The first letter which reached Jake after the scene at Joe Peltner's dancing academy came so unusually close upon its predecessor that he received it from his landlady's hand with a throb of misgiving. He had always laboured under the presentiment that some unknown enemies--for he had none that he could name--would some day discover his wife's address and anonymously represent him to her as contemplating another marriage, in order to bring Gitl down upon him unawares. His first thought accordingly was that this letter was the outcome of such a conspiracy. "Or maybe there is some death in the family?" he next reflected, half with terror and half with a feeling almost amounting to reassurance. When the cigarette vender unfolded the letter he found it to be of such unusual length that he stipulated an additional cent for the reading of it. "_Alla right_, hurry up now!" Jake said, grinding his teeth on a mumbled English oath. "_Righd evay! Righd evay!_" the old fellow returned jubilantly, as he hastily adjusted his spectacles and addressed himself to his task. The letter had evidently been penned by some one laying claim to Hebrew scholarship and ambitious to impress the New World with it; for it was quite replete with poetic digressions, strained and twisted to suit some quotation from the Bible. And what with this unstinted verbosity, which was Greek to Jake, one or two interruptions by the old man's customers, and interpretations necessitated by difference of dialect, a quarter of an hour had elapsed before the scribe realized the trend of what he was reading. Then he suddenly gave a start, as if shocked. "Vot'sh a madder? Vot'sh a madder?" "_Vot's der madder?_ What should be the _madder_? Wait--a--I don't know what I can do"--he halted in perplexity. "Any bad news?" Jake inquired, turning pale. "Speak out!" "Speak out! It is all very well for you to say 'speak out.' You forget that one is a piece of Jew," he faltered, hinting at the orthodox custom which enjoins a child of Israel from being the messenger of sad tidings. "Don't _bodder_ a head!" Jake shouted savagely. "I have paid you, haven't I?" "_Say_, young man, you need not be so angry," the other said, resentfully. "Half of the letter I have read, have I not? so I shall refund you one cent and leave me in peace." He took to fumbling in his pockets for the coin, with apparent reluctance. "Tell me what is the matter," Jake entreated, with clinched fists. "Is anybody dead? Do tell me now." "_Vell_, since you know it already, I may as well tell you," said the scribe cunningly, glad to retain the cent and Jake's patronage. "It is your father who has been freed; may he have a bright paradise." "Ha?" Jake asked aghast, with a wide gape.