Oswald's invitation."

"It is as well as it is," said the Palmer; "the company, even of
a Jew, can hardly spread contamination through an oaken
partition."

So saying, he entered the cabin allotted to him, and taking the
torch from the domestic's hand, thanked him, and wished him
good-night. Having shut the door of his cell, he placed the
torch in a candlestick made of wood, and looked around his
sleeping apartment, the furniture of which was of the most simple
kind. It consisted of a rude wooden stool, and still ruder hutch
or bed-frame, stuffed with clean straw, and accommodated with two
or three sheepskins by way of bed-clothes.

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