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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1303 ***
+
+THE SCAPEGOAT
+
+By Hall Caine
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     PREFACE
+     1. ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+     2. THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+     3. THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+     4. THE DEATH OF RUTH
+     5. RUTH'S BURIAL
+     6. THE SPIRIT-MAID
+     7. THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+     8. THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+     9. ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+     10. THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+     11. ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+     12. THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+     13. NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+     14. ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+     15. THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+     16. NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+     17. ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+     18. THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+     19. THE RAINBOW SIGN
+     20. LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+     21. ISRAEL IN PRISON
+     22. HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+     23. ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+     24. THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+     25. THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+     26. ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+     27. THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+     28. “AT ALLAH-U-KABAR”
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+_Within sight of an English port, and within hail of English ships as
+they pass on to our empire in the East, there is a land where the ways
+of life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago; a land
+wherein government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny, wherein
+justice is bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich and a
+danger to be poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man, and women
+is no more than a creature of lust--a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to
+the century, an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion! That land is
+Morocco!_
+
+_This is a story of Morocco in the last years of the Sultan Abd
+er-Rahman. The ashes of that tyrant are cold, and his grandson sits in
+his place; but men who earned his displeasure linger yet in his noisome
+dungeons, and women who won his embraces are starving at this hour in
+the prison-palaces in which he immured them. His reign is a story of
+yesterday; he is gone, he is forgotten; no man so meek and none so mean
+but he might spit upon his tomb. Yet the evil work which he did in his
+evil time is done to-day, if not by his grandson, then in his grandson's
+name--the degradation of man's honour, the cruel wrong of woman's, the
+shame of base usury, and the iniquity of justice that may be bought! Of
+such corruption this story will tell, for it is a tale of tyranny that
+is every day repeated, a voice of suffering going up hourly to the
+powers of the world, calling on them to forget the secret hopes and
+petty jealousies whereof Morocco is a cause, to think no more of any
+scramble for territory when the fated day of that doomed land has come,
+and only to look to it and see that he who fills the throne of Abd
+er-Rahman shall be the last to sit there._
+
+_Yet it is the grandeur of human nature that when it is trodden down
+it waits for no decree of nations, but finds its own solace amid the
+baffled struggle against inimical power in the hopes of an exalted
+faith. That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the
+narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning
+of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where
+humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt. On the one hand, the hard
+experience of daily existence; on the other hand, the soul crying out
+that the things of this world are not the true realities. Savage vices
+make savage virtues. God and man are brought face to face._
+
+_In the heart of Morocco there is one man who lives a life that is like
+a hymn, appealing to God against tyranny and corruption and shame. This
+great soul is the leader of a vast following which has come to him from
+every scoured and beaten corner of the land. His voice sounds throughout
+Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him, and wheresoever
+women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy and the shelter of his
+face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but
+that is the best thing of all--it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope
+in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him. Man that
+veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter, and science that
+reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God, have no place
+with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty; the miracle is all in all
+to him; he throngs the air with marvels; God speaks to him in dreams
+when he sleeps, and warns and directs him by signs when he is awake._
+
+_With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the joyous
+child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with a
+beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond the
+wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged fellowship
+of the poor behind them, having no homes and no possessions, pass
+from place to place, unharmed and unhindered, through that land of
+intolerance and iniquity, being protected and reverenced by virtue of
+the superstition which accepts them for Saints. Who are they? What have
+they been?_
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+
+
+Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was
+the daughter of a banker in London. The father's name was Oliel; the
+mother's was Sara. Oliel had held business connections with the house of
+Sara's father, and he came over to England that he might have a personal
+meeting with his correspondent. The English banker lived over his
+office, near Holborn Bars, and Oliel met with his family. It consisted
+of one daughter by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a second
+wife, still living. They were not altogether a happy household, and the
+chief apparent cause of discord was the child of the first wife in the
+home of the second. Oliel was a man of quick perception, and he saw the
+difficulty. That was how it came about that he was married to Sara. When
+he returned to Morocco he was some thousand pounds richer than when he
+left it, and he had a capable and personable wife into his bargain.
+
+Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and
+spending, always taking care to have much of the one, and no more than
+he could help of the other. Sara was a nervous and sensitive little
+woman, hungering for communion and for sympathy. She got little of
+either from her husband, and grew to be as silent as he. With the people
+of the country of her adoption, whether Jews or Moors, she made no
+headway. She never even learnt their language.
+
+Two years passed, and then a child was born to her. This was Israel, and
+for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely woman. His
+coming made no apparent difference to his father. He grew to be a tall
+and comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be of a sweet and
+cheerful disposition. But the school of his upbringing was a hard one. A
+Jewish child in Morocco might know from his cradle that he was not born
+a Moor and a Mohammedan.
+
+When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife,
+his first wife being still alive. This was lawful, though unusual in
+Tangier. The new marriage, which was only another business transaction
+to Oliel, was a shock and a terror to Sara. Nevertheless, she supported
+its penalties through three weary years, sinking visibly under them day
+after day. By that time a second family had begun to share her husband's
+house, the rivalry of the mothers had threatened to extend to the
+children, the domesticity of home was destroyed and its harmony was no
+longer possible. Then she left Oliel, and fled back to England, taking
+Israel with her.
+
+Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers was
+not warm. They had no sympathy with her rebellion against her husband's
+second marriage. If she had married into a foreign country, she should
+abide by the ways of it. Sara was heartbroken. Her health had long been
+poor, and now it failed her utterly. In less than a month she died.
+On her deathbed she committed her boy to the care of her brothers, and
+implored them not to send him back to Morocco.
+
+For years thereafter Israel's life in London was a stern one. If he had
+no longer to submit to the open contempt of the Moors, the kicks and
+insults of the streets, he had to learn how bitter is the bread that one
+is forced to eat at another's table. When he should have been still at
+school he was set to some menial occupation in the bank at Holborn Bars,
+and when he ought to have risen at his desk he was required to teach the
+sons of prosperous men the way to go above him. Life was playing an evil
+game with him, and, though he won, it must be at a bitter price.
+
+Thus twelve years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty, was a
+tall, silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects, and a
+master of figures. Never once during that time had his father written
+to him, or otherwise recognised his existence, though knowing of his
+whereabouts from the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles.
+Then one day a letter came written in distant tone and formal manner,
+announcing that the writer had been some time confined to his bed, and
+did not expect to leave it; that the children of his second wife had
+died in infancy; that he was alone, and had no one of his own flesh
+and blood to look to his business, which was therefore in the hands of
+strangers, who robbed him; and finally, that if Israel felt any duty
+towards his father, or, failing that, if he had any wish to consult his
+own interest, he would lose no time in leaving England for Morocco.
+
+Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
+nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
+landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
+before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
+thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
+lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the
+ruins of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the little
+Jewish cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and
+cousins' cousins, to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of
+sentiment, were busily dividing his inheritance among them.
+
+Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
+restitution of his father's substance. But his cousins made the Kadi,
+the judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
+impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father's
+letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi
+to the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed
+cases; but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan
+law to offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the
+British Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention,
+being a subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage. Meantime, his
+dispute with his cousins was set at rest for ever by the Governor of the
+town, who, concluding that his father had left neither will nor heirs,
+confiscated everything he had possessed to the public treasury--that is
+to say, to the Kaid's own uses.
+
+Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco, whether as a
+Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger in his father's country, and
+openly branded as a cheat. That he did not return to England promptly
+was because he was already a man of indomitable spirit. Besides that,
+the treatment he was having now was but of a piece with what he had
+received at all times. Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing
+ever does avail to crush a man of character. But the obstacles and
+torments which make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make
+a very sensible impression on his heart; the mind triumphs, it is
+the heart that suffers; the mind strengthens and expands after every
+besetting plague of life, but the heart withers and wears away.
+
+So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together to
+beat him down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means of
+settling there.
+
+His opportunity came early. The Governor, either by qualm of conscience
+or further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the
+Oomana, the three Administrators of Customs at Tangier. He held the post
+six months only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid, but amid the
+muttered discontent of the merchants and tradesmen. Then the Governor of
+Tetuan, a bigger town lying a long day's journey to the east, hearing
+of Israel that as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled the custom revenues in
+half a year, invited him to fill an informal, unofficial, and irregular
+position as assessor of tributes.
+
+Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did in
+his new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and appointed a
+Mut'hasseb, a clerk of the market, to collect them--so many moozoonahs
+for every camel sold, so many for every horse, mule, and ass, so many
+floos for every fowl, and so many metkals for the purchase and sale of
+every slave; how he numbered the houses and made lists of the trades,
+assessing their tribute by the value of their businesses--so much for
+gun-making, so much for weaving, so much for tanning, and so on through
+the line of them, great and small, good and bad, even from the trades
+of the Jewish silversmiths and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the
+callings of the Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.
+
+All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran, which
+entitled the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever; but it would
+not wrong the truth to say that he did it also by the impulse of a sour
+and saddened heart. The world had shown no mercy to him, and he need
+show no mercy to the world. Why talk of pity? It was only a name, an
+idea a mocking thought. In the actual reckoning of life there was no
+such name as pity. Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings,
+whatever their severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.
+
+And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed
+it.
+
+“Ya Allah! Allah!” the Moors would cry. “Who is this Jew--this son of
+the English--that he should be made our master?”
+
+They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him, and at
+length they insulted him openly. Since his return from England he had
+resumed the dress of his race in his country--the long dark gabardine
+or kaftan, with a scarf for girdle, the black slippers, and the black
+skull-cap. And, going one day by the Grand Mosque, a group of the
+beggars; who lay always by the gate, called on him to uncover his feet.
+
+“Jew! Dog!” they cried, “there is no god but God! Curses on your
+relations! Off with your slippers!”
+
+He paid no heed to their commands, but made straight onward. Then one
+blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and struck off his cap
+with a crutch. He picked it up again without a look or a word, and
+strode away. But next morning, at early prayers, there was a place empty
+at the door of the mosque. Its accustomed occupant lay in the prison at
+the Kasbah.
+
+And if the Muslimeen hated Israel for what he was doing for their
+Governor, the Jews hated him yet more because it was being done for a
+Moor.
+
+“He has sold himself to our enemy,” they said, “against the welfare of
+his own nation.”
+
+At the synagogue they ignored him, and in taking the votes of their
+people they counted others and passed him by. He showed no malice. Only
+his strong face twitched at each fresh insult and his head was held
+higher. Only this, and one other sign of suffering in that secret place
+of his withering heart, which God's eye alone could see.
+
+Thus far he had done no more to Moor and Jew than exact that tenth part
+of their substance which the faiths of both required that they should
+pay. But now his work went further. A little group of old Jews, all held
+in honour among their people--Abraham Ohana, nicknamed Pigman, son of
+a former rabbi; Judah ben Lolo, an elder of his synagogue; and Reuben
+Maliki, keeper of the poor-box--were seized and cast into the Kasbah for
+gross and base usury.
+
+At this the Jewish quarter was thrown into wild hubbub. The hand that
+was on their people was a daring and terrible one. None doubted whose
+hand it was--it was the hand of young Israel the Jew.
+
+When the three old usurers had bought themselves out of the Kasbah, they
+put their heads together and said, “Let us drive this fellow out of the
+Mellah, and so shall he be driven out of the town.” Then the owner of
+the house which Israel rented for his lodging evicted him by a poor
+excuse, and all other Jewish owners refused him as tenant. But the
+conspiracy failed. By command of the Governor, or by his influence,
+Israel was lodged by the Nadir, the administrator of mosque property,
+in one of the houses belonging to the mosque on the Moorish side of the
+Mellah walls.
+
+Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said, “Let
+us see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life be a
+burden.” Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him, and
+when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not obey the
+unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes out of the Soudan he
+was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave. But the conspiracy failed
+again. Two black female slaves from Soos, named Fatimah and Habeebah,
+were bought in the name of the Governor and assigned to Israel's
+service.
+
+And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel's
+material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
+again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they
+said, “He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named
+the prophetess put her curse upon him.” Then she who was so called, one
+Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
+of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki kept,
+crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
+predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo
+with the groans of God's elect, so should his own spirit be broken
+within them and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he
+heard her out, and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only
+smiled coldly, and passed on in silence.
+
+“The clouds are not hurt,” he thought, “by the bark of dogs.”
+
+Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture
+him; yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter
+of their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was young,
+and God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many young
+Jewish men, of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he favour. Of
+Israel's duty she knew little, save what report had said of it, that
+it was evil; and of the act which had made him an outcast among his
+own people, and an Ishmael among the sons of Ishmael she could form
+no judgment. But what a woman's eyes might see in him, without help of
+other knowledge, that she saw.
+
+She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
+manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been
+cheated of his youth and had missed his early manhood, the when he was
+ignored he ignored his insult, and when he was reviled he answered not
+again; in a word, the he was silent and strong and alone, and, above all
+that he was sad.
+
+These were credentials enough to the true girl's favour, and Israel soon
+learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him. There the lonely man
+first found himself. The cold eyes of his little world had seen him as
+his father's son, but the light and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw
+him as the son of his mother also. The Rabbi himself was old, very
+old--ninety years of age--and length of days had taught him charity.
+And so it was that when, in due time, Israel came with many excuses and
+asked for Ruth in marriage, the Rabbi gave her to him.
+
+The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses stood
+beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief; and, when
+the marriage came in its course, few stood beside the Chief Rabbi.
+Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan
+were alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a
+great company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them,
+gathered in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss and jeer.
+
+The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio,
+and when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him above
+the tumult, crying, “Woe to her that has married the enemy of her
+nation, and woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people!
+They shall taste death. He shall see them fall from his side and die,”
+ then the old man listened and trembled visibly. In confusion and fierce
+anger he rose up and stumbled through the crooked passage to the door,
+and flinging it wide, he stood in the doorway facing them that stood
+without.
+
+“Peace! Peace!” he cried, “and shame! shame! Remember the doom of him
+that shall curse the high priest of the Lord.”
+
+This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath. Then suddenly, his voice
+failing him, he said in a broken whisper, “My good people, what is this?
+Your servant is grown old in your service. Sixty and odd years he has
+shared your sorrows and your burdens. What has he done this day that
+your women should lift up their voices against him?”
+
+But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in
+the darkness were silent and made no answer. Then he staggered back, and
+Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to compose
+him. But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.
+
+When the Rabbi's death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered,
+“It is the first-fruits!” and the Moors touched their foreheads and
+murmured “It is written!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+
+
+Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the
+building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in
+comfort many years together. In the south-east corner of the Mellah
+he placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the
+English fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a
+marble staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but
+also with windows and with doors. And when his house was raised he put
+no haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for
+tables and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in
+this wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and
+Jews.
+
+And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out
+of the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly
+it occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had
+built was a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a
+prison for his wife. In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his
+intimates by one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had
+reduced even her friends to that number. Her father was dead; if she was
+the daughter of a Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast, the
+companion of a pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone.
+Even their bondwomen still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with
+them was mainly by signs.
+
+Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on
+Israel's mind, one hope on his heart--that Ruth might soon bear a child.
+Then would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman
+might know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would make
+amends.
+
+Israel thought of this again and again. The delicious hope pursued him.
+It was his secret, and he never gave it speech. But time passed, and no
+child was born. And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she began
+to cast down her head before her husband. Israel's hope was of longer
+life, but the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he perceived
+that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him. He had been
+thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she
+had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he
+never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the
+cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss
+of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given
+no children.
+
+This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
+half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the
+woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and
+she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, “Israel ben Oliel,
+the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise
+up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!”
+
+“Out upon you, woman!” cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
+his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions
+had passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut
+himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to
+him.
+
+Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
+angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What
+was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had
+first beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his
+feet? Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was
+the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.
+
+That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and
+his spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
+offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might
+persuade himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the
+ordinances and commandments of God.
+
+Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
+since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of
+their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might
+straightway be divorced by her husband.
+
+Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
+would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
+still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
+his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.
+
+“Send me away from you!” she cried. “Send me away!”
+
+“Not for the place of the Kaid,” he answered stoutly; “no, nor the
+throne of the Sultan!”
+
+At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their
+tears together. But he comforted her at length, and said, “Look up, my
+dearest! look up! I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord
+may deal with me. And which of us shall murmur against God?”
+
+At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full
+of a sudden thought.
+
+“Then let us ask of the Lord,” she whispered hotly, “and surely He will
+hear our prayer.”
+
+“It is the voice of the Lord Himself!” cried Israel; “and this day it
+shall be done!”
+
+At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand
+together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki. And
+Ruth knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and
+the candles that hung above it, and she prayed: “O Lord, have pity on
+this Thy servant, and take away her reproach among women. Give her grace
+in Thine eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed. Grant her a
+child of Thy mercy, that his eye may smile upon her. Yet not as
+she willeth, but as Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be
+satisfied.”
+
+But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart and his
+eyes to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not
+be appeased, saying: “How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? My enemies
+triumph over me and foretell Thy doom upon me. They sit in the
+lurking-places of the streets to deride me. Confound my enemies, O Lord,
+and rebuke their counsels. Remember Ruth, I beseech Thee, that she is
+patient and her heart is humbled. Give her children of Thy servant, and
+her first-born shall be sanctified unto Thee. Give her one child, and
+it shall be Thine--if it is a son, to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues. Hear
+me, O Lord, and give heed to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee.
+One child, but one, only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is
+before Thee. How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?”
+
+The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble
+was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come without
+delay to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues. This
+request the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef
+was a prince of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces the
+believers paid him tribute. So in three days' time Israel was ready
+to set out on his journey, with men and mules at his door, and camels
+packed with tents. He was likely to be some months absent from Tetuan,
+and it was impossible that Ruth should go with him. They had never been
+separated before, and Ruth's concern was that they should be so long
+parted, but Israel's was a deeper matter.
+
+“Ruth,” he said when his time came, “I am going away from you, but my
+enemies remain. They see evil in all my doings, and in this act also
+they will find offence. Promise me that if they make a mock at you for
+your husband's sake you will not see them; if they taunt you that you
+will not hear them; and if they ask anything concerning me that you will
+answer them not at all.”
+
+And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her she should
+be as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that was deaf, and
+if they questioned her concerning her husband as one that was dumb. Then
+they parted with many tears and embraces.
+
+Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,
+having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan
+loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers and
+attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him to the door
+of his own house.
+
+And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with
+tears of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great
+news on her tongue.
+
+“Listen,” she whispered; “I have something to tell you--”
+
+“Ah, I know it,” he cried; “I know it already. I see it in your eyes.”
+
+“Only listen,” she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck of his
+kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.
+
+Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child they had
+asked for was to come.
+
+Israel was like a man beside himself with joy. He burst in upon the
+message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again,
+and kissed her. Long they stood together so, while he told her of the
+chances which had befallen him during his absence from her, and she
+told him of her solitude of six long months, unbroken save for the poor
+company of Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind and deaf and
+dumb to all the world.
+
+During the months thereafter until Ruth's time was full Israel sat with
+her constantly. He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company. He
+covered her chamber with fruits and flowers. There was no desire of her
+heart but he fulfilled it. And they talked together lovingly of how they
+would name the child when the time came to name it. Israel concluded
+that if it was a son it should be called David, and Ruth decided that if
+it was a daughter it should be called Naomi. And Ruth delighted to tell
+of how when it was weaned she should take it up to the synagogue and
+say, “O Lord: I am the woman that knelt before Thee praying. For this
+child I prayed, and Thou hast heard my prayer.” And Israel told of how
+his son should grow up to be a Rabbi to minister before God, and how
+in those days it should come to pass that the children of his father's
+enemies should crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of
+bread. Thus they built themselves castles in the air for the future of
+the child that was to come.
+
+Ruth's time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast of
+the Passover, being in the month of Nisan. This was a cause of joy to
+Israel, for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face, and
+he could not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So
+he set a supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg
+of an ox, the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three
+Mitzvoth, and the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife
+had been summoned, and it was the day of the night of the Seder.
+
+Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests. Only
+his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers, and
+among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman, Judah ben Lolo,
+and Reuben Maliki. “They cursed me,” he thought, “and I shall look on
+their confusion.” His heart thirsted to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also,
+but well he knew that her dainty masters would not sit at meat with her.
+
+And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves and
+refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man should
+sit save in his own house and at his own table. But Israel was not to be
+gainsaid. He went out to them himself, and said, “Come, let bygones be
+bygones. It is the feast of our nation. Let us eat and drink together.”
+ So, partly by his importunity, but mainly in their bewilderment, yet
+against all rule and custom, they suffered themselves to go with him.
+
+And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table
+in the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine and blessed
+it, and passed it to all, and they had drunk together, he could not keep
+back his tongue from taunting them. Then when he had washed again and
+dipped the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk of the wine once
+more, he taunted them afresh and laughed. But nothing yet had they
+understood of his meaning, and they looked into each other's faces and
+asked, “What is it?”
+
+“Wait! Only wait!” Israel answered. “You shall see!”
+
+At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.
+
+“I am a sorrowful woman,” she said. “Some evil is about to befall--I
+know it, I feel it.”
+
+But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy on the
+morrow. Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes had been
+broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat and drink
+as much as their hearts desired.
+
+They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight of
+Israel's frenzy. The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben, rose
+to go, but Israel cried, “Stay! Stay, and see what is come!” and under
+the very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.
+
+Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them. In the wild torrent of
+his madness he called them by names they knew and by names they did not
+know--Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu--and at every new name he laughed
+again. And while he carried himself so in the outer court the slave
+woman Fatimah came from the inner room with word that the child was
+born.
+
+At that Israel was like a man distraught. He leapt up from the table and
+faced full upon his guests, and cried, “Now you know what it is; and now
+you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice
+with me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!” And he
+lifted a winecup and drank himself.
+
+They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into
+the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.
+
+“You will not drink?” he said. “Then listen to me.” He dashed the
+winecup out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor. His
+laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill
+cry. “You foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made
+me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women
+to prophesy that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a
+reproach and a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a
+son like the best of you. More than that--more than that--my son shall
+yet see--”
+
+The slave woman was touching his arm. “It is a girl,” she said; “a
+girl!”
+
+For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, “No matter!
+She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them
+mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against
+them! She shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate
+places! And now you can go! Go! go!”
+
+He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was
+driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded and with their
+eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.
+
+It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in
+to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct,
+followed him and listened from the threshold.
+
+Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came
+from them.
+
+And Israel said, “How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and pride
+of my pride?”
+
+Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said “The Lord has counted
+my prayer to me as sin--look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!”
+
+At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered out of his
+dry throat, “No, no, never believe it!”
+
+“True, true, it is true,” she moaned; “the child has not uttered a cry,
+and its eyelids have not blinked at the light.”
+
+“Never believe it, I say!” Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his
+arms to try it.
+
+But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon
+the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the
+eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then
+his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his
+arms and laid it again on its mother's bosom.
+
+And Ruth wept over it, saying, “Even if it were a son never could it
+serve in the synagogue! Never! Never!”
+
+At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed
+themselves into the chamber, and they cried, “Peace! Peace!” And old
+Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, “Is it
+not written that no one afflicted of God shall minister in His temples?”
+
+Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into
+the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he
+had bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, “What matter?
+Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!” But after that he staggered,
+his knees gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a
+falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.
+
+The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with
+water; but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves,
+“The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and
+into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to
+slip.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+
+
+Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object
+of contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low,
+God Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him
+mercy?
+
+But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult
+him. And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the
+rabble to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus,
+they would call their dogs and their asses by his name, and the dogs
+would be the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses the laziest in the
+market.
+
+He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at
+the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of
+pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily,
+“Accursed old Israel! Get on home to your mother!” Then, turning quickly
+round, he would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent
+countenance was cudgelling his donkey by that title.
+
+He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound
+of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white
+walls crying “Allah! Allah! Allah!” would suddenly change their cry to
+“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!” “Go on! Go on! Go on!”
+
+He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of
+laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his
+direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his
+voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.
+
+His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God's
+displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight
+of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber--they all despised him!
+
+Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed
+him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his
+soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with
+God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.
+
+There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form
+of warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other,
+the better for his person.
+
+It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known
+as Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other
+than the late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman,
+though by another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan's brother in
+Morocco is not to be a Sultan's favourite, but a possible aspirant to
+his throne. Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the
+Sultan's army, and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry.
+In that capacity he had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni
+Hasan, the Beni Idar, and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit
+the country near to Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been
+first directed to that town. When he had returned from his expedition he
+offered the Sultan fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha
+or Governor, and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.
+The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha
+at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man
+was summoned to the Sultan's presence, accused of appropriating the
+Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.
+
+That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of
+how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no
+less curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious
+transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He
+was a valiant soldier--the black blood of his slave-mother had counted
+for so much; but he was a bad administrator--he could neither read nor
+write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would
+have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this
+man had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him.
+He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and
+his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters
+of his name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel, his scribe the notary,
+Hosain ben Hashem, styled Haj, because he had made the pilgrimage to
+Mecca, but he was also the Imam, or head of the Mosque, and the wily
+Ben Aboo foresaw the danger of some day coming into collision with the
+religious sentiment of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed
+ben Arby, but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he
+wanted a man who should be under his hand. That was the combination of
+circumstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan.
+
+Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master
+entirely. He had carried the Basha's seal and acted for him in all
+affairs of money. The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars, so
+that the Basha had twenty thousand to the good. Then Ben Aboo's ambition
+began to override itself. He started an oil-mill, and wanted Israel to
+select a hundred houses owned by rich men, that he might compel each
+house to take ten kollahs of oil--an extravagant quantity, at seven
+dollars for each kollah--an exorbitant price. Israel had refused. “It is
+not just,” he had said.
+
+Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but
+Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor
+had pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a
+gross and wicked tax, but Israel's answer had been the same. “There is
+no evil in the world but injustice,” he had said. “Do justice, and you
+do all that God can ask or man expect.”
+
+For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have
+been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by
+day. Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn
+of that day whereon he should need him no more.
+
+But since the disaster which had befallen Israel's house everything
+had undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious
+means of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning
+the very air itself into money--ransoms, promissory notes, and false
+judgments--but Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to
+send his small currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver
+dollars at the rate of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was
+worth ten in currency. And after certain of the shopkeepers, having
+changed fifty thousand dollars at that rate, fled to the Sultan to
+complain, Israel advised that their debtors should be called together,
+their debts purchased, and bonds drawn up and certified for ten times
+the amounts of them. Thus a few were banished from their homes in fear
+of imprisonment, many were sorely harassed, and some were entirely
+ruined.
+
+It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public
+streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and
+their asses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty must
+answer to it.
+
+Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching at his
+indignities nor glorying in his power. He beheld the wreck of families
+without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry of children
+without a qualm. Neither did he delight in the sufferings of them that
+had derided him. His evil impulse was a higher matter--his faith in
+justice had been broken up. He had been wrong. There was no such thing
+as justice in the world, and there could, therefore, be no such thing
+as injustice. There was no thing but the blind swirl of chance, and the
+wild scramble for life. The man had quarrelled with God.
+
+But Israel's heart was not yet dead. There was one place, where he who
+bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great
+tenderness. That place was his own home. What he saw there was enough to
+stir the fountains of his being--nay, to exhaust them, and to send him
+abroad as a river-bed that is dry.
+
+In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before
+the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of
+himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only of the
+babe.
+
+The child was born blind and dumb and deaf. At the feast of life there
+was no place left for it. So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall,
+and called on God to take it.
+
+“Take it!” she cried--“take it! Make haste, O God, make haste and take
+it!”
+
+But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself
+suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over
+it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little
+by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived
+her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side
+and whisper “Take heart of hope, O Ruth! God does not afflict willingly.
+Perhaps the child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is
+not dumb. Who shall ye say? Wait and see!”
+
+And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no
+difference in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she
+would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an
+the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the
+little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she
+would look at the pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and
+full as a shell on the shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the
+sea was not heard in it, and that all within was silence.
+
+So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
+“It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and
+see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue
+will yet speak to me, and make me very glad.” And then an ineffable
+serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.
+
+But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar
+with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its
+little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful
+perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child did not open
+in seeing, but lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that
+a child's ears should hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a
+mother's love, and its tongue begin to give back the words in lisping
+sounds, the ear of Ruth's child heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.
+
+Then Ruth's spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to
+come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, “Wait, Ruth; only
+wait, only a little longer.”
+
+So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched
+for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the
+prattle of its little lips. But never a sound as of speech seemed to
+break the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue,
+and never once across her baby's face passed the light of her tearful
+smile. It was a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful
+of all for the pains she was at to conceal them. Thus, every day at
+midday she would carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its
+eyes should blink in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon
+her then, she would drop her head and say, “How sweet the air is to-day,
+and how pleasant to sit in the sun!”
+
+“So it is,” he would answer, “so it is.”
+
+Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the
+court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if
+its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh--a little
+shrill laugh like a cry--and cover her face in confusion.
+
+“How merry you are, sweetheart,” he would say, and then pass into the
+house.
+
+For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw,
+and pretending not to hear what he heard. But every day his heart bled
+at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very
+soul had sickened, and he cried, “Have done, Ruth!--for mercy's sake,
+have done! The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison. Her
+eyes are darkness, like the tomb's, and her ears are silence, like the
+grave's. Never will she smile to her mother's smile, or answer to her
+father's speech. The first sound she will hear will be the last trump,
+and the first face she will see will be the face of God.”
+
+At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.
+The hope that she had cherished was dead. Israel could comfort her no
+longer. The fountain of his own heart was dry. He drew a long breath,
+and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.
+
+The child lived and thrived. They had called her Naomi, as they had
+agreed to do before she was born, though no name she knew of herself,
+and a mockery it seemed to name her. At four years of age she was
+a creature of the most delicate beauty. Notwithstanding her Jewish
+parentage, she was fair as the day and fresh as the dawn. And if her
+eyes were darkness, there was light within her soul; and if her ears
+were silence, there was music within her heart. She was brighter than
+the sun which she could not see, and sweeter than the songs which she
+could not hear. She was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage, and never
+did she fret at the bars which bound her. And, like the bird that sings
+at midnight, her cheery soul sang in its darkness.
+
+Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was the
+sound of laughter. With this she lay down to sleep at night, and rose
+again in the morning. She laughed as she combed her hair, and laughed
+again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.
+
+She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the
+sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day from
+the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark. She
+knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by
+the brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew in the fields
+outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap,
+as other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands. She
+seemed almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she
+would twine in her hair were red, and the white were those which she
+would lay on her bosom. And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto
+the wind alone could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.
+
+Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them
+that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she
+knew no delight like to that of playing with other children. But her
+father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was
+allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met
+in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did
+she ever meet.
+
+Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of
+the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel. She
+herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi
+was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child that is the only
+child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off
+from the parents of other children; and yet again, once more, alone as a
+child that is blind and dumb.
+
+But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him from the
+Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and big innocent white
+eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel. The boy's name was
+Ali, and he was four years old. His father had killed his mother for
+infidelity and neglect of their child, and, having no one to buy him out
+of prison, he had that day been executed. Then little Ali had been left
+alone in the world, and so Israel had taken him.
+
+Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him. He had been born a Mohammedan,
+but secretly she brought him up as a Jew. And for some years thereafter
+no difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes
+could see. They ate together, they walked abroad together, they played
+together, they slept together, and the little black head of the boy lay
+with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.
+
+Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles of
+humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them. First, on Ali's
+part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi, “Come!” she did
+not hear, when he asked “Why?” she did not answer; and when he said
+“Look!” she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed to gaze full into
+his face. Then, a sort of amused bewilderment that her little nervous
+fingers were always touching his arms and his hands, and his neck and
+his throat. But long before he had come to know that Naomi was not as
+he was, that Nature had not given her eyes to see as he saw, and ears to
+hear as he heard, and a tongue to speak as he spoke, Nature herself had
+overstepped the barriers that divided her from him. He found that Naomi
+had come to understand him, whatever in his little way he did, and
+almost whatever in his little way he said. So he played with her as he
+would have played with any other playmate, laughing with her, calling
+to her, and going through his foolish little boyish antics before her.
+Nevertheless, by some mysterious knowledge of Nature's own teaching, he
+seemed to realise that it was his duty to take care of her. And when the
+spirit and the mischief in his little manly heart would prompt him to
+steal out of the house, and adventure into the streets with Naomi by his
+side, he would be found in the thick of the throng perhaps at the heels
+of the mules and asses, with Naomi's hand locked in his hand, trying to
+push the great creatures of the crowd from before her, and crying in his
+brave little treble, “Arrah!” “Ar-rah!” “Ar-r-rah!”
+
+As for Naomi, the coming of little black Ali was a wild delight to her.
+Whatever Ali did, that would she do also. If he ran she would run; if he
+sat she would sit; and meanwhile she would laugh with a heart of glee,
+though she heard not what he said, and saw not what he did, and knew not
+what he meant. At the time of the harvest, when Ruth took them out into
+the fields, she would ride on Ali's back, and snatch at the ears of
+barley and leap in her seat and laugh, yet nothing would she see of the
+yellow corn, and nothing would she hear of the song of the reapers, and
+nothing would she know of the cries of Ali, who shouted to her while
+he ran, forgetting in his playing that she heard him not. And at night,
+when Ruth put them to bed in their little chamber, and Ali knelt with
+his face towards Jerusalem, Naomi would kneel beside him with a reverent
+air, and all her laughter would be gone. Then, as he prayed his prayer,
+her little lips would move as if she were praying too, and her little
+hands would be clasped together, and her little eyes would be upraised.
+
+“God bless father, and mother, and Naomi, and everybody,” the black boy
+would say.
+
+And the little maid would touch his hands and hi throat, and pass her
+fingers over his face from his eyelids to his lips, and then do as he
+did, and in her silence seem to echo him.
+
+Pretty and piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One
+thing at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison,
+nevertheless it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it
+could not die, but was immortal and unmaimed and waited only for the
+hour when it should be linked to other souls, soul to soul in the chains
+of speech. But the years went on, and Naomi grew in beauty and increased
+in sweetness, but no angel came down to open the darkened windows of her
+eyes, and draw aside the heavy curtains of her ears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DEATH OF RUTH
+
+
+For all her joy and all her prettiness, Naomi was a burden which only
+love could bear. To think of the girl by day, and to dream of her by
+night, never to sit by her without pity of her helplessness, and never
+to leave her without dread of the mischances that might so easily
+befall, to see for her, to hear for her, to speak for her, truly the
+tyranny of the burden was terrible.
+
+Ruth sank under it. Through seven years she was eyes of the child's
+eyes, and ears of her ears, and tongue of her tongue. After that her
+own sight became dim, and her hearing faint. It was almost as if she had
+spent them on Naomi in the yearning of dove and pity. Soon afterwards
+her bodily strength failed her also, and then she knew that her time had
+come, and that she was to lay down her burden for ever. But her burden
+had become dear, and she clung to it. She could not look upon the child
+and think it, that she, who had spent her strength for her from the
+first, must leave her now to other love and tending. So she betook
+herself to an upper room, and gave strict orders to Fatimah and Habeebah
+that Naomi was to be kept from her altogether, that sight of the child's
+helpless happy face might tempt her soul no more.
+
+And there in her death-chamber Israel sat with her constantly, settling
+his countenance steadfastly, and coming and going softly. He was more
+constant than a slave, and more tender than a woman. His love was great,
+but also he was eating out his big heart with remorse. The root of his
+trouble was the child. He never talked of her, and neither did Ruth
+dwell upon her name. Yet they thought of little else while they sat
+together.
+
+And even if they had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to
+say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings,
+no simple broken speech, no pretty lisp--they had nothing to bring back
+out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that
+lies stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That
+way everything was a waste. Always, as Israel entered her room, Ruth
+would say, “How is the child?” And always Israel would answer, “She is
+well.” But, if at that moment Naomi's laughter came up to them from the
+patio, where she played with Ali, they would cover their faces and be
+silent.
+
+It was a melancholy parting. No one came near them--neither Moor
+nor Jew, neither Rabbi nor elder. The idle women of the Mellah would
+sometimes stand outside in the street and look up at their house,
+knowing that the black camel of death was kneeling at their gate. Other
+company they had none. In such solitude they passed four weeks, and when
+the time of the end seemed near, Israel himself read aloud the prayer
+for the dying, the prayer Shema' Yisrael, and Ruth repeated the words of
+it after him.
+
+Meantime, while Ruth lay in the upper chamber little Naomi sported and
+played in the patio with Ali, but she missed her mother constantly. This
+she made plain by many silent acts of helpless love that knew no way to
+speak aloud. Thus she would lay flowers on the seats where her mother
+had used to sit, and, if at night she found them untouched where she
+had left them, her little face would fall, and her laughter die off her
+lips; but if they had withered and some one had cast them into the oven,
+she would laugh again and fetch other flowers from the fields, until
+the house would be full of the odour of the meadow and the scent of the
+hill.
+
+And well they knew, who looked upon her then, whom she missed, and what
+the question was that halted on her tongue; yet how could they answer
+her? There was no way to do that until she herself knew how to ask.
+
+But this she did on a day near to the end. It was evening, and she
+was being put to bed by Habeebah, and had just risen from her innocent
+pantomime of prayer beside Ali, when Israel, coming from Ruth's chamber,
+entered the children's room. Then, touching with her hand the seat
+whereon Ruth had used to sit, Naomi laid down her head on the pillow,
+and then rose and lay down again, and rose yet again and rose yet again
+lay down, and then came to where Israel was and stood before him. And at
+that Israel knew that the soul of his helpless child had asked him, as
+plainly as words of the tongue can speak, how often she should lie to
+sleep at night and rise to play in the morning before her mother came to
+her again.
+
+The tears gushed into his eyes, and he left the children and returned to
+his wife's chamber.
+
+“Ruth,” he cried, “call the child to you, I beseech you!”
+
+“No, no, no!” cried Ruth.
+
+“Let her come to you and touch you and kiss you, and be with you before
+it is too late,” said Israel. “She misses you, and fills the house with
+flowers for you. It breaks my heart to see her.”
+
+“It will break mine also,” said Ruth.
+
+But she consented that Naomi should be called, and Fatimah was sent to
+fetch her.
+
+The sun was setting, and through the window which looked out to the
+west, over the river and the orange orchards and the palpitating plains
+beyond, its dying rays came into the room in a bar of golden light. It
+fell at that instant on Ruth's face, and she was white and wasted. And
+through the other window of the room, which looked out over the Mellah
+into the town, and across the market-place to the mosque and to the
+battery on the hill, there came up from the darkening streets below the
+shuffle of the feet of a crowd and the sound of many voices. The Jews
+of Tetuan were trooping back to their own little quarter, that their
+Moorish masters might lock them into it for the night.
+
+Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her
+nightdress. She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she
+laughed as Fatimah held her by the hand, and danced as she was led to
+her mother's chamber. But when she was come to the door of it, suddenly
+her laughter ceased, and her little face sobered, as if something in the
+close abode of pain had troubled the senses that were left to her.
+
+It is, perhaps, the most touching experience of the deaf and blind that
+no greeting can ever welcome them. When Naomi stood like a little white
+vision at the threshold of the room, Israel took her hand in silence,
+and drew her up to the pillow of the bed where her mother rested, and in
+silence Ruth brought the child to her bosom.
+
+For a moment Naomi seemed to be perplexed. She touched her mother's
+fingers, and they were changed, for they had grown thin and long. Then
+she felt her face, and that was changed also, for it was become withered
+and cold. And, missing the grasp of one and the smile of the other, she
+first turned her little head aside as one that listens closely, and then
+gently withdrew herself from the arms that held her.
+
+Ruth had watched her with eyes that overflowed, and now she burst into
+sobs outright.
+
+“The child does not know me!” she cried. “Did I not tell you it would
+break my heart?”
+
+“Try her again,” said Israel; “try her again.”
+
+Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back
+to her side. Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck,
+she bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were
+on her wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child.
+This she did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind to
+her always. But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only to
+know, by the quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely,
+and giving no thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp of
+recognition and the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again from her
+mother's arms, and bounded into the middle of the room, and suddenly
+began to laugh and to dance.
+
+The sun's dying light, which had rested on Ruth's wasted face, now
+glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed on
+her blind eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened her white
+nightdress, while she danced and laughed to her mother's death. Nothing
+did the child know of death, any more than Adam himself before Abel was
+slain, and it was almost as if a devil out of hell had entered into her
+innocent heart and possessed it, that she might make a mock of the dying
+of the dearest friend she had known on earth.
+
+On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child's
+uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down
+at speech, but wildly and deliriously. The room was darkening fast, but
+still across the nether end, by the foot of the bed, streamed the dull
+red bar of sunlight with the little red figure leaping and prancing and
+laughing in the midst of it.
+
+With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to
+the wall. The black woman dropped her head that she might not see. And
+Israel covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, “O Lord God,
+long hast Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with
+scorpions!”
+
+Ruth recovered herself quickly. “Bring her to me again!” she faltered;
+and once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside. Then, embracing
+and kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her
+trouble that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, “It's your mother,
+Naomi! your mother, darling, though so sick and changed! Don't you know
+her, Naomi? Your mother, your own mother, sweet one, your dear mother
+who loves you so, and must leave you now and see you no more!”
+
+Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness of the
+child at last, only God Himself can say. But first Naomi's cheeks grew
+pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they reddened,
+and then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth's hands again, and
+then her little lips trembled, and then, at length, she flung herself
+along Ruth's bosom and nestled close in her embrace.
+
+Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman
+stood and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any
+longer was melted and unmanned. The sun had gone down, and the room was
+darkening rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short; the streets
+were quiet, and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret was chanting in
+the silence, “God is great, God is great!”
+
+After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother's bosom, and,
+seeing this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back
+to her own bed; but Ruth said, “No; leave her, let me have her with me
+while I may.”
+
+“No one shall take her from you,” said Israel.
+
+Then she gazed down at the child's face and said, “It is hard to leave
+her and never once to have heard her voice.”
+
+“That is the bitterest cup of all,” said Israel.
+
+“I shall not return to her,” said Ruth, “but she shall come to me, and
+then, perhaps--who knows?--perhaps in the resurrection I shall hear it.”
+
+Israel made no answer.
+
+Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, “My helpless darling! Who
+will care for you when I am gone?”
+
+“Rest, rest, and sleep!” said Israel.
+
+“Ah, yes, I know,” said Ruth. “How foolish of me! You are her father,
+and you love her also. Yet promise me--promise--”
+
+“For love and tending she shall never lack,” said Israel. “And now lie
+you still, my dearest; lie still and sleep.”
+
+She stretched out her hand to him. “Yes, that was what I meant,” she
+said, and smiled. Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom. “But when
+I am gone,” she said, “will Naomi ever know that her mother who is dead
+had wronged her?”
+
+“You have never wronged her,” said Israel. “Have done, oh, have done!”
+
+“God punished us for our prayer, my husband,” said Ruth.
+
+“Peace, peace!” said Israel.
+
+“But God is good,” said Ruth, “and surely He will not afflict our child
+much longer.”
+
+“Hush! Hush! You will awaken her,” said Israel, not thinking what he
+said. “Now lie still and sleep, dearest. You are tired also.”
+
+She lay quiet for a time, gazing, while the light remained, into the
+face of the sleeping child, and listening, when the light failed, to her
+gentle breathing. Then she babbled and crooned over her with a childish
+joy. “Yes, yes, father is right, and mother must lie quiet--very quiet,
+and so her little Naomi will sleep long--very long, and wake happy and
+well in the morning. How bonny she will look! How fresh and rosy!”
+
+She paused a moment. Her laboured breathing came quick and fast. “But
+shall I be here to see her? shall I?”
+
+She paused again, and then, as though to banish thought, she began to
+sing in a low voice that was like a moan. Presently her singing ceased,
+and she spoke again, but this time in broken whispers.
+
+“How soft and glossy her hair is! I wonder if Fatimah will remember to
+wash it every day. She should twist it around her fingers to keep it in
+pretty curls. . . . Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . .
+Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves, it's a
+chance if Habeebah has seen to it. Then there's her underclothing. . . .
+Will she be deaf and blind and dumb always? I wonder if I shall see her
+when I. . . . They say that angels are sent. . . . Yes, yes, that's it,
+when I am there--there--I will go to God and say, 'O Lord! my little
+girl whom I have left behind, she is. . . . You would never think, O
+Lord, how many things may happen to one like her. Let me go--only let me
+watch over her--O Lord, let me be her guar--'”
+
+Her weakness had conquered her, and she was quiet at last. Israel sat in
+silence by the post of the bed. His heart was surging itself out of his
+choking breast. The black woman stood somewhere by the wall. After a
+time Ruth seemed to awake as from sleep. She was in great excitement.
+
+“Israel, Israel!” she cried in a voice of joy, “I have seen a vision. It
+was Naomi. She was no longer deaf and blind and dumb. She was grown to
+be a woman, but I knew her instantly. Not a woman either, but a young
+maiden, and so beautiful, so beautiful! Yes, and she could see and hear
+and speak.”
+
+Israel thought Ruth had become delirious, and he tried to soothe her,
+but her agitation was not to be overcome. “The Lord hath seen our
+tears at last,” she cried. “He has put our sin beneath His feet. We are
+forgiven. It will be well with the child yet.”
+
+Israel did not try to gainsay her, and at sight and sound of her joy,
+seeing it so beautiful, yet thinking it so vain, he could not help at
+last but weep. Presently she became quiet again, and then again, after a
+little while, she woke as from a sleep.
+
+“I am ready now,” she said in a whisper, “quite ready, sweet Heaven,
+quite, quite ready now.”
+
+Then with her one free hand she felt in the darkness for Israel, where
+he sat beside her, and touching his forehead she smoothed it, and said
+very softly, “Farewell, my husband!”
+
+And Israel answered her, “Farewell!”
+
+“Good-night!” she whispered.
+
+And Israel drew down her hand from his forehead to his lips and sobbed,
+and said, “Good-night, beloved!”
+
+Then she put her white lips to the child's blind eyes, and at that
+moment the spirit of the Lord came to her, and the Lord took her, and
+she died.
+
+When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw that the end
+had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth's bosom, but the child
+awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers about the
+dead mother's neck and covered the mouth with kisses. And when she felt
+that the lips did not answer to her lips, and that the arms which had
+held her did not hold her any longer, but fell away useless, she clung
+the closer, and tears started to her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RUTH'S BURIAL
+
+
+The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth of his
+sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him. By noon of the day
+following the night of Ruth's death, Israel knew that he was to be left
+alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death
+in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the
+first service thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra
+Kadisha of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make
+arrangements for burial. Early prayers had been held in the synagogue
+at eight o'clock that morning, and no one had yet come near to Israel's
+house. The men of the Hebra were going about their ordinary occupations.
+They knew nothing of Ruth's death by official announcement. The clerk
+had not published it. Israel remembered with bitterness that notice
+of it had not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout
+Tetuan. There was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken
+it to each house he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little
+groups of idle Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the
+streets outside, talking of it in whispers and looking up at the
+darkened windows with awe. But the synagogue knew nothing of it.
+Israel had omitted the customary ceremony, and in that omission lay the
+advantage of his enemies. He must humble himself and send to them. Until
+he did so they would leave him alone.
