As Manasseh the Great, first beggar in Europe, sauntered across Goodman's Fields, attended by his Polish parasite, both serenely digesting the supper provided by the Treasurer of the Great Synagogue, Joseph Grobstock, a martial music clove suddenly the quiet evening air, and set the _Schnorrers'_ pulses bounding. From the Tenterground emerged a squad of recruits, picturesque in white fatigue dress, against which the mounted officers showed gallant in blue surtouts and scarlet-striped trousers. "Ah!" said da Costa, with swelling breast. "There go my soldiers!" [Illustration: "'THERE GO MY SOLDIERS.'"] "Your soldiers!" ejaculated Yankelé in astonishment. "Yes--do you not see they are returning to the India House in Leadenhall Street?" "And vat of dat?" said Yankelé, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his palms. "What of that? Surely you have not forgotten that the clodpate at whose house I have just entertained you is a Director of the East India Company, whose soldiers these are?" "Oh," said Yankelé, his mystified face relaxing in a smile. The smile fled before the stern look in the Spaniard's eyes; he hastened to conceal his amusement. Yankelé was by nature a droll, and it cost him a good deal to take his patron as seriously as that potentate took himself. Perhaps if Manasseh Bueno Barzillai Azevedo da Costa had had more humour he would have had less momentum. Your man of action is blind in one eye. Cæsar would not have come and conquered if he had really seen. Wounded by that temporary twinkle in his client's eye, the patron moved on silently, in step with the military air. "It is a beautiful night," observed Yankelé in contrition. The words had hardly passed his lips before he became conscious that he had spoken the truth. The moon was peeping from behind a white cloud, and the air was soft, and broken shadows of foliage lay across the path, and the music was a song of love and bravery. Somehow, Yankelé began to think of da Costa's lovely daughter. Her face floated in the moonlight. Manasseh shrugged his shoulders, unappeased. "When one has supped well, it is always a beautiful night," he said testily. It was as if the cloud had overspread the moon, and a thick veil had fallen over the face of da Costa's lovely daughter. But Yankelé recovered himself quickly. "Ah, yes," he said, "you have indeed made it a beaudiful night for me." The King of _Schnorrers_ waved his staff deprecatingly. "It is alvays a beaudiful night ven I am mid _you_," added Yankelé, undaunted. "It is strange," replied Manasseh musingly, "that I should have admitted to my hearth and Grobstock's table one who is, after all, but a half-brother in Israel." "But Grobstock is also a Tedesco," protested Yankelé. "That is also what I wonder at," rejoined da Costa. "I cannot make out how I have come to be so familiar with him." "You see!" ventured the Tedesco timidly. "P'raps ven Grobstock had really had a girl you might even have come to marry her."