’If you have such a power, you may be responsible for a very disagreeable dream I had in your synagogue the other day.’

‘What was the dream?’

‘Nay, if you created it you should be able to tell me what it was.’

’I have no idea what it was; if I influenced your imagination I did so unconsciously.’

There was about this Jew such a complete gentleness and repose, such earnestness without eagerness, such self-confidence without self-assertion, that the curate’s heart warmed to him instinctively.

‘I believe you are an honest Christian,’ said the Jew very simply.

‘I hope honest Christians are not rare.’

’I think a wholly honest man is very rare, because to see what is honest it is necessary to look at things without self-interest or desire.’

’I am certainly not such a man.  The most I can say is that I try to be more honest every day.’

‘That is very well said,’ said the Jew.  ’If you had believed in your own honesty, I should have doubted it.’  Then, in a very simple and quiet way, he told the curate a strange story.

He said that he lived in Antwerp.  They were five in one family—­the parents, a sister and brother, and himself.  His father and brother did business with the English ships, but he was a teacher and reader in the synagogue.  There had been in their family a very sacred heirloom in the form of an amulet or charm.  Their forefathers had believed that it came from Jerusalem before their nation lost the holy city; but he himself did not think that this could be true; he only knew that it was ancient, and possessed very valuable properties as a talisman to those who knew how to use it.  About five years before, his sister, who was beautiful and wayward, had loved and married a French sea-captain.  The father cursed his daughter, but the mother could not let her go from them under the fear of this curse, and she hung the amulet about her neck as a safeguard.  Alas for such safeguard! in a few weeks the captain’s ship was wrecked, and all on her were drowned.  He said that it was that same ship which lay near them, a wreck among the waves, and his sister lay buried beneath their feet.

The family did not hear of the wreck till some time after the burial, and then they knew for the first time what their mother had done with the amulet.  His brother came over at once to this town to seek it, but in vain.  The people said they had not seen the necklace; that it had certainly not been buried with the girl.  The people seemed simple and honest; the brother was a shrewd man, and he believed that they spoke the truth.  He returned home, in distress; they could not tell what to think, for they knew their sister would not have dared to take off the necklace, and the chain was too strong to be broken by the violence of the waves.

Some months after they heard that there was a young Englishman dying in Antwerp who came from this town.  The name of the town was graven on their hearts, and they went to see him.  He was a mere boy, a pretty boy, and when they asked him about the wreck he became excited in his weakness and fever, and told them all the story of it as he had seen it with his own eyes.