+
+Israel did not send. Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed
+the threshold of the synagogue. He would not cross it now, whether in
+body or in spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he
+had lost the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews
+that a body should be buried within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from
+the time of death. He must do something immediately. Some help must be
+summoned. What help could it be?
+
+It was useless to think of the Muslimeen. No believer would lend a hand
+to dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead. It
+was just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of
+this burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that he would
+have need to know more. And of Christians of any sort or condition there
+were none in all Tetuan.
+
+The gall of Israel's heart rose to his throat. Was he to be left alone
+with his dead wife? Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave
+with his own hands? Or did they expect him to come to them with bowed
+forehead and bended knee? Either way their reckoning was a mistake.
+They might leave him terribly and awfully alone--alone in his hour of
+mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when
+he had married the dear soul who was dead. But his strength and energy
+they should not crush: his vital and intellectual force they should
+not wither away. Only one thing they could do to touch him--they could
+shrivel up his last impulse of sweet human sympathy. They were doing it
+now.
+
+When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message
+to the Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six State
+prisoners, fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.
+
+The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed
+by Jewish custom. It was twilight when the body was brought down from
+the upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that
+had been raised for it on chairs standing back to back. And there, too,
+sat Israel, with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.
+
+Israel's manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock, and
+his dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.
+Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself, down to
+the least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in
+the larger sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his
+riches except to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down and to
+abash the enemies who still menaced him. Nothing was lacking that money
+could buy in Tetuan to make this burial an imposing ceremony. Only one
+thing it wanted--it wanted mourners, and it had but one.
+
+Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited. She ran to and fro,
+clutched at Israel's clothes and seemed to look into his face, clasped
+the hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear. Whether she knew
+what work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or
+sense she learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the
+presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah
+brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black
+women clinging to it, kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke
+away from Israel and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her
+little white arms upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need
+to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in
+dread to her father's side.
+
+“God be gracious to my father, look at that,” whispered Fatimah.
+
+“My child, my poor child,” said Israel, “is there but one thing in life
+that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!”
+
+It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of
+the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs
+according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger
+had wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had
+sunken their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them,
+and concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep,
+rich, velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two
+remaining prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand--the
+right arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a
+soldier, carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the
+twilight, and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone.
+Thus they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated
+at the door, through the streets of the Mellah and out into the
+marketplace, and up the narrow lane that leads to the chief town gate.
+
+There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage, and
+the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel. As the procession went
+through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent until
+it had gone. Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing fowls
+and taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work and fell
+back as the procession approached. A blind beggar crouching at the other
+side of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close
+at his elbow were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were
+playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the
+procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler
+was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller
+was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the
+juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the
+storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of
+the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling of the bells of the
+water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from the country were
+dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their panniers full of
+street-filth, were drawn up by the wall. From the market-place and out
+of the shops, out of the houses and out of the mosque itself, the people
+came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close line on either side
+of the course which the procession must take. And through this avenue
+of onlookers the strange company made its way--the two prisoners
+bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the two soldiers
+carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported and alone.
+Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of the feet
+of the six men, and the clank of their chains.
+
+The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every
+one knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet
+he did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither
+to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.
+
+The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the
+procession came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white
+tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock
+of sheep asleep among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence,
+and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.
+
+Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi
+her father. He had asked no man's permission to do so, but if no one had
+helped at that day's business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
+when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
+forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch
+in his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white
+earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a
+padlock and flung away the key. Last of all, when the body had been
+taken out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in
+after it, and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern. And
+then, kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both
+his hands, and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down
+at her where she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the
+synagogue, and speaking to her as though she heard: “Ruth, my wife, my
+dearest, for the cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered
+you to marry me, being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people,
+forgive me now, my beloved, and ask God to forgive me also.”
+
+The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two
+soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted
+man kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the
+custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet
+no more until the resurrection itself reunited them! The traffic of the
+streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel
+had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.
+
+The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for
+each carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day
+following. But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened
+mind. As he had plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over
+his shoulder, saying, “They shall spring in the cities as the grass in
+the earth,” he had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the
+world were peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was
+dead. God had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert. Only one
+glimpse of human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken
+from him for ever.
+
+And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again. She was
+a helpless exile among men, a creature banished from all human
+intercourse, a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a
+good God who had taken the mother from such a child--the child from such
+a mother? Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not
+God but the devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that
+governed it.
+
+Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's
+loss and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to
+be saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
+fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
+strange and beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SPIRIT-MAID
+
+
+The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should
+not lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time
+forward he became as father and mother both to the child.
+
+At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
+it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of
+the tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and
+blind, but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied.
+It implied that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest
+of the family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart
+as if she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could
+reach her in joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In
+the midst of a world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was
+in a world of silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a
+living and buried soul.
+
+And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had
+memory, for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had
+love, for she had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love
+and memory without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet
+locked in a casket--idle and useless to any purposes of man or the
+world.
+
+Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
+affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
+but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
+twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not
+merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human
+speech.
+
+For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
+father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows he must have
+soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
+beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
+must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
+though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
+might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if
+she felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he
+must have known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the
+world and what the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book
+for her to read. But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of
+being deaf, being dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation
+of her state, the blank void of her isolation--cut off, apart, aloof,
+shut in, imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other
+souls: alive, and yet dead?
+
+Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
+Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and
+silent soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to
+her, that he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his
+own great comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but
+the one gift only whereof he had known from the beginning--the gift of
+touch and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light
+should always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or
+silence should be her speech for ever.
+
+Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
+stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not
+hear, and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent
+to England for many books written on the treatment of these children
+of affliction, and when they were come he pondered them closely and was
+thrilled by the marvellous works they described. But when he came to
+practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the
+impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always,
+to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child
+through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought
+nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense
+were the walls of the prison that encompassed it. “Yes” was a mystery
+that could not at first be revealed to her, and “No” was a problem
+beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and frowns were useless to teach
+her. No discipline could be addressed to her mind or heart. Except mere
+bodily restraint, no control could be imposed upon her. She was swayed
+by her impulses alone.
+
+Israel did not despair. If he was broken down today he strengthened his
+hands for tomorrow. At length he had got so far, after a world of toil
+and thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was for
+approval, and when he touched her hand it was for assent. Then he
+stopped very suddenly. His hope had not drooped, and neither had his
+energy failed, but the conviction had fastened upon him that such effort
+in his case must be an offence against Heaven. Naomi was not merely an
+infirm creature from the left hand of Nature; she was an afflicted being
+from the right hand of God. She was a living monument of sin that was
+not her own. It was useless to go farther. The child must be left where
+God had placed her.
+
+But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human
+kind, she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they
+possessed. It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her,
+and from that source alone could she have imbibed her power. To tell of
+all she could do to guide her steps, and to minister to her pleasures,
+and to cherish her affections, would be to go beyond the limit of
+belief. Truly it seemed as if Naomi, being blind with her bodily eyes,
+could yet look upon a light that no one else could see, and, being deaf
+with her bodily ears, could yet listen to voices that no one else could
+hear.
+
+Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew
+when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.
+Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears
+had taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her
+hands to take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it
+against her cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms
+to encircle his neck; and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to
+her bosom; and always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by. Did she go
+with Ali into the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of
+the town, and the narrow lanes from the open Sok. Did she pass the lofty
+mosque in the market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled
+under and behind and around. Did a troop of mules and camels come near
+her, she knew them from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two
+streets crossed, she would stand and face both ways.
+
+And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around
+Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah
+and the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river
+under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and
+even some of their rocky gorges. She could find her way among them all
+without help or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her
+to keep her out of the way of harm. While Ali was a little fellow he was
+her constant companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet
+heart suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school
+every day early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny
+white goat which her father had bought to be another playfellow.
+
+And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the
+crown of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her
+feet felt the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded
+whether the sun was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from
+the rising of the morning until the coming of the stars. So, casting off
+her slippers and the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and
+clad in her white woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of
+airy grace, and with the little goat going before her, though she could
+neither see nor hear it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery,
+and stand on the summit, like a spirit poised in air. She could see
+nothing of the green valley then stretched before her, or of the white
+town lying below, with its domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult
+in her lofty place, and to drink new life from the rush of mighty winds
+about her. Then coming back to the dale, she would seem, to those who
+looked up at her, with fear and with awe, to leap as the goat leapt
+in the rocky places; and as a bird sweeps over the grass with wings
+outstretched, so with her arms spread out, and her long fair hair flying
+loose, she would sweep down the hill, as though her very tiptoes did not
+touch it.
+
+By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were
+the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind,
+which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child
+into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring,
+when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were
+abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder
+thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic
+tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her she would run
+and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter
+would be on her lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and,
+having found her in the pelting storm without covering on her head or
+shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand, and as they
+passed through the streets together his forehead would be bowed and his
+eyes bent down.
+
+But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
+joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature
+of joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
+darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
+though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did
+not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with
+a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
+maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
+seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant
+flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars
+of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars
+that stood in it. And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress
+increased as well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things;
+it was a wild passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled
+in native grace about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness.
+She was happy as a day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.
+The ripple of her laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed
+to follow in the air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her
+father, she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.
+
+Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel
+in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that
+the little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling
+could only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and
+many throbs of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially
+at seasons when no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful
+silence haunted the air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick
+longing from causes that were beyond Israel's power to fathom. Then her
+sweet face would sadden, and her beautiful blind eyes would fill, and
+her pretty laughter would echo no more through the house. And sometimes,
+in the dead of the night, she would rise from her bed and go through
+the dark corridors, for darkness and light were as one to her, until she
+came to Israel's room, and he would awake from his sleep to find her,
+like a little white vision, standing by his bedside. What she wanted
+there he could never know, for neither had he power to ask nor she to
+answer, whether she were sick or in pain, or whether in her sleep she
+had seen a face from the invisible world, and heard a voice that called
+her away, or whether her mother's arms had seemed to be about her once
+again and then to be torn from her afresh, and she had come to him on
+awakening in her trouble, not knowing what it is to dream, but thinking
+all evil dreams to be true fact and new sorrow. So, with a sigh, he
+would arise and light his lamp and lead her back to her bed, and more
+scalding than the tears that would be standing in Naomi's eyes would be
+the hot drops that would gush into his own.
+
+“My poor darling,” he would say, “can you not tell me your trouble, that
+I may comfort you? No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot comfort her.
+My darling, my darling.”
+
+Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle
+out of heaven to find a way to the little maiden's mind that she might
+ask and answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it, for still
+greater than his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath of God.
+And out of this fear there came to him at length an awful and terrible
+thought: though so severed on earth, his child and he, yet before the
+bar of judgment they would one day be brought together, and then how
+should it stand with her soul?
+
+Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man. Would God
+condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever? No, no, no! God would
+not ask her for good works in the land of silence, and for labour in the
+land of night. She had no eyes to see God's beautiful world, and no ears
+to hear His holy word. God had created her so, and He would not destroy
+what He had made. Far rather would He look with love and pity on His
+little one, so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to
+be a blessed saint in heaven.
+
+Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain. He was a
+Jew to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself out of his
+own mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God's will, that
+had sent Naomi into the world as she was. Then, on the day of the great
+account, how should he answer to her for her soul?
+
+Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul that
+knew not God. These were the most awful terrors of his sleepless nights,
+but at length peace came to him, for he saw his path of duty. It was his
+duty to Naomi that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the
+Lord to her! What matter if she could not hear? Though she had senses as
+the sands of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could
+lead her. What matter though she could not see? The soul was the eye
+that saw God, and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.
+
+So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and led
+her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and, fetching
+from a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her of
+the commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets, and of the
+Kings. And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet, with his one
+free hand in both of her hands, clasped close against her cheek.
+
+What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom, what
+mystery it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks into
+darkness could see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun had
+set--for she knew when the sun was gone--Naomi herself would take her
+father by the hand, and lead him to the upper room, and fetch the book
+to his knees.
+
+And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,
+and make a mock at him, and say, “The child is deaf and hears not--go
+read your book in the tombs!” But he only hardened his neck and laughed
+proudly. And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say, “Why waste
+yourself in this misspent desire? The child is buried while she is still
+alive, and who shall roll away the stone?” But Israel only answered, “It
+is for the Lord to do miracles, and the Lord is mighty.”
+
+So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night, and when
+his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice would be hoarse,
+and he would read the law which says, “_Thou shalt not curse the deaf,
+nor put a stumbling-block before the blind._” But when his heart was
+at peace his voice would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel
+sanctified to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he
+answered--
+
+“_And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
+and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp
+of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was,
+and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel, and he
+answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou
+calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and
+lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and
+went to Eli and said, Here am I for thou didst call me. And he answered,
+I called not my son; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the
+Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him._”
+
+And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book, and sing
+out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says, “It is good for me that
+I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes.”
+
+Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read
+of the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter, who was both
+blind and deaf. And though Naomi heard not, and neither did she see, yet
+in their silent hour together there was another in their chamber always
+with them--there was a third, for there was God.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+
+
+When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then
+fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife.
+The woman's name was Katrina. She was a Spaniard by birth, and had
+first come to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy, which travelled
+through Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez. What her belongings
+were, and what her antecedents had been, no one appeared to know, nor
+did Ben Aboo himself seem to care. She answered all his present needs in
+her own person, which was ample in its proportions and abundant in its
+charms.
+
+In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions. The first
+was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement of
+four Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as the many
+concubines that he had annexed in his way through life, and now kept
+lodged in one unquiet nest in the women's hidden quarter of the Palace.
+The second condition was, that she herself should never be banished
+to such seclusion, but, like the wife of any European governor, should
+openly share the state of her husband.
+
+Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan,
+and he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to
+abide by, but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a
+prelude to that public life which she intended to live by his side, she
+insisted on a public marriage.
+
+They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church by a
+Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival lasted
+six days. Great was the display, and lavish the outlay. Every morning
+the cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill, every
+evening the tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats of
+powder-play in the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa from
+Mequinez yelled and shrieked in the enclosure called the M'salla, near
+the Bab er-Remoosh. Feasts were spread in the Kasbah, and relays of
+guests from among the chief men of the town were invited daily to
+partake of them.
+
+No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute of a
+present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light
+of their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though
+it galled the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage of a
+Christian and a Muslim--no man except Israel, and he excused himself
+with what grace he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick with
+sorrow of the heart.
+
+The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid. She had taken her measure of
+the man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel should
+pay her court and tribute before all. Therefore she caused him to be
+invited again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman, and with
+some lack of courtesy he excused himself afresh.
+
+Katrina was not yet done. She was a creature of resource, and having
+heard of Naomi with strange stories concerning her, she devised a
+children's feast for the last day of the marriage festival, and
+caused Ben Aboo to write to Israel a formal letter, beginning “To our
+well-beloved the excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise to the one God,”
+ and setting forth that on the morrow, when the “Sun of the world” should
+“place his foot in the stirrup of speed,” and gallop “from the kingdom
+of shades,” the Governor would “hold a gathering of delight” for all the
+children of Tetuan and he, Israel, was besought to “lighten it with the
+rays of his face, rivalled only by the sun,” and to bring with him
+his little daughter Naomi, whose arrival “similar to a spring breeze,”
+ should “dissipate the dark night of solitude and isolation.” This
+despatch written in the common cant of the people, concluded with
+quotations from the Prophet on brotherly love and a significant and
+more sincere assurance that the Basha would not admit of excuses “of the
+thickness of a hair.”
+
+When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious. He
+leapt to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi, the
+Spanish woman, who must know of the child's condition desired only to
+make a show of it. But, after a fume, he put that thought from him as
+uncharitable and unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.
+
+And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi's
+own eagerness must have driven it away. The little maid seemed to know
+that something unusual was going on. Troops of poor villagers from every
+miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating
+drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them--bullocks,
+cows, and sheep--and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and
+were glad. Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in
+the marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle
+everywhere.
+
+Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement. The
+children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had
+been summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be
+dancing and singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself,
+who had lately practised the kanoon--the lute, the harp--under his
+teacher, was to show his skill before the Governor. Therefore, great
+was the little black man's excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would
+talk to every one of the event forthcoming--to Fatima, to Habeebah, and
+often to Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to
+him, or perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him,
+and then, thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them
+like a fury, and they would scamper away.
+
+When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and
+Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs. Every
+child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then
+a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling
+them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly
+happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree
+of the knowledge of good and evil.
+
+Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and
+followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the
+lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through
+the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women
+stood together closely covered in their blankets--the mothers and
+sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into
+the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther--then down the crooked passage,
+past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and
+finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+
+This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a
+great company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors,
+Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white
+and blue and black and red--they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and,
+perhaps, a beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.
+
+As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every
+eye was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made
+for them, he heard the whispered exclamations of the people. “Shoof!”
+ muttered a Moor. “See!” “It's himself,” said a Jew. “And the child,”
+ said another Jew. “Allah has smitten her,” said an Arab “Blind and
+dumb and deaf,” said another Moor “God be gracious to my father!” said
+another Arab.
+
+Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and
+from the flat roof above it the women of the Governor's hareem, not yet
+dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were
+gazing furtively down from behind their haiks. There was a fountain in
+the middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an
+alcove that opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with
+stalactites, against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat
+rugs of many colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.
+
+It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at
+the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome
+woman, but plainly a heartless one--selfish, vain, and vulgar.
+
+Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina
+drew Naomi to her side.
+
+“So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?” said
+Katrina.
+
+Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman's
+feet.
+
+“The darling is as fair as an angel,” said Katrina, and she kissed
+Naomi.
+
+The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.
+
+Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a
+pretty and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the
+black shadows of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people
+massed around the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going
+in the middle of it. First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered
+hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting
+and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then,
+a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish
+manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around
+with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above
+their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the
+Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and
+chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by
+a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song
+of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little
+black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in
+his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of
+pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting,
+and his face aglow.
+
+Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been
+agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes
+playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.
+It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going
+forward, and knew that they were children who were making it. Perhaps
+the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or
+perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to
+her sensitive body. Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to
+her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was
+full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.
+
+But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
+his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement. The girl
+leaped up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost
+rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to
+the boy's side. And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it,
+and then a low cry came from her lips. Again she touched it, and her
+eyes, though blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire. Then, with
+both her hands she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she
+kissed it, while her whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.
+
+Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with
+wild thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope. As well as he
+could in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the
+little maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave
+her.
+
+“Leave her!” she cried. “Let us see what the child will do!”
+
+At that moment Ali's playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp
+pass to Naomi's clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling
+on the ground beside it, the girl took it to herself. She caressed it,
+she patted it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then a faint
+smile crossed her rosy lips. She laid her cheek against it and touched
+its strings again, and then she laughed aloud. She flung off her
+slippers and the garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid
+her pure flesh against the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and
+touched its strings once more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh
+with delight.
+
+Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious
+saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds
+so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet
+heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes
+of a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds
+such as no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.
+
+It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion
+to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found
+to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them
+some of the sensations of sound--the trembling of the air after thunder,
+the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls
+after the ringing of mighty bells--so Naomi, who was blind as well and
+had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up the
+force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument
+of music the movement of things that moved about her--the patter of the
+leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great
+winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling
+of the levanter in her hair.
+
+This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion
+in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the
+music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings of the
+harp. But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of
+sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it. She lifted
+her head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she
+played, she laughed again and again.
+
+There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the
+beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through
+the robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white
+fingers flying across the strings. There was something gruesome and
+awful, as well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard
+nothing of the sounds that her fingers were making.
+
+Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was
+agape. And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from
+their first surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words
+they passed between them. “Where has she learnt it?” asked a Moor.
+“From her master himself,” muttered a Jew. “Who is it?” asked the Moor.
+“Beelzebub,” growled the Jew. “God pity me, the evil eye is on her,”
+ said an Arab. “God will show,” said a Shereef from Wazzan. “They say
+her mother was a childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah's
+blessing at the tomb of Rabbi Amran.” “No,” said the Arab; “she sent her
+girdle.” “Anyhow, the child is a saint,” whispered the Shereef. “No, but
+a devil,” snorted the Jew.
+
+“Brava, brava, brava!” cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered
+and laughed as the girl played. “What did I tell you?” she said, looking
+toward her husband. “The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either. Oh,
+it's a brave imposture! Brava, brave!”
+
+Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded, her head
+dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp and
+sighed audibly.
+
+“Good again!” cried the woman. “Very good!” and she clapped her
+hands, whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread, felt
+constrained to follow her example, and they cheered in their wilder way,
+but the Jews continued to mutter, “Beelzebub, Beelzebub!”
+
+Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind and the
+confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight of what Naomi did.
+Had God opened a gateway to her soul? Were the poor wings of her spirit
+to spread themselves out at last? Was this, then, the way of speech
+that Heaven had given her? But hardly had Israel overflowed with the
+tenderness of such thoughts when the bleating and barking of the faces
+about him awakened his anger. Then, like blows on his brain, came the
+cries of the wife of the Governor, who cheered this awakening of
+the girl's soul as it were no better than a vulgar show; and at that
+Israel's wrath rose to his throat.
+
+“Brava, brava!” cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel, she said,
+“You shall leave the child with me. I must have her with me always.”
+
+Israel's throat seemed to choke him at that word. He looked at Katrina,
+and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and vain of heart, who
+had married Ben Aboo because he was rich. Then he looked at Naomi,
+and remembered that her heart was clear as the water, and sweet as the
+morning, and pure as the snow.
+
+And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the
+people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to
+take up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the
+spell had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp, her head
+had dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to
+her face.
+
+“Take her in!” said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped
+up to where the little maiden lay. But before they had touched her
+Israel strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.
+
+“Stop!” he cried.
+
+The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.
+
+“Do as you are bidden--take her in!” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Stop!” cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.
+Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up the
+unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.
+
+“Madam,” he cried, “I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor, but
+my child belongs to me.”
+
+So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms,
+and in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed to
+know what he had done until he was gone.
+
+Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event he
+found courage in his heart to begin his task again. Let his enemies
+bleat and bark “Beelzebub,” yet the child was an angel, though suffering
+for his sin, and her soul was with God. She was a spirit, and the songs
+she had played were the airs of paradise. But, comforting himself so,
+Israel remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered her
+powers. He had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death, but
+would the Lord yet bring it to pass? Would God in His mercy some day
+take the angel out of his house, though so strangely gifted, so radiant
+and beautiful and joyful, and give him instead for the hunger of his
+heart as a man this sweet human child, his little, fair-haired Naomi,
+though helpless and simple and weak?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+
+
+Israel's instinct had been sure: the coming of Katrina proved to be
+the beginning of his end. He kept his office, but he lost his power. No
+longer did he work his own will in Tetuan; he was required to work the
+will of the woman. Katrina's will was an evil one, and Israel got the
+blame of it, for still he seemed to stand in all matters of tribute and
+taxation between the people and the Governor. It galled him to take the
+woman's wages, but it vexed him yet more to do her work. Her work was to
+burden the people with taxes beyond all their power of paying; her wages
+was to be hated as the bane of the bashalic, to be clamoured against
+as the tyrant of Tetuan, and to be ridiculed by the very offal of the
+streets.
+
+One day a gang of dirty Arabs in the market-place dressed up a blind
+beggar in clothes such as Israel wore, and sent him abroad through the
+town to beg as one that was destitute and in a miserable condition. But
+nothing seemed to move Israel to pity. Men were cast into prison for no
+reason save that they were rich, and the relations of such as were there
+already were allowed to redeem them for money, so that no felon suffered
+punishment except such as could pay nothing. People took fright and fled
+to other cities. Israel's name became a curse and a reproach throughout
+Barbary.
+
+Yet all this time the man's soul was yearning with pity for the people.
+Since the death of Ruth his heart had grown merciful. The care of the
+child had softened him. It had brought him to look on other children
+with tenderness, and looking tenderly on other children had led him to
+think of other fathers with compassion. Young or old, powerful or weak,
+mighty or mean, they were all as little children--helpless children who
+would sleep together in the same bed soon.
+
+Thinking so, Israel would have undone the evil work of earlier years;
+but that was impossible now. Many of them that had suffered were
+dead; some that had been cast into prison had got their last and long
+discharge. At least Israel would have relaxed the rigour whereby his
+master ruled, but that was impossible also. Katrina had come, and she
+was a vain woman and a lover of all luxury, and she commanded Israel to
+tax the people afresh. He obeyed her through three bad years; but many
+a time his heart reproached him that he dealt corruptly by the poor
+people, and when he saw them borrowing money for the Governor's tributes
+on their lands and houses, and when he stood by while they and their
+sons were cast into prison for the bonds which they could not pay to the
+usurers Abraham or Judah or Reuben, then his soul cried out against him
+that he ate the bread of such a mistress.
+
+But out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
+sweetness, and out of this coming of the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo came
+deliverance for Israel from the torment of his false position.
+
+There was an aged and pious Moor in Tetuan, called Abd Allah, who was
+rumoured to have made savings from his business as a gunsmith. Going to
+mosque one evening, with fifteen dollars in his waistband, he unstrapped
+his belt and laid it on the edge of the fountain while he washed his
+feet before entering, for his back was no longer supple. Then a younger
+Moor, coming to pray at the same time, saw the dollars, and snatched
+them up and ran. Abd Allah could not follow the thief, so he went to the
+Kasbah and told his story to the Governor.
+
+Just at that time Ben Aboo had the Kaid of Fez on a visit to him. “Ask
+him how much more he has got,” whispered the brother Kaid to Ben Aboo.
+
+Abd Allah answered that he did not know.
+
+“I'll give you two hundred dollars for the chance of all he has,” the
+Kaid whispered again.
+
+“Five bees are better than a pannier of flies--done!” said Ben Aboo.
+
+So Abd Allah was sold like a sheep and carried to Fez, and there cast
+into prison on a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars imposed upon
+him on the pretence of a false accusation.
+
+Israel sat by the Governor that day at the gate of the hall of justice,
+and many poor people of the town stood huddled together in the court
+outside while the evil work was done. No one heard the Kaid of Fez when
+he whispered to Ben Aboo, but every one saw when Israel drew the warrant
+that consigned the gunsmith to prison, and when he sealed it with the
+Governor's seal.
+
+Abd Allah had made no savings, and, being too old for work, he had lived
+on the earnings of his son. The son's name was Absalam (Abd es-Salem),
+and he had a wife whom he loved very tenderly, and one child, a boy of
+six years of age. Absalam followed his father to Fez, and visited him in
+prison. The old man had been ordered a hundred lashes, and the flesh was
+hanging from his limbs. Absalam was great of heart, and, in pity of his
+father's miserable condition he went to the Governor and begged that the
+old man might be liberated, and that he might be imprisoned instead.
+His petition was heard. Abd Allah was set free, Absalam was cast into
+prison, and the penalty was raised from two hundred and fifty dollars to
+three hundred.
+
+Israel heard of what had happened, and he hastened to Ben Aboo, in great
+agitation, intending to say “Pay back this man's ransom, in God's name,
+and his children and his children's children will live to bless you.”
+ But when he got to the Kasbah, Katrina was sitting with her husband, and
+at sight of the woman's face Israel's tongue was frozen.
+
+Absalam had been the favourite of his neighbours among all the gunsmiths
+of the market-place, and after he had been three months at Fez they
+made common cause of his calamities, sold their goods at a sacrifice,
+collected the three hundred dollars of his fine, bought him out of
+prison, and went in a body through the gate to meet him upon his return
+to Tetuan. But his wife had died in the meantime of fear and privation,
+and only his aged father and his little son were there to welcome him.
+
+“Friends,” he said to his neighbours standing outside the walls, “what
+is the use of sowing if you know not who will reap?”
+
+“No use, no use!” answered several voices.
+
+“If God gives you anything, this man Israel takes it away,” said
+Absalam.
+
+“True, true! Curse him! Curse his relations!” cried the others.
+
+“Then why go back into Tetuan?” said Absalam.
+
+“Tangier is no better,” said one. “Fez is worse,” said another. “Where
+is there to go?” said a third.
+
+“Into the plains,” said Absalam--“into the plains and into the
+mountains, for they belong to God alone.”
+
+That word was like the flint to the tinder.
+
+“They who have least are richest, and they that have nothing are best
+off of all,” said Absalam, and his neighbours shouted that it was so.
+
+“God will clothe us as He clothes the fields,” said Absalam, “and feed
+our children as He feeds the birds.”
+
+In three days' time ten shops in the market-place, on the side of the
+Mosque, were sold up and closed, and the men who had kept them were gone
+away with their wives and children to live in tents with Absalam on the
+barren plains beyond the town.
+
+When Israel heard of what had been done he secretly rejoiced; but Ben
+Aboo was in a commotion of fear, and Katrina was fierce with anger, for
+the doctrine which Absalam had preached to his neighbours outside the
+walls was not his own doctrine merely, but that of a great man lately
+risen among the people, called Mohammed of Mequinez, nicknamed by his
+enemies Mohammed the Third.
+
+“This madness is spreading,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Yes,” said Katrina; “and if all men follow where these men lead, who
+will supply the tables of Kaids and Sultans?”
+
+“What can I do with them?” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Eat them up,” said Katrina.
+
+Ben Aboo proceeded to put a literal interpretation upon his wife's
+counsel. With a company of cavalry he prepared to follow Absalam and his
+little fellowship, taking Israel along with him to reckon their taxes,
+that he might compel them to return to Tetuan, and be town-dwellers
+and house-dwellers and buy and sell and pay tribute as before, or else
+deliver themselves to prison.
+
+But Absalam and his people had secret word that the Governor was coming
+after them, and Israel with him. So they rolled their tents, and fled to
+the mountains that are midway between Tetuan and the Reef country, and
+took refuge in the gullies of that rugged land, living in caves of the
+rock, with only the table-land of mountain behind them, and nothing but
+a rugged precipice in front. This place they selected for its safety,
+intending to push forward, as occasion offered, to the sanctuaries of
+Shawan, trusting rather to the humanity of the wild people, called the
+Shawanis, than to the mercy of their late cruel masters. But the valley
+wherein they had hidden is thick with trees, and Ben Aboo tracked them
+and came up with them before they were aware. Then, sending soldiers
+to the mountain at the back of the caves, with instructions that they
+should come down to the precipice steadily, and kill none that they
+could take alive, Ben Aboo himself drew up at the foot of it, and
+Israel with him, and there called on the people to come out and deliver
+themselves to his will.
+
+When the poor people came from their hiding-places and saw that they
+were surrounded, and that escape was not left to them on any side, they
+thought their death was sure. But without a shout or a cry they knelt,
+as with one accord, at the mouth of the precipice, with their backs
+to it, men and women and children, knee to knee in a line, and joined
+hands, and looked towards the soldiers, who were coming steadily down on
+them. On and on the soldiers came, eye to eye with the people, and their
+swords were drawn.
+
+Israel gasped for his breath, and waited to see the people cut in pieces
+at the next instant, when suddenly they began to sing where they knelt
+at the edge of the precipice, “God is our refuge and our strength, a
+very present help in trouble.”
+
+In another moment the soldiers had drawn up as if swords from heaven
+had fallen on them, and Israel was crying out of his dry throat, “Fear
+nothing! Only deliver your bodies to the Governor, and none shall harm
+you.”
+
+Absalam rose up from his knees and called to his father and his son.
+And standing between them to be seen by all, and first looking upon both
+with eyes of pity, he drew from the folds of his selham a long knife
+such as the Reefians wear, and taking his father by his white hair he
+slew him and cast his body down the rocks. After that he turned towards
+his son, and the boy was golden-haired and his face was like the
+morning, and Israel's heart bled to see him.
+
+“Absalam!” he cried in a moving voice; “Absalam, wait, wait!”
+
+But Absalam killed his son also, and cast him down after his father.
+Then, looking around on his people with eyes of compassion, as seeming
+to pity them that they must fall again into the hands of Israel and his
+master, he stretched out his knife and sheathed it in his own breast,
+and fell towards the precipice.
+
+Israel covered his face and groaned in his heart, and said, “It is the
+end, O Lord God, it is the end--polluted wretch that I am, with the
+blood of these people upon me!”
+
+The companions of Absalam delivered themselves to the soldiers, who
+committed them to the prison at Shawan, and Ben Aboo went home in
+content.
+
+Rumour of what had come to pass was not long in reaching Tetuan, and
+Israel was charged with the guilt of it. In passing through the streets
+the next day on his way to his house the people hissed him openly.
+“Allah had not written it!” a Moor shouted as he passed. “Take care!”
+ cried an Arab, “Mohammed of Mequinez is coming!”
+
+It chanced that night, after sundown, when Naomi, according to her wont,
+led her father to the upper room, and fetched the Book of the Law from
+the cupboard of the wall and laid it upon his knees, that he read the
+passage whereon the page opened of itself, scarce knowing what he read
+when he began to read it, for his spirit was heavy with the bad doings
+of those days. And the passage whereon the book opened was this--
+
+“_Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and
+the other lot for the scapegoat. . . . Then shall he kill the goat of
+the sin-offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the
+vail. And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of
+the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their
+transgressions in all their sins. . . . And when he hath, made an end of
+reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and
+the altar, he shall bring the live goat: and Aaron shall lay both his
+hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the
+iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in
+all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send
+him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat
+shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited._”
+
+That same night Israel dreamt a dream. He had been asleep, and
+had awakened in a place which he did not know. It was a great arid
+wilderness. Ashen sand lay on every side; a scorching sun beat down on
+it, and nowhere was there a glint of water. Israel gazed, and slowly
+through the blazing sunlight he discerned white roofless walls like the
+ruins of little sheepfolds. “They are tombs,” he told himself, “and this
+is a Mukabar--an Arab graveyard--the most desolate place in the world
+of God.” But, looking again, he saw that the roofless walls covered the
+ground as far as the eye could see, and the thought came to him that
+this ashen desert was the earth itself, and that all the world of
+life and man was dead. Then, suddenly, in the motionless wilderness, a
+solitary creature moved. It was a goat, and it toiled over the hot sand
+with its head hung down and its tongue lolled out. “Water!” it seemed
+to cry, though it made no voice, and its eyes traversed the plain as if
+they would pierce the ground for a spring. Fever and delirium fell upon
+Israel. The goat came near to him and lifted up its eyes, and he saw its
+face. Then he shrieked and awoke. The face of the goat had been the face
+of Naomi.
+
+Now Israel knew that this was no more than a dream, coming of the
+passage which he had read out of the book at sundown, but so vivid was
+the sense of it that he could not rest in his bed until he had first
+seen Naomi with his waking eyes, that he might laugh in his heart to
+think how the eye of his sleep had fooled him. So he lit his lamp, and
+walked through the silent house to where Naomi's room was on the lower
+floor of it.
+
+There she lay, sleeping so peacefully, with her sunny hair flowing over
+the pillow on either side of her beautiful face, and rippling in little
+curls about her neck. How sweet she looked! How like a dear bud of
+womanhood just opening to the eye!
+
+Israel sat down beside her for a moment. Many a time before, at such
+hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways, and she
+had known nothing of it. She was like any other maiden now. Her eyes
+were closed, and who should see that they were blind? Her breath came
+gently, and who should say that it gave forth no speech? Her face was
+quiet, and who should think that it was not the face of a homely-hearted
+girl? Israel loved these moments when he was alone with Naomi while she
+slept, for then only did she seem to be entirely his own, and he was not
+so lonely while he was sitting there. Though men thought he was strong,
+yet he was very weak. He had no one in the world to talk to save Naomi,
+and she was dumb in the daytime, but in the night he could hold little
+conversations with her. His love! his dove! his darling! How easily he
+could trick and deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and
+speak to me! Yes; her eyes will open and see me here again, and I
+shall hear her voice, for I love it! “Father!” she will say.
+“Father--father--”
+
+Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!
+
+Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her. As he went back to his bed,
+through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him that
+made his hair to rise. It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.
+
+Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream to be a
+vision. It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream would be
+to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything. The vision as he
+thought he saw it was this, and these were the words of it as he thought
+he heard them--
+
+It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room, when
+a dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed, and a
+voice that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it, crying “Israel!”
+
+And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, “Speak, Lord, Thy servant
+heareth.”
+
+Then the Lord said, “Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest
+cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat.”
+
+And Israel answered trembling, “I have read.”
+
+Then the Lord said to Israel, “Look now upon Naomi, thy child, for
+she is as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement for thy
+transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore she is
+dumb to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight, a soul
+in chains and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot that is
+cast for justice and for the Lord.”
+
+And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, “Would that the lot had
+fallen upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou
+speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before
+Thee.”
+
+Then said the Lord to Israel, “On thee, also, hath the lot fallen, even
+the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of God.”
+
+And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said,
+“Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people, so
+cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo, and of his wife,
+Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins of the people into the
+wilderness, so, in the resurrection, shalt thou bear the sins of this
+man and of this woman into a land that no man knoweth.”
+
+Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were
+drops of blood, and cried, “What shall I do, O Lord?”
+
+And the Lord said, “Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee to
+the country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard
+tidings, and he shall show thee what thou shalt do.”
+
+Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, “Shall my soul live?
+Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?”
+
+But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed, and
+all around was darkness.
+
+Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath on
+the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice, not in
+his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight of all
+common things about him--his room and his bed; and the canopy that
+covered it. And on rising in the morning, at daydawn, so actual was the
+sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful the impression of
+it, that he straightway set himself to carry out the injunction it had
+made, without question of its reality or doubt of its authority.
+
+Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now
+grown to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate,
+Israel first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent
+from Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide, and to the
+market-place for mules.
+
+Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan was
+waiting at the door. Then Israel remembered Naomi. Where was the girl,
+that he had not seen her that morning? They answered him that she had
+not yet left her room, and he sent the black woman Fatimah to fetch
+her. And when she came and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in
+silence, his heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his
+foot to the stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio with
+the two bondwomen beside her.
+
+“Is she well?” he asked.
+
+“Oh yes, well--very well,” said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.
+Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language
+of her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face,
+which had used to be cheerful, was now sad. At that he almost repented
+of his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone
+no farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick,
+nothing could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must
+let him go his ways without warning.
+
+He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last, with many
+words of tender protest which she did not hear, he had to break away
+from the beautiful arms that held him.
+
+Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier and guide
+and muleteers and tentmen were already mounted, amid a chattering throng
+of idle people looking on.
+
+“Ali, my lad,” said Israel, “if anything should befall Naomi while I am
+away, will you watch over her and guard her with all your strength?”
+
+“With all my life,” said Ali stoutly. He was Naomi's playfellow no
+longer, but her devoted slave.
+
+Then Israel set off on his journey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+
+
+MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a
+Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died,
+and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's brothers, both men of
+yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at
+Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a
+land where there is one noble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and
+descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are
+mired with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest
+nobility. Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth
+that went along with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.
+
+He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out into
+the plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the
+shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed
+him. He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and
+lovers of poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They
+were never to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give
+what he had to him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet
+whatever they said was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be
+ministers of peace, and if any man did them violence they were never to
+resist him. Nevertheless they were not to lack for courage, but to laugh
+to scorn the enemies that tormented them, and smile in their pains and
+shed no tear. And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to
+esteem it more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible,
+but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released
+from the bondage of the flesh. Not dissenters from the Koran, but
+stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews, yet followers of
+Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.
+
+And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the
+cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets,
+from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service
+of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds
+and trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty,
+and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought
+nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs
+save the stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which
+they drove before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their
+fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for
+their food and the hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and
+desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering
+themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of
+battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded,
+passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about
+Mequinez. And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been
+so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as
+Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan: “God will feed
+us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He
+clothes the fields.”
+
+Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his
+people too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties
+were enough already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a
+palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom
+had the dusty and tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the
+fast of Ramadhan, and Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the
+double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his
+famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the
+night. In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some
+obstacles, but his time was long.
+
+And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan,
+so he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed
+through, and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes
+very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was
+passing through his own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people
+think but that he had come to make a new assessment of their lands and
+holdings, their cattle and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and
+more fully. So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of
+their houses as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse,
+and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot
+in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord), a title never
+before given to a Jew, and offered him presents out of their meagre
+substance.
+
+“A gift for my lord,” they would say, “of the little that God has given
+us, praise His merciful name for ever!”
+
+Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
+by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
+trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
+in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.
+
+Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.
+
+“Keep them,” he would answer; “keep them until I come again,” intending
+to tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.
+
+And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic
+of El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos
+hastened before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks
+and palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his
+errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in
+the early morning.
+
+“Peace be with you!” said the Kaid. “So my lord is going again to the
+Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!”
+
+Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of
+crooked lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near
+the market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the
+presents of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars
+who looked on with feverish eyes.
+
+Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of
+Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the
+foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand
+Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood
+waiting to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention
+of his journey.
+
+“Welcome! welcome!” said the Shereef; “all you see is yours until Allah
+shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our
+lord the Sultan at Fez--may God prolong his life and bless him!”
+
+“God make you happy!” said Israel, but he offered no answer to the
+question that was implied.
+
+“It is twenty and odd years, my lord,” the Shereef continued, “since my
+father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that
+time has wrought since then, under Allah's will; but none in the past
+have been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in
+the future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (God keep
+our lord Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him.”
+
+“God will show,” said Israel.
+
+No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef
+alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel's
+horse instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past
+the old Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque
+of the Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live
+like cattle. A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy
+rags, a group of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled
+renegades leaning against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from
+their dishevelled heads and bowed.
+
+That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the
+ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company of Muslimeen--guests
+in the house of the descendants of the Prophet--were, by special
+Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at
+their pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and
+his men started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with
+the Shereef's black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of
+honour, through the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock
+that is warning to strike) a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with
+fierce and dirty faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid
+clouds of hot dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should
+proclaim the end of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains
+stood ready to fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on
+the ground with dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain
+rolled in their fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef,
+and flint and tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the
+minaret stood looking abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun
+was lazily sinking under the plain.
+
+Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were
+the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of
+their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought
+the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage,
+and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of
+his mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this
+lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!
+
+Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like
+ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over
+the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town,
+through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious
+barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they
+came in the grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the
+Father of Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept
+it were snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.
+
+“Selam! M'barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!” shouted the Shereef's
+black guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in
+Israel's honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him
+housed within.
+
+From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came
+yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. “Burn your father!
+Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!”
+
+“Selam!” shouted one of the black guard. “You dog of dogs! Your father
+was bewitched by a hyena! I'll teach you to curse your betters. Quick!
+get up,--or I'll shave your beard. Open! or I'll ride the donkey on your
+head! There!--and there!--and there again!” and at every word the butt
+of his long gun rang on the old oaken gate.
+
+“Hamed el Wazzani!” muttered several voices within.
+
+“Yes,” shouted the Shereef's man. “And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his
+way to the Sultan, God grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi
+Israel el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and
+snoring in your dirt.”
+
+There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys,
+and then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two
+of the four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse,
+asking forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime,
+the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had
+ridden far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his class and
+country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham
+and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.
+
+“I heard you were coming,” he panted--“sent for by the Sultan--Allah
+preserve him!--but had I known you were to be here so soon--I--that
+is--”
+
+“Peace be with you!” interrupted Israel.
+
+“God grant you peace. The Sultan--praise the merciful Allah!” the Kaid
+continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup--“he reached Fez from
+Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him.”
+
+“God will show,” said Israel, and he pushed forward.
+
+“Ah, true--yes--certainly--my lord is tired,” puffed the Kaid, bowing
+again most profoundly. “Well, your lodging is ready--the best in
+Mequinez--and your mona is cooking--all the dainties of Barbary--and
+when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand Vizier--”
+
+Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until
+they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until
+sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same--the Sultan, the
+Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!
+
+Israel could bear no more. “Basha,” he said “it is a mistake; the Sultan
+has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him.”
+
+“Not going to him?” the Kaid echoed vacantly.
+
+“No, but to another,” said Israel; “and you of all men can best tell me
+where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen--yet a poor
+man--the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez.”
+
+Then there was a long silence.
+
+Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after
+sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and
+no man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had
+gone off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind
+him his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen,
+who, like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in
+dudgeon. The Kaid had turned them out of the town.
+
+Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within
+their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the
+tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there
+passed them in the fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of
+the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and
+shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had to pass
+over. They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid
+of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace without
+delay, that he might give good account of his stewardship, or else
+deliver up his substance and be cast into prison for the defalcations
+with which rumour had charged him.
+
+Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people,
+who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at
+Fez; and great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they
+remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last
+in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly
+touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of
+its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his
+door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and
+built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken
+from him and the other failed him, where then was the hope of that man's
+salvation, whether in this world or the next? The dungeon, the chain,
+the lash, the wooden jellab--what else was left to him? Only the wail
+of the poor whom he has made poorer, the curse of the orphan whom he
+has made fatherless, and the execration of the down-trodden whom he has
+oppressed. These followed him into his prison, and mingled their cries
+with the clank of his irons, for they were voices which had never yet
+deserted the man that made them, but clamoured loud at the last when his
+end had come, above the death-rattle in his throat. One dim hour waited
+for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace--one lonely
+hour wherein none could bear him company--and what was wealth and
+treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on earth? Was it
+glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth--what could it be but a
+will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night! Oh! riches of
+gold and silver--what had they ever been but marsh-fire gathered in the
+dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the service of the
+prince of it!
+
+Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure--so far away. Though
+all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by
+God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from
+his child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling!
+His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose
+anything, everything, all that the world and all that the devil had
+given him; but let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what
+was gold without gladness, and what was plenty without peace?
+
+Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the
+musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of
+unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped
+like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were
+a vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included
+multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil
+moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago
+they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from
+Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from
+Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous
+Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but
+their substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them.
+Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
+privations patiently--the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains
+of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the
+Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of both
+in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
+that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or
+sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild
+bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.
+
+So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
+in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
+starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What
+of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them
+as He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was
+seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour,
+He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to
+plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it.
+“The hunger is on us!” “Our children are perishing!” “Find us food!”
+ “Food!” “Food!”
+
+With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
+madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
+came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
+their leader when he answered them.
+
+First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
+quivering nostrils. “Do you think I am Moses,” he cried, “that I should
+smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full?
+If you are naked, am I clothed?”
+
+But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
+was saying in a very moving voice, “My good people, who have followed
+me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than
+you can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that
+death itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that
+Allah sees a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that,
+unknown to us all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass!
+Patience, I beg of you; patience, my poor people--patience and trust!”
+
+At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered
+the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan
+had burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes
+worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings and
+earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang on the breast
+as safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much gold filagree of the
+kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box
+and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further
+thought to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of
+them, he said, “Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, 'A
+present to the man of God and to his people in their trouble.'”
+
+And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
+open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him,
+it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had
+opened and rained manna on their heads.
+
+“It is an answer to your prayer,” he cried; “an angel from heaven has
+sent it.”
+
+Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened
+to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched
+throats--
+
+“Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!”
