whereabouts from the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles.
Then one day a letter came written in distant tone and formal manner,
announcing that the writer had been some time confined to his bed, and
did not expect to leave it; that the children of his second wife had
died in infancy; that he was alone, and had no one of his own flesh
and blood to look to his business, which was therefore in the hands of
strangers, who robbed him; and finally, that if Israel felt any duty
towards his father, or, failing that, if he had any wish to consult his
own interest, he would lose no time in leaving England for Morocco.

Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the
ruins of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the little
Jewish cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and
cousins' cousins, to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of
sentiment, were busily dividing his inheritance among them.

Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
restitution of his father's substance. But his cousins made the Kadi,
the judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father's
letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi
to the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed
cases; but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan
law to offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the
British Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention,