ood before
the desk, slowly turning over backward the leaves of the great book.
Then suddenly he began to chant in the Hebrew tongue. His voice fell
mellow and sweet upon the silence, filling it with drowsy sound, as the
soft music of a humble-bee will suddenly fill the silence of a woodland
glade. There was no thought, only feeling, conveyed by the sound.

Issachar had gone out, and the Anglican priest sat erect, gazing at the
Jew through the fading light, his attention painfully strained by the
sense of loneliness and surprise. From mere habit he supposed the chant
to be an introduction to a varied service, but no change came. On and on
and on went the strange music, like a potent incantation, the big Jew
swaying his body slightly with the rhythm, and at long intervals came
the whisper of paper with the turning of the leaf.

The curate gazed and wondered until he forgot himself. Then he tried
with an effort to recall who he was, and where he was, and all the
details of the busy field of labour he had left just outside the door.
He wished that the walls of the square room were not so thick, that some
sound from the town might come in and mingle with the chant. He strained
his ear in vain to catch a word of the Hebrew which might be
intelligible to him. He wondered much what sort of a man this Jew might
be, actuated by what motives, impelled by what impulses to his lonely
task. All the sorrow of a hope deferred through ages, and a long torture
patiently borne, seemed gathered in the cadence; but the man--surely the
man was no refined embodiment of the high sentiment of his psalm! And
still the soft rich voice chanted the unknown language, and the daylight
grew more dim.

The curate was conscious that again he tried to remember who he was, and
where; and then the surroundings of the humble synagogue fell away, and
he himself was standing looking at a jewel. It was a purple stone,
oval-shaped and polished, perhaps about as large as the drop of dew
which could hang in a harebell's heart. The stone was the colour of a
harebell, and there was a ray of light in it, as if in the process of
its formation the jewel had caught sight of a star, and imprisoned the
tiny reflection for ever within itself. The curate moved his head from
side to side to see if the ray within the stone would remain still, but
it did not, turning itself to meet his eye as if the tiny star had a
life and a light of its own. Then he looked at the setting