+
+And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of
+men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together,
+and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great
+broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them succour, that they
+might not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every
+man looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, “I could
+have borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I
+was a fool.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+
+
+Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of
+the new prophet for his guide and motto: “Exact no more than is just; do
+violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give
+to the poor.” That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if
+any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been
+an idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after
+Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom.
+“I'll do it,” he said; “at all risks and all costs, I'll do it.”
+
+And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant
+to bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his
+pockets of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to
+return to his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in
+amazement, and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their
+ways by themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan
+at Fez had stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming
+behind them penniless.
+
+But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his
+homeward journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in
+his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out
+from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five
+long days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the
+daytime. Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done
+so much to wipe out God's displeasure as he was now doing and yet would
+do. He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of
+his vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the
+sin-offering must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would
+meet her without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance,
+then must her debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child
+been so smitten of God, and never had any father of an afflicted child
+bought God's mercy at so dear a price!
+
+Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared
+not to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing God out of his love
+of the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home,
+it was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity
+and pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through
+the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three
+sights which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence
+in that town and province.
+
+First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east of the new
+town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the
+high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room for a thousand
+women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco
+and rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders
+selling twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all
+black, and of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They
+had lately arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and
+the Wargha, and some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others
+were fresh and cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were
+adorned, after their doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters,
+with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers
+pricked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they
+were drawn up in a line for public auction; but before the sale of them
+could begin among the buyers that had gathered about them in the street,
+the overseers of the Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection
+for their master. This the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them
+nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces of evil old
+women and the hoarse voices of ravens--had picked out three fat black
+maidens, the business of the auction began by the sale of a negro girl
+of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and passed around.
+
+“Now, brothers,” said the slave-master, “look see; sound of wind and
+limb--how much?”
+
+“Eighty dollars,” said a voice from the crowd.
+
+“Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her--rosy lips, fit for the
+kisses of a king, eh? How much?”
+
+“A hundred dollars.”
+
+“A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It's giving the girl away.
+Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound.”
+
+The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her
+round the crowd again.
+
+“Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now's the chance for true
+believers. How much?”
+
+“A hundred and ten.”
+
+“A hundred and ten--thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel of a
+girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles. Look at her flesh. Not
+a flaw anywhere. Pass her round, test her, try her, talk to her--she
+speaks good Arabic. Isn't she fit for a Sultan? She's the best thing
+I'll offer to-day, and by the Prophet, if you are not quick I'll keep
+her for myself. Now, for the third and last time--seventeen years of
+age, sound, strong, plump, sweet, and intact--how much?”
+
+Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl, and to
+hear what shameless questions they asked of her, and with a long sigh he
+was turning away from the crowd, when another man came up to it. The man
+was black and old and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white
+selham. But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him,
+he made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people, pushed his
+way to the girl's side, and opened his arms to her, and she fell into
+them with a cry of joy and pain together.
+
+It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before,
+had been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben
+Hashem, having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and
+from his only child, who thus strangely rejoined him. This story he
+told, in broken Arabic; to those that stood around, and, hard as were
+the faces of the bidders, and brutal as was their trade; there was not
+an eye among them all but was melted at his story.
+
+Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, “I will give
+twenty dollars to buy him the girl's liberty,” and straightway another
+and another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount of
+the last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it, and the
+girl was free.
+
+Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand, came to
+Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks, and said in his
+broken way: “The blessing of Allah upon you, white brother, and if you
+have a child of your own may you never lose her, but may Allah favour
+her and let you keep her with you always!”
+
+That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear,
+and, facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned down the
+dark arcade that descends into the old town as into a vault, and having
+crossed the markets, he came upon the second of the three sights that
+were to smite out of his heart his pride towards God. A man in a blue
+tunic girded with a red sash, and with a red cotton handkerchief tied
+about his head, was driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees
+cut into short lengths to lie over its panniers. He was clearly a
+Spanish woodseller and he had the weary, averted, and downcast look of
+a race that is despised and kept under. His donkey was a bony creature,
+with raw places on its flank and shoulders where its hide had been worn
+by the friction of its burdens. He drove it slowly; crying “Arrah!” to
+it in the tongue of its own country, and not beating it cruelly. At
+the bottom of the arcade there was an open place where a foul ditch was
+crossed by a rickety bridge. Coming to this the man hesitated a moment,
+as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey over it or to make the beast
+trudge through the water. Concluding to cross the bridge, he cried
+“Arrah!” again, and drove the donkey forward with one blow of his stick.
+But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten thing gave way,
+and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch. The donkey's legs were
+broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry,
+had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water on to the
+paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a moment
+it was dead.
+
+At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
+called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.
+And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed to pity
+him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
+arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
+dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the
+man with bitter reproaches. “Allah blot out your name, you thief!” she
+cried. “You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself,
+you dog of a Nazarene!”
+
+This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl
+to hold her peace. “Silence, you young wanton!” he cried, in a voice
+of indignation. “Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
+trouble?”
+
+It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a
+renegade from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his
+father and his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's
+face, and said, “You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not
+be a good man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard when
+your own children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in
+their cradles, before they can speak to you to curse you.”
+
+Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
+about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
+sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
+be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!
+
+He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice
+to part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell,
+and that was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost
+everything. And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved
+Naomi, and she clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him
+walk humbly before God, for God was great.
+
+Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased his
+cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet
+lighter spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow of
+the town walls. It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted by a
+white flag; and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out to
+the entrance. He was a poor, miserable creature--ragged, dirty, and with
+dishevelled hair--and, seeing Israel's eyes upon him, he began to talk
+in some wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only a fierce
+jabber of sounds that had no words in them, and of words that had no
+meaning. The poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught he was
+counted a holy man among his people, and put to live in this place,
+which was the tomb of a dead saint--though not more dead to the ways of
+life was he who lay under the floor than he who lived above it. The
+man continued his wild jabber as long as Israel's eyes were on him, and
+Israel dropped two coins into his hand and passed on.
+
+Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God's creatures.
+And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type and
+sign of how her soul was smitten.
+
+On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company of
+his people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey.
+And then, while they walked some paces together before parting, and the
+prophet talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying in the prison at
+Shawan (for he had heard of them from Israel), Israel himself mentioned
+Naomi.
+
+“My father,” he said, “there is something that I have not told you.”
+
+“Tell it now, my son,” said the Mahdi.
+
+“I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.
+You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,
+for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone, and so she is
+very near and dear to me. But she is in the land of silence and in the
+land of night. Nothing can she see, and nothing hear, and never has
+her voice opened the curtains of the air, for she is blind and dumb and
+deaf.”
+
+“Merciful Allah!” cried the Mahdi.
+
+“Ah! is her state so terrible? I thought you would think it so. Yes, for
+all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature of the fields that
+knows not God.”
+
+“Allah preserve her!” cried the Mahdi.
+
+“And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me in the
+vision, and my soul trembles for her soul. But if God has washed me with
+water should not she also be clean?”
+
+“God knows,” said the Mahdi. “He gives no rewards for repentance.”
+
+“But listen!” said Israel. “In a vision of death her mother saw her, and
+she was afflicted no more. No, for she could see, and hear, and speak.
+Man of God, will it come to pass?”
+
+“God is good,” said the Mahdi. “He needs that no man should teach Him
+pity.”
+
+“But I love her,” cried Israel, “and I vowed to her mother to guard her.
+She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has
+no freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will
+have mercy?”
+
+The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, “The Lord sees all. Go your
+way in trust. Farewell!”
+
+“Farewell!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+
+
+ISRAEL'S return home was an experience at all points the reverse of his
+going abroad. He had seven dollars in the pocket of his waistband on
+setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred and more with which he
+had started from Tetuan. His men had gone on before him and told their
+story. So the people whom he came upon by the way either ignored him or
+jeered at him, and not one that on his coming had run to do him honour
+now stepped aside that he might pass.
+
+Two days after leaving Fez he came again to Wazzan. Women were going
+home from market by the side of their camels, and charcoal-burners were
+riding back to the country on the empty burdas of their mules. It
+was nigh upon sunset when Israel entered the town, and so exactly
+was everything the same that he could almost have tricked himself and
+believed that scarce two minutes had passed since he had left it. There
+at the fountains were the water-carriers waiting with their water-skins,
+and there in the market-place sat the women and children with their
+dishes of soup; there were the men by the booths with their pipes ready
+charged with keef, and there was the mooddin in the minaret, looking
+out over the plain. Everything was the same save one thing, and that
+concerned Israel himself. No Grand Shereef stood waiting to exchange
+horses with him, and no black guard led him through the town. Footsore
+and dirty, covered with dust, and tired, he walked through the
+streets alone. And when presently the voice rang out overhead, and the
+breathless town broke instantly into bubbles of sounds--the tinkling
+of the bells of the water-carriers, the shouts of the children, and the
+calls of the men--only one man seemed to see him and know him. This was
+an Arab, wearing scarcely enough rags to cover his nakedness, who was
+bathing his hot cheeks in water which a water-carrier was pouring into
+his hands, and he lifted his glistening face as Israel passed, and
+called him “Dog!” and “Jew!” and commanded him to uncover his feet.
+
+Israel slept that night in one of the three squalid fondaks of Wazzan
+inhabited by the Jews. His room was a sort of narrow box, in a square
+court of many such boxes, with a handful of straw shaken over the earth
+floor for a bed. On the doorpost the figure of a hand was painted in
+red, and over the lintel there was a rude drawing of a scorpion, with an
+imprecation written under it that purported to be from the mouth of
+the Prophet Joshua, son of Nun. If the charm kept evil spirits from the
+place of Israel's rest, it did not banish good ones. Israel slept in
+that poor bed as he had never slept under the purple canopy of his own
+chamber, and all night long one angel form seemed to hover over him.
+It was Naomi. He could see her clearly. They were together in a little
+cottage somewhere. The house was a mean one, but jasmine and marjoram
+and pinks and roses grew outside of it, and love grew inside. And Naomi!
+How bright were her eyes, for they could see! Yes, and her ears could
+hear, and her tongue could speak!
+
+Two days after Israel left Wazzan he was back in the bashalic of Tetuan.
+Each night he had dreamt the same dream, and though he knew each morning
+when he awoke with a sigh that his dream was only a reflection of his
+dead wife's vision, yet he could not help but think of it the long day
+through. He tried to remember if he had ever seen the cottage with his
+waking eyes, and where he had seen it, and to recall the voice of Naomi
+as he had heard it in his dream, that he might know if it was the same
+as he used to think he heard when he sat by her in his stolen watches of
+the night while she lay asleep. Sometimes when he reflected he thought
+he must be growing childish, so foolish was his joy in looking forward
+to the night--for he had almost grown in love with it--that he might
+dream his dream again.
+
+But it was a dear, delicious folly, for it helped him to bear the
+troubles of his journey, and they were neither light nor few. After
+passing through El Kasar he had been robbed and stripped both of his
+small remaining moneys and the better part of his clothes by a gang of
+ruffians who had followed him out of the town. Then a good woman--the
+old wife, turned into the servant of a Moor who had married a young
+one--had taken pity on his condition and given him a disused Moorish
+jellab. His misfortune had not been without its advantage. Being forced
+to travel the rest of his way home in the disguise of a Moor, he had
+heard himself discussed by his own people when they knew nothing of his
+presence. Every evil that had befallen them had been attributed to him.
+Ben Aboo, their Basha, was a good, humane man, who was often driven to
+do that which his soul abhorred. It was Israel ben Oliel who was their
+cruel taxmaster.
+
+When Israel was within a day's journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge fell
+upon the country. A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud from
+the direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade of grass
+that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it
+had passed was as black and barren as a lava stream. The farmers
+were impoverished, and the poorer people made beggars. Even this last
+disaster they charged in their despair to Israel, for Allah was now
+cursing them for Israel's sake. They were the same people that had
+thrust their presents upon him when he was setting out.
+
+At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl of
+buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water. She gave him
+a dish of zummetta--barley roasted like coffee--and inquired if he
+was going on to Tetuan. He told her yes, and she asked if his home was
+there. And when he answered that it was, she looked at him again, and
+said in a moving way, “Then Allah help you, brother.”
+
+“Why me more than another, sister?” said Israel.
+
+“Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man,” said the old
+woman. “And that is the sort he is hardest upon.”
+
+Israel faltered and said, “He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean--”
+
+“Who else but Israel the Jew?” said she, and then added, as by a sudden
+afterthought, “But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has
+stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this
+poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been--so
+wise and powerful!”
+
+Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame,
+he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him. “They
+tell me,” he said, “that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has
+devils.”
+
+“Blind and dumb, poor soul,” said the old woman; “but Allah has pity for
+the afflicted--he is taking her away.”
+
+Israel rose. “Away?”
+
+“She is ill since her father went to Fez.”
+
+“Ill?”
+
+“Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying.”
+
+Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered,
+and fled out of the hut. Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying
+with dreams--billing and cooing with his own fancies--fondling and
+nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and damned
+for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them that poor men's
+souls might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale
+face of Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had
+used to laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?
+
+With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running at his
+utmost velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting his
+imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist against the
+sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering to himself in awe.
+
+Would God not hear his prayer? God knew the child was very near and dear
+to him, and also that he was a lonely man. “Have pity on a lonely man,
+O God!” he whispered. “Let me keep my child; take all else that I have,
+everything, no matter what! Only let me keep her--yes, just as she is,
+let me have her still! Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I am
+humble, and ask that alone.”
+
+On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down on
+his uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust, he
+prayed this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.
+
+When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening under the setting
+sun. Then he thought of his Moorish jellab, and looked at himself, and
+saw that he was returning home like a beggar; and he remembered with
+what splendour he had started out. Should he wait for the darkness, and
+creep into his house under the cover of it? If the thought had occurred
+an hour before he must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of
+every face in Tetuan than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now
+that he was so near he was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon
+to learn the truth he dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro on the
+heath outside the town, paltering with himself, struggling with himself,
+eating out his heart with eagerness, trying to believe that he was
+waiting for the night.
+
+The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening with
+thick stars, Israel passed unknown through the Moorish gate, which was
+still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square. At the gate
+of the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked, and demanded entrance in
+the name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards who kept it fell back at sight
+of him with looks of consternation.
+
+“Israel!” cried one, and dropped his lantern.
+
+Israel whispered, “Keep your tongue between your teeth!” and hurried on.
+
+At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again,
+but more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and,
+seeing his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.
+
+“Habeebah!” he cried, and he knocked once more.
+
+Then Ali came to the door. “What Moorish man are you?” cried Ali,
+pushing him back as he pressed forward.
+
+“Ali! Hush! It is I--Israel.”
+
+Then Ali knew him and cried, “God save us! What has happened?”
+
+“What has happened here?” said Israel. “Naomi,” he faltered, “what of
+her?”
+
+“Then you have heard?” said Ali. “Thank God, she is now well.”
+
+Israel laughed--his laugh was like a scream.
+
+“More than that--a strange thing has befallen her since you went away,”
+ said Ali.
+
+“What?”
+
+“She can hear!”
+
+“It's a lie!” cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to
+the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and
+saying, “Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know
+what I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true,
+there is no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no
+fiend in hell need envy me.”
+
+And Ali answered through his tears, “It is true, my father--come and
+see.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+
+
+WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story
+that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered
+from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in
+the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her
+father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and
+the book was in her hands.
+
+“Look at her, poor child,” said Fatimah. “See, she thinks he will come
+as usual. God bless her sweet innocent face!”
+
+On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made
+her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife
+of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly
+through the courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from
+there to the gate of the prison.
+
+The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither
+did she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly,
+and seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and
+silent; she did not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of
+submission that was very touching to see.
+
+“Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel,” said Fatimah. “How
+long will she wait, poor darling?”
+
+On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to
+restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands
+were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.
+
+It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel's fears on
+setting out from home had been right after all. And making his own
+reckoning with Naomi's condition, Ali went off for the only doctor
+living in Tetuan--a Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading
+to the western gate. This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her
+pulse, touched her throbbing forehead, with difficulty examined her
+tongue, and pronounced her illness to be fever. He gave some homely
+directions as to her treatment--for he despaired of administering drugs
+to such a one as she was--and promised to return the next day.
+
+About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood
+constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water;
+Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner
+outside the door of her room.
+
+The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but
+there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very
+solemnly, and said, “I will come again after two days more, when the
+fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out of
+Tangier along with me!”
+
+Meantime, Naomi's delirium continued. It was gentle as her own
+spirit tent there was this that was strange and eerie about her
+unconsciousness--that whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its
+dark cell must have been mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke
+without ceasing throughout the time of her reason's vanquishment. Not
+that her poor tongue in its trouble uttered speech such as those that
+heard could follow and understand, but only a restless babble of empty
+sounds, yet with tones of varying feeling, sometimes of gladness,
+sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of remonstrance, and sometimes of
+entreaty.
+
+All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat
+together by her bedside, holding each other's hands like little children
+in great fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness
+outside the door, listening in terror to the silvery young voice that
+had never echoed in that house before. This was the night when Israel,
+sleeping at the squalid inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi's
+voice in his dreams.
+
+At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone,
+and away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the
+fondak, which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his
+wet eyes in the pitiless sunlight for Israel's caravan that should soon
+come. On the first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he
+came upon Israel's men returning without him, and telling their lying
+story that he had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and
+was coming behind them penniless.
+
+Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.
+That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had
+fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad
+faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. “Liars and thieves!”
+ he cried; “tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go
+straight to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all
+whipped through the streets for plundering my master.”
+
+The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a
+mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no
+more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them
+concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by
+right of nature on the tongues of Moors--they said and knew nothing.
+
+While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of
+Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the
+wise leech shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was
+sinking--in plain words, she was dying--and if her father did not come
+before the morrow he would come too late to find her alive.
+
+Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to
+spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly
+become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was,
+therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a
+Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. “The Imam is good, the Imam
+is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?” “Nay, but our Sidi holds
+not with the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our
+lord is our sultan, our lord is our king.” “Shoof! What is Sidi against
+paradise? And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a
+follower of Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her
+lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn
+everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum.” “But, alack! how can the poor
+girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?” “Then how can she say
+the Shemang either?”
+
+Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and
+silenced both the bondwomen: “The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is
+a thief.” There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his
+own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp
+in the days of the Governor's marriage. This person was an old negro,
+bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still
+partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated
+slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and
+willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he
+was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say,
+and not too much of either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance
+there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that
+this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark
+cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar,
+he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through
+thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive generations
+of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither and thither
+among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words, and often meat
+and drink of his meagre substance.
+
+Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his
+own great trouble, he tried away for him.
+
+“Father,” cried the lad, “does it not say in the good book that the
+prayer of a righteous man availeth much?”
+
+“It does, my son,” said the Taleb “You have truth. What then?”
+
+“Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover,” said Ali.
+
+It was a sweet instance of simple faith. The old black Taleb dismissed
+his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled
+to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her
+through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and
+then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and
+a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and
+prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
+
+The negro's prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything;
+it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away
+and might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three
+days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was
+blind and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her.
+She was his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man.
+He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were
+gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart would be
+broken and his very soul in peril.
+
+Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb
+angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole
+of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager
+and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down
+mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.
+
+And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
+tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by
+the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and
+Naomi lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
+features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
+restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.
+
+The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
+“El hamdu l'Illah!” (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
+the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete
+the miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and
+wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
+Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
+were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
+breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept
+softly through the night and has just awakened in the morning.
+
+Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment
+of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was
+a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And
+then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while
+the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle
+hand and covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of
+dread.
+
+So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and
+they were shouting “Hallelujah!” with one voice, thinking only that
+she who had been dead to them was alive again. But the old Taleb cried
+eagerly, “Hush! my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing!
+I know what it is--who knows so well as I? Once I was deaf, my children,
+but now I hear. Listen! The maiden has had fever--fever of the brain.
+Listen! A watery humour had gathered in her head. It has gone, it has
+flowed away. Now she will hear. Listen, for it is I that know it--who
+knows it so well as I? Yes; she will be no longer deaf. Her ears will be
+opened. She will hear. Once she was living in a land of silence; now
+she is coming into the land of sound. Blessed be God, for He has wrought
+this wondrous work. God is great! God is mighty! Praise the merciful God
+for ever! El hamdu l'Illah!”
+
+And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb's story seemed to be,
+it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning in
+a slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath, Naomi turned
+her face full upon him; and when the black women in their ready faith,
+joined in his shouts of praise, she turned her face towards them also;
+and wherever a voice sounded in the room she inclined her head towards
+it as one who knew the direction of the sounds, and also as one who was
+in fear of them.
+
+But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one
+thing only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had
+been deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now
+heard their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
+laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
+black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
+around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in
+answer to his old Taleb's prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb's
+cries of warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen
+see the old man's uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes,
+so overpowered were they with their delight, so startled and so joy
+drunken. But over their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing
+shrieks. They were the cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror
+at the first sounds that had reached her of human voices. Her face
+was blanched, her eyelids were trembling, her lips were restless, her
+nostrils quivered, her whole being seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of
+dread, and, in the horrible disarray of all her sensations her brain,
+on its wakening from its dolorous sleep of three delirious days, was
+tottering and reeling at its welcome in this world of noise.
+
+Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their
+peace in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the
+clamour of tongues.
+
+It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in
+the jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
+entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
+remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
+was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance
+was changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No
+longer was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither
+was it as the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot
+and perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and
+as Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no
+cheer did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away
+from her when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears
+with terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then
+his sight grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick
+mist seemed to cover everything, and through the dense waves of
+semi-consciousness he heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice
+coming to him as from far away.
+
+“My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver!
+It is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear
+father has come back to her!”
+
+Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
+Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
+head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
+Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
+hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
+dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
+more than he had asked or deserved!
+
+Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob,
+yet uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only
+holding Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face.
+And the black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb
+in that great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose
+house had come the wonderful work that God had wrought.
+
+No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face, in
+joy over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had
+known him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she
+continued to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father
+and she loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it
+was also because he alone was silent of all that were about her.
+
+When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears,
+that, coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man
+was never heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and
+darkling as the air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit
+trembled in a new world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a
+little dark chamber, a vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul
+was ever passing to and fro, asking for news of the world without?
+Through seventeen dark and silent years the soul of Naomi had been
+passing and repassing within its beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying
+daily and hourly, “Watchman, what of the world?” At length it had found
+an answer, and it was terrified. The world had spoken to her soul and
+its voice was like the reverberations of a subterranean cavern, strange
+and deep and awful.
+
+In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the
+room, all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.
+
+Ali was saying, “Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
+returned yesterday, and said--”
+
+And the bondwomen were crying, “Sidi, you were right when you went
+away!” “Yes, the dear child was ill!” “Oh, how she missed you when
+you were gone.” “She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of
+Tetuan--”
+
+And the old Taleb was muttering, “Master, it is all by God's mercy. We
+prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway
+to her spirit as well.”
+
+Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi's
+ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned
+them out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of
+Naomi's fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her
+by the solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment
+of a soul.
+
+And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the
+door of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women
+were calling to their children without, and the children were still
+shouting in their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested
+her head against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put
+her arms about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart
+yearned to speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear.
+Let it be but one word, only one, that she might know her father's
+voice--for she had never once heard it--and answer it with a smile.
+
+“Daughter! My dearest! My darling.”
+
+Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
+tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
+years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not
+speak lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that
+would break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation.
+It was terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence,
+hardly moving, scarcely breathing--a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
+holding Naomi in his arms.
+
+It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
+In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
+through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
+Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
+little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
+hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
+Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
+Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and
+women and children--country Arabs and Barbers--were squatting around the
+charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while the
+ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently the
+wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the
+streets came to an end; the “Balak” of the ass-driver was no more heard,
+the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the fires on
+the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts of the
+shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew the air
+until all was still.
+
+At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
+released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh she
+dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she
+would have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in
+thankfulness to God, that He was making the way of her great journey
+easy out of the land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke
+over the town. Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in
+the air, which had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and
+long and terrible. First from the direction of Marteel, over the four
+miles which divide Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea
+sends before trouble comes to the land--a deep moan as of waters falling
+from the sky. Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens
+on the gate called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to
+the port. Then came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down
+the gorges of the Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches
+far away to Kitan. Last of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied
+themselves over the town, and the rain fell in floods on the roof of the
+house and on the pavement of the patio, and leapt up again in great loud
+drops, making a noise to the ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a
+hidden multitude. Thus sound after sound broke over the darkness of the
+night in a thousand awful voices, now near, now far, now loud, now
+low, now long, now short, now rising, now falling, now rushing, now
+running--a mighty tumult and a fearsome anarchy.
+
+At last Naomi's terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her
+body as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of
+touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued
+to refer all sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out
+her arms before her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in
+her palms; and at the sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to
+protect her head.
+
+Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom.
+He yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
+words of love, gentle words of hope.
+
+“Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain;
+it is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They
+shall not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There,
+there, my little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you.
+Fear not, my child, fear not!”
+
+Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears,
+but, alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which
+moaned about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again
+and again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the
+solace of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of
+the storm.
+
+Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its
+fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise
+it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with
+the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed--the blessing of a
+pathway to his daughter's soul--a misfortune had come as well. What was
+it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
+And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
+silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but
+a circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
+shrieked and moved around her?
+
+Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror,
+and smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at
+length, in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens
+seemed rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell
+into a long unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer,
+but wept above her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name--
+
+“Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing!
+nothing! Listen! It is gone! Gone!”
+
+With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
+soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
+not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
+Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in
+ashes!
+
+Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
+grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
+could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
+she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the
+bars which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came
+dancing out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down
+at her knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his
+voice through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of
+Jacob, and rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.
+
+If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
+foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
+God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
+God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
+wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
+she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
+knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
+was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
+than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
+he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought
+this evil upon him!
+
+But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
+manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
+breathless quiet.
+
+And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed
+to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing
+could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay
+over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was
+back in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices
+which had startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been
+nothing but an evil dream.
+
+In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
+with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,
+and said within himself, “It was her baptism. Now she will walk the
+world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the
+Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!”
+
+Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of
+the room on tiptoe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+
+
+With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
+had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she
+had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
+disrobed.
+
+It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her
+new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though
+she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached.
+They led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to
+the great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no
+more as of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see
+them through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on
+her lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took
+her to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod
+the familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did
+she exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty
+winds about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the
+world unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and
+heard the breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her
+ears. They gave Ali's harp into her hands, the same that she had played
+so strangely at the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again
+as on that day did she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound
+such as none had heard before and none could follow, but only touched
+and fumbled them with deftless fingers that knew no music.
+
+She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
+pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
+communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
+kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
+beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.
+
+Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
+of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years
+had bleated and barked “Beelzebub!” And if God in His mercy had taken
+the angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful,
+He had given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet
+human daughter, however helpless and frail.
+
+Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content. But
+day by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange
+sinkings of the heart. Naomi's frailty appeared to be not only of the
+body but also of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly
+fallen asleep. She betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her
+lips; no thought for herself or for others seemed to animate her. She
+neither laughed nor wept. When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not
+stretch out her arms as she had done before to draw down his head to her
+lips. Calmly, silently, sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day,
+without feeling and without thought--a beautiful statue of flesh and
+blood.
+
+What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself
+knows; but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first
+delight in the new gift with which God had gifted her.
+
+To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
+walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
+childhood--the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink, the
+thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered flowers
+in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for it was
+the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle, and
+under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
+Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
+direction.
+
+On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths
+of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the
+sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a
+tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the
+Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there--but by what
+impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had withdrawn her hand
+from his hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it
+took him to stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had
+sunk into the earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from
+his sight.
+
+Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,
+but she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would
+answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her
+laugh.
+
+“Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?”
+
+But no sound came back to him.
+
+Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a
+voice of fear.
+
+“Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?”
+
+Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor
+the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.
+
+Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
+left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
+and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly,
+until the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and
+deadened the sound of his voice.
+
+Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
+length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
+brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom.
+She was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had
+sat herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were
+still wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old
+olive-tree over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues;
+the little family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny
+creature of the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging
+itself on the low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a
+sheep of solemn face--gaunt and grim and ancient--was standing and
+palpitating before her. Bees were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing,
+the light wind was whispering, and cattle were lowing in the distance.
+The air of that sweet spot in that sweet hour was musical with every
+sweet sound of the earth and sky, and fragrant with all the wild odours
+of the wood.
+
+“My darling,” cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
+he paused and looked at her again.
+
+The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the
+light that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her
+head was held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were
+flushed. She had pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair
+had fallen over her neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear,
+and the other strayed among the plants that grew on the bank beside her.
+She seemed to be listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and
+radiant joy, a pure and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her
+beautiful face. It was almost as though she believed that everything she
+heard with the great new gift which God had given her was speaking to
+her, and bidding her welcome and offering her love; as if the garrulous
+old olive over her head were stretching down his arms to sport with her
+hair, and pattering; “Kiss me, little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss
+me! kiss me!”--as if the rippling river at her feet were laughing and
+crying, “Catch me, naked feet! catch me, catch me!” as if the thrush
+on the bough were singing, “Where from, sunny locks? where from? where
+from?”--as if the young squirrel were chirping, “I'm not afraid, not
+afraid, not afraid!” and as if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly,
+“Pat me, little maiden! you may, you may!”
+
+“God bless her beautiful face!” cried Israel. “She listens with every
+feature and every line of it.”
+
+It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
+forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever--in
+the voices of children at play--in the bleat of the goat--in the
+footsteps of them she loved--in the hiss and whirr of her mother's old
+spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work--and in Ali's harp, when
+he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.
+
+But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the
+ground first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what
+change was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of
+sound, the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself
+nor any one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a
+beautiful and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to
+give herself up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music
+she took most pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened
+to with a simple and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her
+joy, and the joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air
+wheresoever she went.
+
+There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
+beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah's homely ditties were
+all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times
+when she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the
+caravan, telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing
+cypress, and liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales
+which the good soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties
+whose silence was the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love
+tore the veil of their chastity.
+
+But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be
+the yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call
+down love out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a
+favourite song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had
+learned it in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she
+sang it over the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not
+hear. Naomi knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother's song at
+last, though silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her
+chief and dear delight.
+
+     O, where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+
+In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song, when
+Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it, and the simple
+silent arts she used, being mute and blind, to show her pleasure while
+it lasted, and to ask for it again when it was done, were very sweet and
+touching.
+
+And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves
+that child most among many children that most is helpless, so the
+earth-mother of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes were
+blind. Thus she seemed to hear many things that are unheard by the rest
+of the human family. It is only a dim echo of the outer world that the
+ears of men are allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow of the
+outer world that the eyes of men are allowed to see; but the ears of
+Naomi seemed to hear all.
+
+There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts, and a
+third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another in keenness
+even as one sight differs from another in strength. And all the earth
+is full of voices, and everything that moves upon the face of it has its
+sound; but the bird hears that which is unheard of the beast, and the
+beast hears that which is unheard of men. But Naomi appeared to hear all
+that is heard of each.
+
+Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only, with
+nothing that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground but
+she dropped her face, and nothing flew in the sky but she lifted her
+eyes. And whereas before the coming of her great gift her face had been
+all feeling, and she seemed to feel the sunset, and to feel the sky, and
+to feel the thunder and the light, now her face was all hearing, and
+her whole body seemed to hear, for she was like a living soul floating
+always in a sea of sound.
+
+Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,
+building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with which
+God had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was to her then,
+what the sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was with its roar,
+and what the face of man was, and the eyes of woman, none could know,
+and neither could she tell, for her soul was not linked to other
+souls--soul to soul, in the chains of speech.
+
+And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,
+beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words, and that
+words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill, made their mark
+on the soul that listened to them. So he continued to read to her out of
+the Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
+custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to
+say, “Fool! she hears, but does she understand?” he remembered how he
+had read to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself,
+“Shall I have less faith now that she can hear?”
+
+But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's
+soul at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to
+her it seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern
+and gets back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her
+of the sky, that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the
+great deeps to measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was
+green as the fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour?
+And sometimes as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words
+themselves which he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the
+notes which Ali struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at
+her feet.
+
+Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, “Let the
+Lord find His own way to her spirit.” So he continued to speak with
+her as often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that
+concerned their household, as well as of the greater things it was good
+for her soul to know.
+
+It was a touching sight--the lonely man, the outcast among his people,
+talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling her of
+God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that his
+words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
+to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
+judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.
+
+Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on
+her ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was
+she putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering
+them, imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace
+for her spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would,
+he could never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He
+clung to all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor
+and his pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also--the
+false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before
+the eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.
+
+It was some three weeks after his return from his journey, and the
+fierce blaze of the sun continued. The storm that had broken over the
+town had left no results of coolness or moisture, for the ground had
+been baked hard, and the rain had been too short and swift to penetrate
+it. And what the withering heat had spared of green leaf and shrub a
+deadlier blight had swept away. The locusts had lately come up from
+the south and the east, in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on
+millions, making the air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue
+sky. They had swept the country of its verdure, and left a trail of
+desolation behind them. The grass was gone, the bark of the olives and
+almonds was stripped away, and the bare trees had the look of winter.
+
+The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.
+Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds. A
+Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls of the
+town. It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town's
+six gates. The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on
+the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind. It
+was a horrible place.
+
+The skinny dogs of the town soon found it. And after these scavengers
+of the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of
+bones, they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in
+search of water. By this time there was none that they could come at
+nearer than the sea, and that was salt. Nevertheless, they lapped it, so
+burning was their thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town. Then
+the people hunted them and killed them.
+
+Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to
+death on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult of
+the streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat,
+that went before her. The goat was grown old, but it was still her
+constant companion and also it was now her guide and guardian, for the
+little dumb creature seemed to know that she was frail and helpless. And
+so it was that she was crossing the Sok el Foki, a market of the town,
+and hearkening only to the patter of the feet of the goat going in
+front, when suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps hurrying towards her,
+with shouts and curses that were loud and deep. She stood in fear on the
+spot where she was, and no eyes had she to see what happened next, and
+she had none save the goat to tell her.
+
+But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward from
+the hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude of men and boys.
+And flying in its despair, it bit out wildly at whatever lay in its way,
+and Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight in front of it. Then she
+must have fallen before it, but instantly the goat flung itself across
+the dog's open jaws, and butted at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill
+cries of terror.
+
+The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if
+the madness of the monster shrank before it. But the people came down
+with their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat and
+felled it, and fled away. The people followed it, and then Naomi was
+alone in the market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.
+
+Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father's house in the
+Mellah, and her dying champion with her. And out of this hard chance,
+and not out of Israel's teaching, Naomi was first to learn what life is
+and what is death. She felt the goat with her hands, and as she did so
+her fingers shook. Then she lifted it to its feet, and when they slipped
+from under it she raised her white face in wonder. Again she lifted it,
+and made strange noises at its ear; but when it did not answer with its
+bleat her lips began to tremble. Then she listened for its breathing,
+and felt for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor
+the other to her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast. At length she
+fondled it in her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave
+back no sign of motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose
+at her heart. At last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat
+opened its heavy eyes upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her
+hand. With that last farewell the brave heart of the little creature
+broke, and it stretched itself and died.
+
+Israel saw it all. His heart bled to see the parting in silence between
+those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead than the
+human soul that was left alive. He tried to put the goat from Naomi's
+arms, saying, “It was only a goat, my child; think of it no more,”
+ though it smote him with pain to say it, for had not the creature given
+its life for her life? And where, O God, was the difference between
+them? But Naomi clung to the goat, and her throat swelled and her bosom
+fluttered, and her whole body panted, and it was almost as if her soul
+were struggling to burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might
+speak and ask and know.
+
+“Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?”
+
+Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
+thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, “It is dead, my
+child--the goat is dead.”
+
+But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in
+a dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that
+hour had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken
+of death had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that
+he had spoken of life, and of the little things which concerned their
+household? And if Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these--if
+she had not pondered and interpreted them--if they had fallen on her ear
+only as voices in a dark cavern--only as dead birds on a dead sea--what
+of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
+and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?
+
+Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
+great gift a mockery?
+
+Israel's feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself
+of God's mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand?
+Only a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi
+had heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked
+and cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer
+deaf. Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication
+and why had He received his prayer?
+
+But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi's new
+gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.
+
+“Give her speech, O Lord!” he cried, “speech that shall lift her above
+the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know!
+Give her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+
+
+AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts of
+the young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his
+hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will
+of Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled
+the land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had
+unjustly extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had
+returned double--once for the tax and once for the excess; and if any
+man, having been unjustly taxed for the Kaid's tribute, had given
+bond on his lands for his debt and been cast into the Kasbah and
+died, without ransoming them, then to his children he had returned
+fourfold--double for the lands and double for the death. Israel had done
+this continually, and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out
+of his own purse, so that from being a rich man he had fallen within
+a month to the condition of a poor one, for what was one man's wealth
+among so many? Yet no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity and
+contempt, for the people that had taken his money had thanked the Kaid
+for it, who, according to their supposals, had called on him to correct
+what he had done amiss. And with Ben Aboo himself he had fared no
+better, for the Basha was provoked to anger with him when he heard from
+Katrina of the good money that he had been casting away in pity for the
+poor.
+
+“What have I told you a score of times?” said the woman. “That man has
+mints of money.”
+
+“My money, burn his grandfather,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world's reckoning. When he
+lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done the devil's
+work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before he had made
+more powerful. People who had showed him lip-service when he was thought
+to be rich did not conceal the joy they had that he was brought down
+so near to be a beggar. Upstarts, who owed their promotion to his
+intercession, found in his charities an easy handle given them to be
+insolent, for, by carrying to Katrina their secret messages of his mercy
+to the people, they brought things at length to such a pass between him
+and the Kaid that Ben Aboo openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not
+once or twice but many times.
+
+“And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?”
+ said Ben Aboo. “Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough
+to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones
+to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity
+you've got too much of it, I say.”
+
+“The people are poor, Lord Basha,” said Israel; “they are famishing, and
+they have no refuge save with God and with us.”
+
+“Tut!” cried Ben Aboo. “A famine in my bashalic! Let no man dare to say
+so. The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness, mistress Israel.
+You poor old grandmother! I always suspected,” he added, facing about
+upon his attendants, “I always suspected that I was served by a woman.
+Now I am sure of it.”
+
+Israel felt the indignity. He had given good proof of his manhood in the
+past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo between
+him and his people, making him rich by his extortions, keeping him safe
+in his seat, and thereby saving him from the wooden jellab which Abd
+er-Rahman, the Sultan, kept for Kaids that could not pay. But Israel
+mastered his anger and held his peace.
+
+Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour of
+the Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him in
+the streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor, thinking
+himself accountable to God for their sufferings. He could have crushed
+the better part of his insulters to death in his brawny arms, but he was
+slow to anger and long-suffering. All the heed he paid to their insults
+was to do his good work with more secrecy.
+
+Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised
+him on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this
+difficulty. When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well
+down over his black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his
+face. In this innocent disguise he went out night after night for many
+nights among the poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters of the
+grain markets near the Bab Ramooz. How he bore himself being there,
+with what harmless deceptions he unburdened his soul by stealth, what
+guileless pretences he made that he might restore to the poor the money
+that had been stolen from them, would be a long story to tell.
+
+“Who are you?” he was asked a hundred times.
+
+“A friend,” he answered
+
+“Who told you of our trouble?”
+
+“Allah has angels,” he would reply.
+
+Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw the
+very children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention
+of his name. And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people whisper
+together and say, “He is a saint. He comes from the Kabar at nightfall.
+Allah sends him to help poor men who have been in the clutches of Israel
+the Jew.”
+
+Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for
+good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask
+nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it
+was the breath of angels.
+
+One day, about a month after his return from his journey, when he
+was near to the end of his substance, a message came to him that the
+followers of Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison at Shawan.
+Their relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now, but the
+plague of the locust had fallen on the bread-winners, and they had no
+more bread to send. Israel concluded that it was his duty to succour
+them. From a just view of his responsibilities he had gone on to a
+morbid one. If in the Judgment the blood of the people of Absalam cried
+to God against him, he himself, and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into
+hell.
+
+Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began to take
+a view of his condition. Then he saw, to his dismay, that little as he
+had thought he possessed, even less remained to him out of the wreck of
+his riches. Only one thing he had still, but that was a thing so dear to
+his heart that he had never looked to part with it. It was the casket
+of his dead wife's jewels. Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to
+sell it now, and, taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept
+it--a closet that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart
+for ever, but in his house no more.
+
+Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the
+doorpost, and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour
+came out to them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried
+air itself had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay
+on everything. But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate
+shawls and gauzy haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red
+slippers, and many dainty things such as women love. And to him that
+came again after ten heavy years they were as a dream of her that had
+worn them when she was young that now was dead when she was beautiful
+that now was in the grave.
+
+“Ah me, ah me! Ruth! My Ruth!” he murmured. “This was her shawl. I
+brought it from Wazzan. . . . And these slippers--they came from Rabat.
+Poor girl, poor girl! . . . . This sash, too, it used to be yellow and
+white. How well I remember the first time she wore it! She had put it
+over her head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman. But her
+brown curls fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them. And
+then she laughed. My poor dear girl. How happy we were once in spite of
+everything! It is all like yesterday. When I think Ah no, I must think
+no more, I must think no more.”
+
+Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket of
+the jewels where it stood by the wall. With trembling hands he took it
+and opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets, and rings
+and earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering of
+dust. He lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers, and looked at
+them while his eyes grew wet.
+
+“Not for myself,” he murmured, “not for myself would I have sold them,
+not for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of
+worlds!”
+
+All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood
+by his side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks and
+looked serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed, and now at the
+jingling of the jewels she stretched out her hand and took one of
+them from her father's fingers, and feeling it, and finding it to be a
+necklace, she clasped it about her neck and laughed.
+
+At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed. It brought back
+the memory of the day when she danced to her mother's death, decked in
+that same necklace and those same ornaments. More on this head Israel
+could not think and hold to his purpose, so he took the jewels from
+Naomi's neck and returned them to the casket, and hastened away with it
+to a man to whom he designed to sell it.
+
+This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the
+Jews; for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop
+in the Sok el Foki. Israel was moved to go to this person by the
+remembrance of two things, of which either seemed enough for his
+preference--first, that he had bought the jewels of Reuben in the
+beginning, and next, the Reuben had never since ceased to speak of
+them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the gems of Ethiopia and the gold of
+Ophir.
+
+But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy, he
+eyed both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear to his
+covetous and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself in his
+need, and bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction that
+could come to it.
+
+“And what is this that you bring me?” said Reuben languidly.
+
+“A case of jewels,” said Israel, with a downward look.
+
+“Jewels? umph! what jewels?”
+
+“My poor wife's. You know them, Reuben See!”
+
+Israel opened the casket.
+
+“Ah, your wife's. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere.”
+
+“You have seen them here, Reuben.”
+
+“Here?--do you say here?”
+
+“Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago.”
+
+“Sold them to you? Never. I don't remember it. Surely you must be
+mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these.”
+
+Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in
+expressions of contempt.
+
+Israel watched him closely. “Give them back to me,” he said; “I can go
+elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling.”
+
+Reuben's lip straightened instantly. “Wrangling? Who is wrangling,
+brother? You are too impatient, Sidi.”
+
+“I am in haste,” said Israel.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said,
+“The things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with
+them?”
+
+“To buy them,” said Israel.
+
+“_Buy_ them?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But I don't want them.”
+
+“Are they worth your money?--you don't want that either.”
+
+“Umph!”
+
+A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded to
+examine the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems--the rich onyx,
+the sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the
+topaz, and first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back
+again. And seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers, the
+precious jewels which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist and her white
+neck, Israel could scarcely hold back his hand from snatching them away.
+But how can he that is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his
+twitching hands behind him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of
+Absalam, and when at length Reuben tendered him for the casket one half
+what he had paid for it, he took the money in silence and went his way.
+
+“Five hundred dollars--I can give no more,” Reuben had said.
+
+“Do you say five hundred--five?”
+
+“Five--take it or leave it.”
+
+It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through
+was a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow
+wooden boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a
+shelter from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay
+raisins and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers
+crouched in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous
+straw hats, with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats
+at their feet. Under arcades of dried leaves--made, like desert graves,
+of upright poles and dry branches thrown across--the butchers lay at
+their ease, flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. “Buy! buy!
+buy!” they all shouted together. A dense throng of the poor passed
+between them in torn jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought.
+Asses and mules crushed through amid shouts of “Arrah!” “Arrah!” and
+“Balak!” “Ba-lak!” It was a lively scene, with more than enough of
+bustle and swearing and vociferation.
+
+There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised
+with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of
+sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers
+for penance. “God forgive me,” he muttered, “_God forgive me, God
+forgive me,_” and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer
+approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, “How much?” The merchant
+continued his prayers and did his business at a breath. “(_God forgive
+me_) How much? (_God forgive me_) Four pesetas (_God forgive me_),” and
+round went the restless rosary. “Too much,” said the buyer; “I'll give
+three.” The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, “(_God
+forgive me_) Couldn't take it for as much as you might put in your tooth
+(_God forgive me_); gave four myself (_God forgive me_).” “Then I'll
+leave it, old sweet-tooth,” said the buyer, as he moved away. “Here!
+take it for nothing (_God forgive me_),” cried the merchant after the
+retreating figure. “(_God forgive me_) I'm giving it away (_God forgive
+me_); I'll starve, but no matter (_God forgive me_), you are my brother
+(_God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me_).”
+
+Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the
+prisoners needed--enough for the present and for many days to come. Then
+he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man two
+days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he knew
+full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of Absalam
+receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of
+famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his
+short journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was
+highest, hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to
+escape observation.
+
+His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came
+to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and
+deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+at which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a
+strange procession. It was a procession of penance and petition, asking
+God to wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and
+eating up the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white
+beard, walked side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in
+the folds of his snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews
+and the Imam of the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors
+walked abreast in the burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were
+Berbers were bareheaded also.
+
+“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!” the Imam cried,
+and the Muslims echoed him.
+
+“By the God of Jacob!” the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words
+after him.
+
+“Spare us! Spare the land!” they all cried together. “Send rain to
+destroy the eggs of the locust!” cried the Rabbi. “Else will they
+rise on the ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor; and
+neither fire nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we
+ourselves will die, and our children with us!”
+
+And the Jews cried, “God of Jacob, be our refuge.”
+
+And the Muslims shouted, “Allah, save us!”
+
+It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance--the
+haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of
+sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike,
+walking and praying in the public streets together.
+
+Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved. And being come
+into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the
+motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that,
+if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself
+for what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no
+merit could he make of his poverty.
+
+“Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her,” he thought. Naomi was his hope
+and his salvation. His faith in God was his love of the child. He
+was only bribing God to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he
+journeyed towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for
+them that lay there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their
+miseries, the mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to
+himself. So the nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his
+breast, as if the sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head
+had eyes to peer into his deceiving soul.
+
+The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half
+of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set
+when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of
+the mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and
+vineyards that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners
+and pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from
+Tetuan and his heavy taxings.
+
+“It's Israel ben Oliel,” whispered one.
