at gains, and would have parted with ten times
three hundred pounds to secure the profits which, as it seemed to him,
were likely to result from the important business on hand. He could be
extravagant in promising speculations, although he denied himself
ordinary comforts at his hearth. Strange feelings possessed him,
however, as his son tore from him, and disappeared in the hotel. The
money was out of his pocket, and in an instant might find itself in the
pocket of another without an adequate consideration. Dismal reflection!
Mr Methusaleh looked up to one of the hotel windows to get rid of it.
The boy was inexperienced, and might be in the hands of sharpers, who
would rub their hands and chuckle again at having done the "knowing
Jew." Excruciating thought! Mr Methusaleh visibly perspired as it came
and went. The boy himself was hardly to be trusted. He had been the
plague of Mr Methusaleh's life since the hour of his birth--was full of
tricks, and might have schemes to defraud his natural parent of his
hard-earned cash, like any stranger to his blood or tribe. As this
suspicion crossed the old man's brain, he clenched his fist
unconsciously, and gnashed his teeth, and knit his brow, and felt as
murderers feel when the hot blood is rampant, and gives a tone of
justice to the foulest crime. A quarter of an hour passed in this
distressing emotion. Mr Methusaleh would have sworn it was an hour, if
he had not looked at his watch. Not for one moment had he withdrawn his
eager vision from that banging door, which opened and shut at every
minute, admitting and sending forth many human shapes, but not the one
he longed yet feared to see. The old man's eyes ached with the strain,
and wearying anxiety. One good hour elapsed, and there stood Mr Moses.
He was sure his boy was still in the house. He had watched every face
closely that had entered and issued. Could he have mistaken Aby?
Impossible! I would have given a great deal to read the history of the
old man's mind during that agitated sixty minutes! I believe he could
have called to recollection every form that had passed either into or
out of the hotel, all the time that he had been on duty. How he watched
and scanned some faces! One or two looked sweetly and satisfactorily
ingenuous--the very men to spend money faster than they could get it,
and to need the benevolent aid that Mr Moses was ready to afford them.
Methusaleh's spirits and confidence rose tremendously at such
ap