And yet there were times when his tight-pursed lips unclenched themselves and he drew in great breaths even of Ghetto air with the huge contentment of one who has known suffocation.  “One can breathe here,” he seemed to be saying.  The atmosphere, untainted by spies, venal officials, and jeering soldiery, seemed fresh and sweet.  Here the ground was stable, not mined in all directions; no arbitrary ukase—­veritable sword of Damocles—­hung over the head and darkened the sunshine.  In such a country, where faith was free and action untrammelled, mere living was an ecstasy when remembrance came over one, and so Joseph Strelitski sometimes threw back his head and breathed in liberty.  The voluptuousness of the sensation cannot be known by born freemen.

When Joseph Strelitski’s father was sent to Siberia, he took his nine-year old boy with him in infringement of the law which prohibits exiles from taking children above five years of age.  The police authorities, however, raised no objection, and they permitted Joseph to attend the public school at Kansk, Yeniseisk province, where the Strelitski family resided.  A year or so afterwards the Yeniseisk authorities accorded the family permission to reside in Yeniseisk, and Joseph, having given proof of brilliant abilities, was placed in the Yeniseisk gymnasium.  For nigh three years the boy studied here, astonishing the gymnasium with his extraordinary ability, when suddenly the Government authorities ordered the boy to return at once “to the place where he was born.”  In vain the directors of the gymnasium, won over by the poor boy’s talent and enthusiasm for study, petitioned the Government.  The Yeniseisk authorities were again ordered to expel him.  No respite was granted and the thirteen-year old lad was sent to Sokolk in the Government of Grodno at the other extreme of European Russia, where he was quite alone in the world.  Before he was sixteen, he escaped to England, his soul branded by terrible memories, and steeled by solitude to a stern strength.

At Sugarman’s he spoke little and then mainly with the father on scholastic points.  After meals he retired quickly to his business or his sleeping-den, which was across the road.  Bessie loved Daniel Hyams, but she was a woman and Strelitski’s neutrality piqued her.  Even to-day it is possible he might not have spoken to Gabriel Hamburg if his other neighbor had not been Bessie.  Gabriel Hamburg was glad to talk to the youth, the outlines of whose English history were known to him.  Strelitski seemed to expand under the sunshine of a congenial spirit; he answered Hamburg’s sympathetic inquiries about his work without reluctance and even made some remarks on his own initiative.