"I think he lives," said Kensky, and shook his head. "I am too weak and too old a man to have killed him. I put the cord about his neck and twisted it with a stick. If he can loosen the cord he will live; if he cannot, he will die. But I think he was too strong a man to die."
"Did he know it was you?" asked Petroff.
Kensky shook his head.
"What is the hour?" he asked, and they told him that it was two o'clock.
"Sophia Kensky dies at four," he said, in such a tone of unconcern that even Malinkoff stared at him.
"It is right that she should die," said Kensky, and they marvelled that he, who had risked his life to save one of the class which had persecuted his people for hundreds of years, should speak in so matter-of-fact tones about the fate of his own blood. "She betrayed her race and her father. It is the old law of Israel, and it is a good law. I am going to sleep."
"Is there a chance that you have been followed?" asked Malinkoff, and Kensky pulled at his beard thoughtfully.
"I passed a watchman at the barricade, and he was awake—that is the only danger."
He beckoned to Malcolm, and, loth as the young man was to leave the girl's side, now that she was
