ise."

"Nay, for that matter," said Gurth, "I will never fail my friend for
fear of my skin-cutting. I have a tough hide, that will bear knife or
scourge as well as any boar's hide in my herd."

"Trust me, I will requite the risk you run for my love, Gurth," said the
Knight. "Meanwhile, I pray you to accept these ten pieces of gold."

"I am richer," said Gurth, putting them into his pouch, "than ever was
swineherd or bondsman."

"Take this bag of gold to Ashby," continued his master, "and find out
Isaac the Jew of York, and let him pay himself for the horse and arms
with which his credit supplied me."

"Nay, by St Dunstan," replied Gurth, "that I will not do."

"How, knave," replied his master, "wilt thou not obey my commands?"

"So they be honest, reasonable, and Christian commands," replied Gurth;
"but this is none of these. To suffer the Jew to pay himself would be
dishonest, for it would be cheating my master; and unreasonable, for it
were the part of a fool; and unchristian, since it would be plundering a
believer to enrich an infidel."

"See him contented, however, thou stubborn varlet," said the
Disinherited Knight.

"I will do so," said Gurth, taking the bag under his cloak, and leaving
the apartment; "and it will go hard," he muttered, "but I content him
with one-half of his own asking." So saying, he departed, and left the
Disinherited Knight to his own perplexed ruminations; which, upon more
accounts than it is now possible to communicate to the reader, were of a
nature peculiarly agitating and painful.

We must now change the scene to the village of Ashby, or rather to a
country house in its vicinity belonging to a wealthy Israelite, with
whom Isaac, his daughter, and retinue, had taken up their quarters; the
Jews, it is well known, being as liberal in exercising the duties of
hospitality and charity among their own people, as they were alleged to
be reluctant and churlish in extending them to those whom they
termed Gentiles, and whose treatment of them certainly merited little
hospitality at their hand.

In an apartment, small indeed, but richly furnished with decorations of
an Oriental taste, Rebecca was seated on a heap of embroidered cushions,
which, piled along a low platform that surrounded the chamber, served,
like the estrada of the Spaniards, instead of chairs and stools. She
was watching the motions of her father with a look of anxious and
filial affection, while he paced the apartment