to run to her husband; but she needed sympathy--not nagging. And then in her darkness she saw a light--the face of her friend, Mrs. Preston. She hurried to her. “Oi--friend! The landlord raised me my rent again,” she gasped, dashing into the room like a thing hounded by wild beasts. Mrs. Preston was shocked by Hanneh Hayyeh’s distraught appearance. For the first time she noticed the ravages of worry and hunger. “Hanneh Hayyeh! Try to calm yourself. It is really quite inexcusable the way the landlords are taking advantage of the situation. There must be a way out. We’ll fix it up somehow.” “How fix it up?” Hanneh Hayyeh flared. “We’ll see that you get the rent you need.” There was reassurance and confidence in Mrs. Preston’s tone. Hanneh Hayyeh’s eyes flamed. Too choked for utterance, her breath ceased for a moment. “I want no charity! You think maybe I came to beg? No--I want justice!”