"Then come with me, and I shall hide you, my boy. Don't be afraid.
I am your uncle. Don't you recognize me?"
He took me by the arm, and I went after him. Then I noticed that
the children of my neighborhood were eyeing me terror-stricken. The
womenfolk saw me, wrung their hands, and lamented aloud.
"What are they crying about?" I wondered.
"Do you want some candy? Your uncle has plenty of it," said he,
bending over me, as if to protect me. "Or maybe your feet hurt you?
Let your uncle take you on his arms." As soon as I heard "candy,"
I felt that the man was the Catcher himself, and I tried to break
away. But the "uncle" held me fast. Then I began to yell. It was
near our house, and the people of our alley rushed towards us, some
yelling, some crying, some armed with sticks. Pretty soon I
recognized my mother's voice in the mixture of voices and noises.
You see, peculiar is the charm of a mother's voice: a knife may be
held to one's throat, but the mere sound of mother's voice awakens
new courage and begets new hope. Mother made a way for herself, and
fell upon the Catcher like a wild beast. She struck, she pinched,
she scratched, she pulled his hair, she bit him. But what can a
woman do in the line of beating? Nothing! Her neighbors joined
her, one, two, three; and all tried hard to take me out of the hands
of the Catcher. What can a few women do against one able-bodied
man? Nothing at all! That happened during the dinner hour. One of
our neighbors got the best of the Catcher, a woman who happened
rather to dislike me and my mother; they quarreled frequently.
Perhaps on account of this very dislike she was not over-excited,
and was able to hit upon the right course to take at the critical
moment. She went to our house, took in one hand a potful of roasted
groats, ready for dinner, and in the other a kettle of boiling
water. Unnoticed she approached the Catcher, spilled the hot groats
upon his hands, and at the same time she poured the boiling water
over them. A wild yell escaped from the mouth of the Catcher--and I
was free.--
There was no more tobacco in the pipe, and the old man lost his
speech. That was the way of Samuel the Beadle; he could tell his
story only from behind the smoke of his pipe, when he did not see
his hearers, nor his hearers saw him. In that way he found it easy
to put his boyhood before his mind's eye and conjure up the
reminiscences of those days. Meanwhile the horses had stopped, and
let us know that a high and steep hill was ahead of us, and that it
was our turn to trudge through the mud. We had to submit to the
will of the animals, and we dismounted.