+
+“God of Jacob, save us!” whispered another.
+
+“He has followed us for the arrears of taxes.”
+
+“We must fly.”
+
+“Let us go home first.”
+
+“No time for that.”
+
+“There is Rachel--”
+
+“She's a woman.”
+
+“But I must warn my son--he has children.”
+
+“Then you are lost. Come on.”
+
+Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress
+and was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within,
+had heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild
+disorder of all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his
+visit, as if they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women
+and young children, gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some
+with faces that were hard and stony, some with faces that were weak and
+simple, some with eyes that were red as blood, all weary with waiting
+and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom of the
+foul place where they were immured together. Shedding tears, beating
+their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour, these unhappy creatures
+of God, who had been great of soul when they sang their death-song with
+the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front, now quaked for
+the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger and cherished in
+bitterness.
+
+By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found
+his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been
+gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one
+impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to
+their knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women
+in front, and mothers holding out their babes before their breasts so
+that he might see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart
+made for pity.
+
+Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head
+was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in
+wonder.
+
+“Arise,” he said; “I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and
+God bless you!”
+
+So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the
+muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.
+
+And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had
+looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged
+within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat.
+For a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained
+their wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his
+new poverty such as his riches had never brought him--no, not once in
+all the days of his old prosperity.
+
+At length an old man--he was a Muslim--looked steadily into Israel's
+face and said, “May the God of Jacob bless thee also, brother!”
+
+After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of
+their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet
+with hearts so different.
+
+“May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!”
+
+“May the child of thy wife be blessed!”
+
+“Stop,” he cried; “stop! you don't know what you are saying.”
+
+He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had
+stung him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips;
+they pushed their children under his hands for his blessing.
+
+“No, no,” he cried; “no, no, no!”
+
+Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town
+like one who was ashamed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+
+
+Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would
+have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered
+into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen
+years in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the
+father, still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since
+her mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears,
+touching her hand for assent, patting her head for approval, and guiding
+her fingers to teach them signs.
+
+Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter,
+more to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her
+sole gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit
+gazed upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and
+without him neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out
+to the world. Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on
+one side of all language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a
+mother with her first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery
+as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with
+her, then only did Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of
+wonder at the strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was
+gone from her, she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's
+close abode, waiting to be born anew.
+
+When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder
+him, as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and
+connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence; or
+as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the
+world, what was to befall him before he returned. He put her from him
+with many tender words, and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead,
+as though to chide her while he blessed her for so much love. But her
+dread increased, and she held to him like a child to its mother's robe.
+And at last, when he unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in
+anger, and after that laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her
+meaning yet had no fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a
+fit of weeping.
+
+“Tut! tut! what is this?” he said. “I will be back to-morrow. Do you
+hear, my child?--tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow.”
+
+When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed
+to increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered,
+and her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood
+she walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside,
+sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to
+herself in noises such as none had heard from her lips before.
+
+The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of
+her heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and
+with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the
+black woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its
+master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her
+fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which
+God Himself might have revealed to her.
+
+“Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?” cried Fatimah.
+
+“Alack! girl,” said Habeebah, “the maid is sickening again.”
+
+And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless
+agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic
+slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she
+awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the
+evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along
+in them like one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter,
+as if she were living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour
+followed long hour, but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her
+bosom heaved, her throat throbbed, her excitement became hysterical.
+Sometimes she broke into wild, inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the
+black women could have believed, in spite of knowledge and reason, that
+she was muttering and speaking words, though with a wild disorder of
+utterance.
+
+At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when
+this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh
+intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened,
+her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear
+nothing save the common sounds of the streets--the shouts of children
+at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and
+again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of
+the Moors--only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct
+murmur of multitudinous life coming and going on every side.
+
+Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears? Was her spiritual power, which
+was unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of
+some terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no
+more than recollection of her father's promise to be back at sunset, and
+mere anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw
+nothing. All that they could do was to wring their hands.
+
+Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would
+serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the
+black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her
+fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went
+out together.
+
+“Where are we going?” said Habeebah.
+
+“Nay, how should I know?” said Fatimah.
+
+“We are fools,” said Habeebah.
+
+It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic
+was sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to
+custom, had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of
+Jews stood under it in earnest and passionate talk. There was a strange
+and bodeful silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond
+the gate was already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was
+empty. No snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their
+circles of squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These
+professors of science and magic and jocularity had never before been
+absent. Even the blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were
+silent. But out of the mosques there came a deep low chant as of many
+voices, from great numbers gathered within.
+
+“The girl was right,” said Fatimah; “something has happened.”
+
+“What is it?” said Habeebah.
+
+“Nay, how should I know that either?” said Fatimah.
+
+“I tell you we are a pair of fools,” said Habeebah.
+
+Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she
+led. Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble
+frame as by an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed,
+and perhaps foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these
+helpless children of God, going whither they knew not and wherefore they
+knew not, save that a fear that was like to madness drew them on.
+
+“Listen! I hear something,” said Fatimah.
+
+“Where?” said Habeebah.
+
+“The way we are going,” said Fatimah.
+
+On and on Naomi passed from street to street. They were the same streets
+whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her
+goat was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither
+altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight
+forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the
+goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar.
+Then she could go no farther.
+
+“Holy saints, what is this?” cried Habeebah.
+
+“Didn't I tell you--the girl heard something?” said Fatimah.
+
+“God's face shine on us,” said Habeebah. “What is all this crowd?”
+
+An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and
+overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It
+was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered
+on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving mass of
+haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare
+shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd of dark figures
+in black gowns and skull-caps. The assemblage was of Jews only--Jews of
+every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher
+in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold
+braid on his new kaftan.
+
+They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
+to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them
+to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the
+Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a
+vacant space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in
+their open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their
+reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country
+Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted
+on the vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently
+impassively, at the vast company of Jews.
+
+And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
+commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
+tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
+their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
+entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
+loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every
+side. It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were
+breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of
+man, and predicting fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which
+had befallen him early or late but they were remembering it, and
+reckoning it up and rejoicing in it. And there was no evil which had
+befallen themselves but they were laying it to his charge.
+
+Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
+penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
+that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
+expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain
+fall instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the
+thick hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in
+the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched
+and scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while
+the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and
+muttering to themselves, “It is written,” they had returned to their
+synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like
+the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know
+for whose cause the evil was upon them.
+
+They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they
+were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance
+of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a
+Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden.
+But they were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had
+been adopted, and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers.
+So three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or
+slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.
+
+The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had
+been unanimous. The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel. He had sold
+himself to their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and
+interest of his own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race
+and nation into exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the
+Kasbah, and yet others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God,
+and God had given him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was
+cursed with devils, a daughter who had been born blind and dumb and
+deaf, and was still without sight and speech.
+
+Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire
+upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this
+devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as
+He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
+Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them,
+never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a
+feast. Not until their judgment went out against him would God's anger
+be appeased. Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the
+blessed rain would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink
+it, and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed. But let them put
+off any longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the
+people, and their evil time would soon come. Within eight-and-twenty
+days the eggs would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other
+days the young locust would have wings. Before the end of those
+seventy-and-six days the harvest of wheat and barley would be yellow to
+the scythe and ripe for the granary, but the locust would cover the face
+of the earth, and there would be no grain to gather. The scythe would be
+idle, the granaries would be empty, the tillers of the ground would come
+hungry into the markets, and they themselves that were town-dwellers
+and tradesmen would be perishing for bread, both they and their children
+with them.
+
+Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
+three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had--contrary to
+Jewish custom--tried and convicted him. God would not let them perish
+for this man's life, and neither would He charge them with his blood.
+
+Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They
+could only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That
+the Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel's sin?
+Ben Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, “It is written.”
+ That to appease God's wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die?
+Convince the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land
+of the Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the
+whole community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.
+
+The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
+Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
+for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
+their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
+Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding
+on to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him--though
+sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful.
+But the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for
+them, upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them;
+but visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.
+
+The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow
+lane of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of
+the oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other
+ground of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find
+it. At length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the
+trial of an Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset.
+Also they had been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a
+capital case must not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So
+they had broken up and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they
+had told the crowds that waited there that judgment had fallen upon
+Israel ben Oliel, but that his doom could not be made known until sunset
+on the following day.
+
+That time was now come. In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood and
+anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday. The
+Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning. They had
+not broken bread since yesterday, for the day that condemned a son of
+Israel to death must be a fast-day to his judges.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open.
+The sentence was not ready yet, but the judges in council were near
+to their decision. At the open door the reader of the synagogue had
+stationed himself, holding a flag in his hand. Under the gate of the
+Mellah a second messenger was standing, so placed that he could see the
+movement of the flag. If the flag fell, the sentence would be “death,”
+ and the man under the gate would carry the tidings to the people
+gathered in the market-place. Then the three-and-twenty judges would
+come in procession and tell what steps had been taken that the doom
+pronounced might be carried into effect.
+
+Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger which
+seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals of a few minutes
+to glance back towards the Mellah gate.
+
+If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight--these
+children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs and
+vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking and
+acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years
+before; again judging it expedient that one man should die rather than
+the whole people be brought to destruction; again probing their crafty
+heads, if not their hearts, for an artifice whereby their scapegoat
+might be killed by the hand of their enemy; children indeed, for all
+that some of their heads were bald, and some of their beards were
+grizzled, and some of their faces were wrinkled and hard and fierce;
+little children of God writhing in the grip of their great trouble.
+
+Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings
+of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led
+her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching
+ears had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness,
+filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought,
+of great and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher
+leading? Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always,
+and that when the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were
+following the blind maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn
+was following God?
+
+When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,
+though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,
+and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had
+infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and
+they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from
+danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a
+reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon
+him found a way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again and going
+back to the house.
+
+“Come,” said Habeebah; “let us go--we are not safe.”
+
+“Yes,” said Fatimah; “let us take the poor child back.”
+
+“Come along, then,” said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.
+
+“Naomi, Naomi,” whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, “we are going home.
+Come, dearest, come.”
+
+But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her.
+She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,
+motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent
+save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet
+listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
+
+And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her
+dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been
+terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness
+and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been
+learning speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in
+that crowd she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others
+saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the
+darkness outside her eyes that were blind.
+
+First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse,
+jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it
+was--it was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.
+
+“Brothers of Tetuan,” the old man cried, “what are we waiting for? For
+the verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one
+thing to do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a
+humane master. If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been
+driven to do that which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say:
+'Lord Basha, through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has
+stood over us to oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been
+silent. In that time we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the
+houses of their fathers where they have lived since their birth. We have
+seen them buffeted and smitten, without a resting-place for the soles
+of their feet, and perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and
+the want of all things. Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your
+profit?'”
+
+The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once
+more silent, the thick voice went on: “And not the seed of Israel
+only, but the sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of
+misery. Under a Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice,
+in a land that breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God,
+our brethren the Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no
+standing. Every day brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At
+this moment a plague is upon us. The country is bare; the town is
+overflowing; every man stumbles over his fellow our lives hang in doubt;
+in the morning we say 'Would it were evening'; in the evening we say,
+'Would it were morning'; stretch out your hand and help us!”
+
+Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice
+continued: “Let us say to him 'Lord Basha, there is no way of help but
+one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race
+and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor,
+any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own
+people, and your servants will bless you.'”
+
+The old man's voice was drowned in great shouts of “Ben Aboo!” “To Ben
+Aboo!” “Why wait for the judges?” “To the Kasbah!” “The Kasbah!”
+
+But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those
+waves of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen.
+Naomi knew this voice also--it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo,
+the elder of the synagogue, who would have been sitting among the
+three-and-twenty-judges but that he was a usurer also.
+
+“Why go to the Kaid?” said the voice like a peahen. “Does the Basha
+love this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such
+affection? Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo
+be glad to have done with this servant who has been so long his master?
+Then why trouble him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the
+Kaid will thank you! And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord
+and worship Him, that He has not put it into the hearts of His people
+to play the game of breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the
+races around them, the Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more
+warm by nature, must long ago have done, and that not unjustly either,
+or altogether to the displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and
+merciful, and has never loved that his poor people should be oppressed.”
+
+At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the
+crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. “Away with the man!”
+ “Away with him!” rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and
+clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called
+for mercy or for patience.
+
+While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice
+came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice
+of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.
+
+“And does God,” said Reuben, “any more than Ben Aboo--blessings on his
+life!--love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt with
+this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has His
+hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty
+years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife,
+how she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben
+Ohana, how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the
+day whereon his daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this
+offspring of sin, this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and
+speechless!”
+
+Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh of a
+breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering.
+“Come! Let us away!” But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.
+
+The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. “Do you say that
+the Lord gave him riches? Behold him!--he swallowed them down, but has
+he not vomited them up? Examine him!--that which he took by extortions
+has he not been made to restore? Does God's anger smoke against him?
+Answer me, yes or no!”
+
+Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of “Yes!” And
+instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice,
+a peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it--it
+was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and
+still deaf as a stone.
+
+“Tut! What is all this talking about?” she snapped and grunted. “Reuben
+Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don't give them too much of
+it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
+am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
+for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
+Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll
+laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is
+to ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her
+a miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
+children!”
+
+The people laughed--it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets the
+teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of the
+crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the counter-currents
+of an angry sea. “She's right,” said a shrill voice. “He deserves it,”
+ snuffled a nasal one. “At least let us drive him out of the town,” said
+a third gruff voice. “To his house!” cried a fourth voice, that pealed
+over all. “To his house!” came then from countless hungry throats.
+
+“Come, let us go,” whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold
+of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
+strange sounds to herself.
+
+“To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!” the people howled in a
+hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
+mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
+
+It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
+people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
+Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.
+
+Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait
+for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means
+whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry
+the sentence into effect. The procession was even then forming. It
+was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the
+Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front
+of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were
+the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his
+pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez.
+By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.
+
+But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and
+turning like worms on an upturned turf. “Why sack his house?” cried
+some. “Why drive him out?” cried others. “A poor revenge!” “Kill him!”
+ “Kill him!”
+
+At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had
+waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly
+in the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of “He is
+there!” and then there was a great silence.
+
+It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town
+walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from
+Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one
+mule and leading another.
+
+He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers
+of Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out
+of their dry throats, saying, “May the God of Jacob bless you also,
+brother!” and “May the child of your wife be blessed!” Ah! those
+blessings, he could hear them still! They followed him as he walked.
+He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang in his ears and were
+like music in his melted soul. Once before he had heard such music.
+It was in England. The organ swelled and the voices rose, and he was a
+lonely boy, for his mother lay in her grave at his feet. His mother! How
+strangely his heart was softened towards himself and-all the world And
+Ruth! He could think of nothing without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the
+sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be waiting for him at home,
+for she was as one that had no life without his presence. What would
+befall if he were taken from her? That thought was like the sweeping of
+a dead hand across his face. So his body stooped as he walked with his
+staff, and his head was held down, and his step was heavy.
+
+Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were
+gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing
+and hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first
+surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.
+
+Naomi heard them.
+
+Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the
+air, crying, “God has given him into our hands!” After that all sounds
+seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled
+by the distance.
+
+But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great
+throat, the crowd encompassed Israel crying, “Kill him!” Israel stopped,
+and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out
+nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their
+midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their
+fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his
+face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on
+to his knees.
+
+No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight
+girl that stood there--blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly
+beautiful--a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the
+thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and
+terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
+
+Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash
+of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust
+herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she
+was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God
+loosed her tongue, for she was crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”
+
+Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man
+dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against
+him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the
+midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow
+like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from
+their deed of blood as with the voice of God--she, the blind, the frail,
+the helpless.
+
+Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the
+procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how
+it was that in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come
+upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over
+his enemies and say, “You thought God's arm was against me, but behold
+how God has saved me out of your hands.”
+
+But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
+seemed to have dropped upon him.
+
+At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, “Father!”
+
+Then the cup of Israel's heart was full. His throat choked him. So he
+took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they
+passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes
+were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted
+up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+
+
+Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her
+gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different
+tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself,
+and to put out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than
+a child untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and
+broke down, and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must
+do, only quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because
+she was a girl and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and
+thinking shame of it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her
+father when she halted in her talk with him, and still more humbled by
+Ali's impetuous help when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back
+again on silence.
+
+Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
+when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the
+Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond “Yes” and “No,” notwithstanding
+Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings, and Habeebah's
+breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst
+of the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the
+voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw
+bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he
+had possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.
+
+“Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,” Israel
+would say.
+
+His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and
+lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
+
+But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was
+returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor
+quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money
+which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife's jewels. The
+night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were
+almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was
+late, very late, and far and near the town was still.
+
+With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm,
+Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed
+to cross it after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through
+the sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of
+the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.
+
+All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift of
+speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past.
+He had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill
+him. Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing
+had not come to pass. Man's extremity had indeed been God's opportunity
+and Ruth's vision was all but realised.
+
+Ah, Ruth! Ruth! It had escaped Israel's notice until then that he had
+been thinking of his dead wife the whole night through. When he put it
+to himself so, he saw the reason of it at once. It was because there
+was a sort of secret charm in the certainty that where she was she
+must surely know that her dream was come true. There was also a kind
+of bitter pathos in the regret that she was only an angel now and not a
+woman; therefore she could not be with him to share his human joy.
+
+As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again: how she
+had sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear. Sung? Yes, he
+could almost fancy that he heard her singing yet. That voice so soft,
+so clear even in its whispers--there had been nothing like it in all
+the world. And her songs! Israel could also fancy that he heard her
+favourite one. It was a song of love, a pure but passionate melody
+wherein his own delicious happiness in the earlier days, before the
+death of the old Grand Rabbi, had seemed to speak and sing.
+
+Israel began to laugh at himself as he walked. To think that the warmth
+and softness of the night, the sweet caressing night, the light and
+beauty of the moon and the stillness and slumber of the town, could
+betray an old fellow into forgotten dreams like these!
+
+He had taken out of his pocket the big key of the clamped door to his
+house, and was crossing the shadowed lane in front of it, when suddenly
+he thought he heard music coating in the air above him. He stopped and
+listened. Then he had no longer any doubt. It was music, it was singing;
+he knew the song, and he knew the voice. The song was the song he had
+been thinking of, and the voice was the voice of Ruth.
+
+     O where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+
+Israel felt himself rooted to the spot, and he stood some time without
+stirring. He looked around. All else was still. The night was as silent
+as death. He listened attentively. The singing seemed to come from his
+own house. Then he thought he must be dreaming still, and he took a step
+forward. But he stopped again and covered both his ears. That was of no
+avail, for when he removed his hands the voice was there as before.
+
+A shiver ran over his limbs, yet he could not believe what his soul was
+saying. The key dropped out of his hand and rang on the stone. When the
+clangour was done the voice continued. Israel bethought him then that
+his household must be asleep, and it flashed on his mind that if this
+were a human voice the singing ought to awaken them. Just at that moment
+the night guard went by and saluted him. “God bless your morning!” the
+guard cried; and Israel answered, “Your morning be blessed!” That was
+all. The guard seemed to have heard nothing. His footsteps were dying
+away, but the voice went on.
+
+Then a strange emotion filled Israel's heart, and he reflected that even
+if it were Ruth she could have come on no evil errand. That thought gave
+him courage, and he pushed forward to the door. As he fumbled the key
+into the lock he saw that a beggar was crouching by the doorway in the
+shadow cast by the moonlight. The man was asleep. Israel could hear his
+breathing, and smell his rags. Also he could hear the thud of his own
+temples like the beating of a drum in his brain.
+
+At length, as he was groping feebly through the crooked passage, a new
+thought came to him. “Naomi,” he told himself in a whisper of awe. It
+was she. By the full flood of the moonlight in the patio he saw her. She
+was on the balcony. Her beautiful white-robed figure was half sitting on
+the rail, half leaning against the pillar. The whole lustre of the moon
+was upon her. A look of joy beamed on her face. She was singing her
+mother's song with her mother's voice, and all the air, and the sky, and
+the quiet white town seemed to listen:--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice
+     Sings--“Love, great Love
+     O come and claim shine own,
+     O come and take thy throne
+     Reign ever and alone,
+     Reign, glorious golden Love.”
+
+Then Israel's fear was turned to rapture. Why had he not thought of this
+before? Yet how could he have thought of it? He had never once heard
+Naomi's voice save in the utterance of single words. But again, why had
+he not remembered that before the tongues of children can speak words of
+their own they sing the words of others?
+
+The singing ended, and then Israel, struggling with his dry throat,
+stepped a pace forward--his foot grated on the pavement--and he called
+to the singer--
+
+“Naomi!”
+
+The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below, but
+Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind.
+
+“My father!” she whispered.
+
+“Where did you learn it?” said Israel.
+
+“Fatimah, she taught me,” Naomi answered; and then she added quickly,
+as if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean, “Oh
+yes, it was I! Was I not beautiful?”
+
+After that night Naomi's shyness of speech dropped away from her, and
+what was left was only a sweet maidenly unconsciousness of all faults
+and failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran in and out among the
+simple words that fell from her red lips like a young squirrel among the
+fallen leaves of autumn. It would be a long task to tell how her lisping
+tongue turned everything then to favour and to prettiness. On the coming
+of the gift of hearing, the world had first spoken to her; and now, on
+the coming of the gift of speech, she herself was first speaking to the
+world. What did she tell it at that first sweet greeting? She told it
+what she had been thinking of it in those mute days that were gone, when
+she had neither hearing nor speech, but was in the land of silence as
+well as in the land of night.
+
+The fancies of the blind maid so long shut up within the beautiful
+casket of her body were strange and touching ones. Israel took delight
+in them at the beginning. He loved to probe the dark places of the mind
+they came from, thinking God Himself must surely have illumined it
+at some time with a light that no man knew, so startling were some of
+Naomi's replies, so tender and so beautiful.
+
+One evening, not long after she had first spoken, he was sitting with
+her on the roof of their house as the sun was going down over the
+palpitating plains towards Arzila and Laraiche and the great sea beyond.
+Twilight was gathering in the Feddan under the Mosque, and the last
+light of day, which had parleyed longest with the snowy heights of the
+Reef Mountains, was glowing only on the sky above them.
+
+“Sweetheart,” said Israel, “what is the sun?”
+
+“The sun is a fire in the sky,” Naomi answered; “my Father lights it
+every morning.”
+
+“Truly, little one, thy Father lights it,” said Israel; “thy Father
+which is in heaven.”
+
+“Sweetheart,” he said again, “what is darkness?”
+
+“Oh, darkness is cold,” said Naomi promptly, and she seemed to shiver.
+
+“Then the light must be warmth, little one?” said Israel.
+
+“Yes, and noise,” she answered; and then she added quickly, “Light is
+alive.”
+
+Saying this, she crept closer to his side, and knelt there, and by her
+old trick of love she took his hand in both of hers, and pressed it
+against her cheek, and then, lifting her sweet face with its motionless
+eyes she began to tell him in her broken words and pretty lisp what she
+thought of night. In the night the world, and everything in it, was cold
+and quiet. That was death. The angels of God came to the world in the
+day. But God Himself came in the night, because He loved silence,
+and because all the world was dead. Then He kissed things, and in the
+morning all that God had kissed came to life again. If you were to get
+up early you would feel God's kiss on the flowers and on the grass. And
+that was why the birds were singing then. God had kissed them in the
+night, and they were glad.
+
+One day Israel took Naomi to the mearrah of the Jews, the little
+cemetery outside the town walls where he had buried Ruth. And there he
+told her of her mother once more; that she was in the grave, but also
+with God; that she was dead, but still alive; that Naomi must not expect
+to find her in that place, but, nevertheless, that she would see her yet
+again.
+
+“Do you remember her, Naomi?” he said. “Do you remember her in the old
+days, the old dark and silent days? Not Fatimah, and not Habeebah, but
+some one who was nearer to you than either, and loved you better than
+both; some one who had soft hands, and smooth cheeks, and long, silken,
+wavy hair--do you remember, little one?”
+
+“Y-es, I think--I _think_ I remember,” said Naomi.
+
+“That was your mother, my darling.”
+
+“My mother?”
+
+“Ah, you don't know what a mother is, sweetheart. How should you? And
+how shall I tell you? Listen. She is the one who loves you first and
+last and always. When you are a babe she suckles you and nourishes you
+and fondles you, and watches for the first light of your smile, and
+listens for the first accent of your tongue. When you are a young child
+she plays with you, and sings to you, and tells you little stories, and
+teaches you to speak. Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine,
+and your childish lisp more sweet than music. If you are sick she is
+beside you constantly, and when you are well she is behind you still.
+Though you sin and fall and all men spurn you, yet she clings to you;
+and if you do well and God prospers you, there is no joy like her joy.
+Her love never changes, for it is a fount which the cold winds of the
+world cannot freeze. . . . And if you are a little helpless girl--blind
+and deaf and dumb maybe--then she loves you best of all. She cannot tell
+you stories, and she cannot sing to you, because you cannot hear; she
+cannot smile into your eyes, because you cannot see; she cannot talk to
+you, because you cannot speak; but she can watch your quiet face, and
+feel the touch of your little fingers and hear the sound of your merry
+laughter.”
+
+“My mother! my mother!” whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.
+
+“Yes,” said Israel, “your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the
+days before your great gifts came to you. But she is gone, she has left
+us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of
+memory can she smile back upon us now.”
+
+Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears,
+and she said abruptly, “People who die are deceitful. They want to go
+out in the night to be with God. That is where they are when they go
+away. They are wandering about the world when it is dead.”
+
+The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no
+search availed to find her. She was not in the Mellah, and therefore
+she must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at
+sunset. Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or
+among the Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before
+their tents. At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there
+he found her. It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent. The
+reflection of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the
+distant hum of voices came over the black town walls. And there, within
+the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones that
+lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the
+darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro, and
+crying, “Mother! Mother!”
+
+Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea
+might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat
+and fumes of the town. The day was soft and beautiful, the water was
+quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it. But Naomi listened
+to every sound with eager intentness--the light plash of the blue
+wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when
+the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the
+boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the
+fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to
+unload the cargoes.
+
+And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees,
+with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him
+another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing in the world
+that did not die at night, and it was water. That was because water was
+the way from heaven to earth. It went up into the mountains and over
+them into the air until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His
+angels came and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why
+it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.
+And the angels were always singing. That was why the waters were always
+making a noise, and were never silent like the grass. Sometimes their
+song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil
+spirits were struggling with the angels, and that was when the waters
+were terrible. Every time the sea made a little noise on the shore, an
+angel had stepped on to the earth. The angel was glad.
+
+Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart.
+Where had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out these beautiful
+dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come upon the joy of
+hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was and what life
+was, and death and heaven? The question was soon decided for him.
+
+Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
+Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her. Alone,
+without help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on
+to the water. It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made
+of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark. In this
+frail craft she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing,
+but sitting quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind
+was rising, and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with
+breakers. Israel put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes
+began to fill when she heard his voice.
+
+“My darling, my darling!” cried Israel; “where did you think you were
+going?”
+
+“To heaven,” she answered.
+
+And truly she had all but gone there.
+
+Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart of this
+creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril. Naomi was
+no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone, but in more
+danger from herself than any child before her, because deprived of two
+of her senses until she had grown to be a maid, and no control could be
+imposed upon her.
+
+At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening
+while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting, and
+there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people shuffling
+back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind. The word made no
+impression upon her mind at first. She had heard it before, and it had
+passed her by like a sound that she did not know. She had been born
+blind, and therefore could not realise what it was to see. To open a way
+for the awful truth was difficult, and Israel's heart smote him while
+he persisted. Naomi laughed as he put his fingers over her eyes that
+he might show her. She laughed again when he asked if she could see the
+people whom she could only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun
+had gone down, and the mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque in the
+Metamar, and he asked if she could see the old blind man in the minaret,
+where he was crying, “God is great! God is great!”
+
+“Can you see him, little one?” said Israel.
+
+“See him?” said Naomi; “why yes, you dear old father, of course I can
+see him. Listen,” she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger,
+and holding her head aslant, “listen: God is great! God is great!
+There--I saw him then.”
+
+“That is only hearing him, Naomi--hearing him with your ears--with this
+ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?”
+
+Did her father mean to ask her if she could _feel_ the mooddin in his
+minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant. There was a
+pause, and then she cried impulsively--
+
+“Oh, _I_ know. But, you foolish old father, how _can_ I? He is too far
+away.”
+
+Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.
+
+“There,” she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences, “I have
+seen my _father_ anyway.”
+
+It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it. He told
+her, with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like other
+maidens--not like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah; that she
+was a being afflicted of God; that there was something she had not got,
+something she could not do, a world she did not know, and had never yet
+so much as dreamt of. Darkness was more than cold and quiet, and light
+was more than warmth and noise. The one was day--day ruled by the fiery
+sun in the sky--and the other was night, lit by the pale moon and the
+bright stars in heaven. And the face of man and the eyes of woman were
+more than features to feel--they were spirit and soul, to watch and to
+follow and to love without any hand being near them.
+
+“There is a great world about you, little one,” he said, “which you have
+never seen, though you can hear it and feel it and speak to it. Yes, it
+is true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen the mountains and the
+dangerous gullies on their rocky sides. You have never seen the mighty
+deep, and the storms that heave and swell in it. You have never seen man
+or woman or child. Is that very strange, little one? Listen: your mother
+died nine years ago, and you had never seen her. Your father is holding
+your head in his hands at this moment, but you have never seen his face.
+And if the dark curtains were to fall from your eyes, and you were to
+see him now, you would not know him from another man, or from woman, or
+from a tree. You are blind, Naomi, you are blind.”
+
+Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested
+nervously on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn,
+and then filled with tears. Israel's throat swelled. To tell her of all
+this, though he must needs do it for her safety, was like reproaching
+her with her infirmity. But it was only the trouble in her father's
+voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber of Naomi's mind.
+The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later to her
+consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer and lighter hand.
+
+She had always loved little children, and since the coming of her
+hearing she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues, their
+pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts, all
+fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself,
+though grown to be a lovely maid. And of all children those she loved
+best were not the children of the Jews, nor yet the children of the
+Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged, barefoot, black and olive-skinned
+mites who came into Tetuan with the country Arabs and Berbers on market
+mornings. They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest, and
+they were most full of joy and wonder. So she would gather them up in
+twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays, from the mouths of
+their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home by the hand.
+
+And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope, suspended
+from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this Naomi would sport
+with her little ones. She would be swinging in the midst of them, with
+one tiny black maiden on the seat beside her, and one little black man
+with high stomach and shaven poll holding on to the rope behind her, and
+another mighty Moor in a diminutive white jellab pushing at their feet
+in front, and all laughing together, or the children singing as the
+swing rose, and she herself listening with head aslant and all her fair
+hair rip-rip-rippling down her back and over her neck, and her smiling
+white face resting on her shoulder.
+
+It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it came the
+first great shadow of the blind girl's life. For it chanced one day
+that one of the children--a tiny creature with a slice of the woman in
+her--brought a present for Naomi out of her mother's market-basket.
+It was a flower, but of a strange kind, that grew only in the distant
+mountains where lay the little black one's home. Naomi passed her
+fingers over it, and she did not know it.
+
+“What is it?” she asked.
+
+“It's blue,” said the child.
+
+“What is blue?” said Naomi
+
+“Blue--don't you know?--blue!” said the child.
+
+“But what is blue?” Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her
+restless fingers.
+
+“Why, dear me! can't you see?--blue--the flower, you know,” said the
+child, in her artless way.
+
+Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's
+relief. “Blue is a colour,” he said.
+
+“A colour?” said Naomi.
+
+“Yes, like--like the sea,” he added.
+
+“The sea? Blue? How?” Naomi asked.
+
+Ali tried again. “Like the sky,” he said simply.
+
+Naomi's face looked perplexed. “And what is the sky like?” she asked.
+
+At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face, and
+her great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes. The lad was
+pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer that leapt up to his
+tongue. “Like,” he said--“like--”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Like your own eyes, Naomi.”
+
+By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes with her
+hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her what her other senses
+could not tell. But the solemn mystery had dawned on her mind at last:
+that she was unlike others; that she was lacking something that every
+one else possessed; that the little children who played with her knew
+what she could never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off; that
+there was a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying round about
+her, where every one else might sport and find delight, but that her
+spirit could not enter it, because she was shut off from it by the great
+hand of God.
+
+From that time forward everything seemed to remind her of her
+affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times. Even her
+dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices that told of
+them. If a bird sang in the air above her, she lifted her sightless
+eyes. If she walked in the town on market morning and heard the din of
+traffic--the cries of the dealers, the “Balak!” of the camel-men,
+the “Arrah!” of the muleteers, and the twanging ginbri of the
+story-tellers--she sighed and dropped her head into her breast.
+Listening to the wind, she asked if it had eyes or was sightless; and
+hearing of the mountains that their snowy heads rose into the clouds,
+she inquired if they were blind, and if they ever talked together in the
+sky.
+
+But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child,
+and became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more of the
+world than in all the years of her life before. She was no longer
+a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy, but a weak,
+patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity, humbled by it,
+and thinking shame of it.
+
+One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out with the
+children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered far down
+the banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced, the
+little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called to the cattle
+and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets that whistled to
+their young.
+
+Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening, the
+evening into twilight, the twilight into early night. Then the air grew
+empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell upon the children, and they
+crept to Naomi's side in fear, and took her hands and clung to her
+gown. She turned back towards the town, and as they walked in the double
+silence of their own hushed tongues and the songless and voiceless
+world, the fingers of the little ones closed tightly upon her own.
+
+Then the children cried in terror, “See!”
+
+“What is it?” said Naomi.
+
+The little ones could not tell her. It was only the noiseless summer
+lightning, but the children had never seen it before. With broad white
+flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the
+valley to the white peaks of the mountains. At every flash the little
+people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort
+them save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw.
+With helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the
+darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light,
+leading on, yet seeing nothing.
+
+But Israel saw Naomi's shame. The blindness which was a sense of
+humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him. He had asked
+God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied. “Give her
+speech, O Lord,” he had cried, “speech that shall lift her above the
+creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know.” But
+what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind? What was
+all the world to one who had never seen it? Only as Paradise is to Man,
+who can but idly dream of its glories.
+
+Israel took back his prayer. There were things to know that words could
+never tell. Now was Naomi blind for the first time, being no longer
+dumb. “Give her sight, O Lord,” he cried; “open her eyes that she may
+see; let her look on Thy beautiful world and know it! Then shall her
+life be safe, and her heart be happy, and her soul be Thine, and Thy
+servant at last be satisfied!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+
+
+It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok,
+and no rain had yet fallen. The eggs of the locust might be hatched
+at any time. Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the
+earth like snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were
+coming green out of the ground would wither before them. The country
+people were in despair. They were all but stripped of their cattle; they
+had no milk; and they came afoot to the market. Death seemed to look
+them in the face. Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they
+offer petitions to God for rain. They had long ceased their prayers.
+Only in the Feddan at the mouths of their tents did they lift up their
+heavy eyes to the hot haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, “It is
+written!”
+
+Israel was busy with other matters. During these six-and-twenty days he
+had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.
+He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he
+held under the Kaid. No longer could he serve two masters. Too long had
+he held to the one, thinking that by recompense and restitution, by fair
+dealing and even-handed justice, he might atone to the other. Recompense
+was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was
+no longer possible--his own purse being empty--without robbery of the
+treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope
+in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan
+in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a
+human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of
+the man beneath him.
+
+To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible,
+and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina,
+was a waste of shame and spirit. Besides, and above all, Israel
+remembered that God had given him grace in the sacrifices which he had
+made already. Twice had God rewarded him, in the mercy He had shown to
+Naomi, for putting by the pomp and circumstance of the world. Would
+His great hand be idle now--now when he most needed its mighty and
+miraculous power when Naomi, being conscious of her blindness, was
+mourning and crying for sweet sight of the world and he himself was
+about to put under his feet the last of his possessions that separated
+him from other men--his office that he wrought for in the early days
+with sweat of brow and blood, and held on to in the later days through
+evil report and hatred, that he might conquer the fate that had first
+beaten him down!
+
+Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat
+of his desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan. He made his
+preparations, and they were few. His money was gone already, and so were
+his dead wife's jewels. He had determined that he would keep his house,
+if only as a shelter to Naomi (for he owed something to her material
+comfort as well as her spiritual welfare), but that its furniture and
+belongings were more luxurious than their necessity would require or
+altered state allow.
+
+So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and great
+chairs which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets
+from Rabat, the silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies from
+Morocco city. When these were gone, and nothing remained but the simple
+rugs and mattresses which are all that the house of a poor man needs in
+that land where the skies are kind, he called his servants to him as he
+sat in the patio--Ali as well as the two bondwomen--for he had decided
+that he must part with them also, and they must go their ways.
+
+“My good people,” he said, “you have been true and faithful servants to
+me this many a year--you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah, since before
+the days when my wife came to me--and you too, Ali, my lad, since you
+grew to be big and helpful. Little I thought to part with you until my
+good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary is over already,
+and to-morrow I shall be less than the least of all men in Tetuan. So
+this is what I have concluded to do. You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah,
+being given to me as bondwomen by the Kaid in the old days when
+my power, which now is little and of no moment, was great and
+necessary--you belong to me. Well, I give you your liberty. Your papers
+are in the name of Ben Aboo, and I have sealed them with his seal--that
+is the last use but one that I shall put it to. Here they are, both of
+them. Take them to the Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will
+ratify your title. Then you will be free women for ever after.”
+
+The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel's words with
+exclamations of surprise and consternation. “Allah!” “Bismillah!” “Holy
+Saints!” “By the beard of the Prophet!” And when at length he put the
+deeds of emancipation into their hands they fell into loud fits of
+hysterical weeping.
+
+“As for you, Ali, my son,” Israel continued, “I cannot give you your
+freedom, for you are a freeman born. You have been a son to me these
+fourteen years. I have another task for you--a perilous task, a solemn
+duty--and when it is done I shall see you no more. My brave boy, you
+will go far, but I do not fear for you. When you are gone I shall think
+of you; and if you should sometimes think of your old master who could
+not keep you, we may not always be apart.”
+
+The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment. That strange
+disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea that had
+forced itself upon his unwilling mind. But that Israel, the greatest,
+noblest, mightiest man in the world--let the dogs of rasping Jews and
+the scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark as they would--should fall to
+be less than the least in Tetuan, and, having fallen that he should
+send him away--him, Ali, his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi's old
+playfellow--Allah! Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did his
+master mean?
+
+Ali's big eyes began to fill, and great beads rolled down his black
+cheeks. Then, recovering his speech he blurted out that he would not go.
+He would follow his father and serve him until the end of his life. What
+did he want with wages? Who asked for any? No going his ways for him! A
+pretty thing, wasn't it, that he should go off, and never see his father
+again, no, nor Naomi--Naomi--that-that--but God would show! God would
+show!
+
+And, following Ali's lead, Fatimah stepped up to Israel and offered her
+paper back. “Take it,” she said; “I don't want any liberty. I've got
+liberty enough as I am. And here--here,” fumbling in her waistband and
+bringing out a knitted purse; “I would have offered it before, only I
+thought shame. My wages? Yes. You've paid us wages these nine years,
+haven't you; and what right had we to any, being slaves? You will not
+take it, my lord? Well, then, my dear master, if I must go, if I must
+leave you, take my papers and sell me to some one. I shall not care,
+and you have a right to do it. Perhaps I'll get another good master--who
+knows?”
+
+Her brows had been knitted, and she had tried to look stern and angry,
+but suddenly her cheeks were a flood of tears.
+
+“I'm a fool!” she cried. “I'll never get a good master again; but if I
+get a bad one, and he beats me, I'll not mind, for I'll think of
+you, and my precious jewel of gold and silver, my pretty gazelle,
+Naomi--Allah preserve her!--that you took my money, and I'm bearing it
+for both of you, as we might say--working for you--night and day--night
+and day--”
+
+Israel could endure no more. He rose up and fled out of the patio
+into his own room, to bury his swimming face. But his soul was big
+and triumphant. Let the world call him by what names it would--tyrant,
+traitor, outcast pariah--there were simple hearts that loved and
+honoured him--ay, honoured him--and they were the hearts that knew him
+best.
+
+The perilous task reserved for Ali was to go to Shawan and to liberate
+the followers of Absalam, who, less happy than their leader, whose
+strong soul was at rest, were still in prison without abatement of
+the miseries they lay under. He was to do this by power of a warrant
+addressed to the Kaid of Shawan and drawn under the seal of the Kaid of
+Tetuan. Israel had drawn it, and sealed it also, without the knowledge
+or sanction of Ben Aboo; for, knowing what manner of man Ben Aboo was,
+and knowing Katrina also, and the sway she held over him, and thinking
+it useless to attempt to move either to mercy, he had determined to make
+this last use of his office, at all risks and hazards.
+
+Ben Aboo might never hear that the people were at large, for Ali was to
+forbid them to return to Tetuan, and Shawan was sixty weary miles away.
+And if he ever did hear, Israel himself would be there to bear the brunt
+of his displeasure, but Ali the instrument of his design, must be
+far away. For when the gates of the prison had been opened, and the
+prisoners had gone free, Ali was neither to come back to Tetuan nor to
+remain in Morocco, but with the money that Israel gave him out of the
+last wreck of his fortune he was to make haste to Gibraltar by way
+of Ceuta, and not to consider his life safe until he had set foot in
+England.
+
+“England!” cried Ali. “But they are all white men there.”
+
+“White-hearted men, my lad,” said Israel; “and a Jewish man may find
+rest for the sole of his foot among them.”
+
+That same day the black boy bade farewell to Israel and to Naomi. He was
+leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted. Israel was his father,
+Naomi was his sister, and never again should he set his eyes on either.
+But in the pride of his perilous mission he bore himself bravely.
+
+“Well, good-night,” he said, taking Naomi's hand, but not looking into
+her blind face.
+
+“Good-night,” she answered, and then, after a moment, she flung her arms
+about his neck and kissed him. He laughed lightly, and turned to Israel.
+
+“Good-night, father,” he said in a shrill voice.
+
+“A safe journey to you, my son,” said Israel; “and may you do all my
+errands.”
+
+“God burn my great-grandfather if I do not!” said Ali stoutly.
+
+But with that word of his country his brave bearing at length broke
+down, and drawing Israel aside, that Naomi might not hear, he whispered,
+sobbing and stammering, “When--when I am gone, don't, don't tell her
+that I was black.”
+
+Then in an instant he fled away.
+
+“In peace!” cried Israel after him. “In peace! my brave boy, simple,
+noble, loyal heart!”
+
+Next morning Israel, leaving Naomi at home, set off for the Kasbah, that
+he might carry out his great resolve to give up the office he held under
+the Kaid. And as he passed through the streets his head was held up, and
+he walked proudly. A great burden had fallen from him, and his spirit
+was light. The people bent their heads before him as he passed, and
+scowled at him when he was gone by. The beggars lying at the gate of the
+Mosque spat over their fingers behind his back, and muttered “Bismillah!
+In the name of God!” A negro farmer in the Feddan, who was bent double
+over a hoof as he was shoeing a bony and scabby mule, lifted his ugly
+face, bathed in sweat, and grinned at Israel as he went along. A
+group of Reefians, dirty and lean and hollow-eyed, feeding their
+gaunt donkeys, and glancing anxiously at the sky over the heads of the
+mountains, snarled like dogs as he strode through their midst. The sky
+was overcast, and the heads of the mountains were capped with mist.
+“Balak!” sounded in Israel's ears from every side. “Arrah!” came
+constantly at his heels. A sweet-seller with his wooden tray swung in
+front of him, crying, “Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Edrees, sweets,
+all sweets,” changed the name of the patron saint of candies, and cried,
+“Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all sweets!” The girl
+selling clay peered up impudently into Israel's eyes, and the oven-boy,
+answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms thrust out at
+doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with a mocking
+echo of Israel's name.
+
+What matter? Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.
+Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave. This
+morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be one of themselves.
+
+When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air about it that
+brought back recollections of the day--now nearly four years past--of
+the children's gathering at Katrina's festival. The lusty-lunged Arabs
+squatting at the gates among soldiers in white selhams and peaked
+shasheeahs the women in blankets standing in the outer court, the dark
+passages smelling of damp, the gusts of heavy odour coming from the
+inner chambers, and the great patio with the fountain and fig-trees--the
+same voluptuous air was over everything. And as on that day so on this,
+in the alcove under the horseshoe arch sat Ben Aboo and his Spanish
+wife.
+
+Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face of the
+Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey and
+his hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise he was the
+same man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss of some teeth
+of the upper row, was the same woman. And if the children had risen up
+before Israel's eyes as he stood on the threshold of the patio, he could
+not have drawn his breath with more surprise than at the sight of the
+man who stood that morning in their place.
+
+It was Mohammed of Mequinez. He had come to ask for the release of
+the followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan. In defiance
+of courtesy his slippers were on his feet. He was clad in a piece of
+untanned camel-skin, which reached to his knees and was belted about his
+waist. His head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a
+flower, was held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing. He was not
+supplicating for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and
+taxing Ben Aboo as a tyrant to his throat.
+
+“Give me them up, Ben Aboo,” he was saying as Israel came to the
+threshold, “or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you.”
+
+“And pray what is that?” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer.”
+
+Ben Aboo's brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made
+pretence to laugh, and then said, “And pray, my lord, who shall the
+murderer be?”
+
+Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered,
+“Yourself.”
+
+At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in
+his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.
+
+Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed. He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was
+master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of
+this man whom the people called a prophet. And partly out of this fear,
+and partly because he had more regard to Mohammed's courageous behaviour
+in thus bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than
+to the anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised
+him at that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.
+
+But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation
+against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had
+openly denounced her marriage.
+
+“Wait, Sidi,” she said. “Is not this the fellow that has gone up and
+down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the
+law of Mohammed?”
+
+At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he
+made pretence to laugh again, and said, “Allah! so it is! Mohammed the
+Third, eh? Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You
+could never think how long I've waited that I might look face to face
+upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid.”
+
+He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but
+Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant. “Wait no
+longer, O Ben Aboo,” he cried, “but look upon him now, and know that
+what you have done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and
+die!”
+
+Then Ben Aboo's passion mastered him. He rose to his feet in his anger,
+and cried, “Prophet, you have destroyed yourself. Listen to me! The
+turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish
+of hunger and rot of their sores. By the beard of my father, I swear
+it!”
+
+Mohammed did not flinch. Throwing back his head, he answered, “If I am
+a prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy. Before that which you say shall
+come to pass, both you and your father's house will be destroyed. Never
+yet did a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it
+like a dog.”
+
+Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of
+barefooted Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, “Take him! He will
+escape!”
+
+But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and
+Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.
+
+“In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt
+you had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought
+on our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you. And
+within this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest,
+your whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing
+and your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with
+you, for all else had forsaken you--all save one, and that was your
+enemy, and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you
+with his heart, because you were fallen and dead.”
