The window of this sunny little room was open and on the sill was a row of flower-pots from which a sweet fresh smell crept with the passing air into the chamber.

Behind these flower-pots for two hours past had crouched—­all eye and ear and mind—­a keen old man.

To Isaac Levi age had brought vast experience, and had not yet dimmed any one of his senses.  More than forty-five years ago he had been brought to see that men seldom act or speak so as to influence the fortunes of others without some motive of their own; and that these motives are seldom the motives they advance; and that their real motives are not always known to themselves, and yet can nearly always be read and weighed by an intelligent bystander.

So for near half a century Isaac Levi had read that marvelous page of nature written on black, white and red parchments, and called “Man.”

One result of his perusal was this, that the heads of human tribes differ far more than their hearts.

The passions and the heart he had found intelligible and much the same from Indus to the Pole.

The people of our tale were like men walking together in a coppice; they had but glimpses of each others’ minds.  But to Isaac behind his flower-pots they were a little human chart spread out flat before him, and not a region in it he had not traveled and surveyed before to-day:  what to others passed for accident to him was design; he penetrated more than one disguise of manner; and above all his intelligence bored like a center-bit into the deep heart of his enemy, Meadows, and at each turn of the center-bit his eye flashed, his ear lived, and he crouched patient as a cat, keen as a lynx.

He was forgotten, but not by all.

Meadows, a cautious man, was the one to ask himself, “Where is that old heathen, and what is he doing?”

To satisfy himself, Meadows had come smoothly to the door of the little apartment, and burst suddenly into it.

There he found the reverend Israelite extended on a little couch, a bandana handkerchief thrown over his face, calmly reposing.

Meadows paused, eyed him keenly, listened to his gentle but audible, equable breathing, relieved his mind by shaking his fist at him, and went out.

Thirty seconds later Isaac awoke! spat in the direction of Meadows, and crouched again behind the innocent flowers, patient as a cat, keen as a lynx.

So then; when George was gone in, William Fielding and Mr. Meadows both felt a sudden need of being alone; each longed to indulge some feeling he did not care the other should see; so they both turned their faces away from each other and strolled apart.

Isaac Levi caught both faces off their guard, and read the men as by a lightning flash to the bottom line of their hearts.

For two hours he had followed the text, word by word, deed by deed, letter by letter, and now a comment on that text was written in these faces.