In front of the choir was a platform railed round.  Three chairs were placed at the back of the platform.  There was a table covered with red velvet, on which lay the book of the Law, a ponderous roll of parchment provided with silver staves or handles.  Before this desk or table stood the Reader.  He was a tall and handsome man, with black hair and full black beard, about forty years of age.  He wore a gown and large Geneva bands, like a Presbyterian minister; on his head he had a kind of biretta.  Four tall wax candles were placed round the front of the platform.  The chairs were occupied by two or three elders.  A younger man stood at the desk beside the Reader.  The service was already begun—­it was, in fact, half over.

Francesca observed next that all the men wore a kind of broad scarf, made of some white stuff about eight feet long and four feet broad.  Bands of black or blue were worked in the ends, which were also provided with fringes.  “It is the Talleth,” Nelly whispered.  Even the boys wore this white robe, the effect of which would have been very good but for the modern hat, tall or pot, which spoiled all.  Such a robe wants a turban above it, not an English hat.  The seats were ranged along the synagogue east and west.  The place was not full, but there were a good many worshipers.  The service was chanted by the Reader.  It was a kind of chant quite new and strange to Francesca.  Like many young persons brought up with no other religion than they can pick up for themselves, she was curious and somewhat learned in the matter of ecclesiastical music and ritual, which she approached, owing to her education, with unbiased mind.  She knew masses and anthems and hymns and chants of all kinds; never had she heard anything of this kind before.  It was not congregational, or Gregorian; nor was it repeated by the choir from side to side; nor was it a monotone with a drop at the end; nor was it a florid, tuneful chant such as one may hear in some Anglican services.  This Reader, with a rich, strong voice, a baritone of great power, took nearly the whole of the service—­it must have been extremely fatiguing—­upon himself, chanting it from beginning to end.  No doubt, as he rendered the reading and the prayers, so they had been given by his ancestors in Spain and Portugal generation after generation, back into the times when they came over in Phoenician ships to the Carthaginian colonies, even before the dispersion of the Ten Tribes.  It was a traditional chant of antiquity beyond record—­not a monotonous chant.  Francesca knew nothing of the words; she grew tired of trying to make out whereabouts on the page the Reader might be in the book lent her, which had Hebrew on one side and English on the other.  Besides, the man attracted her—­by his voice, by his energy, by his appearance.  She closed her book and surrendered herself to the influence of the voice and the emotions which it expressed.

There was no music to help him.  From time to time the men in the congregation lifted up their voices—­not seemingly in response, but as if moved to sudden passion and crying out with one accord.  This helped him a little, otherwise he was without any assistance.