the Jew left him. There was neither anger nor impatience visible in his
face or movements. He cast a glance up at the City Hall,--an involuntary
appeal, perhaps, to the justice supposed to inhabit its chambers,--and
then he walked slowly toward his store and home.

[Illustration: Hyde flung off the touch with a passionate oath]

Both were under one roof,--a two-storied building in the lower part of
Pearl Street, dingy and unattractive in outward appearance, but crowded
in its interior with articles of beauty and worth,--Flemish paintings
and rich metal work, Venetian glasses and velvets, Spanish and Moorish
leather goods, silverware, watches, jewellery, etc. The window of the
large room in which all was stored was dim with cobwebs, and there was
no arrangement of the treasures. They were laid in the drawers of the
great Dutch presses and in cabinets, or packed in boxes, or hung against
the walls.

At the back of the store, there was a small sitting-room, and behind it
a kitchen, built in a yard which was carefully boarded up. A narrow
stairway near the front of the store led to the apartments above. They
were three in number. One was a kind of lumber-room; a second, Cohen's
sleeping-room; and the largest, at the back of the house, belonged to
the Jew's grandchild Miriam. There was one servant in the family, an old
woman who had come to America with Jacob. She spoke little English, and
she lived in complete seclusion in her kitchen and yard. As far as Jacob
Cohen was concerned, he preserved an Oriental reticence about the women
of his household; he never spoke of them, and he was never seen in their
company. It was seldom they went abroad; when they did so, it was early
in the morning, and usually to the small synagogue in Mill Street.