BY ORDER OF 7 PIE CZAR. 79
Ferrari flashed his knife in the man's face. The Russian did not flinch. He fixed a dull gaze upon Fer- rari's bony face and sparkling eyes.
" Give me a chance," at last said the leader from Elizabethgrad.
"A chance to kill me?"
" A chance of my life."
" Ho, ho ! " laughed Ferrari, " do you ask a Jew to do that ? Do you ask a Jew who crucifies babies and makes sacrifices of Christians at his bloody feasts ? Do you ask me to save you ? "
" To save yourself," said the man, sullenly.
"You will kill me, then?"
" They will," said the man, pointing to the closed door.
" Have you not read in what you call your Scriptures what the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did for His people in the old days ?
No reply.
" Answer me, you thief, or I will stab you."
" I have answered," the man replied. And now there began a fresh assault upon Ferrari's last barrier, and the long ears of the man from Elizabethgrad moved as a horse's might, and a tremor of hope ran through every muscle.
" Your friends are coming ; are you not sorry you left them ? " said Ferrari with a sneer.
Just as the spy in the opening chapter of these records lost his life to Ferrari's knife by a glance aside in a moment of victorious pride and cynicism, so for the twinkling of an eye was Ferrari off his guard with his unbound prisoner, 'who sprang at him and held him with the hug of a bear. Neither of them spoke. They fell to the ground with a thud ; they writhed ; Ferrari's knife fell from his grip, but it was still fastened to his wrist. He could not recover it within his hand ; his opponent was feeling for it, and also trying to seize Ferrari by his right wrist ; the fight on both
