“Oh! I sincerely hope that you will recognise the error of your ways, ere it be indeed too late!” exclaimed Esther, in a tone of enthusiasm deeply felt by her generous soul. “Consider your advanced age--and think how soon the hand of Death may be laid upon you! Then how wretched--how awful would your feelings be,--and how would you shudder at the idea of being about to stand in the presence of that Almighty Power whose laws and mandates you have so often violated! For, after all, what have you gained by your long, long career of wickedness? All your treasures were annihilated in one hour----” “Yes--yes,” interrupted Old Death, in a voice half suffocated with emotions which the Jewess fondly believed to be those of remorse. “The hoardings of many years and the produce of innumerable misdeeds were thus swept away,” she continued, impressively; “and Providence at length decreed that you should become a prisoner in the very place where you had so long ruled as a master. Does not heaven, then, afford you solemn and significant warnings that your career of crime is no more to be pursued with success?--and do not those warnings move your heart to repentance and remorse? Neglect not such warnings as these, I conjure you!” “Your words do me good, young lady!” exclaimed Old Death. “I am glad that you have come thus to speak to me.” “And shall you ponder upon what I have said?” she demanded. “Yes. But you will not leave me yet?--and you will come again?” he said, in a voice indicative of suspense and anxiety relative to the answer that was to be given. “I will return to-morrow,” observed Esther. “Thank you!” exclaimed Old Death, his tone now denoting a profound emotion. But Esther did not immediately leave the vicinity of the cell on the present occasion. Believing that she had succeeded in making some salutary impression upon him, she was desirous of following up the promising commencement of her mission; and she accordingly continued to reason with him for nearly half-an-hour longer. In the course of the observations and arguments which she addressed to the ancient sinner, she displayed a sound judgment and a deep but enlightened religious feeling: there was nothing bigoted--nothing fanatical in her language. She indulged in no quotations from the Old Testament--the book that formed the basis of her own nation’s creed: but she expatiated on the goodness of the Creator--the hope that exists for penitent sinners--the terrors of a death-bed without previous repentance--and the folly, as well as the wickedness, of the course already pursued by the prisoner. Old Death interrupted her but seldom; and when he did interject an observation, it was in a tone and of a nature calculated to inspire the charming Jewess with the hope that her mission had not been undertaken in vain. At length she quitted the vicinity of the cell, having reiterated her promise to return on the following day.