+
+Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again and reeled
+backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward at his feet where
+the eyes of Mohammed had rested. It was almost as if he saw the awful
+thing of which Mohammed had spoken, so strong was the power of the
+vision upon him.
+
+But recovering himself quickly, he cried, “Away! In the name of God,
+away!”
+
+“I will go,” said Mohammed; “and beware what you do while I am gone.”
+
+“Do you threaten me?” cried Ben Aboo. “Will you go to the Sultan? Will
+you appeal to Abd er-Rahman?”
+
+“No, Ben Aboo; but to God.”
+
+So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place, for no man
+hindered him. Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat as one that was
+speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body availed him, or the
+silver on his breast, against that simple man in camel-skin, who owned
+nothing and asked nothing, and feared neither Kaid nor King.
+
+When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing at the
+doorway, and he beckoned to him with the downward motion, which is the
+Moorish manner. And rising on his quaking limbs he took him aside and
+said, “I know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and
+visions he has gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I
+dare not take him! Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas!
+Camel-skin coat? Allah! a fine disguise! Bismillah! Bismillah!”
+
+Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision saw his
+body lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and said,
+“Listen! You have my seal?”
+
+Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband,
+and drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.
+
+“Right! Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God. Do not liberate
+these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them so much as bread to
+eat or water to drink, but let such as own them feed them. And if ever
+the thing of which that fellow has spoken should come to pass--do you
+hear?--in the hour wherein it befalls--Allah preserve me!--in that hour
+draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan and seal it with my seal--are you
+listening?--a warrant to put every man, woman, and child to the sword.
+Ya Allah! Allah! We will deal with these spies of Abd er-Rahman!
+So shall there be mourning at my burial--Holy Saints! Holy
+Saints!--mourning, I say, among them that look for joy at my death.”
+
+Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking into
+loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words into
+Israel's ear.
+
+Israel made no answer. His eyes had become dim--he scarcely saw the
+walls of the place wherein they stood. His ears had become dense--he
+scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo, though the Kaid's hot breath was
+beating upon his cheek. But through the haze he saw the shadow of one
+figure tramping furiously to and fro, and through the thick air the
+voice of another figure came muffled and harsh. For Katrina, having
+chased away with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel
+and was saying--
+
+“What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter--this Naomi of
+yours--that she has recovered her speech and hearing! When did that
+happen, pray? No answer? Ah, I see, you are tired of the deception. You
+kept it up well between you. But is she still blind? So? Dear me! Blind,
+poor child. Think of it!”
+
+Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless on the
+same place, holding the seal in his hand. And Ben Aboo, in his restless
+tramping up and down, came to him again, and said, “Why are you a Jew,
+Israel ben Oliel? The dogs of your people hate you. Witness to the
+Prophet! Resign yourself! Turn Muslim, man--what's to hinder you?”
+
+Still Israel made no reply. But Ben Aboo continued: “Listen! The people
+about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all you are the best
+servant I have ever had. Say the Kelmah, and I'll make you my Khaleefa.
+Do you hear?--my Khaleefa, with power equal to my own. Man, why don't
+you speak? Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+
+
+“Basha,” said Israel--he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced
+calmness--“Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that--this
+hand of mine shall never seal that warrant.”
+
+“Tut, man!” whispered Ben Aboo. “Do your new measles break out
+everywhere? Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?”
+
+Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his
+great resolve.
+
+“Basha,” he said again calmly and quietly, “if you were Sultan and could
+make me your Vizier, I would not do it.”
+
+“Why?” cried Ben Aboo; “why? why?”
+
+“Because,” said Israel, “I am here to deliver up your seal to you.”
+
+“You? Grace of God!” cried Ben Aboo.
+
+“I am here,” continued Israel, as calmly as before, “to resign my
+office.”
+
+“Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?” cried Ben Aboo. “Man, man,
+are you mad?”
+
+“No, Basha, not to-day,” said Israel quietly. “I must have been that
+when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.”
+
+Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his
+anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel
+with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and
+terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers
+under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and
+said, “There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let
+me think!”
+
+Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown
+white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct
+of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, “What
+does it mean? What does it mean?”
+
+In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. “Wait!” he
+cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people
+about him. “Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez?
+The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I
+knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought
+him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread
+should spy and pry on me?”
+
+Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for
+no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and
+protests. “O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.
+Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites--his thieves,
+his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib
+es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want
+to squeeze me of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings
+after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O
+Compassionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of
+my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I'm an old
+soldier--they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I'll
+stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?
+It's because I'm his brother--that's it, that's it! But I've never risen
+against him. Never, never! I've paid him all! All! I tell you I've paid
+everything. I've got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you
+know it.”
+
+Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded
+and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary
+and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up
+at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if
+anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for
+ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful
+spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base
+disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.
+
+But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as
+slowly and calmly as at first, “Basha, have no fear; I have not sold
+myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez--but not to see
+the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing
+of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for
+myself alone.”
+
+Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the
+other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made
+what poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he
+had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's
+steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn
+of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of
+braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a
+humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had
+truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again,
+and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once
+more, without disguise and without shame.
+
+“And pray, sir,” said he, with a ghastly smile, “what riches have you
+gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?”
+
+“None,” said Israel shortly.
+
+Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with
+Katrina.
+
+“And pray, again,” he said, with a curl of the lip, “without office and
+without riches how may you hope to live?”
+
+“As a poor man among poor men,” said Israel, “serving God and trusting
+to His mercy.”
+
+Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel
+stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.
+
+“Serving God is hard bread,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Serving the devil is crust!” said Israel.
+
+At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed
+it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.
+
+“Allah! What do you mean?” he cried. “Who are you that you dare wag your
+insolent tongue at me?”
+
+“I am your scapegoat, Basha,” said Israel, with an awful calm--“your
+scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.
+Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them
+by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and
+have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets
+among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are
+up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and
+the mistaken love of all men.”
+
+While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the
+opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy
+cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose
+and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his
+turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.
+
+But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face
+to face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke
+again and said, “Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your
+business nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is
+your seal. It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these
+five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it.”
+
+In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as
+he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of
+the patio.
+
+“Fool!” he cried. “So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most
+merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A
+prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!”
+
+Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery
+his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and
+lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
+
+“Who said it was the Sultan?” he cried again. “He was a fool. Abd
+er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That's it!
+That's it!”
+
+So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of
+Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side
+to side like a caged and angry beast.
+
+“And if I am a tyrant,” he said in a thick voice, “who made me so? If
+I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain
+devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false
+judgments--what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver
+dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people
+that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head
+did all this? Why, yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the
+Prophet, I swear it!”
+
+Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he
+answered calmly and sadly, “God's ways are not our ways, neither are
+His thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His
+ministers. I thought God's justice had failed, but it has overtaken
+myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to
+oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.”
+
+All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with
+lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan
+restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And
+now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn
+in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said
+lightly, “Ah! I thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its
+teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?”
+
+“About the time that you were, madam,” said Israel, lifting his heavy
+eyes upon her.
+
+At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. “Husband,” she
+cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, “I hope
+you now see that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you
+from the first what would come of him. But no, you would have your own
+foolish way. It was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him. Yet
+you would not believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are,
+you are believing him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I
+tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh,
+trust him, he's got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it!
+He'll be master in Tetuan yet!”
+
+Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes
+laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry
+cry. And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers,
+who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, “Arabs, Berbers,
+Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may,
+you'll lie in the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!”
+
+A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile
+came back into the face of Ben Aboo.
+
+“You must be right,” he said, “you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!
+This is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and
+I gave him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him
+place and rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could
+find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his
+enemies, and imprisoned those he hated. After his wife had died, and
+none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own
+hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them
+I set them free. All these years I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya
+Allah! His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of
+his finger. And all for what? For this! For this! For this! Ingrate!” he
+cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, “if you must
+give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool? Could you not come
+to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I
+have served you long and faithfully; let me rest'--why not? I say, why
+not?”
+
+Israel answered calmly, “Because it would have been a lie, Basha.”
+
+“So it would,” cried Ben Aboo sharply, “so it would: you are right--it
+would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and
+say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have
+sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it.”
+
+“Because it is true, Basha,” said Israel.
+
+At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and
+awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the
+patio, he said, “There is another thing that is true. It is true that on
+the other side of that wall there is a prison,” and, lifting his voice
+to a shriek, he added, “you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel.
+One step more--”
+
+But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and
+the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling
+throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have
+had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn
+countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his
+passion, and a retort upon his words.
+
+And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his
+ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of
+rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin,
+shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was
+the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood.
+But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head
+wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the
+dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan's
+wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind's eye
+Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless, eyeless, hungry,
+gaunt. But no, he was still here--fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And
+good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death,
+lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose
+brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him
+there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back
+by his cubs.
+
+But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should
+he speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither
+read nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the
+Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should
+he do so? Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man's
+house; yet why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully?
+He had said his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage
+had been written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then
+courage! courage!
+
+“Husband,” cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile
+to Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, “you must scour this vermin out of
+Tetuan!”
+
+“You are right,” he answered. “By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I
+will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers.”
+
+Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice
+of mockery, “Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?
+But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well,
+and all that's in it, and leave this town as a beggar.”
+
+Israel stood unmoved. “As you will,” he said quietly.
+
+“Where are the two women--the slaves?” asked Ben Aboo.
+
+“At home,” said Israel.
+
+“They are mine, and I take them back,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+Israel's face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he
+only drew a longer breath, and said again, “As you will, Basha.”
+
+Ben Aboo's voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. “Where
+is your money?” he cried; “the money that you have made out of my
+service--out of me--_my_ money--where is it?”
+
+“Nowhere,” said Israel.
+
+“It's a lie--another lie!” cried Ben Aboo. “Oh yes, I've heard of your
+charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they?
+Were they? Were they, I ask?”
+
+“So you say, Basha,” said Israel.
+
+“So I know!” cried Ben Aboo; “but all you had is not gone that way.
+You're a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys--the keys
+of your house!”
+
+Israel hesitated, and then said, “Let me return for a minute--it is all
+I ask.”
+
+At that the woman laughed hysterically. “Ah! he has something left after
+all!” she cried.
+
+Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, “Yes, madam, I _have_
+something left--after all.”
+
+Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying,
+“El Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure
+there!”
+
+“It is true, madam,” said Israel; “it is true that I have a treasure
+there. My daughter--my little blind Naomi.”
+
+“Is that all?” cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.
+
+“It is all,” said Israel, “but it is enough. Let me fetch her.”
+
+“Don't allow it!” cried Katrina.
+
+Israel's face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. “Make
+me homeless if you will,” he said, “turn me like a beggar out of your
+town, but let me fetch my daughter.”
+
+“She'll not thank you,” cried Katrina.
+
+“She loves me,” said Israel, “I am growing old, I am numbering the steps
+of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.
+Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am
+yours, and no one save her father--”
+
+“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
+
+Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had
+been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. “Trust
+me,” she cried, “I know what daughters are. Girls like better things.
+No, I'll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here
+with me.”
+
+Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, “Madam, I would
+rather see her dead at my feet.”
+
+Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, “Don't wag your tongue at your
+mistress, sir.”
+
+“_Your_ mistress, Basha,” said Israel; “not mine.”
+
+At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down
+upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not
+flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood
+trickled over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.
+
+Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from
+behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.
+
+In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood
+in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered
+the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and
+how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets
+scarce any one--even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered
+thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate--could clearly tell. She
+stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly
+with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open
+iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up,
+her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare
+wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow
+that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father!
+It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking,
+reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and
+sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it
+all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must
+burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!
+
+At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
+has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into
+His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous
+flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which
+had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
+
+They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
+girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips,
+her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair
+before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then
+but a blank. Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time.
+This, only this, was she!
+
+And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been
+newly born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face,
+eye to eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light,
+everything had entered at a blow--the white glare of the sun, the
+blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his
+soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the
+fringe of his eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know
+what vision was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone
+out from its dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. “Oh!
+oh!” she cried, and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The
+picture of the world seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her
+eyes with her hands, that she might abolish it altogether.
+
+Israel saw everything. “Naomi!” he cried in a choking voice, and
+stretched out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked,
+and paused and hesitated.
+
+“Naomi!” he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her
+eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and
+only listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into
+her father's arms. And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her to
+his breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, “Madam, we are
+in the hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His
+servant.”
+
+Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God
+in the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his
+maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done
+before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object
+of his terror. “O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us!
+Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on
+them both! Allah! Allah!”
+
+The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled
+together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.
+
+“Brava!” she cried. “Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long
+ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well
+acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!”
+
+Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of
+his crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.
+
+Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of
+Naomi, a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the
+lowest hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and
+at the next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying--
+
+“Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk
+barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, 'So shall it be
+done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who
+is a play-actor and a cheat!' Thus let them pass through the streets and
+through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then
+cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+THE RAINBOW SIGN
+
+
+While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great
+blessing had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed
+for--the good and blessed rain--had come at last. In gentle drops like
+dew it had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had
+gathered over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of
+such moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring
+down like a flood.
+
+Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!
+The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and
+whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which
+had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome
+river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.
+
+And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the
+falling of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The
+streets and the marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they
+wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought
+of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their
+palms to the rain and drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of
+boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came
+without aim or direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering
+like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers
+cried “Balak” in tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers
+sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs
+stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their
+dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square
+capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long
+guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and
+sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were far
+away.
+
+Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that
+the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from
+the Kasbah. At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and
+gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah and crimson
+selham. Behind him were four black police, and on either side of the
+company were two criers of the street, each carrying a short staff
+festooned with strings of copper coin, which he rattled in the air for a
+bell. Between these came the victims of the Basha's order--Naomi first,
+barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all but the last garment that
+hid her nakedness, her head held down, her face hidden, and her eyes
+closed--and Israel afterwards, mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A
+further guard of black police walked at the back of all. Thus they came
+down the steep arcades into the market-square, where the greater body of
+the townspeople had gathered together.
+
+When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from
+every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent,
+and booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud
+exclamations of surprise.
+
+“Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!” cried the Moors.
+
+“God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!” cried the people of the
+Mellah.
+
+“What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?” they all asked
+together.
+
+“Balak!” cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to
+force a passage through the thronging multitude. “Attention! By your
+leave! Away! Out of the way!”
+
+And as they walked the criers chanted, “So shall it be done to every man
+who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and
+a cheat.”
+
+When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to
+look black into each other's face, to mutter oaths between their teeth,
+and to say in voices of no pity or rush, “He deserved it!” “Ya Allah,
+but he's well served!” “Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!”
+ “Look at him now!” “There he is at last!” “Brave end to all his great
+doings!” “Curse him! Curse him!”
+
+And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
+of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came
+still the cry of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who is an
+enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.”
+
+Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter,
+and after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they
+derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now
+he seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an
+imposture. Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To
+think that they had ever been afraid of him!
+
+As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in
+a blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of
+the Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck
+Israel with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her
+husband and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel
+had succoured both when he went about on his secret excursions after
+nightfall in the disguise of a Moor.
+
+“Balak! Balak!” cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the
+crier rang out over all other noises.
+
+At every step the throng increased. The strong and lusty bore down the
+weak in the struggle to get near to the procession. Blind beggars and
+feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at
+Israel from the back of the crowd.
+
+As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came
+out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to
+the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house; the other was a
+company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and
+Judah ben Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized
+the people. They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal
+progress--the departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan. The soldier
+and police fell into the humour of the multitude. Salaams were made
+to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi.
+Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd, and walked backward, and cried,
+in his harsh, nasal croak--
+
+“Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him! Make way!
+make way!”
+
+Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the
+hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people's heads a
+huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and
+the black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over
+Israel's head.
+
+Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.
+
+“God bless our Lord!”
+
+“Saviour of his people!”
+
+“Benefactor! King of men!”
+
+And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.
+
+All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing
+humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned
+with a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked
+by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the
+Jews, spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed
+with bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and
+at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred. And, thinking that
+it was he who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to
+reach her side and whisper in her ear, and say, “Forgive me, my child,
+forgive me.” But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered
+what God had that day done for her; and taking it for a sign of God's
+pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well, he raised his eyes on
+her with tears of bitter joy, and thought, in the wild fever of his
+soul, “She is sharing the triumph of my humiliation. She is walking
+through the mocking and jeering crowd, but see! God Himself is walking
+beside her!”
+
+The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow and the
+concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a
+stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and
+said, so that all might hear, “Look at the crowds that have come out to
+speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember
+this day!”
+
+“So you shall!” cried Israel. “Until your days of death you shall all
+remember it!”
+
+He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his
+answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts
+of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and
+followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice of a brother. They
+had been insulting calamity itself.
+
+“Balak!” shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the
+procession moved again.
+
+It was the hour of Israel's last temptation. Not a glance in his face
+disclosed passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed to be
+jarring at his ear, “Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you
+have come to this? Were they worth the sacrifice? You might have been
+rich and great, and riding on their heads. They would have honoured you
+then, but now they despise you. Fool! You have sold all and given to the
+poor, and this is the end of it.” But in the throes and last gasp of his
+agony, hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted
+on the stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper,
+“Be strong. Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done,
+servant of God, well done!”
+
+He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted
+his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron
+of faces black and white. “O pity of men!” he thought. “What devil is
+tempting _them_?”
+
+By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near
+to the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no
+longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by
+sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately
+over the arch of the gate.
+
+Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand in the
+heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land
+beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged--God
+Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!
+
+What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life
+seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
+
+First the voice of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who
+is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a
+cheat.”
+
+Then the voice of the soldier, “Balak! Balak!”
+
+After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then
+to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.
+
+When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that
+was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi
+by the hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+
+Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi were
+settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north of the
+town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak which
+lies on the road to Tangier. From the hour wherein the gates had closed
+behind them, everything had gone well with both. The country people who
+lay encamped on the heath outside had gathered around and shown them
+kindness. One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi's shame, had come behind
+without a word and cast a blanket over her head and shoulders. Then
+a girl of the Berber folk had brought slippers and drawn them on to
+Naomi's feet. The woman wore no blanket herself, and the feet of the
+girl were bare. Their own people were haggard and hollow-eyed and
+hungry, but the hearts of all were melted towards the great man in his
+dark hour. “Allah had written it,” they muttered, but they were more
+merciful than they thought their God.
+
+Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer of kind
+words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered on
+through the country from village to village, until in the evening, an
+hour after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made their home.
+It was a poor, mean place--neither a round tent, such as the mountain
+Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone, with its garden in a
+court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears for his homestead, but an
+oblong shed, roofed with rushes and palmetto leaves in the manner of an
+Irish cabin. And, indeed, the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been,
+who, escaping at Gibraltar from the ship that was taking him to Sidney,
+had sailed in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the
+land until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa. Unlike the
+better part of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and
+gloomy temper, and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours,
+and when he died his house had been left alone. That was the chance
+whereby Israel and Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and
+unclaimed.
+
+Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and
+values, yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes
+only from the hand of God. Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses
+grew at the foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had
+first caught the eyes of Israel. For suddenly through the mazes of his
+mind, where every perception was indistinct at that time, there seemed
+to come back to him a vague and confused recollection of the abandoned
+house, as if the thing that his eyes then saw they had surely seen
+before. How this should be Israel could not tell, seeing that never
+before to his knowledge had he passed on his way to Tangier so near to
+Semsa. But when he questioned himself again, it came to him, like light
+beaming into a dark room, that not in any waking hour at all had he seen
+the little place before, but in a dream of the night when he slept on
+the ground in the poor fondak of the Jews at Wazzan.
+
+This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with
+Naomi; this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to
+hear and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which
+when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in
+his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.
+Israel's heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading
+of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without
+more ado than such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with
+Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.
+
+And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer
+until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,
+lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought
+to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.
+
+Israel was poor, but not penniless. Out of the wreck of his fortune,
+after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three
+hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was
+cast out of the town. These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen. He
+hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the
+hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan. The rains continued, the
+eggs of the locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the
+ground, and Israel found bread for both of them. With such simple
+husbandry, and in such a home, giving no thought to the morrow, he
+passed with cheer and comfort from day to day.
+
+And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the
+loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of
+his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always
+present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his
+hope. He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed
+the hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far
+away under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town
+lamps sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.
+
+“They are yonder,” he would think, “wrangling, contending, fighting,
+praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from
+them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet
+odour of God's proper air.”
+
+But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former
+life was the recollection of Naomi. God had given back all her gifts,
+and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing? They
+were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and
+riches of gold and silver had been without it. And higher than the joy
+of Israel's constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now
+see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was
+the solemn thought that all this was but the sign and symbol of God's
+pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had
+been lifted away.
+
+More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man was his
+delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life. She was like a creature
+born afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened into a world of
+strange sights.
+
+But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure. What had
+happened to her was, after all, a simple thing. Born with cataract on
+the pupils of her eyes, the emotion of the moment at the Kasbah, when
+her father's life seemed to be once more in danger, had--like a fall
+or a blow--luxated the lens and left the pupils clear. That was all.
+Throughout the day whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when
+they were cast out of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through
+the country until they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes
+steadfastly closed. The light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate
+lids, and gave her pain. When for a moment she lifted her lashes and saw
+the trees, she put out her hand as if to push them away; and when she
+saw the sky, she raised her arms as if to hold it off. Everything seemed
+to touch her eyes. The bars of sunlight seemed to smite them. Not until
+the falling of darkness did her fears subside and her spirits revive.
+Throughout the day that followed she sat constantly in the gloom of the
+blackest corner of their hut.
+
+But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world of
+darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air had been
+her baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence. Within three
+days afterwards her terror began to give place to joy; and from that
+time forward the world was full of wonder to her opened eyes. Then
+sweet and beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy, were her amazement and
+delight in every little thing that lay about her--the grass, the weeds,
+the poorest flower that blew, even the rude implements of the house and
+the common stones that worked up through the mould--all old and familiar
+to her fingers, but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an
+angel out of heaven had dropped them down to her.
+
+For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise
+everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life in
+the cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her on
+the eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up at him
+as he stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant, being still
+in the mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes again, and
+put out her hand to touch him, did her face brighten with recognition
+and her lips utter his name. “My father,” she murmured, “my father.”
+
+Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back
+to the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower in her
+hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it in her broken,
+lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her that there were flowers
+that could see? Here was one which while she looked upon it had opened
+its beautiful eye and laughed at her. “What is it?” she asked; “what is
+it?”
+
+“A daisy, my child,” Israel answered.
+
+“A daisy!” she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and
+quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed her
+nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and
+then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, “Oh, yes, so it
+is; it is only a daisy.”
+
+But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with
+what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a
+long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside the coast, but
+from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one
+day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly
+at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, “The sky! the sky!
+Look! It has fallen on to the land.”
+
+“That is the sea, my child,” said Israel.
+
+“The sea!” she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and
+then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed
+out and her beautiful face looked aside, “So it is--yes, it is the sea.”
+
+Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her
+mind were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she
+mounted the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she
+walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields
+where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn
+by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun,
+until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast. Still
+the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized
+upon her sight. The gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless
+sea-birds. From high up in the rocks above, and from far down in the
+chasm below, from every cleft on every side, they flew out, with white
+wings and black ones and grey and blue, and sent their voices into the
+air, until the echoing place seemed to shriek and yell with a deafening
+clangour.
+
+It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long
+hour in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father, she
+told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea,
+and fought in the air and killed each other. “And see!” she cried; “look
+at this, and this, and this!”
+
+Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the
+devilish warfare that she had witnessed and “This,” said he, lifting
+one of them, “is a sea-bird's feather; and this,” lifting another, “is
+a sea-bird's egg; and this,” lifting the third, “is a dead sea-bird
+itself.”
+
+Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes
+and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.
+“Ah yes,” she said meekly, looking into her father's eye, with a smile,
+“they are only that after all.” And then she said very quietly, as if
+speaking to herself, “What a long time it is before you learn to see!”
+
+It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of
+Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took
+shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening, when she
+had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came
+back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the
+sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like
+fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes, and went down behind
+the world together, passing out of the earth through the gates of
+heaven.
+
+Israel listened to her and said, “That was the sunset my child. Every
+morning the sun rises and every night it sets.”
+
+Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame at her sweet
+errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and
+Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, “After all, the eyes are
+deceitful.” Vision was life's new language, and she had yet to learn it.
+
+But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world
+to be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part of
+it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself
+alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off
+with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still, the sea was smooth,
+the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky
+was blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little
+island, which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with
+heather and long stalks of seeding grass. Through whispering beds of
+rushes they glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming
+fishes were at play. Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger
+at their invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on
+the pebbles and great stones. It was a morning of God's own making, and,
+for joy of its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi
+rose in the boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it
+played with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and
+embrace it.
+
+At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden
+knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she
+knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of
+the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where
+they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun's reflected disc
+on the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and
+then saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.
+
+“Father,” she cried with alarm, “a face in the water! Look! look!”
+
+“It is your own, my child,” said Israel. “Mine!” she cried.
+
+“The reflection of your face,” said Israel; “the light and the water
+make it.”
+
+The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly in this
+thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at
+her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and
+asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had
+grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was
+like a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child
+in her unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at
+rest she leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.
+
+“How beautiful!” she cried, “how beautiful!”
+
+She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water
+was the wonder of her dancing eyes. “Oh! how very beautiful!” she cried
+without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke
+and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed
+again with a heart of glee.
+
+Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all
+his sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he
+could not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long
+the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny
+himself this choking rapture of her recovery. “Live on like a child
+always, little one,” he thought; “be a child as long as you can, be a
+child for ever, my dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that
+I myself should be a child at all.”
+
+The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly
+some new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the
+earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the
+flowers. Also she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with
+as little shame and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery
+dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and
+when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still.
+Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had
+seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of
+her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden
+no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of
+human sunlight gathering sunshine into her father's house.
+
+It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the
+better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length
+in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but
+voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so
+deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never
+heard before. Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete
+with sparkling life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart.
+All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was
+still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her,
+they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across
+the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their
+hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and
+only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.
+
+Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely
+from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her
+favourite song was still her mother's:--
+
+     Oh, come and claim thine own,
+     Oh, come and take thy throne,
+     Reign ever and alone
+     Reign glorious, golden Love.
+
+Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper
+fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was
+almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a
+maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think
+of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was
+even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she
+were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.
+
+Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like
+the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future
+would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the
+rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating
+joy. He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow.
+And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.
+
+In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and
+look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into
+Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young
+motherhood. Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride and
+joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red fingers
+fastening on her white bosom--oh, what a glimpse was there revealed to
+him!
+
+But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could
+not help but feel pain from them also. They had a perilous fascination
+for him, but he grudged them to Naomi. He thought he could have given
+his immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give. That was
+his poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty
+as a father. He dreaded the coming of that time when another--some other
+yet unseen--should come before him, and he should lose the daughter that
+was now his own.
+
+Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross
+like a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour it
+was gone. The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense
+but wonder. Once she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of
+something which she believed to have happened to her in the night. She
+had been carried away from him--she could not say when--and she knew
+no more until she found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed with
+tiles. Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing
+white kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that
+were of the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of
+bells, a curling silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags
+hung by yellow cords about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman
+of a laughing cruel face; and she herself, Naomi--alone her father being
+nowhere near--stood in the midst with all eyes upon her. What happened
+next she did not know, for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in
+that interval they who had taken her away must have brought her back.
+For when she opened her eyes she was in her own bed, and the things of
+their little home were about her, and her father's eyes were looking
+down at her, and his lips were kissing her, and the sun was shining
+outside, and the birds were singing, and the long grass was whispering
+in the breeze, and it was the same as if she had been asleep during the
+night and was just awakening in the morning.
+
+“It was a dream, my child,” said Israel, thinking only with how vivid
+a sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight the
+picture of that day at the Kasbah.
+
+“A dream!” she cried; “no, no! I _saw_ it!”
+
+Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt of her own
+people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch of their hands
+or the sound of their voices. By one of these she had always known them,
+and sometimes it had been her mother's arms that had been about her, and
+sometimes her father's lips that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes
+Ali's voice that had rung in her ears.
+
+Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both of her
+dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart, “She is a child,
+a child born into life as a maid, and without the strength of a child's
+weakness. Oh! great is the wisdom which orders it so that we come into
+the world as babes.”
+
+Thus realising Naomi's childishness, Israel kept close guard and watch
+upon her afterwards. But if she was a gleam of sunlight in his lonely
+dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found
+her near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a passing
+traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out
+of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was
+gazing full into the man's gross face, answering his evil questions with
+the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between
+them; and in a moment he had torn Naomi away. And that night, while she
+wept out her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown
+her, Israel himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out a new
+petition to God. “O Lord, my God,” he cried, “when she was blind and
+dumb and deaf she was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril from
+herself for Thy hand did guide her, and in none from the world, for no
+man dared outrage her infirmity. But now she is a maid, and her dangers
+are many, for she is beautiful, and the heart of man is evil. Keep me
+with her always, O Lord, to guard and guide her! Let me not leave her,
+for she is without knowledge of good and evil. Spare me a little
+while longer, though I am stricken in years. For her sake spare me, Oh
+Lord--it is the last of my prayers--the last, O Lord, the last--for her
+sake spare me!”
+
+God did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers
+came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The
+release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had
+become known by the blind gratitude of one of them, who, hastening to
+Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before
+it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ISRAEL IN PRISON
+
+
+Short as the time was--some three months and odd days--since the prison
+at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had
+sealed without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied
+by other prisoners. The remoteness of the town in the territory of
+the Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis, had made the
+old fortress a favourite place of banishment to such Kaids of other
+provinces as looked for heavier ransoms from the relatives of victims,
+because the locality of their imprisonment was unknown or the danger
+of approaching it was terrible. And thus it happened that some fifty or
+more men and boys from near and far were already living in the dungeon
+from which Israel and Ali together had set the other prisoners free.
+
+This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from
+Naomi and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa.
+“Ya Allah! Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his
+pups!” said Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel to
+the Kaid of Shawan.
+
+Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning of
+the second day after his arrest. The sun was shining as he approached
+the rude old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down
+to the dungeon. In a little court at the door of the place the Kaid el
+habs, the jailer, was sitting on a mattress, which served him for chair
+by day and bed by night. He was amusing himself with a ginbri, playing
+loud and low according as the tumult was great or little which came from
+the other side of a barred and knotted doorway behind him, some four
+feet high, and having a round peephole in the upper part of it. On the
+wall above hung leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in
+the corner.
+
+At Israel's approach there were some facetious comments between the
+jailer and the guard. Why the ginbri? Was he practising for the fires
+of Jehinnum? Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon? Well, what was a man to do
+while the dogs inside were snarling? Were the thongs for the correction
+of persons lacking understanding? Why, yes; everybody knew their old
+saying, “A hint to the wise, a blow to the fool.”
+
+A bunch of great keys rattled, the low doorway was thrown open, Israel
+stooped and went in, the door closed behind him, the footsteps of the
+guard died away, and the twang of the ginbri began again.
+
+The prison was dark and noisome, some sixty feet long by half as many
+broad, supported by arches resting on rotten pillars, lighted only by
+narrow clefts at either hand, exuding damp from its walls, dropping
+moisture from its roof, its air full of vermin, and its floor reeking of
+filth. And only less horrible than the prison itself was the condition
+of the prisoners. Nearly all wore iron fetters on their legs, and some
+were shackled to the pillars. At one side a little group of them--they
+were Shereefs from Wazzan--were conversing eagerly and gesticulating
+wildly; and at the other side a larger company--they were Jews from
+Fez--were languidly twisting palmetto leaves into the shape of baskets.
+Four Berbers at the farther end were playing cards, and two Arabs that
+were chained to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a
+battered old draughtboard between them. From both groups of players
+came loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation and
+of indignant and sarcastic comment. Down went the cards with triumphant
+bangs, and the moves of the “dogs” were like lightning. First a mocking
+voice: “_You_ call yourself a player! There!--there!--there!” Then a
+meek, piping tone: “So--so--verily, you are my master. Well, let us
+praise Allah for your wisdom.” But soon a wild burst of irony: “You are
+like him who killed the dog and fell into the river. See! thus I teach
+you to boast over your betters! I shave your beard! There!--there!--and
+there!”
+
+In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of
+light from the clefts at the ends might fall on them--a barber-doctor
+was bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. “We're all having it done,”
+ he was saying. “It's good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of
+pilgrims once.” A wild-looking creature sat in a corner--he was a saint,
+a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa--rocking himself to and fro, and
+crying “Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!” Near to this person
+a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his
+prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa,
+brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled through the country with a lion
+by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn to a tune
+that he had heard on the coast.
+
+Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the
+companions that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in
+the clamour of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The
+prisoners knew him, and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every
+mouth was agape. Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind
+him. He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer
+vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down
+helplessly by a pillar on the ground.
+
+A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of
+bread. “Hungry, brother? No?” said the youth. “Cheer up, Sidi! No good
+letting the donkey ride on your head!”
+
+This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless,
+facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing
+for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs
+on every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself--
+
+     El Arby was a black man
+     They called him “'Larby Kosk:”
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+
+Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. “Stay
+here,” he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was
+quelled; “never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will
+come back.” After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither
+insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him.
+He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the
+faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of
+water by the way.
+
+At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by
+their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a
+number of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was
+a wild and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of
+the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild
+shouts as each one found his own. “Blessed be God! She's here! here!”
+ Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come.
+“My Ayesha! Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?”
+ After that the shrieks of despair from such as learned that their
+breadwinners were dying off one by one. “Dead, you say?” “Dead!” “No,
+no!” “Yes, yes!” “No, no, I say!” “I say yes! God forgive me! died
+last week. But don't you die too. Here take this bag of zummetta.” Then
+inquiries after absent children. “Little Selam, where is he?” “Begging
+in Tetuan.” “Poor boy! poor boy! And pretty M'barka, what of her?”
+ “Alas! M'barka's a public woman now in Hoolia's house at Marrakesh. No,
+don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven to it. What were we
+to do with the children crying for bread? And then there was nothing to
+fetch you this journey, Jellali.” “I'll not eat it now it's brought. My
+boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah! May the Kaid that keeps me
+here roast alive in the fires of hell!” Then, apart in one quiet corner,
+a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the lap of his beautiful
+young wife. “You'll not be long coming again, dearest?” he whispers. She
+wipes her eyes and stammers, “No--that is--well--” “What's amiss?” “Ali,
+I must tell you--” “Well?” “Old Aaron Zaggoory says I must marry him, or
+he'll see that both of us starve.” “Allah! And you--_you_?” “Don't look
+at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on me, and whatever happens I--I can
+love nobody else.” “Curses on Aaron Zaggoory! Curses on you! Curses on
+everybody!”
+
+No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this 'Larby the negro
+swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of
+bread--
+
+     Rusks are good and kiks are sweet
+     And kesksoo is both meat and drink;
+     It's this for now, and that for then,
+     But khalia still for married men.
+
+“You're like me, Sidi,” he said, “you want nothing,” and he made an
+upward movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence.
+That was the gay rascal's way of saying that he stole from the bags of
+his comrades while they slept.
+
+“No? Fasting yet?” he said, and went off singing as he came--
+
+     It will make your ladies love you;
+     It will make them coo and kiss--
+
+“What?” he shouted to some one across the prison “eating khalia in the
+bird-cage? Bad, bad, bad!”
+
+All this came to Israel's mind through thick waves of
+half-consciousness, but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air
+of the place must have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he
+had first placed himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow
+eyes he gazed at everything, but nothing did he see. Sometimes he had
+the look of one who listens, but never did he hear. Thus in silence and
+languor he passed from day to day, and from night to night, scarcely
+sleeping, rarely eating, and seeming always to be waiting, waiting,
+waiting.
+
+Fresh prisoners came at short intervals, and then only was Israel's
+interest awakened. One question he asked of all. “Where from?” If they
+answered from Fez, from Wazzan, from Mequinez, or from Marrakesh, Israel
+turned aside and left them without more words. Then to his fellows they
+might pour out their woes in loud wails and curses, but Israel would
+hear no more.
+
+Strangers from Europe travelling through the country were allowed to
+look into the prison through the round peephole of the door kept by the
+Kaid el habs, who played the ginbri. The Jews who made baskets took this
+opportunity to offer their work for sale; and so that he might see the
+visitors and speak with them Israel would snatch up something and hang
+it out. Always his question was the same. “Where from last?” he would
+say in English, or Spanish, or French, or Moorish. Sometimes it chanced
+that the strangers knew him. But he showed no shame. Never did their
+answers satisfy him. He would turn back to his pillar with a sigh.
+
+Thus weeks went on, and Israel's face grew worn and tired. His fellow
+prisoners began to show him deference in their own rude way. When he
+came among them at the first they had grinned and laughed a little.
+To do that was always the impulse of the poor souls, so miserably
+imprisoned, when a new comrade joined him. But the majesty and the
+suffering in Israel's face told on their hearts at last. He was a great
+man fallen, he had nothing left to him; not even bread to eat or water
+to drink. So they gathered about him and hit on a way to make him share
+their food. Bringing their sacks to his pillar, they stacked them about
+it, and asked him to serve out provisions to all, day by day, share and
+share alike. He was honest, he was a master, no one would steal from
+him, it was best, the stuff would last longest. It was a touching sight.
+
+Still the old eagerness betrayed itself in Israel's weary manner as
+often as the door opened and fresh prisoners arrived. Once it happened
+that before he uttered his usual question he saw that the newcomers
+were from Tetuan, and then his restlessness was feverish. “When--were
+you--have you been of late--” he stammered, and seemed unable to go
+farther.
+
+But the Tetawanis knew and understood him. “No,” said one in answer to
+the unspoken question; “Nor I,” said another; “Nor I,” said a third,
+“Nor I neither,” said a fourth, as Israel's rapid eyes passed down the
+line of them.
+
+He turned away without a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked
+vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo
+was a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a
+harlot whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising
+the entire bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child in
+the streets was safe, and no woman, whether wife or daughter, whom God
+had made comely, dare show herself on the roofs. Their own women
+had been carried off to the palace at the Kasbah. That was why they
+themselves were there in prison.
+
+This was about a month after the coming of Israel to Shawan. Then his
+reason began to unsettle. It was pitiful to see that he was conscious of
+the change that was befalling him. He wrestled with madness with all the
+strength of a strong man. If it should fall upon him, where then would
+be his hope and outlook? His day would be done, his night would be
+closed in, he would be no more than a helpless log, rolling in an
+ice-bound sea, and when the thaw came--if it ever came--he would be
+only a broken, rudderless, sailless wreck. Sometimes he would swear at
+nothing and fling out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame
+hang down his head and mutter, “No, no, Israel; no, no, no!”
+
+Other prisoners arrived from Tetuan, and all told the same story. Israel
+listened to them with a stupid look, seeming hardly to hear the tale
+they told him. But one morning, as life began again for the day in that
+slimy eddy of life's ocean, every one became aware that an awful change
+had come to pass. Israel's face had been worn and tired before, but now
+it looked very old and faded. His black hair had been sprinkled with
+grey, and now it was white; and white also was his dark beard, which
+had grown long and ragged. But his eye glistened, and his teeth were
+aglitter in his open mouth. He was laughing at everything, yet not
+wildly, not recklessly, not without meaning or intention, but with the
+cheer of a happy and contented man.
+
+Israel was mad, and his madness was a moving thing to look upon. He
+thought he was back at home and a rich man still, as he had been in
+earlier days, but a generous man also, as he was in later ones. With
+liberal hand he was dispensing his charities.
+
+“Take what you need; eat, drink, do not stint; there is more where this
+has come from; it is not mine; God has lent it me for the good of all.”
+
+With such words, graciously spoken, he served out the provisions
+according to his habit, and only departed from his daily custom in
+piling the measures higher, and in saluting the people by titles--Sid,
+Sidi, Mulai, and the like--in degree as their clothes were poor and
+ragged. It was a mad heart that spoke so, but also it was a big one.
+
+From that time forward he looked upon the prisoners as his guests, and
+when fresh prisoners came to the prison he always welcomed them as if
+he were host there and they were friends who visited him. “Welcome!” he
+would say; “you are very welcome. The place is your own. Take all. What
+you don't see, believe we have not got it. A thousand thousand welcomes
+home!” It was grim and painful irony.
+
+Israel's comrades began to lose sense of their own suffering in
+observing the depth of his, and they laid their heads together to
+discover the cause of his madness. The most part of them concluded
+that he was repining for the loss of his former state. And when one
+day another prisoner came from Tetuan with further tales of the Basha's
+tyranny, and of the people's shame at thought of how they had dealt by
+Israel, the prisoners led the man back to where Israel was standing in
+the accustomed act of dispensing bounty, that he might tell his story
+into the rightful ears.
+
+“They're always crying for you,” said the Tetawani; “'Israel ben Oliel!
+Israel ben Oliel!' that's what you hear in the mosques and the streets
+everywhere.' Shame on us for casting him out, shame on us! He was our
+father!' Jews and Muslimeen, they're all saying so.”
+
+It was useless. The glad tidings could not find their way. That black
+page of Israel's life which told of the people's ingratitude was sealed
+in the book of memory. Israel laughed. What could his good friend mean?
+Behold! was he not rich? Had he not troops of comrades and guests about
+him?
+
+The prisoners turned aside, baffled and done. At length one man--it was
+no other than 'Larby the wastrel--drew some of them apart and said, “You
+are all wrong. It's not his former state that he's thinking of. _I_ know
+what it is--who knows so well as I? Listen! you hear his laughter! Well,
+he must weep, or he will be mad for ever. He must be _made_ to weep.
+Yes, by Allah! and I must do it.”
+
+That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the
+prisoners tied up their cotton headkerchiefs and lay down to sleep,
+'Larby sat beside Israel's place with sighs and moans and other symptoms
+of a dejected air.
+
+“Sidi, master,” he faltered, “I had a little brother once, and he was
+blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother's son. But you wouldn't think how
+happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi he never missed anything, and
+so his little face was like laughing water! By Allah! I loved that boy
+better than all the world! Women? Why--well, never mind! He was six and
+I was eighteen, and he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over,
+Sidi, and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn't see.
+Well a bleeder came from Soos--curse his great-grandfather! Looked at
+little Hosain--'Scales!' said he--burn his father! Bleed him and he'll
+see! So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for a minute--half
+a minute! 'Oh, 'Larby,' he cried--I was holding him; then he--he--'
+'Larby,' he cried faint, like a lamb that's lost in the mountains--and
+then--and then--'Oh, oh, 'Larby,' he moaned Sidi, Sidi, I _paid_ that
+bleeder--there and then--_this_ way! That's why I'm here!”
+
+It was a lie, but 'Larby acted it so well that his voice broke in his
+throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel's hand.
+
+The effect on Israel himself was strange and even startling. While
+'Larby was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling: “Where?
+When? Naomi!” as if grappling for lost treasures in an ebbing sea.
+And when 'Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. “And you are
+weeping for that?” he cried. “You think it much that the sweet child is
+dead--God rest him! So it is to the like of you, but look at me!”
+
+His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries. “Look at me! Am
+I weeping? No; I would scorn to weep. But I have more cause a
+thousandfold. Listen! Once I was rich; but what were riches without
+children? Hard bread with no water for sop. I asked God for a child. He
+gave me a daughter; but she was born blind and dumb and deaf. I asked
+God to take my riches and give her hearing. He gave her hearing; but
+what was hearing without speech? I asked God to take all I had and give
+her speech. He gave her speech, but what was speech without sight?
+I asked God to take my place from me and give her sight. He gave her
+sight, and I was cast out of the town like a beggar. What matter? She
+had all, and I was forgiven. But when I was happy, when I was content,
+when she filled my heart with sunshine, God snatched me away from her.
+And where is she now? Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born into
+the world at the mercy of liars and libertines. And where am I? Here,
+like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless, stupid,
+powerless, mad. No, no, not mad, either! Tell me, boy, I am not mad!”
+
+In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling like a drowning
+man. “Yet I do not weep,” he cried in a thick voice. “God has a right to
+do as He will. He gave her to me for seventeen years. If she dies she'll
+be mine again soon. Only if she lives--only if she falls into evil
+hands--Tell me, _have_ I been mad?”
+
+He gave no time for an answer. “Naomi!” he cried, and the name broke
+in his throat. “Where are you now? What has--who have--your father
+is thinking of you--he is--No, I will not weep. You see I have a good
+cause, but I tell you I will never weep. God has a right--Naomi!--Na--”
+
+The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly he rose
+and cried in an awful voice, “Oh, I'm a fool! God has done nothing for
+me. Why should I do anything for God? He has taken all I had. He has
+taken my child. I have nothing more to give Him but my life. Let Him
+take that too. Take it, I beseech Thee!” he cried--the vault of the
+prison rang--“Take it, and set me free!”
+
+But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place, and was sobbing
+like a little child. The other prisoners had risen in their amazement,
+and 'Larby, who was shedding hot tears over his cold ones, was capering
+down the floor, and singing, “El Arby was a black man.”
+
+Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot
+into the dark place. The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier, who
+carried an order for Israel's release. Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, was to
+keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo, to celebrate the
+visit, had pardoned Israel.
+
+It was coals of fire on Israel's head. “God is good,” he muttered. “I
+shall see her again. Yes, God has a right to do as He will. I shall see
+her soon. God is wise beyond all wisdom. I must lose no time. Jailer
+can I leave the town to-night? I wish to start on my journey.
+To-night?--yes, to-night! Are the gates open? No? You will open them?
+You are very good. Everybody is very good. God is good. God is mighty.”
+
+Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late intemperate
+outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, “A man's
+a fool when he loses his only child. I don't mean by death. Time heals
+that. But the living child--oh, it's an unending pain! You would never
+think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her
+voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was
+very fond of the little one--I was quite miserable if I lost sight
+of her for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must
+hasten back. The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well
+she'll be looking out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in
+the morning. It's always the way of these tender creatures, is it not?
+So we must humour them. Yes, yes, that's so that's so.”
+
+His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief
+knotted under his chin--gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light of
+the jailer's lantern.
+
+“Farewell, brothers!” he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and
+brought it to their breasts.
+
+“Farewell, master!” “Peace, Sidi!” “Farewell!” “Peace!” “Farewell!”
+
+The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps
+dying away outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then
+silence--empty and ghostly.
+
+In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a
+croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing--
+
+     El Arby was a black man,
+     They called him “'Larby Kosk;”
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+
+
+What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel
+lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which
+she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them,
+she sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil
+which had befallen her, but with her father's warning voice and his last
+words in her ear: “Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say,
+stay here. I will come back.”
+
+When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and
+fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she
+knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of
+this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she
+was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look
+to her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink beside
+her, but no skill to make and take them.
+
+Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother has been
+swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom. It was
+not so much love as loss. What to do, where to look, which way to turn
+first, she knew no longer, and could not think, for lack of the hand
+that had been wont to guide her.
+
+The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi, and some
+of the women among them came to see her. They were poor farming people,
+oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things they saw were
+the cattle and sheep, and the next thing was the simple girl with the
+child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways wherein a lonely woman must
+fend for herself.
+
+“You cannot live here alone, my daughter,” they said; “you would perish.
