"And where sleeps Gurth the swineherd?" said the stranger.

"Gurth," replied the bondsman, "sleeps in the cell on your right, as the

Jew on that to your left; you serve to keep the child of circumcision

separate from the abomination of his tribe. You might have occupied a

more honourable place had you accepted of Oswald's invitation."

"It is as well as it is," said the Palmer; "the company, even of a Jew,

can hardly spread contamination through an oaken partition."

So saying, he entered the cabin allotted to him, and taking the torch

from the domestic's hand, thanked him, and wished him good-night. Having

shut the door of his cell, he placed the torch in a candlestick made of

wood, and looked around his sleeping apartment, the furniture of which

was of the most simple kind. It consisted of a rude wooden stool,

and still ruder hutch or bed-frame, stuffed with clean straw, and

accommodated with two or three sheepskins by way of bed-clothes.

The Palmer, having extinguished his torch, threw himself, without taking

off any part of his clothes, on this rude couch, and slept, or at least

retained his recumbent posture, till the earliest sunbeams found their

way through the little grated window, which served at once to admit both

air and light to his uncomfortable cell. He then started up, and after

repeating his matins, and adjusting his dress, he left it, and entered

that of Isaac the Jew, lifting the latch as gently as he could.

The inmate was lying in troubled slumber upon a couch similar to that on

which the Palmer himself had passed the night. Such parts of his dress

as the Jew had laid aside on the preceding evening, were disposed

carefully around his person, as if to prevent the hazard of their

being carried off during his slumbers. There was a trouble on his brow

amounting almost to agony. His hands and arms moved convulsively, as

if struggling with the nightmare; and besides several ejaculations in

Hebrew, the following were distinctly heard in the Norman-English, or

mixed language of the country: "For the sake of the God of Abraham,

spare an unhappy old man! I am poor, I am penniless--should your irons

wrench my limbs asunder, I could not gratify you!"

The Palmer awaited not the end of the Jew's vision, but stirred him with

his pilgrim's staff. The touch probably associated, as is usual, with

some of the apprehensions excited by his dream; for the old man started

up, his grey hair standing almost erect upon his head, and huddling some

part of his garments about him, while he held the detached pieces with

the tenacious grasp of a falcon, he fixed upon the Palmer his keen black

eyes, expressive of wild surprise and of bodily apprehension.




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