Durlston was an uninteresting little town not many miles from Manchester. There was a very large boot and shoe manufactory at one end of the tiny High Street, and the population of the town was considerably increased by the factory labourers and their families. These were mostly Jews, very poor Jews, who had recently emigrated from Roumania and were glad to get work, even though it were at almost starvation wages. Mendel & Co. secured them directly they arrived in Houndsditch, and packed them off to the Durlston manufactory as occasion required. They were easily satisfied and obsequious, these poor Jews, and seemed to be able to exist on next to nothing. Herbert Karne lived with his half-sister in a pretty country house--The Towers--just outside the town. He was an artist by profession and a romancist by nature. He took the greatest interest in the little Jewish colony which had sprung up almost beneath his windows, and it was his pleasure to protect the rights of the colonists against the cut-throat practices of their employers. He agitated for shorter hours and better pay, and, for fear of being boycotted, Messrs. Mendel & Co. were obliged to make concessions. These poor Jews had no spirit of their own; they were utterly downtrodden with the effect of oppression and destitution: so Karne was determined to defend their cause, and he became their firm friend and ally. Whenever a new batch of Jews arrived in Durlston, he took them in hand at once. He anglicized them, and made them suppress their Jewish idiosyncrasies. With the help of his half-sister Celia, and a few friends, he organized a night school, and taught them to read and write. He managed to enlist the sympathy of the most influential people in the county on their behalf, and got up all sorts of literary and musical entertainments, in order to brighten their empty lives. The educating and uplifting of these poor waifs of humanity was Herbert’s hobby; he entered into it heart and soul. There was no synagogue in Durlston, the nearest one being in Manchester, so he arranged to have divine service in the schoolroom every Saturday morning, at which Emil Blatz, the foreman of the factory, officiated. Herbert himself gave the lecture as a rule, and preached not from a religious so much as from an ethical standpoint. He endeavoured to instil into his hearers his own high standard of honour and equity; he wanted to broaden their ideals, and to make them true to the noble instincts of their ancient race and faith.