any duty
towards his father, or, failing that, if he had any wish to consult his
own interest, he would lose no time in leaving England for Morocco.

Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the
ruins of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the little
Jewish cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and
cousins' cousins, to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of
sentiment, were busily dividing his inheritance among them.

Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
restitution of his father's substance. But his cousins made the Kadi,
the judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father's
letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi
to the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed
cases; but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan
law to offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the
British Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention,
being a subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage. Meantime, his
dispute with his cousins was set at rest for ever by the Governor of the
town, who, concluding that his father had left neither will nor heirs,
confiscated everything he had possessed to the public treasury--that is
to say, to the Kaid's own uses.

Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco, whether as a
Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger in his father's country, and
openly branded as a cheat. That he did not return to England promptly
was because he was already a man of indomitable spirit. Besides that,
the treatment he was having now was but of a piece with what he had
received at all times. Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing
ever does avail to crush a man of character. But the obstacles and
torments which make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make
a very sensible impression on his heart; the mind triumphs, it is
the heart that suffers; the mind strengthens