BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 63
open defiance, and in presence of the officers of the law itself, making riot under the very banner of his Imperial Majesty nothing, Sir Count ? Begone, sir, to your home ! "
As the count, biting his lips, moved away, Anna Kloss- tock, stripped to the waist, was laid upon the reeking frame to receive her punishment.
From such of the crowd as were left, Jew and Gentile, a cry of horror went up to heaven, but the sun shone brightly and the measured beat of the executioner upon the peeling flesh fell stroke by stroke fifty times.
The quivering body was then carried with a strong escort of soldiers to the hospital, and the riots of Czar- ovna began in downright earnest. " Better we take their goods than the strangers from Elizabethgrad," said some of the Christian townsfolk. Others remembered wrongs or imaginary wrongs which they had suffered at the hands of their neighbors. The mujiks thought of the money they owed the Jews. Others were fired with a sort of patriotic zeal, preferring to believe that the Emperor wished them to take over their property. " They are delivered into our hands by the Government," said the agents of the other risings against the Hebrews. f
Outside the ghetto, the Jews' houses were sacked without much defence ; they were mixed up with the wooden and mud houses of their Christian neighbors. The beer- houses and taverns were occupied with ignorant throngs, who, having drunk themselves into a frenzy, presently sal- lied out into the ghetto, mad, wild, irresponsible savages.
The Jews fortified themselves in their houses and fought for their lives fought with knives and staves, and here and there with firearms ; but as a rule they had little or no knowledge of guns and pistols, and while they had the instinct of self-preservation to push them on, their assail- ants were fired with drink and greed, and stimulated with a natural barbarity. The more their cruel passions were
