a shame
in any Christian land. Marvel it is to all living Christian hearts that
such gnawing adders should be suffered to eat into the bowels of the
state, and even of the holy church herself, with foul usuries and
extortions."

"Hold, father," said the Jew, "mitigate and assuage your choler. I pray
of your reverence to remember that I force my monies upon no one. But
when churchman and layman, prince and prior, knight and priest, come
knocking to Isaac's door, they borrow not his shekels with these uncivil
terms. It is then, Friend Isaac, will you pleasure us in this matter,
and our day shall be truly kept, so God sa' me?--and Kind Isaac, if ever
you served man, show yourself a friend in this need! And when the day
comes, and I ask my own, then what hear I but Damned Jew, and The curse
of Egypt on your tribe, and all that may stir up the rude and uncivil
populace against poor strangers!"

"Prior," said the Captain, "Jew though he be, he hath in this spoken
well. Do thou, therefore, name his ransom, as he named thine, without
farther rude terms."

"None but 'latro famosus'--the interpretation whereof," said the Prior,
"will I give at some other time and tide--would place a Christian
prelate and an unbaptized Jew upon the same bench. But since ye require
me to put a price upon this caitiff, I tell you openly that ye will
wrong yourselves if you take from him a penny under a thousand crowns."

"A sentence!--a sentence!" exclaimed the chief Outlaw.

"A sentence!--a sentence!" shouted his assessors; "the Christian has
shown his good nurture, and dealt with us more generously than the Jew."

"The God of my fathers help me!" said the Jew; "will ye bear to the
ground an impoverished creature?--I am this day childless, and will ye
deprive me of the means of livelihood?"

"Thou wilt have the less to provide for, Jew, if thou art childless,"
said Aymer.

"Alas! my lord," said Isaac, "your law permits you not to know how the
child of our bosom is entwined with the strings of our heart--O Rebecca!
laughter of my beloved Rachel! were each leaf on that tree a zecchin,
and each zecchin mine own, all that mass of wealth would I give to know
whether thou art alive, and escaped the hands of the Nazarene!"

"Was not thy daughter dark-haired?" said one of the outlaws; "and wore
she not a veil of twisted sendal, broidered with silver?"

"She did!--she did!" said the old man, trembling with eagerness, as
formerly with fear. "The