Five Hundred Dollars | Page 5

In a moment they all knew that she was there.
"Thus far the Lord hath led me on; Thus far His power prolongs my days; And every evening shall make known Some fresh memorial of His grace."

II.
"M. Isaacs" was over the door; Mr. Isaacs was within. Without, three golden balls were hanging, like apples of the Hesperides; within was an array of goods which the three balls had brought in.
Mr. Isaacs was walking to and fro behind the counter, and briskly rubbing his hands.
"My good wife Sarah," he said, with a strong Semitic accent, "those sudden, raw east winds! I am so frozen as if I was enjoying myself upon the skating-rink,--and here it is the summer. Where is that long spring overcoat that German man hypotecated with us last evening? Between the saddle and the gold-lace uniform, you say?"
And taking it down, by means of a long, hooked pole, he put it on. It covered his ears and swept the ground: "It make me look like Aaron in those pictures," he said.
It would have been a grasping disposition that could not be suited with something from out Mr. Isaacs's stock. It would have been hard to name a faculty of the human soul or a member of the human body to which it could not lend aid and comfort. One musically inclined could draw the wailing bow or sway the accordion; pucker at the pensive flute, or beat the martial, soul-arousing drum. One stripped, as it were, on his way to Jericho, could slink in here and select for himself a fig-leaf from a whole Eden of cut-away coats and wide-checkered trousers, all fitting "to surprise yourself," and could be quite sure of finding a pair of boots, of whatever size was needed, of the very finest custom hand work,--a misfit, made for a gentleman in New York. A devout man, according to his leanings, could pray from the prayer-book of an impoverished Episcopalian, or sing from the hymn-book of an insolvent Baptist.
"So help me gracious!" Mr. Isaacs used to say, raising his shoulders and opening wide his palms; "when you find a man so ungrateful that he cannot be fitted out with somethings from my stock, I really suppose you could not fit that man out in Paradise."
Mr. Isaacs was looking nervous. But it was not by the images which his ordinary stock in trade would naturally cause to arise that he was disturbed,--images though they were of folly, improvidence, and distress. There was indeed hardly an article in the shop, except the new plated jewelry in the window, that was not suggestive of misery or of sin. But in Mr. Isaacs's well-poised mind no morbid fancies arose. "Those hard winters makes me cheerful," he was wont to say in the fall; "they makes the business lifely."
Still, Mr. Isaacs was a little troubled this afternoon, and, singularly enough, about a most happy purchase that he had just made, at ninety per cent below value. There the articles lay upon the counter,--a silk hat, a long surtout, a gold-headed cane and a pair of large rubbers; a young man's Derby hat and overcoat and rattan cane, and a pair of arctics; a lady's bonnet and dolman and arctics; a young girl's hat with a soft bird's-breast, and her seal-skin sack and arctics; besides four small boys' hats and coats and arctics. It seemed as if some modern Elijah, a family man, expectant of translation, had made with thrifty forethought an "arrangement" that Mr. Isaacs's shop should be the point of departure, and flying off in joyous haste, with wife and children, had left the general raiment on the counter. You would naturally have looked for a sky-lit hole in the ceiling.
"So help me gracious!" said Mr. Isaacs, turning the articles over; "I suppose there 's some policemen just so wicked and soospicious to say I must know those garments are stolen--scooped off some hat-tree, the last winter, at one grab."
"Why do you enter dose on de book to-gedder?" said Mrs. Isaacs. "If you put dose separate on de book, how de policeman know dey came in togedder?"
"That is a great danger, Sarah. That's just the way they fix our good friend Greenbaum. When they caught the thief, and he tell them where he sell some things, and Greenbaum had put down those earrings and those bracelets and that Balmoral skirt for three different times, they say he must know those things was stolen,--if not, why did he put those things down different from each other?
"But so help me gracious!" he added, presently, "I have not the least soospicions, like the babes unborn, those goods are stolen. The man that brought them in was very frank, and very much of a gentleman; and he lay his hand upon his bosom-pin, and