Unorna looked about her.  Everywhere there were people at work, and she was more disappointed than she would own to herself at the invasion of the solitude.  The Wanderer looked from the stone-cutters to the ice-men with a show of curiosity.

“I have not seen so much life in Prague for many a day,” he observed.

“Let us go,” answered Unorna, nervously.  “I do not like it.  I cannot bear the sight of people to-day.”

They turned in a new direction, Unorna guiding her companion by a gesture.  They were near to the Jewish quarter, and presently were threading their way through narrow and filthy streets thronged with eager Hebrew faces, and filled with the hum of low-pitched voices chattering together, not in the language of the country, but in a base dialect of German.  They were in the heart of Prague, in that dim quarter which is one of the strongholds of the Israelite, whence he directs great enterprises and sets in motion huge financial schemes, in which Israel sits, as a great spider in the midst of a dark web, dominating the whole capital with his eagle’s glance and weaving the destiny of the Bohemian people to suit his intricate speculations.  For throughout the length and breadth of Slavonic and German Austria the Jew rules, and rules alone.

Unorna gathered her furs more closely about her, in evident disgust at her surroundings, but still she kept on her way.  Her companion, scarcely less familiar with the sights of Prague than she herself, walked by her side, glancing carelessly at the passing people, at the Hebrew signs, at the dark entrances that lead to courts within courts and into labyrinths of dismal lanes and passages, looking at everything with the same serene indifference, and idly wondering what made Unorna choose to walk that way.  Then he saw that she was going towards the cemetery.  They reached the door, were admitted and found themselves alone in the vast wilderness.

In the midst of the city lies the ancient burial ground, now long disused but still undisturbed, many acres of uneven land, covered so thickly with graves, and planted so closely with granite and sandstone slabs, that the paths will scarce allow two persons to walk side by side.  The stones stand and lie in all conceivable positions, erect, slanting at every angle, prostrate upon the earth or upon others already fallen before them—­two, three, and even four upon a grave, where generations of men have been buried one upon the other—­stones large and small, covered with deep-cut inscriptions in the Hebrew character, bearing the sculpture of two uplifted hands, wherever the Kohns, the children of the tribe of Aaron, are laid to rest, or the gracefully chiselled ewer of the Levites.  Here they lie, thousands upon thousands of dead Jews, great and small, rich and poor, wise and ignorant, neglected individually, but guarded as a whole with all the tenacious determination of the race to hold its own, and to preserve the sacredness