Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/65

Rh vitriol. But worst of all are the threats. A threat for a sensitive, nervous nature, is worse than a blow. And now what makes Leiba Zibal suffer more than the fever, is a threat.

“Ah!—dog of a Christian!” he thinks sadly. The one he refers to is friend George. He wonders where he is hiding—this man with whom he had had an unpleasant experience.

It was on a morning in fall. George stumbled into the rest-house weary, saying he was just out of the hospital and must have work. Zibal hired him. But George proved to be coarse and rough and bad tempered. He cursed and grumbled. He was a lazy and unwilling servant, and he stole.

One day he threatened Zibal's wife, who was soon to be confined, that he would give her a blow in the abdomen, and another time he set the dogs upon the baby. Leiba paid him and dimissed him. But George said at first that he would not go away, that he had been hired for a year. The proprietor retorted that he would go to the authorities and complain of him, and ask for the law to free him from him.

Then George grabbed for something hidden within his clothes and shrieked:—“Judas!” He