+Then think of the danger--a child like you, with a face like a flower!
+No, no, you must come to us. We will look to you like one of our own,
+and protect you from evil men. And as for the creatures--”
+
+“But he said I was never to leave this place,” said Naomi. “'Stay here,'
+he said; 'whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.'”
+
+The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and
+murdered. It was in vain. Naomi's answer was always the same: “He told
+me to stay here, and surely I must do so.”
+
+Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger. “Tut!” they
+thought, “what should we want with the Jew child? Allah! Was there ever
+such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too! And as for her
+father, he'll never come back--never. Trust the Basha for that!”
+
+But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness,
+they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple
+offices--milking and churning, and baking and delving--in pity of the
+sweet girl with the great eyes who had been left to live alone. And
+Naomi, seeing her helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy
+it, so that in a little while she was able to do for herself nearly
+everything that her neighbours at first did for her. Then they would say
+among themselves, “Allah! she's not such a baby after all; and if
+she wasn't quite so beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn't so
+wicked--but then, God is great! God is great!”
+
+Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her
+father had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp
+alight by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under
+the dropping eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the
+radiance of the sun she had whispered to herself and said, “He will come
+back, Naomi; only wait, only wait; maybe it will be tonight, maybe it
+will be to-day; you will see, you will see.”
+
+But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon
+her as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been
+there, her old content in her father's command that she should never
+leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.
+
+“Who's to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing. If the Kaid finds
+him in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom. That
+will come to the same thing in the end, or he'll die in prison.”
+
+Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought
+she did not listen. And though it was little she understood of Kaids and
+ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father's peril, and at
+length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she
+should and must. With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind
+of a child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman,
+and her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and
+love were born in it. “He must be starving in prison,” she thought, “and
+I will take him food.”
+
+When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in
+consternation and horror. “God be gracious to my father!” they cried.
+“Shawan? You? Alone? Child, you'll be lost, lost--worse, a thousand
+times worse! Shoof! you're only a baby still.”
+
+But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as
+their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it. “He must
+be starving in prison,” she said, “and I will take him food.”
+
+Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.
+
+“Allah!” they said, “who would have believed it, that the little
+pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!”
+
+Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey. She
+saved up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the
+country; also she churned some butter in the simple way which the women
+had taught her, and put the milk that was left in a goat's-skin. In
+three days she was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf
+panniers of a mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got
+up before them on the front of the burda, after the manner of the wives
+whom she had seen going past to market.
+
+When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild
+errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. “Keep to the
+track as far as Tetuan,” they said to her, “and then ask for the road
+to Shawan.” One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a
+way that it might cover her face. “Faces like yours are not for the
+daylight,” the old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her
+journey. The women watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up
+to the fondak, and then sinks out of sight beyond it. “Poor mad little
+fool,” they whimpered; “that's the end of her! She'll never come back.
+Too many men about for that. And now,” they said, facing each other with
+looks of suspicion and envy, “what of the creatures?”
+
+While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was
+awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had
+thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do
+so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her,
+and she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing
+pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women
+trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the
+herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing
+barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this
+cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear
+which had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her
+neighbour had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as
+they passed her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood
+to tingle. They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning
+of shame.
+
+Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward.
+“He is starving in prison,” she told herself; “I must lose no time.” It
+was a weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything
+was terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she
+travelled she came upon men and women and children. It was so strange
+that all the world was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more
+people everywhere. That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no
+house in sight and never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener
+she wished that the people were not so many; and that was when the
+children mocked at her mule, or the women jeered at her as if she must
+needs be a base person because she was alone, or the men laughed and
+leered into her uncovered face.
+
+Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail. Everything was
+unlike what she expected. She had thought the world so good that she had
+but to say to any that asked her of her errand, “My father is in prison,
+they say that he is starving; I am taking him food,” and every one would
+help her forward. Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had
+reckoned in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours. But no
+one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill, and
+fewer still with pity and cheer.
+
+The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast, had
+flattened the panniers that hung by its side, and made the round cakes
+of bread to protrude from the open mouth of one of them. Seeing this,
+a line of market-women going by, with bags of charcoal on their backs,
+snatched a cake each as they passed and munched them and laughed. Naomi
+tried to protest. “The bread is for my father,” she faltered; “he is
+in prison; they say he--” But the expostulation that began thus timidly
+broke down of itself, for the women laughed again out of their mouths
+choked with the bread, and in another moment they were gone.
+
+Naomi's spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front
+still. To speak of her father again would be to shame him. The poor
+little illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which, in
+spite of vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled, since the
+coming of her sight, to build up in her fresh young soul, were now
+tumbling to pieces. After all, the world was very cruel. It was the same
+as if an angel out of the clouds had fallen on to the earth and found
+her feet mired with clay.
+
+Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a
+fondak which stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan on the
+south-western side. The darkness had closed in by this time, and she
+must needs rest there for the night, but never until then had she
+reflected that for such accommodation she would need money. Only a few
+coppers were necessary, only twenty moozoonahs, that she might lie in
+the shelter and safety of one of the pens that were built for the sleep
+of human creatures, and that her mule might be tethered and fed on
+the manure heap that constituted the square space within. At last she
+bethought her of her eggs, and, though it went to her heart to use for
+herself what was meant for her father, she parted with twelve of them,
+and some cakes of the bread besides, that she might be allowed to pass
+the gate, telling herself repeatedly, with big throbs of remorse between
+her protestations, that unless she did so her father might never get
+anything at all.
+
+The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go
+on to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden, and
+of countless dogs. It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal, and
+between the twilight and the coming of night certain of the men watched
+for the new moon, and when its thin bow appeared in the sky they
+signalled its advent after their usual manner by firing their flintlocks
+into the air, while their women, who were squatting around, kept up a
+cooing chorus. Then came eating and drinking, and laughing and singing,
+and playing the ginbri, and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and
+quarrelling and fighting, and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel
+wielded by the keeper of the fondak. With such exercises the night
+passed into morning.
+
+Naomi was sick. Her head ached. The smell of rotten fish, the stench of
+the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs,
+the grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her
+light-headed. She could neither eat nor sleep. Almost as soon as it
+was light she was up and out and on her way. “I must lose no time,” she
+thought, trying not to realise that the blue sky was spinning round her,
+that noises were ringing in her head, and that her poor little heart,
+which had been so stout only yesterday, was sinking very low.
+
+“He must be starving,” she told herself again, and that helped her to
+forget her own troubles and to struggle on. But oh, if the world were
+only not so cruel, oh, if there were anyone to give her a word of cheer,
+nay, a glance of pity! But nobody had looked at her except the women who
+stole her bread and the men who shamed her with their wicked eyes.
+
+That one day's experience did more than all her life before it to fill
+her with the bitter fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
+evil. Her illusions fell away from her, and her sweet childish faith was
+broken down. She saw herself as she was: a simple girl, a child ignorant
+of the ways of the world, going alone on a long journey unknown to her,
+thinking to succour her father in prison, and carrying a handful of eggs
+and a few poor cakes of bread. When at length the scales fell from the
+eyes of her mind, and as she trudged along on her bony mule, afraid to
+ask her way, she saw herself, with all her fine purposes shrivelled up,
+do what she would to be brave, she could not help but cry. It was all
+so vain, so foolish; she was such a weak little thing. Her father knew
+this, and that was why he told her to stay where he left her. What if he
+came home while she was absent! Should she go back?
+
+She had almost resolved to return, struggle as she might to push
+forward, when going close under the town walls, near to the very gate,
+the Bab Toot whereat she had been cast out with her father remembering
+this scene of their abasement with a new sense of its cruelty and shame
+born of her own simple troubles, she lit upon a woman who was coming
+out.
+
+It was Habeebah. She was now the slave of Ben Aboo, and was just then
+stealing away from the Kasbah in the early morning that she might go in
+search of Naomi, whose whereabouts and condition she had lately learned.
+
+The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled, but that
+Naomi had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In another moment the
+poor frightened girl, with all her brave bearing gone, was weeping on
+the black woman's breast.
+
+“Whither are you going?” said Habeebah.
+
+“To my father,” Naomi began. “He is in prison; they say he is starving;
+I was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don't know my way; and
+besides--”
+
+“The very thing!” cried Habeebah.
+
+Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win emancipation at
+the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died. Naomi,
+who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima. That was all. Then her troubles
+would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her, and her father
+who was in prison would be set free.
+
+Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant.
+The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father was
+everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah's bold promises like a
+drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.
+
+“My father will be let out of prison? You are sure--quite sure?” she
+asked.
+
+“Quite sure,” answered Habeebah stoutly.
+
+Naomi's hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and her
+poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born
+worldliness.
+
+“Very well,” she said. “I will turn Muslima.”
+
+A few minutes afterwards she was riding by Habeebah's side into the
+town, through the Bab Toot across the Feddan, and up to the courtyard
+of the Kasbah, which had witnessed the beginning of her own and her
+father's degradation. Then, tethering the beast in the open stables
+there, Habeebah took Naomi into her own little room and left her alone
+for some minutes, while she hastened to Ben Aboo in secret with her
+wondrous news.
+
+“Lord Basha,” she said, “the beautiful Jewess Naomi, the daughter of
+Israel ben Oliel, will turn Muslima.”
+
+“Where is she?” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Sidi,” said Habeebah, “I have promised that you will liberate her
+father.”
+
+“Fetch her,” said Ben Aboo, “and it shall be done.”
+
+But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah's room and found Naomi there,
+and heard of the vain hope which had brought her.
+
+“My sweet jewel of gold and silver,” the black woman cried, “you don't
+know what you are doing. Turn Muslima, and you will be parted from your
+father for ever. He is a Jew, and will have no right to you any more.
+You will never, never see him again. He will be lost to you--lost--I
+say--lost!”
+
+Habeebah, with two of the guard, came back to take Naomi to Ben Aboo.
+The poor girl was bewildered. She had seen nothing but her father
+in Fatimah's protest, just as she had seen nothing but her father in
+Habeebah's promises. She did not know what to do, she was such a poor
+weak little thing, and there was no strong hand to guide her.
+
+They led her through dark passages to an open place which she thought
+she had seen before. It was a great patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white
+kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that were of
+the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells,
+a silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags, hung by yellow
+cords, about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing
+cruel face, and she herself, Naomi, stood in the midst, with every eye
+upon her. Where had she seen all this before?
+
+Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he
+committed her father to prison. He cherished schemes concerning her
+which he did not share with his wife Katrina. But he had hitherto been
+withheld by two considerations: the first being that he was beset with
+difficulties arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money
+than he could find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity that
+might perchance arise of recalling Israel to his post. Out of these
+grave bedevilments he had extricated himself at length by imposing
+dues on certain tribes of Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the
+Sultan's authority, and by calling on the Sultan's army to enforce them.
+The Sultan had come in answer to his summons, the Reefians had been
+routed, their villages burnt, and that morning at daybreak he had
+received a message saying that Abd er-Rahman intended to keep the feast
+of the Moolood at Tetuan. So this capture of Naomi was the luckiest
+chance that could have befallen him at such a moment. She should witness
+to the Prophet; her father, the Jew, would thereby lose his rights
+in her; and he himself, as her sole guardian, would present her as a
+peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing the boundary of his bashalic.
+
+Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing
+the news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to
+Katrina. But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid,
+so tired, yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the
+light of the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet
+mouth of a child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back
+to his former scheme.
+
+“So you wish to turn Muslima?” he said.
+
+Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear “No,
+no, no!”
+
+Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with
+protests and remonstrances. “She said so,” Habeebah cried. “'I will turn
+Muslima,' she said. Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!”
+
+“Did you say so?” asked Ben Aboo.
+
+“Yes,” said Naomi faintly.
+
+“Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now,” said Ben Aboo; and he
+told her what was the penalty of apostasy. It was death. She must choose
+between them.
+
+Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead
+with her. Still she saw one thing only. “But what of my father?” she
+said.
+
+“He shall be liberated,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“But shall I see him again? Shall I go back to him?” said Naomi.
+
+“The girl is a simpleton!” said Katrina.
+
+“She is only a child,” said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more at her
+flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments of
+his women.
+
+These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds,
+with a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room that was
+stifling from many perfumes, and certain smaller chambers. The garden
+was inhabited by a gazelle, whose great startled eyes looked out through
+the long grass; and the oblong room by a number of women of varying
+ages, among whom were a matronly Mooress, called Tarha, in a scarlet
+head-dress, and with a string of great keys swung from shoulder to
+waist; a Circassian, called Hoolia, in a gorgeous rida of red silk and
+gold brocade; a Frenchwoman, called Josephine, with embroidered red
+slippers and black stockings; and a Jewess, called Sol, with a band of
+silk handkerchiefs tied round her forehead above her coal-black curls,
+with her fingers pricked out with henna and her eyes darkened with kohl.
+
+Such were Ben Aboo's wives and concubines and captives, whom he had not
+divorced according to his promise; and when Naomi came among them they
+did their duty by their master faithfully. Being trapped themselves,
+they tried to entrap Naomi also. They overwhelmed her with caresses,
+they went into ecstasies over her beauty, and caused the future which
+awaited her to shine before her eyes. She would have a noble husband,
+magnificent dresses, a brilliant palace, and the world would be at her
+feet. “And what's the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?” said Sol;
+“look at me!” “Tut!” said Josephine, “there's nothing to choose between
+them.” “For my part,” said Tarha, “I don't see what it matters to us;
+they say Paradise is for the men!” “And think of the jewels, and the
+earrings as big as a bracelet,” said Hoolia, “instead of this,” and she
+drew away between her thumb and first finger the blanket which Naomi's
+neighbour had given her.
+
+It was all to no purpose. “But what of my father?” Naomi asked again and
+again.
+
+The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations,
+ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs. “Tut!” they
+said, “why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan? She would
+only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan.”
+
+Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their
+tales, their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon
+Naomi at last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child.
+In this hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no
+occupation but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education
+but devising new means of pleasing the lust of their husband's eye, no
+delight than that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but
+jealousy, no diversion but sporting on the roofs, no end but death and
+the Kabar.
+
+Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi to the
+prison, and set Habeebah to guard her. The black woman was in terror at
+the turn that events had taken. There was nothing to do now but to
+go on, so she importuned Naomi with prayers. How could she be so
+hard-hearted? Could she keep her father famishing in prison when one
+word out of her lips would liberate him? Naomi had no answer but her
+tears. She remembered the hareem, and cried.
+
+Then Ben Aboo thought of a daring plan. He called the Grand Rabbi, and
+commanded him to go to Naomi and convert her to Islam. The Rabbi
+obeyed with trembling. After all, it was the same God that both peoples
+worshipped, only the Moors called Him Allah and the Jews Jehovah. Naomi
+knew little of either. It was not of God that she was thinking: it was
+only of her father. She was too innocent to see the trick, but the Rabbi
+failed. He kissed her, and went away wiping his eyes.
+
+Rumour of Naomi's plight had passed through the town, and one night a
+number of Moors came secretly to a lane at the back of the Kasbah, where
+a narrow window opened into her cell. They told her in whispers that
+what she held as tragical was a very simple matter. “Turn Muslima,” they
+pleaded, “and save yourself. You are too young to die. Resign yourself,
+for God's sake.” But no answer came back to them where they were
+gathered in the darkness, save low sobs from inside the wall.
+
+At last Ben Aboo made two announcements. The first, a public one, was
+that Abd er-Rahman would reach Tetuan within two days, on the opening
+of the feast of the Moolood, and the other, a private one, that if
+Naomi had not said the Kelmah by first prayers the following morning she
+should die and her father be cut off as the penalty of her apostasy.
+
+That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was
+occupied by a group of Jews. “Sister,” they whispered, “sister of our
+people, listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has robbed us of
+all we had that he may pay for the Sultan's visit. Listen! We have heard
+something. We want Israel ben Oliel back among us. He was our father,
+he was our brother. Save his life for the sake of our children, for the
+Basha has taken their bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we
+pray.”
+
+Naomi broke down at last. Next morning at dawn, kneeling among men in
+the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, she repeated the Word after the Iman:
+“I testify that there is no God but God, and that our Lord Mohammed is
+the messenger of God; I am truly resigned.”
+
+Then she was taken back to the women's apartments, and clad gorgeously.
+Her child face was wet with tears. She was only a poor weak little
+thing, she knew nothing of religion, she loved her father better than
+God, and all the world was against her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+
+
+Such was the method of Israel's release. But, knowing nothing of the
+price which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy.
+Nay, his happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness
+which hung over his life been lifted away. Any one who had seen him in
+prison would have been puzzled by the change as he came away from it.
+He laughed with the courier who walked with him to the town gate, and
+jested with the gate porter as with an old acquaintance. His voice was
+merry, his eye gleamed in the rays of the lantern, his face was flushed,
+and his step was light. “Afraid to travel in the night? No, no, I'll
+meet nothing worse than myself. Others _may_ who meet me? Ha, ha!
+Perhaps so, perhaps so!” “No evil with you, brother?” “No evil, praise
+be God.” “Well, peace be to you!” “On you be peace!” “May your morning
+be blessed! Good-night!” “Good-night!” Then with a wave of the hand he
+was gone into the darkness.
+
+It was a wonderful night. The moon, which was in its first quarter,
+was still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead, making a
+silvery dome that almost obliterated the blue. Rivers were rumbling on
+the hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance, kine that could not be
+seen were chewing audibly near at hand, and sheep like patches of white
+in the gloom were scuttling through the grass before Israel's footsteps.
+Israel walked quickly, tracing his course between the two arms of the
+Jebel Sheshawan, whose summits were visible against the sky. The air was
+cool and moist, and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Oh! the
+joy of it to him who had lain long months in prison! Israel drank in the
+night air as a young colt drinks in the wind.
+
+And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel's heart.
+“I am going to be happy,” he told himself, “yes, very happy, very
+happy.” He raised his eyes to heaven, and a star, bigger and brighter
+than the rest, hung over the path before him. “It is leading me to
+Naomi,” he thought. He knew that was folly, but he could not restrain
+his mind from foolishness. And at least she had the same moon and stars
+above her sleep, for she would be sleeping now. “I am coming,” he cried.
+He fixed his eye on the bright star in front and pushed forward, never
+resting, never pausing.
+
+The morning dawned. Long rippling waves of morning air came down the
+mountains, cool, chill, and moist. The grey light became tinged with
+red. Then the sun rose somewhere. It had not yet appeared, but the peak
+of the western hill was flushed and a raven flew out and perched on the
+point of light. Israel's breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer
+step. “She will be waking soon,” he told himself.
+
+The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing--the wheatear
+in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the
+rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth
+below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like
+vast spiders' webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat, dogs to bark,
+kine to low, horses to cross each other's necks, and over the freshness
+of the air came the smell of peat and of green boughs burning. Israel
+did not stop, but pushed on with new eagerness. “She will have risen
+now,” he told himself. He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door
+and looking out for him in the sunlight.
+
+“Poor little thing,” he thought, “how she misses me! But I am coming, I
+am coming!”
+
+The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed since he saw
+it last. Then it had been like a dead man's face; now it was like a face
+that was always smiling. And though the year was so old it seemed to
+be quite young. No tired look of autumn, no warning of winter; only the
+freshness and vigour of spring. “I am going to see my child, and I shall
+be happy yet,” thought Israel. The dust of life seemed to hang on him no
+longer.
+
+He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer--“the house of the poor
+one.” The place did not even justify its name, for it was a cinereous
+wreck. Not a living creature was to be seen anywhere. The village had
+been sacked by the Sultan's army, and its inhabitants had fled to the
+mountains. Israel paused a moment, and looked into one of the ruined
+houses. He knew it must have been the house of a Jew, for he could
+recognise it by its smell. The floor was strewn over with rubbish--cans,
+kettles, water-bottles, a woman's handkerchief, and a dainty red
+slipper. On the ragged grass in the court within there were some little
+stones built up into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the
+ground in lines. A young girl had lived in that house; children had
+played there; the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits
+still. “Poor souls!” thought Israel, but the troubles of others could
+not really touch him. At that very moment his heart was joyful.
+
+The day was warm, but not too hot for walking. Israel did not feel
+weary, and so he went on without resting. He reckoned how far it was
+from Shawan to his home near Semsa. It was nearly seventy miles. That
+distance would take two days and two nights to cover on foot. He had
+left the prison on Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset
+before he reached Naomi. It was now Thursday morning. He must lose
+no time. “You see, the poor little thing will be waiting, waiting,
+waiting,” he told himself. “These sweet creatures are all so impatient;
+yes, yes, so foolishly impatient. God bless them!”
+
+He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They
+answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their
+trouble. Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred
+dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he
+had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his
+twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel
+hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their
+story. He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi
+he was to leave Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty,
+noble, beautiful England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little
+white island of the sea! His mother's home! England! Yes, he would go
+back to it. True, he had no friends there now; but what matter of that?
+Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful
+gaps. His mother! Ruth! But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name
+aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on
+her hair. Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be
+so childish.
+
+Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.
+It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were
+picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the
+voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning
+under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel
+that he had not eaten since the previous day. “I must have food,” he
+thought, “though I do not feel hungry.” So he stopped, and the wandering
+Arabs hailed him. “Markababikum!” they cried from where they sat within.
+
+“You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!” Their land was the
+world.
+
+Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled
+beans and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a
+woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while
+she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles.
+Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young
+girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and
+baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three
+stones. All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.
+
+“On a long journey, brother?” said the man.
+
+“No, oh no, no,” said Israel. “Only to Semsa, no farther.”
+
+“Well, you must sleep here to-night,” said the Arab.
+
+“Ah, I cannot do that,” said Israel.
+
+“No?”
+
+“You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor
+child, and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of
+a man to stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient,
+you know. And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I
+suppose we must humour them--that's what I always say.”
+
+“But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!” said the woman.
+
+“Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister,” said Israel. “Well, peace!
+Farewell all, farewell!”
+
+Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the
+darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense
+black cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness
+ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on
+every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort.
+The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses.
+He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke
+out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from
+somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no
+choice but to stop. “After all, it is better,” he thought. “Strange, how
+things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I
+will get no sleep at all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and
+to ask and to hear.”
+
+Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept
+upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense
+night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in
+a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart. “Yes, I must
+sleep--sleep--to-morrow _she_ must sleep and I must watch by her--watch
+by her as I used to do--used to do--how soft and beautiful--how
+beautiful--sleeping--sleep--Ah!”
+
+When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance,
+the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the
+borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river,
+which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was
+now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his
+home near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white
+walls, and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with
+the snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange
+orchards.
+
+But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
+Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown
+dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could
+see now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi's
+eyes! Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world
+was new to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far
+sweeter youth.
+
+Naomi--Naomi--always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as she had
+appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.
+But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two
+months and a half--it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown from
+a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big,
+slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.
+Nevertheless, he was her father still--her old, tired, dim-eyed father;
+and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He could
+see and hear it all. First Naomi's voice: “A bow in the sky--red, blue,
+crimson--oh!” Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness: “A
+rainbow, child!” Ah! the dreams were beautiful!
+
+He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice--the voice of his
+poor dead Ruth--and to remember the song that she used to sing--the song
+she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he
+was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the
+street--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice.
+
+He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he
+sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was
+making was Naomi's voice and not his own.
+
+Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the
+Sultan's gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping
+sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation
+that had come out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his
+face they were shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true,
+but strong and firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had
+passed, and he was coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering,
+infirm old man of eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but
+after a pause one of them--Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name
+was Solomon Laredo--stepped up and said, “Israel ben Oliel, our poor
+Tetuan is in trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God
+has punished us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of
+you; for we have heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!”
+
+Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of
+Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also
+something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel,
+who was to bombard Marteel. But Israel heard very little. “I think my
+hearing must be failing me,” he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if
+that did not greatly matter. “And to tell you the truth, though I pity
+my poor brethren, I can no longer help them. God will raise up a better
+minister.”
+
+“Never!” cried the Jews in many voices.
+
+“Anyhow,” said Israel, “my life among you is ended. I set no store by
+place and power. What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand of
+God I stand.' Shakespeare--oh, a mighty creature--one who knew where
+the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you've not lived in England. Do
+you know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You
+remember her--Naomi--a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and
+speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am
+going to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one
+will be waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!”
+
+Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was
+on every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation
+stood and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.
+
+And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him
+of some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began
+to think of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His
+absence had been so long, and so many things might have happened since
+he went away. In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain
+shamble. At nearly every step the body lurched for poise and balance.
+
+At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the
+little rush-covered house ought to be seen. “It's yonder,” he cried, and
+pointed it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and
+its strong rays were in his face. “She's there, I see her!” he shouted.
+A few minutes later he was near the door. “No, my eyes deceived me,”
+ he said in a damp voice. “Or perhaps she has gone in--perhaps she's
+hiding--the sweet rogue!”
+
+The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. “Naomi!” he
+called in a voice like a caress. “Naomi!” His voice trembled now. “Come
+to me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!” He listened.
+There was not a sound, not a movement. “Naomi!” The name was like a
+gurgle in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly
+and simply, “She's not here.”
+
+He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a
+slipper covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his
+face. Dead? Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before--for himself,
+for others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him.
+Death! Oh, oh!
+
+With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the
+floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He
+flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi--it must be she!
+
+It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had
+been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too
+suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. “Where is she laid?” he
+said in a voice of awe.
+
+Fatimah saw his error instantly. “Naomi is alive,” she said, and, seeing
+how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, “and well, very
+well.”
+
+That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a
+cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what
+she had done.
+
+“Where is she?” he cried. “Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she
+not here? Lead me to her, lead me!”
+
+Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. “Alas!” she said, weeping, “that
+cannot be.”
+
+Israel steadied himself and waited. “She cannot come to you, and neither
+can you go to her.” said Fatimah. “But she is well, oh! very well.
+Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--oh no, she
+is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed, she is at the
+palace--the women's palace--but set your mind easy--she--”
+
+With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
+and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
+lived a lifetime in that moment.
+
+“The palace!” he said in a bewildered way. “The women's palace--the
+women's--” and then broke off shortly. “Fatimah, I want to go to Naomi,”
+ he said.
+
+And Fatimah stammered, “Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--”
+
+“Fatimah,” said Israel, with an awful calm. “Can't you see, woman,
+I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not
+understand?--I want to go to my daughter.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Fatimah; “but you can never go to her any more. She is
+in the women's apartments--”
+
+Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.
+
+“Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen,” said Fatimah; “only listen.”
+
+But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
+everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. “Silence!”
+ he cried. “What need is there for words? She is in the palace!--that's
+enough. The women's palace--the hareem--what more is there to say?”
+
+Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in
+all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. “O
+God!” he cried, “my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
+starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home
+to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy.
+Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not
+that, whatever happens! But the palace--the women's palace. Naomi! My
+little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn
+that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to
+see that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell, and Ben Aboo--that
+libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled
+with God for it--”
+
+He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
+his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven,
+and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, “Kill her, O God!
+Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!”
+
+At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of
+tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned
+the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way
+while sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look.
+Sometimes he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own
+condition: “I am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed
+my heart in vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh
+slipped. . . . I am as one whom his mother comforteth.”
+
+Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple
+foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly
+and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared
+to think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer--always
+the same--that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he
+seemed to hear a voice that cried, “Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!”
+ “Here! Israel is here!” he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling
+him. The Kaid was the King. “Yes, I will go back to the King,” he said.
+Then he looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt,
+and tried to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged
+threads of it. At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he
+were a master still, “Bring me robes--clean robes--white robes; I am
+going back to the King!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+
+
+Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,
+the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away,
+encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment
+of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed
+for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were
+everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and
+nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of
+the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.
+
+Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,
+and crying in a hoarse voice, “Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord!
+Awake! Awake!”
+
+In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.
+The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel
+of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange
+orchards lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red
+rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above
+them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself the small red
+flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets
+of various colours swung on many walls.
+
+The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It
+was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment
+of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their
+heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They
+poured into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and
+squeezed their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the
+air, and shouting as they went, “Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is
+coming! Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!”
+
+Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
+perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
+through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
+that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
+himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
+there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
+spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file,
+not hand to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a
+hundred miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,
+or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping
+blood; the faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines
+of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight
+of God's own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the
+many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah beyond the market-place.
+They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had just stripped, whose
+villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children he had just driven
+into the mountains. And they were going to die in his dungeons.
+
+It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's
+train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
+human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
+Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the
+streets were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban
+within range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the
+principal thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their
+haiks, had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next,
+a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the
+walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was
+coming. Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from
+their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish
+people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and
+children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at
+tambourines and crying in wild discords, “God bless our Lord!” “God give
+victory to our Lord the Sultan!”
+
+The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the
+Caliphs of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them
+with exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar
+crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.
+
+“Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your
+slippers--Abd er-Rahman is coming!”
+
+Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed,
+jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners
+were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their
+voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back into their Mellah
+and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan
+even from their roofs.
+
+And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
+having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
+themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
+and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the
+Sultan's train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls,
+donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified
+old camel. It was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces
+thrust into white ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and
+clenched fists uplifted. Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like
+hyenas, shrill and guttural, piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings,
+quarrellings, cursings.
+
+“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!”
+
+“O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!”
+
+“Curses on your grandfather!”
+
+“Allah! Allah! Allah!”
+
+“Balak! Balak! Balak!”
+
+But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of
+the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by
+the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were
+thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the
+street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western
+gate.
+
+By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen
+who had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused
+and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they
+came up to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs
+could see them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river,
+none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.
+
+When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
+camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
+himself was at hand.
+
+First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
+their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
+four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
+outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And
+then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him,
+came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks,
+his rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father
+of Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in
+gorgeous trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold.
+Solomon's seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar--a
+safeguard against the evil eye--was suspended from its neck. Its saddle
+was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were
+of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of
+his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
+girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
+transparent.
+
+As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the
+Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his
+stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.
+
+“God bless our Lord!”
+
+“Sultan Abd er-Rahman!”
+
+“God prolong the life of our Lord!”
+
+He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
+Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to
+the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless
+the people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening
+acclamations.
+
+“All's well, all's well,” they told each other, and pointed to the white
+horse--the sign of peace--which the Sultan rode, and to the riderless
+black horse--the sign of strife--that pranced behind him.
+
+The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
+Sultan with a shrill ululation: “Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!”
+
+Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some
+of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
+coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
+articulate cries.
+
+He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
+Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
+cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
+State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
+head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
+greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem.
+The ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.
+
+Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their
+heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they
+knew that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their
+taxes. Not a man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he
+saved from dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his
+messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed
+only for himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues.
+And yet his people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.
+
+Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,
+whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind
+beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he
+dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.
+
+But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet
+streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses
+tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk
+unheard and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold
+significance passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And
+this was the way and the word of it:
+
+“She is back in the Kasbah!”
+
+“The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?”
+
+“She has fallen sick.”
+
+“And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?”
+
+“He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest.”
+
+“Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is
+saved from the Sultan.”
+
+“For the present, only for the-present.”
+
+“For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
+news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him.”
+
+“Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?”
+
+“Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes
+the--”
+
+“Ya Allah! well?”
+
+“Hark! A footstep on the street--some one is near--”
+
+“But quick. Behind the Mahdi--what?”
+
+“God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!”
+
+“In peace!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+
+
+The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
+before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
+state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
+bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
+him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all
+his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had
+entered Tetuan that day.
+
+He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like
+a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
+come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under
+the walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the
+rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load
+of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each
+man. Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of
+the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades.
+Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and
+story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous
+ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and
+their women. But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of
+them.
+
+“Away!” he had cried. “Away with your uncleanness and deception.”
+
+And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the
+indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk
+off like a pariah dog.
+
+As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan
+were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of
+excited spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in
+line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some
+standing. Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at
+full gallop, firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length,
+throwing their barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping
+back, amid deafening shouts of “Allah! Allah! Allah!”
+
+“Allah indeed!” cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without
+fear. “That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and
+bloodshed. Away, away!”
+
+The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he
+approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for
+the mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out
+in all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked
+men, and one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the
+Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark
+flowing robes and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive
+and eaten raw; while women and children; crouching in the gathering
+darkness overhead looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the
+frenzy increased among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each
+fanatic turned upon himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head
+against the stones until blood ran like water.
+
+“Fools and blind guides!” cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like
+sheep. “Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the
+abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but
+forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away!
+Away!”
+
+At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after
+various parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding
+ways of the gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha's presence.
+The Basha received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his
+face. Ben Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog
+with his muzzle on his forepaws.
+
+“Welcome,” he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious
+posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.
+
+The Mahdi did not sit. “Ben Aboo,” he said in a voice that was half
+choked with anger, “I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to
+you if you send me away unsatisfied.”
+
+Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,
+“What is it now?”
+
+“Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?” said the Mahdi.
+
+With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which
+his dusky muzzle had rested.
+
+“Ah, do not lie to me,” cried the Mahdi. “I know where she is--she is in
+prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime
+but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the
+other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free.”
+
+The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some
+half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled
+about in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and
+said with an air of mock inquiry, “Ya Allah! who is this infidel?”
+
+Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, “Sir, I know who you are!
+You come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your
+purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you
+were a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here--my guest and protector.
+You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin
+our religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by
+Allah you shall die!”
+
+Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his
+superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half
+deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi
+took a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said--
+
+“Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to
+death. You dare not and you cannot do it.”
+
+“Why not?” cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a
+swagger. “What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man
+need know.”
+
+“Basha,” said the Mahdi, “do you think you are talking to a child? Do
+you think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than
+ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for
+my return? And do you think, too,” he cried, lifting one hand and his
+voice together, “that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on
+an errand of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I
+say; you are a fool.”
+
+The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage. But he was
+cowed. He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of
+braggadocio--
+
+“And what if I do not liberate the girl?”
+
+“Then,” said the Mahdi, “if any evil befalls her the consequences shall
+be on your head.”
+
+“What consequences?” said the Basha.
+
+“Worse consequences than you expect or dream,” said the Mahdi.
+
+“What consequences?” said the Basha again.
+
+“No matter,” said the Mahdi. “You are walking in darkness, and do not
+know where you are going.”
+
+“What consequences?” the Basha cried once more.
+
+“That is God's secret,” said the Mahdi.
+
+Ben Aboo began to laugh. “Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,” he
+shouted to his people.
+
+“Enough!” cried the Mahdi. “I have delivered my message. Now woe to you,
+Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come
+no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison.
+Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward
+awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword
+will reach to your soul.”
+
+Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where
+he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, “This is the last
+word that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben
+Aboo--I to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt,
+and death and hell.”
+
+Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place
+where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks
+under a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.
+
+But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed
+through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the
+stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, “Abd
+er-Rahman! Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the
+sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me
+for my country, but the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd
+er-Rahman! You have filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you,
+slave of the Compassionate!”
+
+The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of
+the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But
+his voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly
+thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.
+
+“The Mahdi,” they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.
+
+The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers
+of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms,
+were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from
+these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos
+and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.
+
+The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the
+M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret.
+It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had
+visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also
+of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as
+well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in
+gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he
+listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before
+him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of
+night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was
+imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father,
+who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy
+while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.
+These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of
+Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled. Let come what would, the
+man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.
+
+The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
+and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet,
+the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's
+following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a
+wonderful night. The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter,
+but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the
+town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf.
+Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white
+walls and minarets. Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as
+in an Eastern city. Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white
+roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing
+through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of
+quarried chalk. Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself
+homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin
+darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone. Sometimes a
+clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place,
+and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.
+
+“O Tetuan,” thought the Mahdi, “how soon will your streets be uprooted
+and your sanctuaries destroyed!”
+
+The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
+gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the
+dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the
+bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to
+be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the
+circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled
+and still saddled, were up and feeding.
+
+The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
+had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
+were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
+which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
+right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected
+air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was
+one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare.
+But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not
+until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on
+him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man
+who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled
+with God.
+
+With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside
+Israel at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way,
+telling him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came,
+and whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a
+brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen
+clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves
+of his fingers were also frozen.
+
+Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the
+head. He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to
+prison, and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he
+described the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how
+she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face
+that the affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully.
+At last he recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had
+yielded at length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child,
+seeing her father in everything and thinking to save his life, though
+she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from
+Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers
+trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his
+cheeks.
+
+“My poor darling!” he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he
+asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.
+
+The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against
+the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine of the
+Sultan.
+
+“My brave girl!” he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
+that was both pride and pain.
+
+He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she
+could hear: “Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old
+father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!”
+
+This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
+and said in almost a childish tone, “I suppose there is no help for
+it now, sir. I meant to take her to England--to my poor mother's home,
+but--”
+
+“And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives,” said the Mahdi, rising to
+his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he
+had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
+clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
+impulse, should at length be carried into effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+
+
+The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali's, for the black
+lad was back in Tetuan. After he had fulfilled his errand of mercy at
+Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there, with a spirit afire for the
+wrongs of his master, from whom he was so cruelly parted, he had set
+himself with shrewdness and daring to incite the Spanish powers to
+vengeance upon his master's enemies. This had been a task very easy of
+execution, for just at that time intelligence had come from the Reef, of
+barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo upon mountain tribes that had hitherto
+offered allegiance to the Spanish crown. A mission had gone up to Fez,
+and returned unsatisfied. War was to be declared, Marteel was to be
+bombarded, the army of Marshal O'Donnel was to come up the valley of the
+river, and Tetuan was to be taken.
+
+Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely
+revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was
+the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the
+eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to
+give a “gathering of delight,” to the Sultan, his Ministers, his Kaids,
+his Kadis, his Khaleefas, his Umana, and great rascals generally. Ali's
+stout heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the Spaniards brought up
+to the gates of the town, on the very night when the whole majesty and
+iniquity of Barbary would be gathered in one room; then, locking the
+entire kennel of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and
+burning it to the ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like
+rats in a trap.
+
+One danger attended his bold adventure, for Naomi's person was within
+the Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to find his way
+into the dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate, and deliver up to
+another the key that should serve as a signal for the beginning of the
+great night's work.
+
+Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah
+there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment for
+the siege--no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely not to
+lead them blindfold into a trap. To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in
+search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help
+in the downfall of his master's enemies by leading the Spaniards at the
+right moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.
+
+Hearing Ali's story, the Mahdi had been aflame with tender thoughts
+of Naomi's trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo's tyrannies, and pity of
+Israel's miseries. But at first his humanity had withheld him from
+sympathy with Ali's dark purpose, so full, as it seemed, of barbarity
+and treachery.
+
+“Ali,” he had said, “is it not all you wish for to get Naomi out of
+prison and take her back to her father?”
+
+“Yes, Sidi,” Ali had answered promptly.
+
+“And you don't want to torture these tyrants if you can do what you
+desire without it?”
+
+“No-o, Sidi,” Ali had said doubtfully.
+
+“Then,” the Mahdi had said, “let us try.”
+
+But when the Mahdi was gone to Tetuan on his errand of warning that
+proved so vain, Ali had crept back behind him, so that secretly and
+independently he might carry out his fell design. The towns-people were
+ready to receive him, for the air was full of rebellion, and many had
+waited long for the opportunity of revenge. To certain of the Jews, his
+master's people, who were also in effect his own, he went first with his
+mission, and they listened with eagerness to what he had come to say.
+When their own time came to speak they spoke cautiously, after the
+manner of their race, and nervously, like men who knew too well what
+it was to be crushed and kept under; but they gave their help
+notwithstanding, and Ali's scheme progressed.
+
+In less than three days the entire town, Moorish and Jewish, was
+honeycombed with subterranean revolt. Even the civil guard, the soldiers
+of the Kasbah, the black police that kept the gates, and the slaves that
+stood before the Basha's table were waiting for the downfall to come.
+
+The Mahdi had gone again by this time, and the people had resumed their
+mock rejoicings over the Sultan's visit. These were the last kindlings
+of their burnt-out loyalty, a poor smouldering pretence of fire. Every
+morning the town was awakened by the deafening crackle of flintlocks,
+which the mountaineers discharged in the Feddan by way of signal that
+the Sultan was going to say his prayers at the door of some saint's
+house. Beside the firing of long guns and the twanging of the ginbri the
+chief business of the day seemed to be begging. One bow-legged rascal
+in a ragged jellab went about constantly with a little loaf of bread,
+crying, “An ounce of butter for God's sake!” and when some one gave him
+the alms he asked he stuck the white sprawling mess on the top of the
+loaf and changed his cry to “An ounce of cheese for God's sake!” A pert
+little vagabond--street Arab in a double sense--promenaded the town
+barefoot, carrying an odd slipper in his hand, and calling on all men
+by the love of God and the face of God and the sake of God to give him a
+moozoonah towards the cost of its fellow. Every morning the Sultan went
+to mosque under his red umbrella, and every evening he sat in the hall
+of the court of justice, pretending to hear the petitions of the poor,
+but actually dispensing charms in return for presents. First an old
+wrinkled reprobate with no life left in him but the life of lust: “A
+charm to make my young wife love me!” Then an ill-favoured hag behind
+a blanket: “A charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has
+taken instead of me!” Again, a young wife with a tearful voice: “A charm
+to make me bear children!” A greasy smile from the fat Sultan, a scrap
+of writing to every supplicant, chinking coins dropped into the bag of
+the attendant from the treasury, and then up and away. It was a nauseous
+draught from the bitterest waters of Islam.
+
+But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived by the outward
+marks of devotion. At the corners of the streets, on the Feddan, by the
+fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard, there they stood
+in little groups, crossing their forefingers, the sign of strife,
+or rubbing them side by side, the sign of amity. It was clear that,
+notwithstanding the hubbub of their loyalty to the sultan, they knew
+that the Spaniard was coming and were glad of it.
+
+Meantime Ali waited with impatience for the day that was to see the end
+of his enterprise. To beguile himself of his nervousness in the night,
+during the dark hours that trailed on to morning, he would venture out
+of the lodging where he lay in hiding throughout the day, and pick
+his steps in the silence up the winding streets, until he came under a
+narrow opening in an alley which was the only window to Naomi's prison.
+And there he would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought
+that besides the comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi, the
+tramp, tramp, tramp of his footsteps, which once or twice provoked the
+challenge of the night-guard on his lonely round, would be company to
+her in her solitude. And sometimes, watching his opportunity that he
+might be unseen and unheard, he would creep in the darkness under the
+window and cry up the wall in an underbreath, “Naomi! Naomi! It is I,
+Ali! I have come back! All will be well yet!”
+
+Then if he heard nothing from within he would torture himself with
+a hundred fears lest Naomi should be no longer there, but in a worse
+place; and if he heard a sob he would slink away like a dog with his
+muzzle to the dust, and if he heard his own name echoed in the softer
+voice he knew so well he would go off with head erect, feeling like a
+man who walked on the stars rather than the stones of the street. But,
+whatever befell, before the day dawned he went back to his lodging less
+sore at heart for his lonely vigil, but not less wrathful or resolute.
+
+The day of the feast came at length, and then Ali's impatience rose
+to fever. All day he longed for the night, that the thing he had to do
+could be done. At last the sunset came and the darkness fell, and from
+his place of concealment Ali saw the soldiers of the assaseen going
+through the streets with lanterns to lead honoured guests to the
+banquet. Then he set out on his errand. His foresight and wit had
+arranged everything. The negro at the gate of the Kasbah pretended to
+recognise him as a messenger of the Vizier's, and passed him through. He
+pushed his way as one with authority along the winding passages to the
+garden where the Mahdi had called on Abd er-Rahman and foretold his
+fate. The garden opened upon the great hall, and a number of guests were
+standing there, cooling themselves in the night air while they waited
+for the arrival of the Sultan. His Shereefian Majesty came at length,
+and then, amid salaams and peace-blessings, the company passed in to
+the banquet. “Peace on you!” “And on you the peace!” “God make your
+evening!” “May your evening be blessed!”
+
+Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment? No, a thousand times no!
+While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen and
+scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup and to laugh
+and to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel broken and alone
+in the poor hut which had been described to him, and Naomi lying in her
+damp cell beyond the wall.
+
+Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests
+entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop
+in after them with great dishes under huge covers. Then he held a short
+parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him, and in
+another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi's prison.
+
+Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down
+to the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he
+had never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of
+all--the fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by
+the gift of sight, and would now first look upon _him_. That he would
+be the same as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was;
+that she would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to
+belie the evidence of the newborn sense--this was the least of Ali's
+trouble. By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had
+haunted him in the days before he left her with her father on his errand
+to Shawan. He was black, and she would see him.
+
+With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,
+flashed upon his mind. His shame was abject. It cut him to the quick.
+On the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him
+since times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood. She had
+played with him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face.
+And she was fair as the morning, and he was black as the night! He had
+come to deliver her. Would she recoil from him?
+
+Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything.
+But his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose. “What
+matter?” he thought. “What matter about me?” he asked himself aloud in
+a shrill voice and with a brave roll of his round head. Then he found
+himself inside the cell.
+
+The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief. Naomi must
+have been lying at the farther end of it. She spoke when the door was
+opened. As though by habit, she framed the name of her jailer Habeebah,
+and then stopped with a little nervous cry and seemed to rise to her
+feet. In his confusion Ali said simply, “It is I,” as though that meant
+everything. Recovering himself in a moment he spoke again, and then she
+knew his voice: “Naomi!”
+
+“It's Ali,” she whispered to herself. After that she cried in a
+trembling undertone “Ali! Ali! Ali!” and came straight in the accustomed
+darkness to the spot where he stood.
+
+Then, gathering courage and voice together, Ali told her hurriedly why
+he was there. When he said that her father was no longer in prison, but
+at their home near Semsa and waiting to receive her, she seemed almost
+overcome by her joy. Half laughing, half weeping, clutching at her
+breast as if to ease the wild heaving of her bosom she was transformed
+by his story.
+
+“Hush!” said Ali; “not a sound until we are outside the town,” and Naomi
+knitted her fingers in his palm, and they passed out of the place.
+
+The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors
+where they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by, and coming
+into the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle of laughter from the
+great hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals feasted together. They
+reached the quiet alley outside the Kasbah (for the negro was gone from
+his post), and drew a lone breath, and thanked Heaven that this much was
+over. There had been no group of beggars at the gate, and the streets
+around it were deserted; but in the distance, far across the town in the
+direction of the Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel, they
+heard a low hum as of vast droves of sheep. The Spaniard was coming, and
+the townsmen were going out to meet him. Casual passers-by challenged
+them, and though Ali knew that even if recognised they had nothing to
+fear from the people, yet more than once his voice trembled when he
+answered, and sometimes with a feeling of dread he turned to see that no
+one was following.
+
+As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame
+of that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door of
+Naomi's prison. By the light of the lamps in the hands of the passers-by
+Naomi was looking at him. Again and again, as the glare fell for an
+instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face. At such moments he
+thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them
+seemed wider. But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head
+aside, and hastened on.
+
+“What matter about me?” he whispered again. But the brave word brought
+him no comfort. “Now she's looking at my hand,” he told himself, but
+he could not draw it away. “She is doubting if I am Ali after all,” he
+thought. “Naomi!” he tried to say with averted head, so that once again
+the sound of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and
+he could not speak. Still he pushed on.
