The Palmer, having extinguished his torch, threw himself, without taking off any part of his clothes, on this rude couch, and slept, or at least retained his recumbent posture, till the earliest sunbeams found their way through the little grated window, which served at once to admit both air and light to his uncomfortable cell. He then started up, and after repeating his matins, and adjusting his dress, he left it, and entered that of Isaac the Jew, lifting the latch as gently as he could.
The inmate was lying in troubled slumber upon a couch similar to that on which the Palmer himself had passed the night. Such parts of his dress as the Jew had laid aside on the preceding evening, were disposed carefully around his person, as if to prevent the hazard of their being carried off during his slumbers. There was a trouble on his brow amounting almost to agony. His hands and arms moved convulsively, as if struggling with the nightmare; and besides several ejaculations in Hebrew, the following were distinctly heard in the Norman-English, or mixed language of the country: “For the sake of the God of Abraham, spare an unhappy old man! I am poor, I am penniless—should your irons wrench my limbs asunder, I could not gratify you!”
The Palmer awaited not the end of the Jew’s vision, but stirred him with his pilgrim’s staff. The touch probably associated, as is usual, with some of the apprehensions excited by his dream; for the old man started up, his grey hair standing almost erect upon his head, and huddling some part of his garments about him, while he held the detached pieces with the tenacious grasp of a falcon, he fixed upon the Palmer his keen black eyes, expressive of wild surprise and of bodily apprehension.
“Fear nothing from me, Isaac,” said the Palmer, “I come as your friend.”
“The God of Israel requite you,” said the Jew, greatly relieved; “I dreamed—But Father Abraham be praised, it was but a dream.” Then, collecting himself, he added in his usual tone, “And what may it be your pleasure to want at so early an hour with the poor Jew?”
“It is to tell you,” said the Palmer, “that if you leave not this mansion instantly, and travel not with some haste, your journey may prove a dangerous one.”