e soon perceived that he had politely, or from a stronger
reason, given up his place to another. This was the old Jew, but he
would not have known him by his dress, it was so changed for the better;
the fine profile, the venerable beard which an Arab Sheikh would have
reverenced, and the sharp, intelligent eyes were unaltered.

"Do you speak Latin?" inquired Daniels in that tongue.

But Claudius, though reading the dead tongue fluently, pronounced it
after the University manner, and felt that he could not sustain a
dialogue with one who followed the Italian usage. He could speak
Italian, however, for he had long studied it to be at home in the world
of Art.

"The officer was not killed," remarked the Jew, and before his new
acquaintance could express his relief, he added gravely, "but he has
been spirited away."

"Then it's those vagabonds--"

"Of whom that old _Tausend-Kunstlerin_ (witch of a thousand tricks) is
in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with
her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We
have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we
are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it
is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your
affairs as you please to enlighten me with. I am bound to assist you as
far as possible--though my debt to you will ever remain uncanceled. I am
Daniel Daniels, of Odessa, Marseilles, and elsewhere, and an
introduction to my correspondent nearest where you sojourn is not to be
despised."

Impressed with his tone, the young man related his life-story
succinctly.

He had a dreamy remembrance of a long journey, lastly in a sledge,
buried in fur robes, his clearer later memories were of a happy home in
Poland, in the country, where, though strangers, all were kind to the
lonely orphan. There was a mystery about his parentage; his mother was
probably a native as he acquired the language as easily as the art of
eating, the peasants said. His father had been killed, he thought, on
one of those riots which, in a small way, repeat the olden revolutions
of Poland against the triumvirate of oppression, Austria, Prussia and
Russia. But he had heard a tutor say, when he was not supposed in
hearing, that he had perished by the executioner's steel.

"A death honorable as under the bullets," said Claudius, but half
doubtingly.

As became a man who abhorred homicide