Dilly would not come to be killed just when he was wanted.  In other words, Robinson, who had no idea how he was keeping people waiting, fished tranquilly till near dinner-time, neither taking nor being taken.

This detained Meadows in the neighborhood of the farm, and was the cause of his rencontre with a very singular personage, whose visit he knew at sight must be to him.

As he hovered about among George Fielding’s ricks, the figure of an old man slightly bowed but full of vigor stood before him.  He had a long gray beard with a slight division in the center, hair abundant but almost white, and a dark, swarthy complexion that did not belong to England; his thick eyebrows also were darker than his hair, and under them was an eye like a royal jewel; his voice had the Oriental richness and modulation—­this old man was Isaac Levi; an Oriental Jew who had passed half his life under the sun’s eye, and now, though the town of Farnborough had long been too accustomed to him to wonder at him, he dazzled any thoughtful stranger; so exotic and apart was he—­so romantic a grain in a heap of vulgarity—­he was as though a striped jasper had crept in among the paving-stones of their marketplace, or a cactus grandiflora shone among the nettles of a Berkshire meadow.

Isaac Levi, unlike most Jews, was familiar with the Hebrew tongue, and this and the Eastern habits of his youth colored his language and his thoughts, especially in his moments of emotion, and above all, when he forgot the money-lender for a moment, and felt and thought as one of a great nation, depressed, but waiting for a great deliverance.  He was a man of authority and learning in his tribe.

At sight of Isaac Levi Meadows’ brow towered, and he called out rather rudely without allowing the old gentleman to speak, “If you are come to talk to me about that house you are in you may keep your breath to cool your porridge.”

Meadows had bought the house Isaac rented, and had instantly given him warning to leave.

Isaac, who had become strangely attached to the only place in which he had ever lived many years, had not doubted for a moment that Meadows merely meant to raise the rent to its full value, so he had come to treat with his new landlord.  “Mr. Meadows,” said he persuasively, “I have lived there twenty years—­I pay a fair rent—­but, if you think any one would give you more you shall lose nothing by me—­I will pay a little more; and you know your rent is secure?”

“I do,” was the answer.

“Thank you, sir! well, then—­”

“Well, then, next Lady-day you turn out bag and baggage.

“Nay, sir,” said Isaac Levi, “hear me, for you are younger than I. Mr. Meadows, when this hair was brown I traveled in the East; I sojourned in Madras and Benares, in Bagdad, Ispahan, Mecca and Bassora, and found no rest.  When my hair began to turn gray, I traded in Petersburg and Rome and Paris, Vienna and Lisbon and other western cities and found no rest.  I came to this little town, where, least of all, I thought to pitch my tent for life, but here the God of my fathers gave me my wife, and here He took her to Himself again—­”