+
+The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has
+been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a
+loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to
+move and pass.
+
+Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of
+Israel's humiliation and Naomi's shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,
+came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people. It was
+the Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the
+town on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the
+gates were coming in on the east. The Mahdi himself was locking the
+synagogues and the sanctuaries.
+
+“Lock them up,” he was saying. “It is enough that the foreigner must
+burn down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our
+God.”
+
+Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.
+
+“I have brought her,” he said breathlessly; “Naomi, Israel's daughter,
+this is she.” And then there was a moment of surprise and joy, and pain
+and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look of the
+eyes of the three.
+
+The Mahdi looked at Naomi, and his face lightened. Naomi looked at Ali,
+and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair
+across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break from
+her mouth. Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted and her
+eyes shone. Ali looked at both, and his face twitched and fell.
+
+This was only the work of an instant, but it was enough. Enough for
+the Mahdi, for it told him a secret that the wisdom of life had not yet
+revealed; enough for Naomi, for a new sense, a sixth sense, had surely
+come to her; enough for Ali also, for his big little heart was broken.
+
+“What matter about me?” thought Ali again. “Take her, Mahdi,” he said
+aloud in a shrill voice. “Her father is waiting for her--take her to
+him.”
+
+“Lady,” said the Mahdi, “can you trust me?”
+
+And then without a word she went to him; like the needle to the magnet
+she went to the Mahdi--a stranger to her, when all strangers were as
+enemies--and laid her hand in his.
+
+Ali began to laugh, “I'm a fool,” he cried. “Who could have believed
+it? Why, I've forgotten to lock the Kasbah! The villains will escape. No
+matter, I'll go back.”
+
+“Stop!” cried the Mahdi.
+
+But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear. “I'll see to it yet,” he
+cried, turning on his heel. “Good night, Sidi! God bless you! My love to
+my father! Farewell!”
+
+And in another moment he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+
+
+The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the
+doom that was impending. Squatting on the floor in little circles,
+around little tables covered with steaming dishes, wherein each plunged
+his fingers, they began the feast with ceremonious wishes, pious
+exclamations, cant phrases, and downcast eyes. First, “God lengthen your
+age,” “God cover you,” and “God give you strength.” Then a dish of dates,
+served with abject apologies from Ben Aboo: “You would treat us better
+in Fez, but Tetuan is poor; the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!”
+ Then fish in garlic, eaten with loud “Bismillah's.” Then kesksoo covered
+with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned
+fowls, and fowls and olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters, each
+eaten in its turn amid a chorus of “La Ilah illa Allah's.” Finally three
+cups of green tea, as thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many “Do me
+the favour's,” and countless “Good luck's.” Last of all, the washing
+of hands, and the fumigating of garments and beard and hair by the
+live embers of scented wood burning in a brass censer, with incessant
+exchanges of “The Prophet--God rest him--loved sweet odours almost as
+much as sweet women.”
+
+But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed
+down to a warm and flowing brotherhood. Lolling at ease on their rugs,
+trifling with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries for
+idleness more than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling on the
+pavement the carved ends of their silver knife-shields, they laughed and
+jested, and told dubious stories, and held doubtful discourse generally.
+The talk turned on the distinction between great sins and little ones.
+In the circle of the Sultan it was agreed that the great sins were two:
+unbelief in the Prophet, whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking
+keef and tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and
+unquestionable Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five
+prayers a day, thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the
+Koran, and as many inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and
+as for murder and adultery, and bearing false witness--well, God was
+Merciful, God was Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak children.
+
+This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors of the great
+sins. These were terrible. Putting on a profound air, the Vizier, a fat
+man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco and denied the Prophet
+had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned in his grave with
+his face from Mecca. Then the Kaid of Fez, head of the Mosque and
+general Grand Mufti, led away with stories of the little sins. These
+were delightful. They pictured the shifts of pretty wives, married
+to worn out old men, to get at their youthful lovers in the dark by
+clambering in their dainty slippers from roof to roof. Also of the
+discomfiture of pious old husbands and the wicked triumph of rompish
+little ladies, under pretences of outraged innocence.
+
+Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told, was the
+conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah. At every
+fresh story the laughter became louder, and soon the reserve and dignity
+of the Moor were left behind him and forgotten. At length Ben Aboo,
+encouraged by the Sultan's good fellowship, broke into loud praises of
+Naomi, and yet louder wails over the doom that must be the penalty of
+her apostasy; and thereupon Abd er-Rahman, protesting that for his
+part he wanted nothing with such a vixen, called on him to uncover her
+boasted charms to them. “Bring her here, Basha,” he said; “let us see
+her,” and this command was received with tumultuous acclamations.
+
+It was the beginning of the end. In less than a minute more, while the
+rascals lolled over the floor in half a hundred different postures, with
+the hazy lights from the brass lamps and the glass candelabras on their
+dusky faces, their gleaming teeth, and dancing eyes, the messenger who
+had been sent for Naomi came back with the news that she was gone. Then
+Ben Aboo rose in silent consternation, but his guests only laughed the
+louder, until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running
+with more startling news. Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards;
+the army of Marshall O'Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan, and their
+own people were opening the gates to him.
+
+The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not
+need to be detailed. Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to
+the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of
+horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark
+corridors of men carrying torches and flares. There was no attempt at
+resistance. That was seen to be useless. Both the civil guard and the
+soldiery had deserted. The Kasbah was betrayed. Terror spread like fire.
+In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and
+eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of
+their disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on
+the southern side of it.
+
+Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman. He remembered that he had
+treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it. There
+were fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people.
+No one knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he
+had killed the mason who built it. In the dark he found the place, and
+taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his
+selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen.
+
+It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and
+Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground,
+near the wall of the Kasbah gate. From that dark cell, crouching on the
+grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds
+of the night. First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead;
+then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of
+the crowd. “Damn it--they've given us the slip.” “Yes; they've crawled
+off like rats from a sinking ship.” “Curse it all, it's only a bungle.”
+ This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country
+Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people: “Sidi, try the
+palace.” “Try the apartments of his women, Sidi.” “Abd er-Rahman's gone,
+but Ben Aboo's hiding.” “Death to the tyrant!” “Down with the Basha!”
+ “Ben Aboo! Ben Aboo!” Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence.
+“Silence, you shrieking hell-babies, silence!”
+
+Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to
+hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.
+So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked
+the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for
+the women's apartments, and rattled at their door. It was folly, it was
+lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone. He could
+hear the sounds of voices within--wailing and weeping of the women--but
+no one answered his knocking. Again and again he knocked with his elbows
+(still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw
+through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood. Still the door
+remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for
+company, fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that
+led to the alley behind the Kasbah.
+
+Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers who were
+helping her flight. “We are safe,” she whispered--“they've gone back into
+the Feddan--come;” and by the light of a lamp which she carried she made
+for the winding corridor that led past the bath and the sanctuary to the
+Kasbah gate. But Ben Aboo only cursed her, and fumbled at the low
+door of the passage that went out from the alcove to the alley. He was
+lumbering through with his armless roll, intending to clash the door
+back in Katrina's face, when there was a fierce shout behind him, and
+for some minutes Ben Aboo knew no more.
+
+The shout was Ali's. After leaving the Mahdi on the heath outside the
+Bab Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha. When the Spanish
+soldiers abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search. Up and down he
+had traversed the place in the darkness; and finding Ben Aboo at last,
+on the spot where he had first seen him, he rushed in upon him and
+brought him to the ground. Seeing Ben Aboo down, the black soldiers
+fell upon Ali. The brave lad died with a shout of triumph. “Israel ben
+Oliel,” he cried, as if he thought that name enough to save his soul and
+damn the soul of Ben Aboo.
+
+But Ben Aboo was not yet done with his own. The blow that had been aimed
+at his heart had no more than grazed his shoulder. “Get up,” whispered
+Katrina, half in wrath; and while she stooped to look for his wounds,
+her face and hands as seen in the dim light of the lantern were bedaubed
+with his blood. At that moment the guards were crying that the Kasbah
+was afire, and at the next they were gone, leaving Katrina alone with
+the unconscious man. “Get up,” she cried again, and tugging at Ben
+Aboo's unconscious body she struck it in her terror and frenzy. It was
+every one for himself in that bad hour. Katrina followed the guards, and
+was never afterwards heard of.
+
+When Ben Aboo came to himself the patio was aglow with flames. He
+staggered to his feet, still grappling to his breast the money-bags
+hidden under his selham. Then, bleeding from his shoulder and with
+blood upon his beard, he made afresh for the passage leading to the back
+alley. The passage was narrow and dark. There were three winding steps
+at the end of it. Ben Aboo was dizzy and he stumbled.
+
+But the passage was silent, it was safe, and out in the alley a sea of
+voices burst upon him. He could hear the tramp of countless footsteps,
+the cries of multitudes of voices, and the rattle of flintlocks.
+Lanterns, torches, flares and flashes of gunpowder came and went at both
+ends of the long dark tunnel. In the light of these he saw a struggling
+current of angry faces. The living sea encircled him. He knew what had
+happened. At the first certainty that his power was gone and that there
+was nothing to fear from his vengeance, his own people had gathered
+together to destroy him.
+
+There were two small mean houses on the opposite side of the alley, and
+Ben Aboo tried to take refuge in the first of them. But the woman who
+came with uncovered face to the door was the widow of the mason who had
+built his strong-room. “Murderer and dog!” she cried, and shut the door
+against him. He tried the other house. It was the house of the mason's
+son. “Forgive me,” he cried. “I am corrected by Allah! Yes, yes, it is
+true I did wrong by your father, but forgive me and save me.” Thus he
+pleaded, throwing himself on the ground and crawling there. “Dog and
+coward,” the young man shouted, and beat him back into the street.
+
+Ben Aboo's terror was now appalling to look upon. His face was that of
+a snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick
+breath, he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where
+he thought he might find a friend. “Alee, don't you know me?” “Mohammed,
+it is I, Ben Aboo.” “See, El Arby, here's money, money; it's yours,
+only save me, save me!” With such frantic cries he raced about in
+the darkness like a hunted wolf. But not a house would shelter him.
+Everywhere he met relatives of men who had died through his means, and
+he was driven away with curses.
+
+Meantime, a rumour that Ben Aboo was in the streets had been bruited
+abroad among the people, and their lust of blood was thereby raised to
+madness. Screaming and spitting and raving, and firing their flintlocks,
+they poured from street into street, watching for their victim and
+seeing him in every shadow. “He's here!” “He's there!” “No, he's
+yonder!” “He's scaling the high wall like a cat!”
+
+Ben Aboo heard them. Their inarticulate cries came to him laden with
+one message only--death. He could see their faces, their snarling teeth.
+Sometimes he would rave and blaspheme. Then he would make another effort
+for his life. But the whirlpool was closing in upon him; and at last,
+like one who flings himself over a precipice from dizziness, fears,
+and irresistible fascination, he flung himself into the middle of the
+infuriated throng as they scurried across the open Feddan.
+
+From that moment Ben Aboo's doom was sealed. The people received him
+with a long furious roar, a cry of triumphant execration, as if their
+own astuteness at length had entrapped him. He stood with his back to
+the high wall; the bellowing crowd was before him on either side. By the
+torches that many carried all could see him. Turban and shasheeah had
+fallen off, and the bald crown of his head was bare. His face retained
+no human expression but fear. He was seen to draw his arms from beneath
+his selham, to hold both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a
+hand into the necks of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people.
+“Silver,” he cried; “silver, silver for everybody.”
+
+The despairing appeal was useless. Nobody touched the money. It flashed
+white through the air, and fell unheard. “Death to the Kaid!” was
+shouted on every side. Nevertheless, though half the men carried guns,
+no man fired. By unspoken consent it seemed to be understood that the
+death of Ben Aboo was not to be the act of one, but of all. “Stones,”
+ cried somebody out of the crowd, and in another moment everybody was
+picking stones, and piling them at his feet or gathering them in the
+skirt of his jellab.
+
+Ben Aboo knew his awful fate. Gesticulating wildly, having flung the
+money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was
+seen to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips
+working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant
+the stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he
+reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself
+like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that
+came from his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and
+fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue
+lolling out. Faster and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered
+upon him, darting out of the darkness like swallows of the night. His
+clothes were rent, his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast
+staggers in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up, and
+he fell in a round heap like a ball.
+
+The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of
+Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower
+upon his body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it.
+Then they left it with curses of content and went their ways. When the
+Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside while the work was done, came up
+with their lanterns to look at this monument of Eastern justice, the
+heap of stones was still moving with the terrific convulsions of death.
+
+Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+“ALLAH-U-KABAR”
+
+
+Travelling through the night,--Naomi laughing and singing snatches in
+her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals at the huge
+outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,--they came to the
+hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day. But they had come too
+late. Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England. He
+was going on a longer journey. His lonely hour had come to him, his dark
+hour wherein none could bear him company. On a mattress by the wall he
+lay outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end. Two neighbours
+from the village were with him, and but for these he must have been
+alone--the mighty man in his downfall deserted by all save the great
+Judge and God.
+
+What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her,
+what she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task to
+tell. Oh, the irony of fate! Ay, the irony of God! That scene, and what
+followed it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest--none the less cruel
+because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.
+
+It was useless to go out in search of a doctor. The country was as
+innocent of leechcraft as the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham. All
+they could do was to submit, absolutely and unconditionally. They were
+in God's hands.
+
+The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves
+as Israel awoke to consciousness. He opened his eyes as if from sleep,
+and saw Naomi beside him. No surprise did he show at this, and neither
+did he at first betray pleasure. Dimly and softly he looked upon her,
+and then something that might have been a smile but for lack of strength
+passed like sunshine out of a cloud across his wasted face. Naomi
+pressed a pillow-under his loins, and another under his head,
+thinking to ease the one and raise the other. But the iron hand of
+unconsciousness fell upon him again, and through many hours thereafter
+Naomi and the Mahdi sat together in silence with the multitudinous
+company of invisible things.
+
+During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of
+Tetuan. The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of
+his Ministers had escaped. Ben Aboo had tried to follow them, but he
+had been killed in the alcove of the patio. Ali had killed him. He had
+rushed in upon him through a line of his guards. One of the guards had
+killed Ali. The brave black lad had fallen with the name of Israel on
+his lips and with a dauntless shout of triumph. The Kasbah was afire; it
+had been burning since the banquet of the night before.
+
+Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that
+the end was very near. Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and
+the Mahdi was standing at his left. Israel looked at the girl with a
+world of tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening
+his noble face. More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he
+wished to say something, and yet could not do so, because the power of
+life was low; but at last his voice found strength.
+
+“I have left it too late,” he said. “I cannot go to England.”
+
+Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words, and it
+was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.
+
+“Think no more of that,” he said, and then he stopped, as if the word
+that he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.
+
+“It is hard to leave her,” said Israel, “for she is alone; and who will
+protect her when I am gone?”
+
+“God lives,” said the Mahdi, “and He is Father to the fatherless.”
+
+“But what Jew,” said Israel, “would not repeat for her her father's
+troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?”
+
+“Who that trusts in God,” said the Mahdi, “need fear the Kaid?”
+
+“But what man can save her?” cried Israel again.
+
+And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi's tears as well as her father's
+importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said--
+
+“Peace, peace! If there is no one else to take her, from this day
+forward she shall go with me.”
+
+Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes
+as he has often since, but had never before seen there, and Israel ben
+Oliel who had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly at his wrist.
+
+“God bless you!” he said, as well as he could for the two angels, the
+angel of love and the angel of death, were struggling at his throat.
+
+Israel looked steadily at the Mahdi for a moment more, and then said
+very softly--
+
+“Death may come to me now; I am ready. Farewell, my father! I tried to
+do your bidding. Do you remember your watchword? But God _has_ given me
+rewards for repentance--see,” and he turned his eyes towards the eyes of
+Naomi with a wasting yet sunny smile.
+
+“God is good,” said the Mahdi; “lie still, lie still,” and he laid his
+cool hand on Israel's forehead.
+
+“I am leaving her to you,” said Israel; “and you alone can protect her
+of all men living in this land accursed of God, for God's right arm is
+round you. Yes, God is good. As long as you live you will cherish her.
+Never was she so dear to me as now, so sweet, so lovable, so gentle. But
+you will be good to her. God is very good to me. Guard her as the apple
+of your eye. It will reward you. And let her think of me sometimes--only
+sometimes. Ah! how nearly I shipwrecked all this! Remember! Remember!”
+
+“Hush, hush! Do not increase your pains,” said the Mahdi. “Are you
+feeling better now?”
+
+“I am feeling well,” said Israel, “and happy--so happy.”
+
+The sun had set, and the swift twilight was passing into night, when
+another messenger arrived from Tetuan. It was Ali's old Taleb, shedding
+tears for his boy, but boasting loudly of his brave death. He had
+heard of it from the black guards themselves. After Ali fell he lived
+a moment, though only in unconsciousness. The boy must have thought
+himself back at Israel's side, “I've done it, father,” he said; “he'll
+never hurt you again. You won't drive me away from you any more; will
+you, father?”
+
+They could see that Israel had heard the story. The eyes of the dying
+are dry, but well they knew that the heart of the man was weeping.
+
+The Taleb came with the idea that Israel also was gone, for a rumour to
+that effect had passed through the town. “El hamdu l'Illah!” he
+cried, when he saw that Israel was still alive. But then he remembered
+something, and whispered in the Mahdi's farther ear that a vast
+concourse of Moors and Jews including his own vast fellowship was even
+then coming out to bury Israel, thinking he was dead.
+
+Israel overheard him and smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little
+also. “It will soon be true,” he muttered under his breath, that came
+so quick. And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the
+distance. It was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.
+
+Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear. First a mighty
+bass voice: “Allah Akbar!” Again another and another voice:
+“Allah Akbar!” and then the long roar of a vast multitude:
+“Al--l--lah-u-kabar!” Finally a slow melancholy wail, rising and falling
+on the darkening air: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the
+Prophet of God.”
+
+It was a solemn sound--nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive to
+hear it.
+
+O gratitude that is only a death-song! O fame that is only a funeral!
+
+Israel listened and smiled again. “Ah, God is great!” he whispered; “God
+is great!”
+
+To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to
+the door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession
+approaching--a moving black shadow against the sky. Also over their
+billowy heads he could see a red glow far away in the clouds. It was the
+last smouldering of the fire of the modern Sodom.
+
+While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice
+behind him. It was Israel's voice. He was speaking to Naomi. “Yes,” he
+was saying, “it is hard to part. We were going to be very happy. . . .
+But you must not cry. Listen! When I am there--eh? you know, _there_--I
+will want to say, 'Father, you did well to hear my prayer. My little
+daughter--she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.'
+So you must not weep. Never, never, never! Remember! . . . . Ah! that's
+right, that's right. My simple-hearted darling! My sunny, merry, happy
+girl!”
+
+Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father's will. She
+was combing his white beard with her fingers--it was knotted and
+tangled--and he was labouring hard to speak again.
+
+“Naomi, do you remember?” he said; and then he tried to sing, and even
+to lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done. “Do
+you remember--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
+     Sings 'Love'--”
+
+But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.
+
+“Sing it,” he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure.
+And then the brave girl--all courage and strength, a quivering bow of
+steel--took up the song where he had left it, though her voice trembled
+and the tears started to her eyes.
+
+As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her,
+though once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast. When
+she had done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her, and
+smiled, as if he and she and the song were one to him.
+
+But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again, now
+nearer than before, and louder. Israel heard it. “Hark! They are coming.
+Keep close,” he muttered.
+
+He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan. The
+Mahdi thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct of
+help that a woman has in scenes like these, understood him better. In
+the disarray of his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself
+that he might listen the easier to the song outside. The girl slid her
+arm under his neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest. “Ah! closer.
+'God is great'!” he murmured again. “'God--is--great'!” With that word
+on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back. It was now quite dark.
+
+When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel's feet the dying man
+seemed to have been feeling for his hand. Taking it now, he brought it
+to his breast, where Naomi's hand lay under his own trembling one. With
+that last effort, and a look into the girl's face that must have pursued
+him home, his grand eyes closed for ever.
+
+In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell
+of the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air: “Allah Akbar!
+Al-lah-u-kabar!”
+
+In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had
+come out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.
+
+“He has gone,” said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes
+towards heaven, he added, “TO THE KING!”
+
+
+
+
+Notes: 1. Italic text starts and ends with an underscore. 2. Where
+spelling inconsistencies in the printed text appear to be unintentional,
+they have been made consistent in this Etext version, either by adopting
+the dictionary spelling or the spelling most frequently used in the
+printed text. 3. In the printed text, many representations of Arabic
+words use accented characters; in this Etext version, the accents have
+been removed to allow transmission by email using the 7-bit character
+set.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1303 ***
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine
+    </title>
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+
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+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1303 ***</div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE SCAPEGOAT
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Hall Caine
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0002">
+        CHAPTER II </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0006">
+        CHAPTER VI </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0010">
+        CHAPTER X </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0014">
+        CHAPTER XIV </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0018">
+        CHAPTER XVIII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0022">
+        CHAPTER XXII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0026">
+        CHAPTER XXVI </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Within sight of an English port, and within hail of English ships as
+      they pass on to our empire in the East, there is a land where the ways of
+      life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago; a land wherein
+      government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny, wherein justice is
+      bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich and a danger to be
+      poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man, and women is no more than
+      a creature of lust&mdash;a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to the century,
+      an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion! That land is Morocco!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>This is a story of Morocco in the last years of the Sultan Abd
+      er-Rahman. The ashes of that tyrant are cold, and his grandson sits in his
+      place; but men who earned his displeasure linger yet in his noisome
+      dungeons, and women who won his embraces are starving at this hour in the
+      prison-palaces in which he immured them. His reign is a story of
+      yesterday; he is gone, he is forgotten; no man so meek and none so mean
+      but he might spit upon his tomb. Yet the evil work which he did in his
+      evil time is done to-day, if not by his grandson, then in his grandson's
+      name&mdash;the degradation of man's honour, the cruel wrong of woman's,
+      the shame of base usury, and the iniquity of justice that may be bought!
+      Of such corruption this story will tell, for it is a tale of tyranny that
+      is every day repeated, a voice of suffering going up hourly to the powers
+      of the world, calling on them to forget the secret hopes and petty
+      jealousies whereof Morocco is a cause, to think no more of any scramble
+      for territory when the fated day of that doomed land has come, and only to
+      look to it and see that he who fills the throne of Abd er-Rahman shall be
+      the last to sit there.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Yet it is the grandeur of human nature that when it is trodden down it
+      waits for no decree of nations, but finds its own solace amid the baffled
+      struggle against inimical power in the hopes of an exalted faith. That cry
+      of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the narrow circle of life,
+      which carries up to God the protest and yearning of suffering man, never
+      finds a more sublime expression than where humanity is oppressed and
+      religion is corrupt. On the one hand, the hard experience of daily
+      existence; on the other hand, the soul crying out that the things of this
+      world are not the true realities. Savage vices make savage virtues. God
+      and man are brought face to face.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>In the heart of Morocco there is one man who lives a life that is like
+      a hymn, appealing to God against tyranny and corruption and shame. This
+      great soul is the leader of a vast following which has come to him from
+      every scoured and beaten corner of the land. His voice sounds throughout
+      Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him, and wheresoever
+      women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy and the shelter of his
+      face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but
+      that is the best thing of all&mdash;it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope
+      in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him. Man that
+      veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter, and science that
+      reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God, have no place
+      with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty; the miracle is all in all to
+      him; he throngs the air with marvels; God speaks to him in dreams when he
+      sleeps, and warns and directs him by signs when he is awake.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the
+      joyous child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with a
+      beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond the
+      wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged fellowship
+      of the poor behind them, having no homes and no possessions, pass from
+      place to place, unharmed and unhindered, through that land of intolerance
+      and iniquity, being protected and reverenced by virtue of the superstition
+      which accepts them for Saints. Who are they? What have they been?</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was the
+      daughter of a banker in London. The father's name was Oliel; the mother's
+      was Sara. Oliel had held business connections with the house of Sara's
+      father, and he came over to England that he might have a personal meeting
+      with his correspondent. The English banker lived over his office, near
+      Holborn Bars, and Oliel met with his family. It consisted of one daughter
+      by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a second wife, still living.
+      They were not altogether a happy household, and the chief apparent cause
+      of discord was the child of the first wife in the home of the second.
+      Oliel was a man of quick perception, and he saw the difficulty. That was
+      how it came about that he was married to Sara. When he returned to Morocco
+      he was some thousand pounds richer than when he left it, and he had a
+      capable and personable wife into his bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and spending,
+      always taking care to have much of the one, and no more than he could help
+      of the other. Sara was a nervous and sensitive little woman, hungering for
+      communion and for sympathy. She got little of either from her husband, and
+      grew to be as silent as he. With the people of the country of her
+      adoption, whether Jews or Moors, she made no headway. She never even
+      learnt their language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years passed, and then a child was born to her. This was Israel, and
+      for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely woman. His
+      coming made no apparent difference to his father. He grew to be a tall and
+      comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be of a sweet and cheerful
+      disposition. But the school of his upbringing was a hard one. A Jewish
+      child in Morocco might know from his cradle that he was not born a Moor
+      and a Mohammedan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife, his
+      first wife being still alive. This was lawful, though unusual in Tangier.
+      The new marriage, which was only another business transaction to Oliel,
+      was a shock and a terror to Sara. Nevertheless, she supported its
+      penalties through three weary years, sinking visibly under them day after
+      day. By that time a second family had begun to share her husband's house,
+      the rivalry of the mothers had threatened to extend to the children, the
+      domesticity of home was destroyed and its harmony was no longer possible.
+      Then she left Oliel, and fled back to England, taking Israel with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers was not
+      warm. They had no sympathy with her rebellion against her husband's second
+      marriage. If she had married into a foreign country, she should abide by
+      the ways of it. Sara was heartbroken. Her health had long been poor, and
+      now it failed her utterly. In less than a month she died. On her deathbed
+      she committed her boy to the care of her brothers, and implored them not
+      to send him back to Morocco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For years thereafter Israel's life in London was a stern one. If he had no
+      longer to submit to the open contempt of the Moors, the kicks and insults
+      of the streets, he had to learn how bitter is the bread that one is forced
+      to eat at another's table. When he should have been still at school he was
+      set to some menial occupation in the bank at Holborn Bars, and when he
+      ought to have risen at his desk he was required to teach the sons of
+      prosperous men the way to go above him. Life was playing an evil game with
+      him, and, though he won, it must be at a bitter price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus twelve years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty, was a tall,
+      silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects, and a master
+      of figures. Never once during that time had his father written to him, or
+      otherwise recognised his existence, though knowing of his whereabouts from
+      the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles. Then one day a
+      letter came written in distant tone and formal manner, announcing that the
+      writer had been some time confined to his bed, and did not expect to leave
+      it; that the children of his second wife had died in infancy; that he was
+      alone, and had no one of his own flesh and blood to look to his business,
+      which was therefore in the hands of strangers, who robbed him; and
+      finally, that if Israel felt any duty towards his father, or, failing
+      that, if he had any wish to consult his own interest, he would lose no
+      time in leaving England for Morocco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
+      nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
+      landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
+      before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
+      thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
+      lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the ruins
+      of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the little Jewish
+      cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and cousins' cousins,
+      to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of sentiment, were
+      busily dividing his inheritance among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
+      restitution of his father's substance. But his cousins made the Kadi, the
+      judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
+      impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father's
+      letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi to
+      the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed cases;
+      but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan law to
+      offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the British
+      Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention, being a
+      subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage. Meantime, his dispute
+      with his cousins was set at rest for ever by the Governor of the town,
+      who, concluding that his father had left neither will nor heirs,
+      confiscated everything he had possessed to the public treasury&mdash;that
+      is to say, to the Kaid's own uses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco, whether as a
+      Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger in his father's country, and
+      openly branded as a cheat. That he did not return to England promptly was
+      because he was already a man of indomitable spirit. Besides that, the
+      treatment he was having now was but of a piece with what he had received
+      at all times. Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing ever does
+      avail to crush a man of character. But the obstacles and torments which
+      make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make a very sensible
+      impression on his heart; the mind triumphs, it is the heart that suffers;
+      the mind strengthens and expands after every besetting plague of life, but
+      the heart withers and wears away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together to beat him
+      down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means of settling
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His opportunity came early. The Governor, either by qualm of conscience or
+      further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the Oomana, the
+      three Administrators of Customs at Tangier. He held the post six months
+      only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid, but amid the muttered
+      discontent of the merchants and tradesmen. Then the Governor of Tetuan, a
+      bigger town lying a long day's journey to the east, hearing of Israel that
+      as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled the custom revenues in half a year,
+      invited him to fill an informal, unofficial, and irregular position as
+      assessor of tributes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did in his
+      new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and appointed a Mut'hasseb,
+      a clerk of the market, to collect them&mdash;so many moozoonahs for every
+      camel sold, so many for every horse, mule, and ass, so many floos for
+      every fowl, and so many metkals for the purchase and sale of every slave;
+      how he numbered the houses and made lists of the trades, assessing their
+      tribute by the value of their businesses&mdash;so much for gun-making, so
+      much for weaving, so much for tanning, and so on through the line of them,
+      great and small, good and bad, even from the trades of the Jewish
+      silversmiths and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the callings of the
+      Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran, which entitled
+      the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever; but it would not wrong
+      the truth to say that he did it also by the impulse of a sour and saddened
+      heart. The world had shown no mercy to him, and he need show no mercy to
+      the world. Why talk of pity? It was only a name, an idea a mocking
+      thought. In the actual reckoning of life there was no such name as pity.
+      Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings, whatever their
+      severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ya Allah! Allah!&rdquo; the Moors would cry. &ldquo;Who is this Jew&mdash;this son of
+      the English&mdash;that he should be made our master?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him, and at length
+      they insulted him openly. Since his return from England he had resumed the
+      dress of his race in his country&mdash;the long dark gabardine or kaftan,
+      with a scarf for girdle, the black slippers, and the black skull-cap. And,
+      going one day by the Grand Mosque, a group of the beggars; who lay always
+      by the gate, called on him to uncover his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jew! Dog!&rdquo; they cried, &ldquo;there is no god but God! Curses on your
+      relations! Off with your slippers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paid no heed to their commands, but made straight onward. Then one
+      blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and struck off his cap with
+      a crutch. He picked it up again without a look or a word, and strode away.
+      But next morning, at early prayers, there was a place empty at the door of
+      the mosque. Its accustomed occupant lay in the prison at the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if the Muslimeen hated Israel for what he was doing for their
+      Governor, the Jews hated him yet more because it was being done for a
+      Moor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has sold himself to our enemy,&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;against the welfare of his
+      own nation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the synagogue they ignored him, and in taking the votes of their people
+      they counted others and passed him by. He showed no malice. Only his
+      strong face twitched at each fresh insult and his head was held higher.
+      Only this, and one other sign of suffering in that secret place of his
+      withering heart, which God's eye alone could see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus far he had done no more to Moor and Jew than exact that tenth part of
+      their substance which the faiths of both required that they should pay.
+      But now his work went further. A little group of old Jews, all held in
+      honour among their people&mdash;Abraham Ohana, nicknamed Pigman, son of a
+      former rabbi; Judah ben Lolo, an elder of his synagogue; and Reuben
+      Maliki, keeper of the poor-box&mdash;were seized and cast into the Kasbah
+      for gross and base usury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this the Jewish quarter was thrown into wild hubbub. The hand that was
+      on their people was a daring and terrible one. None doubted whose hand it
+      was&mdash;it was the hand of young Israel the Jew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the three old usurers had bought themselves out of the Kasbah, they
+      put their heads together and said, &ldquo;Let us drive this fellow out of the
+      Mellah, and so shall he be driven out of the town.&rdquo; Then the owner of the
+      house which Israel rented for his lodging evicted him by a poor excuse,
+      and all other Jewish owners refused him as tenant. But the conspiracy
+      failed. By command of the Governor, or by his influence, Israel was lodged
+      by the Nadir, the administrator of mosque property, in one of the houses
+      belonging to the mosque on the Moorish side of the Mellah walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said, &ldquo;Let us
+      see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life be a
+      burden.&rdquo; Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him, and
+      when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not obey the
+      unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes out of the Soudan he
+      was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave. But the conspiracy failed
+      again. Two black female slaves from Soos, named Fatimah and Habeebah, were
+      bought in the name of the Governor and assigned to Israel's service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel's
+      material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
+      again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they said,
+      &ldquo;He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named the
+      prophetess put her curse upon him.&rdquo; Then she who was so called, one
+      Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
+      of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki kept,
+      crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
+      predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo with
+      the groans of God's elect, so should his own spirit be broken within them
+      and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he heard her out,
+      and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only smiled coldly, and
+      passed on in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The clouds are not hurt,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;by the bark of dogs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture him;
+      yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter of
+      their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was young, and
+      God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many young Jewish men,
+      of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he favour. Of Israel's duty
+      she knew little, save what report had said of it, that it was evil; and of
+      the act which had made him an outcast among his own people, and an Ishmael
+      among the sons of Ishmael she could form no judgment. But what a woman's
+      eyes might see in him, without help of other knowledge, that she saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
+      manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been cheated
+      of his youth and had missed his early manhood, the when he was ignored he
+      ignored his insult, and when he was reviled he answered not again; in a
+      word, the he was silent and strong and alone, and, above all that he was
+      sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were credentials enough to the true girl's favour, and Israel soon
+      learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him. There the lonely man
+      first found himself. The cold eyes of his little world had seen him as his
+      father's son, but the light and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw him as the
+      son of his mother also. The Rabbi himself was old, very old&mdash;ninety
+      years of age&mdash;and length of days had taught him charity. And so it
+      was that when, in due time, Israel came with many excuses and asked for
+      Ruth in marriage, the Rabbi gave her to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses stood
+      beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief; and, when the
+      marriage came in its course, few stood beside the Chief Rabbi.
+      Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan were
+      alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a great
+      company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them, gathered
+      in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss and jeer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio, and
+      when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him above the
+      tumult, crying, &ldquo;Woe to her that has married the enemy of her nation, and
+      woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people! They shall taste
+      death. He shall see them fall from his side and die,&rdquo; then the old man
+      listened and trembled visibly. In confusion and fierce anger he rose up
+      and stumbled through the crooked passage to the door, and flinging it
+      wide, he stood in the doorway facing them that stood without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace! Peace!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;and shame! shame! Remember the doom of him that
+      shall curse the high priest of the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath. Then suddenly, his voice
+      failing him, he said in a broken whisper, &ldquo;My good people, what is this?
+      Your servant is grown old in your service. Sixty and odd years he has
+      shared your sorrows and your burdens. What has he done this day that your
+      women should lift up their voices against him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in
+      the darkness were silent and made no answer. Then he staggered back, and
+      Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to compose
+      him. But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Rabbi's death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered,
+      &ldquo;It is the first-fruits!&rdquo; and the Moors touched their foreheads and
+      murmured &ldquo;It is written!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the
+      building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in
+      comfort many years together. In the south-east corner of the Mellah he
+      placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the English
+      fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a marble
+      staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but also
+      with windows and with doors. And when his house was raised he put no
+      haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for
+      tables and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in
+      this wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and
+      Jews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out of
+      the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly it
+      occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had built was
+      a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a prison for
+      his wife. In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his intimates by
+      one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had reduced even her
+      friends to that number. Her father was dead; if she was the daughter of a
+      Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast, the companion of a
+      pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone. Even their bondwomen
+      still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with them was mainly by signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on Israel's
+      mind, one hope on his heart&mdash;that Ruth might soon bear a child. Then
+      would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman might
+      know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would make amends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel thought of this again and again. The delicious hope pursued him. It
+      was his secret, and he never gave it speech. But time passed, and no child
+      was born. And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she began to cast
+      down her head before her husband. Israel's hope was of longer life, but
+      the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he perceived that his wife
+      was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him. He had been thinking of
+      her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she had thought
+      only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he never went
+      abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the cemetery over
+      the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss of their sons,
+      and of how they were best treated of God who were given no children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
+      half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the woman
+      Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and she
+      lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel, the
+      judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise up
+      children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out upon you, woman!&rdquo; cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
+      his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions had
+      passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut himself
+      in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
+      angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What was
+      the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had first
+      beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his feet?
+      Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was the father
+      of a child might look down on him with contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and his
+      spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
+      offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might persuade
+      himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the ordinances and
+      commandments of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
+      since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of their
+      race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might straightway
+      be divorced by her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
+      would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
+      still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
+      his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send me away from you!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Send me away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for the place of the Kaid,&rdquo; he answered stoutly; &ldquo;no, nor the throne
+      of the Sultan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their tears
+      together. But he comforted her at length, and said, &ldquo;Look up, my dearest!
+      look up! I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord may deal
+      with me. And which of us shall murmur against God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full of
+      a sudden thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us ask of the Lord,&rdquo; she whispered hotly, &ldquo;and surely He will
+      hear our prayer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the voice of the Lord Himself!&rdquo; cried Israel; &ldquo;and this day it
+      shall be done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand
+      together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki. And Ruth
+      knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and the
+      candles that hung above it, and she prayed: &ldquo;O Lord, have pity on this Thy
+      servant, and take away her reproach among women. Give her grace in Thine
+      eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed. Grant her a child of Thy
+      mercy, that his eye may smile upon her. Yet not as she willeth, but as
+      Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart and his eyes
+      to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not be appeased,
+      saying: &ldquo;How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? My enemies triumph over me
+      and foretell Thy doom upon me. They sit in the lurking-places of the
+      streets to deride me. Confound my enemies, O Lord, and rebuke their
+      counsels. Remember Ruth, I beseech Thee, that she is patient and her heart
+      is humbled. Give her children of Thy servant, and her first-born shall be
+      sanctified unto Thee. Give her one child, and it shall be Thine&mdash;if
+      it is a son, to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues. Hear me, O Lord, and give
+      heed to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee. One child, but one,
+      only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is before Thee. How long wilt
+      Thou forget me, O Lord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble
+      was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come without delay
+      to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues. This request
+      the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef was a prince
+      of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces the believers paid him
+      tribute. So in three days' time Israel was ready to set out on his
+      journey, with men and mules at his door, and camels packed with tents. He
+      was likely to be some months absent from Tetuan, and it was impossible
+      that Ruth should go with him. They had never been separated before, and
+      Ruth's concern was that they should be so long parted, but Israel's was a
+      deeper matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruth,&rdquo; he said when his time came, &ldquo;I am going away from you, but my
+      enemies remain. They see evil in all my doings, and in this act also they
+      will find offence. Promise me that if they make a mock at you for your
+      husband's sake you will not see them; if they taunt you that you will not
+      hear them; and if they ask anything concerning me that you will answer
+      them not at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her she should be
+      as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that was deaf, and if
+      they questioned her concerning her husband as one that was dumb. Then they
+      parted with many tears and embraces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,
+      having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan
+      loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers and
+      attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him to the door
+      of his own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with tears
+      of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great news on
+      her tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she whispered; &ldquo;I have something to tell you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I know it,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I know it already. I see it in your eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only listen,&rdquo; she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck of his
+      kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child they had asked
+      for was to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was like a man beside himself with joy. He burst in upon the
+      message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again, and
+      kissed her. Long they stood together so, while he told her of the chances
+      which had befallen him during his absence from her, and she told him of
+      her solitude of six long months, unbroken save for the poor company of
+      Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind and deaf and dumb to all
+      the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the months thereafter until Ruth's time was full Israel sat with
+      her constantly. He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company. He
+      covered her chamber with fruits and flowers. There was no desire of her
+      heart but he fulfilled it. And they talked together lovingly of how they
+      would name the child when the time came to name it. Israel concluded that
+      if it was a son it should be called David, and Ruth decided that if it was
+      a daughter it should be called Naomi. And Ruth delighted to tell of how
+      when it was weaned she should take it up to the synagogue and say, &ldquo;O
+      Lord: I am the woman that knelt before Thee praying. For this child I
+      prayed, and Thou hast heard my prayer.&rdquo; And Israel told of how his son
+      should grow up to be a Rabbi to minister before God, and how in those days
+      it should come to pass that the children of his father's enemies should
+      crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread. Thus they built
+      themselves castles in the air for the future of the child that was to
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth's time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast of the
+      Passover, being in the month of Nisan. This was a cause of joy to Israel,
+      for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face, and he could
+      not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So he set a
+      supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg of an ox,
+      the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three Mitzvoth, and
+      the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife had been
+      summoned, and it was the day of the night of the Seder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests. Only
+      his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers, and
+      among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman, Judah ben Lolo,
+      and Reuben Maliki. &ldquo;They cursed me,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;and I shall look on
+      their confusion.&rdquo; His heart thirsted to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also, but
+      well he knew that her dainty masters would not sit at meat with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves and
+      refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man should sit
+      save in his own house and at his own table. But Israel was not to be
+      gainsaid. He went out to them himself, and said, &ldquo;Come, let bygones be
+      bygones. It is the feast of our nation. Let us eat and drink together.&rdquo;
+       So, partly by his importunity, but mainly in their bewilderment, yet
+      against all rule and custom, they suffered themselves to go with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table in
+      the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine and blessed it,
+      and passed it to all, and they had drunk together, he could not keep back
+      his tongue from taunting them. Then when he had washed again and dipped
+      the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk of the wine once more, he
+      taunted them afresh and laughed. But nothing yet had they understood of
+      his meaning, and they looked into each other's faces and asked, &ldquo;What is
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait! Only wait!&rdquo; Israel answered. &ldquo;You shall see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a sorrowful woman,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Some evil is about to befall&mdash;I
+      know it, I feel it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy on the
+      morrow. Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes had been
+      broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat and drink as
+      much as their hearts desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight of
+      Israel's frenzy. The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben, rose
+      to go, but Israel cried, &ldquo;Stay! Stay, and see what is come!&rdquo; and under the
+      very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them. In the wild torrent of
+      his madness he called them by names they knew and by names they did not
+      know&mdash;Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu&mdash;and at every new name he
+      laughed again. And while he carried himself so in the outer court the
+      slave woman Fatimah came from the inner room with word that the child was
+      born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Israel was like a man distraught. He leapt up from the table and
+      faced full upon his guests, and cried, &ldquo;Now you know what it is; and now
+      you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice with
+      me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!&rdquo; And he lifted
+      a winecup and drank himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into the
+      street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not drink?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Then listen to me.&rdquo; He dashed the winecup
+      out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor. His laughter
+      was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill cry. &ldquo;You
+      foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made me ashamed:
+      but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women to prophesy
+      that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and a
+      curse among my people; but God has this day given me a son like the best
+      of you. More than that&mdash;more than that&mdash;my son shall yet see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The slave woman was touching his arm. &ldquo;It is a girl,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;a girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, &ldquo;No matter! She
+      shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them mercy!
+      She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against them! She
+      shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate places! And now
+      you can go! Go! go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was
+      driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded and with their
+      eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in to
+      her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct, followed
+      him and listened from the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came from
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel said, &ldquo;How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and pride
+      of my pride?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said &ldquo;The Lord has counted my
+      prayer to me as sin&mdash;look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered out of his
+      dry throat, &ldquo;No, no, never believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, true, it is true,&rdquo; she moaned; &ldquo;the child has not uttered a cry,
+      and its eyelids have not blinked at the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never believe it, I say!&rdquo; Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his
+      arms to try it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon
+      the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the eyes
+      of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then his
+      limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his arms
+      and laid it again on its mother's bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ruth wept over it, saying, &ldquo;Even if it were a son never could it serve
+      in the synagogue! Never! Never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed
+      themselves into the chamber, and they cried, &ldquo;Peace! Peace!&rdquo; And old Judah
+      ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, &ldquo;Is it not
+      written that no one afflicted of God shall minister in His temples?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into the
+      face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he had
+      bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, &ldquo;What matter? Every
+      monkey is a gazelle to its mother!&rdquo; But after that he staggered, his knees
+      gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a falling horse,
+      and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with water;
+      but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves, &ldquo;The Lord
+      killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and into the pit
+      that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to slip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object of
+      contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low, God
+      Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him mercy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult him.
+      And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the rabble
+      to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus, they
+      would call their dogs and their asses by his name, and the dogs would be
+      the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses the laziest in the market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at the
+      gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of pack-mules
+      to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily, &ldquo;Accursed
+      old Israel! Get on home to your mother!&rdquo; Then, turning quickly round, he
+      would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent countenance
+      was cudgelling his donkey by that title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound
+      of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white
+      walls crying &ldquo;Allah! Allah! Allah!&rdquo; would suddenly change their cry to
+      &ldquo;Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Go on! Go on! Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of
+      laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his
+      direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his
+      voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God's
+      displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight
+      of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber&mdash;they all despised him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed
+      him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his
+      soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with God
+      had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form of
+      warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other, the
+      better for his person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known as
+      Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other than the
+      late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman, though by
+      another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan's brother in Morocco is not
+      to be a Sultan's favourite, but a possible aspirant to his throne.
+      Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the Sultan's army,
+      and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry. In that capacity he
+      had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni Hasan, the Beni Idar,
+      and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit the country near to
+      Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been first directed to that
+      town. When he had returned from his expedition he offered the Sultan
+      fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha or Governor, and
+      promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute. The Sultan took
+      his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha at Tetuan already,
+      but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man was summoned to the
+      Sultan's presence, accused of appropriating the Shereefian tributes,
+      stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of how
+      Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no less
+      curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious
+      transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He was
+      a valiant soldier&mdash;the black blood of his slave-mother had counted
+      for so much; but he was a bad administrator&mdash;he could neither read
+      nor write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would
+      have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this man
+      had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him. He
+      had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and his
+      Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters of his
+      name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel, his scribe the notary, Hosain ben
+      Hashem, styled Haj, because he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but he
+      was also the Imam, or head of the Mosque, and the wily Ben Aboo foresaw
+      the danger of some day coming into collision with the religious sentiment
+      of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed ben Arby, but the
+      judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he wanted a man who
+      should be under his hand. That was the combination of circumstances
+      whereby Israel came to Tetuan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master
+      entirely. He had carried the Basha's seal and acted for him in all affairs
+      of money. The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars, so that the
+      Basha had twenty thousand to the good. Then Ben Aboo's ambition began to
+      override itself. He started an oil-mill, and wanted Israel to select a
+      hundred houses owned by rich men, that he might compel each house to take
+      ten kollahs of oil&mdash;an extravagant quantity, at seven dollars for
+      each kollah&mdash;an exorbitant price. Israel had refused. &ldquo;It is not
+      just,&rdquo; he had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but
+      Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor had
+      pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a gross
+      and wicked tax, but Israel's answer had been the same. &ldquo;There is no evil
+      in the world but injustice,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;Do justice, and you do all that
+      God can ask or man expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have
+      been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by day.
