“Silence,” cried out Isaac; “let the girl speak.  Speak boldly, Rebecca dear, there’s a good girl.”

Rebecca was as pale as a stone.  She folded her arms on her breast, and felt the ring there.  She looked round all the assembly, and then at Isaac.  “Father,” she said, in a thrilling low steady voice, “I am not of your religion—­I am not of the Prince Boabdil’s religion—­I—­I am of his religion.”

“His! whose, in the name of Moses, girl?” cried Isaac.

Rebecca clasped her hands on her beating chest and looked round with dauntless eyes.  “Of his,” she said, “who saved my life and your honor:  of my dear, dear champion’s.  I never can be his, but I will be no other’s.  Give my money to my kinsmen; it is that they long for.  Take the dross, Simeon and Solomon, Jonah and Jochanan, and divide it among you, and leave me.  I will never be yours, I tell you, never.  Do you think, after knowing him and hearing him speak,—­after watching him wounded on his pillow, and glorious in battle” (her eyes melted and kindled again as she spoke these words), “I can mate with such as you?  Go.  Leave me to myself.  I am none of yours.  I love him—­I love him.  Fate divides us—­long, long miles separate us; and I know we may never meet again.  But I love and bless him always.  Yes, always.  My prayers are his; my faith is his.  Yes, my faith is your faith, Wilfrid—­Wilfrid!  I have no kindred more,—­I am a Christian!”

At this last word there was such a row in the assembly, as my feeble pen would in vain endeavor to depict.  Old Isaac staggered back in a fit, and nobody took the least notice of him.  Groans, curses, yells of men, shrieks of women, filled the room with such a furious jabbering, as might have appalled any heart less stout than Rebecca’s; but that brave woman was prepared for all; expecting, and perhaps hoping, that death would be her instant lot.  There was but one creature who pitied her, and that was her cousin and father’s clerk, little Ben Davids, who was but thirteen, and had only just begun to carry a bag, and whose crying and boo-hooing, as she finished speaking, was drowned in the screams and maledictions of the elder Israelites.  Ben Davids was madly in love with his cousin (as boys often are with ladies of twice their age), and he had presence of mind suddenly to knock over the large brazen lamp on the table, which illuminated the angry conclave; then, whispering to Rebecca to go up to her own room and lock herself in, or they would kill her else, he took her hand and led her out.

From that day she disappeared from among her people.  The poor and the wretched missed her, and asked for her in vain.  Had any violence been done to her, the poorer Jews would have risen and put all Isaac’s family to death; and besides, her old flame, Prince Boabdil, would have also been exceedingly wrathful.  She was not killed then, but, so to speak, buried alive, and locked up in Isaac’s back-kitchen: