, and being asked none, had deposited me, bandaged
and bruised as I was, at the door of the villa. If I was not sensible of
this service, it was, at least, a vast relief to the Jew, who had begun
to think that his violence had urged me on some desperate course. As
hasty in his repentance as in his wrath, he had no sooner become
rational enough to hear his daughter's story, than he was eager to make
me the _amende_ by all the means in his power. Perhaps he would have
even lent me money, if I had met him in the penitential mood; but I was
not to be found. The sight of my corded trunk convinced him that I had
taken mortal offence, and he grew more uneasy still. As the night fell,
a general enquiry was made amongst the fisherman's cabins; and as, on
those occasions, no one ever desires to send away the enquirer without
giving himself, at least, credit for an answer, every one gave an answer
according to his fashion. Some thought that they had seen me in a skiff
on the shore; where I was, of course, blown out to sea, and, by that
time, probably carried to the chops of the Channel. Others were sure,
that they had seen me on the outside of the London mail--an equally
embarrassing conjecture; for it happened that the horses, startled by
the lightening, had dashed the carriage to pieces a few miles off.
Mordecai's own conception was, that the extravagance of his rage had
driven me to the extravagance of despair; and that I was by this time
making my bed below the surges which roared and thundered through the
dusk; and some scraps of verse which had been found in my
apartment--"Sonnets to an eyebrow," and reveries on subjects of which my
host had as much knowledge as his own ledger, were set down by him for
palpable proofs of that frenzy to which he assigned my demise. Thus, his
night was a disturbed one, passed alternately in watching over his
daughter's feeble signs of recovery, and hurrying to the window at every
sound of every footstep which seemed to give a hope of my return. The
sight of me in the morning, laid at his hall door, relieved his heart of
a burden; and, though the silence and rapid retreat of my bearers gave
him but too much the suspicion that I had somehow or other been
involved in the desperate business of the last twelve hours; of whose
particulars he had, by some means or other, become already acquainted;
he determined to watch over, and, if need be, protect me, until I could
leave his house in safety.

My r