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 to Jem Morris, and his professional duties kept him very busy.

Baymouth had progressed in all these years, and now actually boasted a fine new shop, with this sign over the door: 

BOOK, STATIONERY, AND FANCY BAZAAR.

And this to Ishmael seemed a very fairy palace.  It attracted him with an irresistible glamour.

It happened one burning Saturday afternoon in August that the boy, having a half-holiday, resolved to make the most of it and enjoy himself by walking to Baymouth and standing before that shop to gaze at his leisure upon the marvels of literature displayed in its windows.