pinion
of them.

So, on the first Sunday after the stranger's settlement at Brudenell
Hall the Baymouth Church was crowded to excess. But those of the
congregation who went there with other motives than to worship their
Creator were sadly disappointed. The crimson-lined Brudenell pew
remained vacant, as it had remained for several years.

"Humph! not church-going people, perhaps! We had an English Jewess
before, perhaps we shall have a Turkish Mohammedan next!" was the
speculation of one of the disappointed.

The conjecture proved false.

The next Sunday the Brudenell pew was filled. There was a gentleman and
lady, and half-a-dozen girls and boys, all dressed in half-mourning,
except one little lady of about ten years old, whose form was enveloped
in black bombazine and crape, and whose face, what could be seen of it,
was drowned in tears. It needed no seer to tell that she was just left
motherless, and placed in charge of her relations.

After undergoing the scrutiny of the congregation, this family was
unanimously, though silently, voted to be perfectly respectable.

CHAPTER XXI.

ISHMAEL'S ADVENTURE.

I almost fancy that the more
He was cast out from men,
Nature had made him of her store
A worthier denizen;
As if it pleased her to caress
A plant grown up so wild,
As if his being parentless
Had made him more _her_ child.

--_Monckton Milnes_.

At twelve years of age Ishmael was a tall, thin, delicate-looking lad,
with regular features, pale complexion, fair hair, and blue eyes. His
great, broad forehead and wasted cheeks gave his face almost a
triangular shape. The truth is, that up to this age the boy had never
had enough food to nourish the healthy growth of the body. And that he
lived at all was probably due to some great original vital force in his
organization, and also to the purity of his native air, of which at
least he got a plenty.

He had learned all the professor could teach him; had read all the books
that Morris could lend him; and was now hungering and thirsting for more
knowledge. At this time a book had such a fascination for Ishmael that
when he happened to be at Baymouth he would stand gazing, spellbound, at
the volumes exposed for sale in the shop windows, just as other boys
gaze at toys and sweetmeats.

But little time had the poor lad for such peeps into Paradise, for he
was now earning about a dollar a week, as Assistant-Professor of Odd
Jobs