What reply Mr. Burton would have made to this question I had no opportunity of judging.  My uncle called him, and he ran hastily up-stairs.  And when he had gone, the Jew came slowly out, and crossed the office as if he were going into the street.  By this time my conscience was pricking hard, and I shoved my book under my coat and called to him:  “Mr. Benson.”

“You?” he said.

“I am very sorry,” I stammered, blushing, “but I heard what you were saying.  I did not mean to listen.  I thought you knew that I was there.”

“It is of no importance,” he said, turning away; “I have no secrets.”

But I detained him.

“Mr. Benson!  Tell me, please.  You were talking about me, weren’t you?  What did you mean about the son of the house not being a servant for ever?”

He hesitated for an instant, and then turned round and came nearer to me.

“It is true, is it not?” he said.  “Next year you may be clerk.  In time you may be your uncle’s confidential clerk, which I should like to be myself.  You may eventually be partner, as I should like to be; and in the long run you may succeed him, as I should like to do.  It is a good business, my dear, a sound business, a business of which much, very much, more might be made.  You might die rich, very rich.  You might be mayor, you might be Member, you might—­but what is the use? You will not. You do not see it, though I am telling you.  You will not wait for it, though it would come.  What is that book you hid when I came in?”

“It is about North American Indians,” said I, dragging it forth.  “I am very sorry, but I left off last night at such an exciting bit.”

The Jew was thumbing the pages, with his black ringlets close above them.

“Novels in office-hours!” said he; but he was very good-natured about it, and added, “I’ve one or two books at home, if you’re fond of this kind of reading, and will promise me not to forget your duties.”

“Oh, I promise!” said I.

“I’ll put them under my desk in the corner,” he said; “indeed, I would part with some of them for a trifle.”

I thanked him warmly, but what he had said was still hanging in my mind, and I added, “Are there real prophets among the Jews now-a-days, Mr. Benson?”

“They will make nothing by it, if there are,” said he; and there was a tone of mysteriousness in his manner of speaking which roused my romantic curiosity.  “A few of ush (very few, my dear!) mould our own fates, and the lives of the rest are moulded by what men have within them rather than by what they find without.  If there were a true prophet in every market-place to tell each man of his future, it would not alter the destinies of seven men in thish wide world.”

As Moses spoke the swing door was pushed open, and one of my uncle’s clients entered.  He was an influential man, and a very tall one.  The Jew bent his ringlets before him, almost beneath his elbow, and slipped out as he came in.