Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/73

Rh “Let me alone,” he cried, trying to wiggle away. “Don't you see I'm sick? Let me alone!”

At length the stage comes, after almost three hours delay. There are two travelers who sit down together at one table. From the conversation of the travelers he learns the following facts. At the last post station, there was a murder committed the night before in a rest-house run by a Jew. The post horses were always changed here. But the robbers stole the horses and escaped to another village, and until other horses could be procured, the travelers were forced to observe the scene of the crime.

If the house had not been robbed one would have thought it an act of revenge or religious fanaticism. In stories told about certain religious sects, there were just such crimes. Even in the fever that was consuming him, Leiba began to shiver.

Then followed something that evidently filled the conductor of the stage with deep respect.

The passengers were two students—one of philosophy and one of medicine. Between the students now arose a debate. Atavism—alcoholism and its pathological results. Theories of