Milovka was to be the next place reddened on the map of Holy Russia. The news of the projected Jewish massacre in this little Polish town travelled to the _Samooborona_ (Self-Defence) Headquarters in Southern Russia through the indiscretion of a village pope who had had a drop of blood too much. It appeared that Milovka, though remote from the great centres of disturbance, had begun to seethe with political activity, and even to publish a newspaper, so that it was necessary to show by a first-class massacre that true Russian men were still loyal to God and the Czar. Milovka lay off the _pogrom_ route, and had not of itself caught the contagion; careful injection of the virus was necessary. Moreover, the town was two-thirds Jewish, and consequently harder to fever with the lust of Jewish blood. But in revenge the _pogrom_ would be easier; the Jewish quarter formed a practically separate town; no asking of _dvorniks_ (janitors) to point out the Jewish apartments, no arming one's self with photographs of the victims; one had but to run amuck among these low wooden houses, the humblest of which doubtless oozed with inexhaustible subterranean wealth.
David Ben Amram was hurriedly despatched to Milovka to organize a local self-defence corps. He carried as many pistols as could be stowed away in a violin-case, which, with a music-roll holding cartridges, was an obtrusive feature of his luggage. The winter was just beginning, but mildly. The sun shone over the broad plains, and as David's train carried him towards Milovka, his heart swelled with thoughts of the Maccabean deeds to be wrought there by a regenerated Young Israel. But the journey was long. Towards the end he got into conversation with an old Russian peasant who, so far from sharing in the general political effervescence, made a long lament over the good old days of serfdom. 'Then, one had not to think--one ate and drank. Now, it is all toil and trouble.'
'But you were whipped at your lord's pleasure,' David reminded him.
'He was a nobleman,' retorted the peasant with dignity.
David fell silent. The Jew, too, had grown to kiss the rod. But it was not even a nobleman's rod; any moujik, any hooligan, could wield it. But, thank Heaven, this breed of Jew was passing away--killed by the _pogroms_. It was their one virtue.