[Dark Saint Alaick]

"Never ... No ... No ... ," his comrades standing behind him began to
murmur.

"I will say more," the thief continued. "Many of us protected the
victims during this pogrom. Our friend, called Sesoi the Great--you
have just seen him, gentlemen--was then lodging with a Jewish
braid-maker on the Moldavanka. With a poker in his hands he defended
his landlord from a great horde of assassins. It is true, Sesoi the
Great is a man of enormous physical strength, and this is well known
to many of the inhabitants of the Moldavanka. But you must agree,
gentlemen, that in these moments Sesoi the Great looked straight into
the face of death. Our comrade Martin the Miner--this gentleman here"
--the orator pointed to a pale, bearded man with beautiful eyes who
was holding himself in the background--"saved an old Jewess, whom he
had never seen before, who was being pursued by a crowd of these
_canaille_. They broke his head with a crowbar for his pains, smashed
his arm in two places and splintered a rib. He is only just out of
hospital. That is the way our most ardent and determined members
acted. The others trembled for anger and wept for their own impotence.