+      Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn of that
+      day whereon he should need him no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But since the disaster which had befallen Israel's house everything had
+      undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious means
+      of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning the very air
+      itself into money&mdash;ransoms, promissory notes, and false judgments&mdash;but
+      Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to send his small
+      currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver dollars at the rate
+      of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was worth ten in currency. And
+      after certain of the shopkeepers, having changed fifty thousand dollars at
+      that rate, fled to the Sultan to complain, Israel advised that their
+      debtors should be called together, their debts purchased, and bonds drawn
+      up and certified for ten times the amounts of them. Thus a few were
+      banished from their homes in fear of imprisonment, many were sorely
+      harassed, and some were entirely ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public
+      streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and
+      their asses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty must
+      answer to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching at his
+      indignities nor glorying in his power. He beheld the wreck of families
+      without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry of children
+      without a qualm. Neither did he delight in the sufferings of them that had
+      derided him. His evil impulse was a higher matter&mdash;his faith in
+      justice had been broken up. He had been wrong. There was no such thing as
+      justice in the world, and there could, therefore, be no such thing as
+      injustice. There was no thing but the blind swirl of chance, and the wild
+      scramble for life. The man had quarrelled with God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel's heart was not yet dead. There was one place, where he who
+      bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great
+      tenderness. That place was his own home. What he saw there was enough to
+      stir the fountains of his being&mdash;nay, to exhaust them, and to send
+      him abroad as a river-bed that is dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before
+      the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of
+      himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only of the
+      babe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child was born blind and dumb and deaf. At the feast of life there was
+      no place left for it. So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall, and
+      called on God to take it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it!&rdquo; she cried&mdash;&ldquo;take it! Make haste, O God, make haste and
+      take it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself suckled
+      it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over it, and
+      she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little by little,
+      her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived her, and hour
+      by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side and whisper
+      &ldquo;Take heart of hope, O Ruth! God does not afflict willingly. Perhaps the
+      child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is not dumb. Who
+      shall ye say? Wait and see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no difference
+      in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she would kneel
+      by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an the eye was blue
+      and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the little cup was
+      broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she would look at the
+      pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and full as a shell on the
+      shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the sea was not heard in it,
+      and that all within was silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
+      &ldquo;It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and
+      see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue will
+      yet speak to me, and make me very glad.&rdquo; And then an ineffable serenity
+      would spread over her face and transfigure it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar with
+      the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its little
+      fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful perplexity
+      at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child did not open in seeing, but
+      lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that a child's ears should
+      hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a mother's love, and its tongue
+      begin to give back the words in lisping sounds, the ear of Ruth's child
+      heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ruth's spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to come
+      to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, &ldquo;Wait, Ruth; only wait,
+      only a little longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched
+      for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the
+      prattle of its little lips. But never a sound as of speech seemed to break
+      the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue, and never
+      once across her baby's face passed the light of her tearful smile. It was
+      a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful of all for the
+      pains she was at to conceal them. Thus, every day at midday she would
+      carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its eyes should blink in
+      the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon her then, she would drop
+      her head and say, &ldquo;How sweet the air is to-day, and how pleasant to sit in
+      the sun!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it is,&rdquo; he would answer, &ldquo;so it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the
+      court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if its
+      ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh&mdash;a little
+      shrill laugh like a cry&mdash;and cover her face in confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How merry you are, sweetheart,&rdquo; he would say, and then pass into the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw, and
+      pretending not to hear what he heard. But every day his heart bled at
+      sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very soul
+      had sickened, and he cried, &ldquo;Have done, Ruth!&mdash;for mercy's sake, have
+      done! The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison. Her eyes are
+      darkness, like the tomb's, and her ears are silence, like the grave's.
+      Never will she smile to her mother's smile, or answer to her father's
+      speech. The first sound she will hear will be the last trump, and the
+      first face she will see will be the face of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears. The hope
+      that she had cherished was dead. Israel could comfort her no longer. The
+      fountain of his own heart was dry. He drew a long breath, and went away to
+      his bad work at the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child lived and thrived. They had called her Naomi, as they had agreed
+      to do before she was born, though no name she knew of herself, and a
+      mockery it seemed to name her. At four years of age she was a creature of
+      the most delicate beauty. Notwithstanding her Jewish parentage, she was
+      fair as the day and fresh as the dawn. And if her eyes were darkness,
+      there was light within her soul; and if her ears were silence, there was
+      music within her heart. She was brighter than the sun which she could not
+      see, and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear. She was joyous
+      as a bird in its narrow cage, and never did she fret at the bars which
+      bound her. And, like the bird that sings at midnight, her cheery soul sang
+      in its darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was the
+      sound of laughter. With this she lay down to sleep at night, and rose
+      again in the morning. She laughed as she combed her hair, and laughed
+      again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the
+      sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day from the
+      night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark. She knew
+      her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by the
+      brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew in the fields
+      outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap, as
+      other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands. She seemed
+      almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she would twine
+      in her hair were red, and the white were those which she would lay on her
+      bosom. And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto the wind alone could
+      whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them
+      that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she knew
+      no delight like to that of playing with other children. But her father's
+      house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was allowed to
+      cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met in the fields
+      when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did she ever meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of the
+      isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel. She
+      herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi
+      was doubly and trebly alone&mdash;first, alone as a child that is the only
+      child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off
+      from the parents of other children; and yet again, once more, alone as a
+      child that is blind and dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him from the
+      Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and big innocent white
+      eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel. The boy's name was Ali,
+      and he was four years old. His father had killed his mother for infidelity
+      and neglect of their child, and, having no one to buy him out of prison,
+      he had that day been executed. Then little Ali had been left alone in the
+      world, and so Israel had taken him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him. He had been born a Mohammedan, but
+      secretly she brought him up as a Jew. And for some years thereafter no
+      difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes
+      could see. They ate together, they walked abroad together, they played
+      together, they slept together, and the little black head of the boy lay
+      with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles of
+      humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them. First, on Ali's
+      part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi, &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; she did not
+      hear, when he asked &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; she did not answer; and when he said &ldquo;Look!&rdquo;
+       she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed to gaze full into his face.
+      Then, a sort of amused bewilderment that her little nervous fingers were
+      always touching his arms and his hands, and his neck and his throat. But
+      long before he had come to know that Naomi was not as he was, that Nature
+      had not given her eyes to see as he saw, and ears to hear as he heard, and
+      a tongue to speak as he spoke, Nature herself had overstepped the barriers
+      that divided her from him. He found that Naomi had come to understand him,
+      whatever in his little way he did, and almost whatever in his little way
+      he said. So he played with her as he would have played with any other
+      playmate, laughing with her, calling to her, and going through his foolish
+      little boyish antics before her. Nevertheless, by some mysterious
+      knowledge of Nature's own teaching, he seemed to realise that it was his
+      duty to take care of her. And when the spirit and the mischief in his
+      little manly heart would prompt him to steal out of the house, and
+      adventure into the streets with Naomi by his side, he would be found in
+      the thick of the throng perhaps at the heels of the mules and asses, with
+      Naomi's hand locked in his hand, trying to push the great creatures of the
+      crowd from before her, and crying in his brave little treble, &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Ar-rah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ar-r-rah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Naomi, the coming of little black Ali was a wild delight to her.
+      Whatever Ali did, that would she do also. If he ran she would run; if he
+      sat she would sit; and meanwhile she would laugh with a heart of glee,
+      though she heard not what he said, and saw not what he did, and knew not
+      what he meant. At the time of the harvest, when Ruth took them out into
+      the fields, she would ride on Ali's back, and snatch at the ears of barley
+      and leap in her seat and laugh, yet nothing would she see of the yellow
+      corn, and nothing would she hear of the song of the reapers, and nothing
+      would she know of the cries of Ali, who shouted to her while he ran,
+      forgetting in his playing that she heard him not. And at night, when Ruth
+      put them to bed in their little chamber, and Ali knelt with his face
+      towards Jerusalem, Naomi would kneel beside him with a reverent air, and
+      all her laughter would be gone. Then, as he prayed his prayer, her little
+      lips would move as if she were praying too, and her little hands would be
+      clasped together, and her little eyes would be upraised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless father, and mother, and Naomi, and everybody,&rdquo; the black boy
+      would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the little maid would touch his hands and hi throat, and pass her
+      fingers over his face from his eyelids to his lips, and then do as he did,
+      and in her silence seem to echo him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pretty and piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One thing
+      at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison, nevertheless
+      it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it could not die, but
+      was immortal and unmaimed and waited only for the hour when it should be
+      linked to other souls, soul to soul in the chains of speech. But the years
+      went on, and Naomi grew in beauty and increased in sweetness, but no angel
+      came down to open the darkened windows of her eyes, and draw aside the
+      heavy curtains of her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE DEATH OF RUTH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      For all her joy and all her prettiness, Naomi was a burden which only love
+      could bear. To think of the girl by day, and to dream of her by night,
+      never to sit by her without pity of her helplessness, and never to leave
+      her without dread of the mischances that might so easily befall, to see
+      for her, to hear for her, to speak for her, truly the tyranny of the
+      burden was terrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth sank under it. Through seven years she was eyes of the child's eyes,
+      and ears of her ears, and tongue of her tongue. After that her own sight
+      became dim, and her hearing faint. It was almost as if she had spent them
+      on Naomi in the yearning of dove and pity. Soon afterwards her bodily
+      strength failed her also, and then she knew that her time had come, and
+      that she was to lay down her burden for ever. But her burden had become
+      dear, and she clung to it. She could not look upon the child and think it,
+      that she, who had spent her strength for her from the first, must leave
+      her now to other love and tending. So she betook herself to an upper room,
+      and gave strict orders to Fatimah and Habeebah that Naomi was to be kept
+      from her altogether, that sight of the child's helpless happy face might
+      tempt her soul no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there in her death-chamber Israel sat with her constantly, settling
+      his countenance steadfastly, and coming and going softly. He was more
+      constant than a slave, and more tender than a woman. His love was great,
+      but also he was eating out his big heart with remorse. The root of his
+      trouble was the child. He never talked of her, and neither did Ruth dwell
+      upon her name. Yet they thought of little else while they sat together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even if they had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to
+      say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings, no
+      simple broken speech, no pretty lisp&mdash;they had nothing to bring back
+      out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that lies
+      stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That way
+      everything was a waste. Always, as Israel entered her room, Ruth would
+      say, &ldquo;How is the child?&rdquo; And always Israel would answer, &ldquo;She is well.&rdquo;
+       But, if at that moment Naomi's laughter came up to them from the patio,
+      where she played with Ali, they would cover their faces and be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a melancholy parting. No one came near them&mdash;neither Moor nor
+      Jew, neither Rabbi nor elder. The idle women of the Mellah would sometimes
+      stand outside in the street and look up at their house, knowing that the
+      black camel of death was kneeling at their gate. Other company they had
+      none. In such solitude they passed four weeks, and when the time of the
+      end seemed near, Israel himself read aloud the prayer for the dying, the
+      prayer Shema' Yisrael, and Ruth repeated the words of it after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, while Ruth lay in the upper chamber little Naomi sported and
+      played in the patio with Ali, but she missed her mother constantly. This
+      she made plain by many silent acts of helpless love that knew no way to
+      speak aloud. Thus she would lay flowers on the seats where her mother had
+      used to sit, and, if at night she found them untouched where she had left
+      them, her little face would fall, and her laughter die off her lips; but
+      if they had withered and some one had cast them into the oven, she would
+      laugh again and fetch other flowers from the fields, until the house would
+      be full of the odour of the meadow and the scent of the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And well they knew, who looked upon her then, whom she missed, and what
+      the question was that halted on her tongue; yet how could they answer her?
+      There was no way to do that until she herself knew how to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this she did on a day near to the end. It was evening, and she was
+      being put to bed by Habeebah, and had just risen from her innocent
+      pantomime of prayer beside Ali, when Israel, coming from Ruth's chamber,
+      entered the children's room. Then, touching with her hand the seat whereon
+      Ruth had used to sit, Naomi laid down her head on the pillow, and then
+      rose and lay down again, and rose yet again and rose yet again lay down,
+      and then came to where Israel was and stood before him. And at that Israel
+      knew that the soul of his helpless child had asked him, as plainly as
+      words of the tongue can speak, how often she should lie to sleep at night
+      and rise to play in the morning before her mother came to her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears gushed into his eyes, and he left the children and returned to
+      his wife's chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruth,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;call the child to you, I beseech you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; cried Ruth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her come to you and touch you and kiss you, and be with you before it
+      is too late,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;She misses you, and fills the house with
+      flowers for you. It breaks my heart to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will break mine also,&rdquo; said Ruth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she consented that Naomi should be called, and Fatimah was sent to
+      fetch her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was setting, and through the window which looked out to the west,
+      over the river and the orange orchards and the palpitating plains beyond,
+      its dying rays came into the room in a bar of golden light. It fell at
+      that instant on Ruth's face, and she was white and wasted. And through the
+      other window of the room, which looked out over the Mellah into the town,
+      and across the market-place to the mosque and to the battery on the hill,
+      there came up from the darkening streets below the shuffle of the feet of
+      a crowd and the sound of many voices. The Jews of Tetuan were trooping
+      back to their own little quarter, that their Moorish masters might lock
+      them into it for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her nightdress.
+      She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she laughed as Fatimah
+      held her by the hand, and danced as she was led to her mother's chamber.
+      But when she was come to the door of it, suddenly her laughter ceased, and
+      her little face sobered, as if something in the close abode of pain had
+      troubled the senses that were left to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, perhaps, the most touching experience of the deaf and blind that no
+      greeting can ever welcome them. When Naomi stood like a little white
+      vision at the threshold of the room, Israel took her hand in silence, and
+      drew her up to the pillow of the bed where her mother rested, and in
+      silence Ruth brought the child to her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Naomi seemed to be perplexed. She touched her mother's
+      fingers, and they were changed, for they had grown thin and long. Then she
+      felt her face, and that was changed also, for it was become withered and
+      cold. And, missing the grasp of one and the smile of the other, she first
+      turned her little head aside as one that listens closely, and then gently
+      withdrew herself from the arms that held her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth had watched her with eyes that overflowed, and now she burst into
+      sobs outright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child does not know me!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Did I not tell you it would
+      break my heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try her again,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;try her again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back to
+      her side. Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck, she
+      bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were on her
+      wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child. This she
+      did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind to her always.
+      But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only to know, by the
+      quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely, and giving no
+      thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp of recognition and
+      the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again from her mother's arms, and
+      bounded into the middle of the room, and suddenly began to laugh and to
+      dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun's dying light, which had rested on Ruth's wasted face, now
+      glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed on her blind
+      eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened her white nightdress,
+      while she danced and laughed to her mother's death. Nothing did the child
+      know of death, any more than Adam himself before Abel was slain, and it
+      was almost as if a devil out of hell had entered into her innocent heart
+      and possessed it, that she might make a mock of the dying of the dearest
+      friend she had known on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child's
+      uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down at
+      speech, but wildly and deliriously. The room was darkening fast, but still
+      across the nether end, by the foot of the bed, streamed the dull red bar
+      of sunlight with the little red figure leaping and prancing and laughing
+      in the midst of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to the
+      wall. The black woman dropped her head that she might not see. And Israel
+      covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, &ldquo;O Lord God, long hast
+      Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with scorpions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth recovered herself quickly. &ldquo;Bring her to me again!&rdquo; she faltered; and
+      once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside. Then, embracing and
+      kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her trouble
+      that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, &ldquo;It's your mother, Naomi! your
+      mother, darling, though so sick and changed! Don't you know her, Naomi?
+      Your mother, your own mother, sweet one, your dear mother who loves you
+      so, and must leave you now and see you no more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness of the
+      child at last, only God Himself can say. But first Naomi's cheeks grew
+      pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they reddened, and
+      then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth's hands again, and then
+      her little lips trembled, and then, at length, she flung herself along
+      Ruth's bosom and nestled close in her embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman stood
+      and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any longer
+      was melted and unmanned. The sun had gone down, and the room was darkening
+      rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short; the streets were quiet,
+      and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret was chanting in the silence,
+      &ldquo;God is great, God is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother's bosom, and, seeing
+      this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back to her own
+      bed; but Ruth said, &ldquo;No; leave her, let me have her with me while I may.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one shall take her from you,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she gazed down at the child's face and said, &ldquo;It is hard to leave her
+      and never once to have heard her voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the bitterest cup of all,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not return to her,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;but she shall come to me, and
+      then, perhaps&mdash;who knows?&mdash;perhaps in the resurrection I shall
+      hear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, &ldquo;My helpless darling! Who
+      will care for you when I am gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rest, rest, and sleep!&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, I know,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;How foolish of me! You are her father, and
+      you love her also. Yet promise me&mdash;promise&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For love and tending she shall never lack,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;And now lie you
+      still, my dearest; lie still and sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stretched out her hand to him. &ldquo;Yes, that was what I meant,&rdquo; she said,
+      and smiled. Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom. &ldquo;But when I am
+      gone,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;will Naomi ever know that her mother who is dead had
+      wronged her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have never wronged her,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Have done, oh, have done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God punished us for our prayer, my husband,&rdquo; said Ruth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace, peace!&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But God is good,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;and surely He will not afflict our child
+      much longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! Hush! You will awaken her,&rdquo; said Israel, not thinking what he said.
+      &ldquo;Now lie still and sleep, dearest. You are tired also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay quiet for a time, gazing, while the light remained, into the face
+      of the sleeping child, and listening, when the light failed, to her gentle
+      breathing. Then she babbled and crooned over her with a childish joy.
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, father is right, and mother must lie quiet&mdash;very quiet,
+      and so her little Naomi will sleep long&mdash;very long, and wake happy
+      and well in the morning. How bonny she will look! How fresh and rosy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused a moment. Her laboured breathing came quick and fast. &ldquo;But
+      shall I be here to see her? shall I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused again, and then, as though to banish thought, she began to sing
+      in a low voice that was like a moan. Presently her singing ceased, and she
+      spoke again, but this time in broken whispers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How soft and glossy her hair is! I wonder if Fatimah will remember to
+      wash it every day. She should twist it around her fingers to keep it in
+      pretty curls. . . . Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . .
+      Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves, it's a chance
+      if Habeebah has seen to it. Then there's her underclothing. . . . Will she
+      be deaf and blind and dumb always? I wonder if I shall see her when I. . .
+      . They say that angels are sent. . . . Yes, yes, that's it, when I am
+      there&mdash;there&mdash;I will go to God and say, 'O Lord! my little girl
+      whom I have left behind, she is. . . . You would never think, O Lord, how
+      many things may happen to one like her. Let me go&mdash;only let me watch
+      over her&mdash;O Lord, let me be her guar&mdash;'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her weakness had conquered her, and she was quiet at last. Israel sat in
+      silence by the post of the bed. His heart was surging itself out of his
+      choking breast. The black woman stood somewhere by the wall. After a time
+      Ruth seemed to awake as from sleep. She was in great excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Israel, Israel!&rdquo; she cried in a voice of joy, &ldquo;I have seen a vision. It
+      was Naomi. She was no longer deaf and blind and dumb. She was grown to be
+      a woman, but I knew her instantly. Not a woman either, but a young maiden,
+      and so beautiful, so beautiful! Yes, and she could see and hear and
+      speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel thought Ruth had become delirious, and he tried to soothe her, but
+      her agitation was not to be overcome. &ldquo;The Lord hath seen our tears at
+      last,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;He has put our sin beneath His feet. We are forgiven.
+      It will be well with the child yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not try to gainsay her, and at sight and sound of her joy,
+      seeing it so beautiful, yet thinking it so vain, he could not help at last
+      but weep. Presently she became quiet again, and then again, after a little
+      while, she woke as from a sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am ready now,&rdquo; she said in a whisper, &ldquo;quite ready, sweet Heaven,
+      quite, quite ready now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then with her one free hand she felt in the darkness for Israel, where he
+      sat beside her, and touching his forehead she smoothed it, and said very
+      softly, &ldquo;Farewell, my husband!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel answered her, &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel drew down her hand from his forehead to his lips and sobbed,
+      and said, &ldquo;Good-night, beloved!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she put her white lips to the child's blind eyes, and at that moment
+      the spirit of the Lord came to her, and the Lord took her, and she died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw that the end
+      had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth's bosom, but the child
+      awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers about the
+      dead mother's neck and covered the mouth with kisses. And when she felt
+      that the lips did not answer to her lips, and that the arms which had held
+      her did not hold her any longer, but fell away useless, she clung the
+      closer, and tears started to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      RUTH'S BURIAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth of his
+      sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him. By noon of the day
+      following the night of Ruth's death, Israel knew that he was to be left
+      alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death
+      in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the
+      first service thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra
+      Kadisha of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make
+      arrangements for burial. Early prayers had been held in the synagogue at
+      eight o'clock that morning, and no one had yet come near to Israel's
+      house. The men of the Hebra were going about their ordinary occupations.
+      They knew nothing of Ruth's death by official announcement. The clerk had
+      not published it. Israel remembered with bitterness that notice of it had
+      not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout Tetuan. There
+      was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken it to each house
+      he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little groups of idle
+      Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the streets outside,
+      talking of it in whispers and looking up at the darkened windows with awe.
+      But the synagogue knew nothing of it. Israel had omitted the customary
+      ceremony, and in that omission lay the advantage of his enemies. He must
+      humble himself and send to them. Until he did so they would leave him
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not send. Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed
+      the threshold of the synagogue. He would not cross it now, whether in body
+      or in spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he had lost
+      the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews that a body
+      should be buried within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from the time of
+      death. He must do something immediately. Some help must be summoned. What
+      help could it be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless to think of the Muslimeen. No believer would lend a hand to
+      dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead. It was
+      just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of this
+      burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that he would have
+      need to know more. And of Christians of any sort or condition there were
+      none in all Tetuan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gall of Israel's heart rose to his throat. Was he to be left alone
+      with his dead wife? Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave
+      with his own hands? Or did they expect him to come to them with bowed
+      forehead and bended knee? Either way their reckoning was a mistake. They
+      might leave him terribly and awfully alone&mdash;alone in his hour of
+      mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when he
+      had married the dear soul who was dead. But his strength and energy they
+      should not crush: his vital and intellectual force they should not wither
+      away. Only one thing they could do to touch him&mdash;they could shrivel
+      up his last impulse of sweet human sympathy. They were doing it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message to the
+      Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six State prisoners,
+      fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed by
+      Jewish custom. It was twilight when the body was brought down from the
+      upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that had been
+      raised for it on chairs standing back to back. And there, too, sat Israel,
+      with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock, and his
+      dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.
+      Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself, down to the
+      least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in the larger
+      sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his riches except
+      to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down and to abash the enemies
+      who still menaced him. Nothing was lacking that money could buy in Tetuan
+      to make this burial an imposing ceremony. Only one thing it wanted&mdash;it
+      wanted mourners, and it had but one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited. She ran to and fro,
+      clutched at Israel's clothes and seemed to look into his face, clasped the
+      hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear. Whether she knew what
+      work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or sense she
+      learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the presence of many
+      strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah brought the roll of
+      white linen down the stairway, with the two black women clinging to it,
+      kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke away from Israel and
+      rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her little white arms
+      upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need to check her. The
+      moment she had touched her mother she crept back in dread to her father's
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be gracious to my father, look at that,&rdquo; whispered Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child, my poor child,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;is there but one thing in life
+      that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of
+      the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs
+      according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger had
+      wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had sunken
+      their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them, and
+      concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep, rich,
+      velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two remaining
+      prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand&mdash;the right
+      arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a
+      soldier, carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the
+      twilight, and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone. Thus
+      they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated at the
+      door, through the streets of the Mellah and out into the marketplace, and
+      up the narrow lane that leads to the chief town gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage, and
+      the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel. As the procession went
+      through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent until it
+      had gone. Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing fowls and
+      taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work and fell back
+      as the procession approached. A blind beggar crouching at the other side
+      of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close at his
+      elbow were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were playing by
+      the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the procession
+      passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler was performing
+      before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller was shrieking to
+      the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the juggler broke up as the
+      procession appeared, and the ginbri of the storyteller was no more heard.
+      The hammering in the shops of the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling
+      of the bells of the water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from
+      the country were dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their
+      panniers full of street-filth, were drawn up by the wall. From the
+      market-place and out of the shops, out of the houses and out of the mosque
+      itself, the people came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close
+      line on either side of the course which the procession must take. And
+      through this avenue of onlookers the strange company made its way&mdash;the
+      two prisoners bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the
+      two soldiers carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported
+      and alone. Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of
+      the feet of the six men, and the clank of their chains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every one
+      knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet he
+      did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither to
+      the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the procession
+      came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white tombstones, all
+      pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock of sheep asleep
+      among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence, and no fence but a
+      hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi her
+      father. He had asked no man's permission to do so, but if no one had
+      helped at that day's business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
+      when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
+      forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch in
+      his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white
+      earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a
+      padlock and flung away the key. Last of all, when the body had been taken
+      out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in after it,
+      and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern. And then,
+      kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both his hands,
+      and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down at her where
+      she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the synagogue, and
+      speaking to her as though she heard: &ldquo;Ruth, my wife, my dearest, for the
+      cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered you to marry me,
+      being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people, forgive me now, my
+      beloved, and ask God to forgive me also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two
+      soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted man
+      kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the
+      custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet
+      no more until the resurrection itself reunited them! The traffic of the
+      streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel
+      had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for each
+      carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day following.
+      But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened mind. As he had
+      plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over his shoulder,
+      saying, &ldquo;They shall spring in the cities as the grass in the earth,&rdquo; he
+      had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the world were
+      peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was dead. God
+      had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert. Only one glimpse of
+      human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken from him for
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again. She was a
+      helpless exile among men, a creature banished from all human intercourse,
+      a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a good God who had
+      taken the mother from such a child&mdash;the child from such a mother?
+      Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not God but the
+      devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that governed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's loss
+      and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to be
+      saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
+      fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
+      strange and beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SPIRIT-MAID
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should not
+      lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time forward
+      he became as father and mother both to the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
+      it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of the
+      tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and blind,
+      but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied. It implied
+      that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest of the
+      family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart as if
+      she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could reach her in
+      joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In the midst of a
+      world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was in a world of
+      silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a living and
+      buried soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had memory,
+      for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had love, for she
+      had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love and memory
+      without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet locked in a
+      casket&mdash;idle and useless to any purposes of man or the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
+      affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
+      but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
+      twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not merely
+      to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
+      father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows he must have
+      soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
+      beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
+      must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
+      though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
+      might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if she
+      felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he must have
+      known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the world and what
+      the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book for her to read.
+      But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of being deaf, being
+      dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation of her state, the
+      blank void of her isolation&mdash;cut off, apart, aloof, shut in,
+      imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other souls: alive,
+      and yet dead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
+      Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and silent
+      soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to her, that
+      he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his own great
+      comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but the one
+      gift only whereof he had known from the beginning&mdash;the gift of touch
+      and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light should
+      always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or silence
+      should be her speech for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
+      stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not hear,
+      and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent to England
+      for many books written on the treatment of these children of affliction,
+      and when they were come he pondered them closely and was thrilled by the
+      marvellous works they described. But when he came to practise the precepts
+      they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the impediments were great.
+      Time after time he tried, and failed always, to touch by so much as one
+      shaft of light the hidden soul of the child through its tenement of flesh
+      and blood. Neither the simplest thought nor the poorest element of an idea
+      found any way to her mind, so dense were the walls of the prison that
+      encompassed it. &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; was a mystery that could not at first be revealed to
+      her, and &ldquo;No&rdquo; was a problem beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and
+      frowns were useless to teach her. No discipline could be addressed to her
+      mind or heart. Except mere bodily restraint, no control could be imposed
+      upon her. She was swayed by her impulses alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not despair. If he was broken down today he strengthened his
+      hands for tomorrow. At length he had got so far, after a world of toil and
+      thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was for approval,
+      and when he touched her hand it was for assent. Then he stopped very
+      suddenly. His hope had not drooped, and neither had his energy failed, but
+      the conviction had fastened upon him that such effort in his case must be
+      an offence against Heaven. Naomi was not merely an infirm creature from
+      the left hand of Nature; she was an afflicted being from the right hand of
+      God. She was a living monument of sin that was not her own. It was useless
+      to go farther. The child must be left where God had placed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human kind,
+      she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they possessed.
+      It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her, and from
+      that source alone could she have imbibed her power. To tell of all she
+      could do to guide her steps, and to minister to her pleasures, and to
+      cherish her affections, would be to go beyond the limit of belief. Truly
+      it seemed as if Naomi, being blind with her bodily eyes, could yet look
+      upon a light that no one else could see, and, being deaf with her bodily
+      ears, could yet listen to voices that no one else could hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew
+      when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.
+      Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears had
+      taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her hands to
+      take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it against her
+      cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms to encircle
+      his neck; and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to her bosom; and
+      always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by. Did she go with Ali into
+      the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of the town, and the
+      narrow lanes from the open Sok. Did she pass the lofty mosque in the
+      market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled under and behind
+      and around. Did a troop of mules and camels come near her, she knew them
+      from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two streets crossed, she
+      would stand and face both ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around
+      Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah and
+      the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river under
+      the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and even some
+      of their rocky gorges. She could find her way among them all without help
+      or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her to keep her out
+      of the way of harm. While Ali was a little fellow he was her constant
+      companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet heart
+      suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school every day
+      early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny white goat
+      which her father had bought to be another playfellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the crown
+      of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her feet felt
+      the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded whether the sun
+      was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from the rising of the
+      morning until the coming of the stars. So, casting off her slippers and
+      the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and clad in her white
+      woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of airy grace, and with
+      the little goat going before her, though she could neither see nor hear
+      it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery, and stand on the summit,
+      like a spirit poised in air. She could see nothing of the green valley
+      then stretched before her, or of the white town lying below, with its
+      domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult in her lofty place, and to
+      drink new life from the rush of mighty winds about her. Then coming back
+      to the dale, she would seem, to those who looked up at her, with fear and
+      with awe, to leap as the goat leapt in the rocky places; and as a bird
+      sweeps over the grass with wings outstretched, so with her arms spread
+      out, and her long fair hair flying loose, she would sweep down the hill,
+      as though her very tiptoes did not touch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were the
+      power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind, which
+      loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child into a
+      maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring, when the
+      rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were abroad, or
+      in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder thundered, her
+      restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic tumults, and if she
+      could escape the eyes that watched her she would run and race in the
+      tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter would be on her
+      lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and, having found her
+      in the pelting storm without covering on her head or shoes on her feet, he
+      would fetch her home by the hand, and as they passed through the streets
+      together his forehead would be bowed and his eyes bent down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
+      joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature of
+      joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
+      darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
+      though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did not
+      become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with a
+      child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
+      maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
+      seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant flowers
+      in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars of the
+      patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars that stood in
+      it. And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress increased as
+      well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things; it was a wild
+      passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled in native grace
+      about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness. She was happy as a
+      day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring. The ripple of her
+      laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed to follow in the
+      air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her father, she was as
+      a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel in
+      his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that the
+      little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling could
+      only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and many throbs
+      of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially at seasons when
+      no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful silence haunted the
+      air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick longing from causes that
+      were beyond Israel's power to fathom. Then her sweet face would sadden,
+      and her beautiful blind eyes would fill, and her pretty laughter would
+      echo no more through the house. And sometimes, in the dead of the night,
+      she would rise from her bed and go through the dark corridors, for
+      darkness and light were as one to her, until she came to Israel's room,
+      and he would awake from his sleep to find her, like a little white vision,
+      standing by his bedside. What she wanted there he could never know, for
+      neither had he power to ask nor she to answer, whether she were sick or in
+      pain, or whether in her sleep she had seen a face from the invisible
+      world, and heard a voice that called her away, or whether her mother's
+      arms had seemed to be about her once again and then to be torn from her
+      afresh, and she had come to him on awakening in her trouble, not knowing
+      what it is to dream, but thinking all evil dreams to be true fact and new
+      sorrow. So, with a sigh, he would arise and light his lamp and lead her
+      back to her bed, and more scalding than the tears that would be standing
+      in Naomi's eyes would be the hot drops that would gush into his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor darling,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;can you not tell me your trouble, that I
+      may comfort you? No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot comfort her. My
+      darling, my darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle out
+      of heaven to find a way to the little maiden's mind that she might ask and
+      answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it, for still greater than
+      his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath of God. And out of this
+      fear there came to him at length an awful and terrible thought: though so
+      severed on earth, his child and he, yet before the bar of judgment they
+      would one day be brought together, and then how should it stand with her
+      soul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man. Would God
+      condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever? No, no, no! God would not
+      ask her for good works in the land of silence, and for labour in the land
+      of night. She had no eyes to see God's beautiful world, and no ears to
+      hear His holy word. God had created her so, and He would not destroy what
+      He had made. Far rather would He look with love and pity on His little
+      one, so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to be a
+      blessed saint in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain. He was a Jew
+      to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself out of his own
+      mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God's will, that had sent
+      Naomi into the world as she was. Then, on the day of the great account,
+      how should he answer to her for her soul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul that knew
+      not God. These were the most awful terrors of his sleepless nights, but at
+      length peace came to him, for he saw his path of duty. It was his duty to
+      Naomi that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the Lord to
+      her! What matter if she could not hear? Though she had senses as the sands
+      of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could lead her.
+      What matter though she could not see? The soul was the eye that saw God,
+      and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and led
+      her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and, fetching from
+      a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her of the
+      commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets, and of the Kings.
+      And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet, with his one free hand
+      in both of her hands, clasped close against her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom, what mystery
+      it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks into darkness could
+      see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun had set&mdash;for she
+      knew when the sun was gone&mdash;Naomi herself would take her father by
+      the hand, and lead him to the upper room, and fetch the book to his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,
+      and make a mock at him, and say, &ldquo;The child is deaf and hears not&mdash;go
+      read your book in the tombs!&rdquo; But he only hardened his neck and laughed
+      proudly. And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say, &ldquo;Why waste
+      yourself in this misspent desire? The child is buried while she is still
+      alive, and who shall roll away the stone?&rdquo; But Israel only answered, &ldquo;It
+      is for the Lord to do miracles, and the Lord is mighty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night, and when
+      his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice would be hoarse,
+      and he would read the law which says, &ldquo;<i>Thou shalt not curse the deaf,
+      nor put a stumbling-block before the blind.</i>&rdquo; But when his heart was at
+      peace his voice would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel
+      sanctified to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he
+      answered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
+      and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp of
+      God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was, and
+      Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel, and he
+      answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou
+      calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and
+      lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and went
+      to Eli and said, Here am I for thou didst call me. And he answered, I
+      called not my son; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord,
+      neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book, and sing
+      out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says, &ldquo;It is good for me that I
+      have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read of
+      the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter, who was both blind
+      and deaf. And though Naomi heard not, and neither did she see, yet in
+      their silent hour together there was another in their chamber always with
+      them&mdash;there was a third, for there was God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then
+      fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife. The
+      woman's name was Katrina. She was a Spaniard by birth, and had first come
+      to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy, which travelled through
+      Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez. What her belongings were, and what
+      her antecedents had been, no one appeared to know, nor did Ben Aboo
+      himself seem to care. She answered all his present needs in her own
+      person, which was ample in its proportions and abundant in its charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions. The first
+      was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement of four
+      Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as the many concubines
+      that he had annexed in his way through life, and now kept lodged in one
+      unquiet nest in the women's hidden quarter of the Palace. The second
+      condition was, that she herself should never be banished to such
+      seclusion, but, like the wife of any European governor, should openly
+      share the state of her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan, and
+      he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to abide by,
+      but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a prelude to that
+      public life which she intended to live by his side, she insisted on a
+      public marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church by a
+      Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival lasted six
+      days. Great was the display, and lavish the outlay. Every morning the
+      cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill, every evening the
+      tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats of powder-play in
+      the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa from Mequinez yelled
+      and shrieked in the enclosure called the M'salla, near the Bab er-Remoosh.
+      Feasts were spread in the Kasbah, and relays of guests from among the
+      chief men of the town were invited daily to partake of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute of a
+      present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light of
+      their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though it galled
+      the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage of a Christian and a
+      Muslim&mdash;no man except Israel, and he excused himself with what grace
+      he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick with sorrow of the
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid. She had taken her measure of the
+      man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel should pay her
+      court and tribute before all. Therefore she caused him to be invited
+      again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman, and with some lack
+      of courtesy he excused himself afresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katrina was not yet done. She was a creature of resource, and having heard
+      of Naomi with strange stories concerning her, she devised a children's
+      feast for the last day of the marriage festival, and caused Ben Aboo to
+      write to Israel a formal letter, beginning &ldquo;To our well-beloved the
+      excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise to the one God,&rdquo; and setting forth that
+      on the morrow, when the &ldquo;Sun of the world&rdquo; should &ldquo;place his foot in the
+      stirrup of speed,&rdquo; and gallop &ldquo;from the kingdom of shades,&rdquo; the Governor
+      would &ldquo;hold a gathering of delight&rdquo; for all the children of Tetuan and he,
+      Israel, was besought to &ldquo;lighten it with the rays of his face, rivalled
+      only by the sun,&rdquo; and to bring with him his little daughter Naomi, whose
+      arrival &ldquo;similar to a spring breeze,&rdquo; should &ldquo;dissipate the dark night of
+      solitude and isolation.&rdquo; This despatch written in the common cant of the
+      people, concluded with quotations from the Prophet on brotherly love and a
+      significant and more sincere assurance that the Basha would not admit of
+      excuses &ldquo;of the thickness of a hair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious. He leapt
+      to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi, the Spanish
+      woman, who must know of the child's condition desired only to make a show
+      of it. But, after a fume, he put that thought from him as uncharitable and
+      unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi's
+      own eagerness must have driven it away. The little maid seemed to know
+      that something unusual was going on. Troops of poor villagers from every
+      miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating
+      drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them&mdash;bullocks,
+      cows, and sheep&mdash;and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and
+      were glad. Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in the
+      marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle
+      everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement. The
+      children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had been
+      summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be dancing and
+      singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself, who had lately
+      practised the kanoon&mdash;the lute, the harp&mdash;under his teacher, was
+      to show his skill before the Governor. Therefore, great was the little
+      black man's excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would talk to every
+      one of the event forthcoming&mdash;to Fatima, to Habeebah, and often to
+      Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to him, or
+      perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him, and then,
+      thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them like a
+      fury, and they would scamper away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and
+      Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs. Every child
+      carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then a girl
+      with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling them
+      close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly happy in
+      their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree of the
+      knowledge of good and evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and
+      followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the
+      lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through the
+      iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women stood
+      together closely covered in their blankets&mdash;the mothers and sisters
+      of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into the Kasbah,
+      but allowed to go no farther&mdash;then down the crooked passage, past the
+      tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and finally into
+      the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a great
+      company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors, Arabs,
+      Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white and blue and
+      black and red&mdash;they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and, perhaps, a
+      beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every eye
+      was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made for them, he
+      heard the whispered exclamations of the people. &ldquo;Shoof!&rdquo; muttered a Moor.
+      &ldquo;See!&rdquo; &ldquo;It's himself,&rdquo; said a Jew. &ldquo;And the child,&rdquo; said another Jew.
+      &ldquo;Allah has smitten her,&rdquo; said an Arab &ldquo;Blind and dumb and deaf,&rdquo; said
+      another Moor &ldquo;God be gracious to my father!&rdquo; said another Arab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and from
+      the flat roof above it the women of the Governor's hareem, not yet
+      dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were
+      gazing furtively down from behind their haiks. There was a fountain in the
+      middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an alcove that
+      opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with stalactites,
+      against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat rugs of many
+      colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at the
+      instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome woman,
+      but plainly a heartless one&mdash;selfish, vain, and vulgar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina drew
+      Naomi to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?&rdquo; said
+      Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman's
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The darling is as fair as an angel,&rdquo; said Katrina, and she kissed Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a pretty
+      and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the black shadows
+      of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people massed around the
+      patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going in the middle of it.
+      First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered hazzams dancing after
+      their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting and turning, but
+      keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then, a line of Jewish
+      girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish manner tripping on
+      their slippered toes, whirling and turning around with rapid motions, and
+      playing timbrels and tambourines held high above their heads by their
+      shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the Koran chanted by a group of
+      Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and chocolate and white, peaked
+      above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in
+      their black skull-caps&mdash;a brave old song of Zion sung by silvery
+      young voices in an alien land. Finally, little black Ali, led out by his
+      teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in his hands, showing no fear at
+      all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of pleasure&mdash;his head aside,
+      his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting, and his face aglow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been agitated
+      and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes playing with
+      her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers. It was as though
+      she was conscious of the fine show which was going forward, and knew that
+      they were children who were making it. Perhaps the breath of the little
+      ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or perhaps the light air made by
+      the sweep of their garments was wafted to her sensitive body. Whatsoever
+      the sense whereby the knowledge came to her, clearly it was there in her
+      flushed and twitching face, which was full of that old hunger for
+      child-company which Israel knew too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
+      his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement. The girl leaped
+      up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost rapidity of
+      motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to the boy's
+      side. And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it, and then a
+      low cry came from her lips. Again she touched it, and her eyes, though
+      blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire. Then, with both her hands
+      she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she kissed it, while her
+      whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with wild
+      thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope. As well as he could
+      in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the little
+      maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave her!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let us see what the child will do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Ali's playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp pass
+      to Naomi's clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling on the
+      ground beside it, the girl took it to herself. She caressed it, she patted
+      it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then a faint smile crossed
+      her rosy lips. She laid her cheek against it and touched its strings
+      again, and then she laughed aloud. She flung off her slippers and the
+      garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid her pure flesh against
+      the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and touched its strings once
+      more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious
+      saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds
+      so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet
+      heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes of
+      a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds such as
+      no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion
+      to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found
+      to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them some
+      of the sensations of sound&mdash;the trembling of the air after thunder,
+      the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls
+      after the ringing of mighty bells&mdash;so Naomi, who was blind as well
+      and had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up
+      the force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this
+      instrument of music the movement of things that moved about her&mdash;the
+      patter of the leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl
+      of the great winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the
+      rippling of the levanter in her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion
+      in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the
+      music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings of the
+      harp. But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of
+      sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it. She lifted her
+      head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she played,
+      she laughed again and again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the
+      beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through the
+      robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white fingers
+      flying across the strings. There was something gruesome and awful, as
+      well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard nothing of
+      the sounds that her fingers were making.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was agape.
+      And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from their first
+      surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words they passed
+      between them. &ldquo;Where has she learnt it?&rdquo; asked a Moor. &ldquo;From her master
+      himself,&rdquo; muttered a Jew. &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; asked the Moor. &ldquo;Beelzebub,&rdquo;
+       growled the Jew. &ldquo;God pity me, the evil eye is on her,&rdquo; said an Arab. &ldquo;God
+      will show,&rdquo; said a Shereef from Wazzan. &ldquo;They say her mother was a
+      childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah's blessing at the tomb
+      of Rabbi Amran.&rdquo; &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Arab; &ldquo;she sent her girdle.&rdquo; &ldquo;Anyhow, the
+      child is a saint,&rdquo; whispered the Shereef. &ldquo;No, but a devil,&rdquo; snorted the
+      Jew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brava, brava, brava!&rdquo; cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered and
+      laughed as the girl played. &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; she said, looking
+      toward her husband. &ldquo;The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either. Oh, it's
+      a brave imposture! Brava, brave!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded, her head
+      dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp and
+      sighed audibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good again!&rdquo; cried the woman. &ldquo;Very good!&rdquo; and she clapped her hands,
+      whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread, felt
+      constrained to follow her example, and they cheered in their wilder way,
+      but the Jews continued to mutter, &ldquo;Beelzebub, Beelzebub!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind and the
+      confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight of what Naomi did. Had
+      God opened a gateway to her soul? Were the poor wings of her spirit to
+      spread themselves out at last? Was this, then, the way of speech that
+      Heaven had given her? But hardly had Israel overflowed with the tenderness
+      of such thoughts when the bleating and barking of the faces about him
+      awakened his anger. Then, like blows on his brain, came the cries of the
+      wife of the Governor, who cheered this awakening of the girl's soul as it
+      were no better than a vulgar show; and at that Israel's wrath rose to his
+      throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brava, brava!&rdquo; cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel, she said,
+      &ldquo;You shall leave the child with me. I must have her with me always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's throat seemed to choke him at that word. He looked at Katrina,
+      and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and vain of heart, who had
+      married Ben Aboo because he was rich. Then he looked at Naomi, and
+      remembered that her heart was clear as the water, and sweet as the
+      morning, and pure as the snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the
+      people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to take
+      up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the spell
+      had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp, her head had
+      dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take her in!&rdquo; said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped up
+      to where the little maiden lay. But before they had touched her Israel
+      strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as you are bidden&mdash;take her in!&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.
+      Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up the
+      unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor, but
+      my child belongs to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms, and
+      in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed to know
+      what he had done until he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event he
+      found courage in his heart to begin his task again. Let his enemies bleat
+      and bark &ldquo;Beelzebub,&rdquo; yet the child was an angel, though suffering for his
+      sin, and her soul was with God. She was a spirit, and the songs she had
+      played were the airs of paradise. But, comforting himself so, Israel
+      remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered her powers. He
+      had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death, but would the Lord
+      yet bring it to pass? Would God in His mercy some day take the angel out
+      of his house, though so strangely gifted, so radiant and beautiful and
+      joyful, and give him instead for the hunger of his heart as a man this
+      sweet human child, his little, fair-haired Naomi, though helpless and
+      simple and weak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Israel's instinct had been sure: the coming of Katrina proved to be the
+      beginning of his end. He kept his office, but he lost his power. No longer
+      did he work his own will in Tetuan; he was required to work the will of
+      the woman. Katrina's will was an evil one, and Israel got the blame of it,
+      for still he seemed to stand in all matters of tribute and taxation
+      between the people and the Governor. It galled him to take the woman's
+      wages, but it vexed him yet more to do her work. Her work was to burden
+      the people with taxes beyond all their power of paying; her wages was to
+      be hated as the bane of the bashalic, to be clamoured against as the
+      tyrant of Tetuan, and to be ridiculed by the very offal of the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day a gang of dirty Arabs in the market-place dressed up a blind
+      beggar in clothes such as Israel wore, and sent him abroad through the
+      town to beg as one that was destitute and in a miserable condition. But
+      nothing seemed to move Israel to pity. Men were cast into prison for no
+      reason save that they were rich, and the relations of such as were there
+      already were allowed to redeem them for money, so that no felon suffered
+      punishment except such as could pay nothing. People took fright and fled
+      to other cities. Israel's name became a curse and a reproach throughout
+      Barbary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all this time the man's soul was yearning with pity for the people.
+      Since the death of Ruth his heart had grown merciful. The care of the
+      child had softened him. It had brought him to look on other children with
+      tenderness, and looking tenderly on other children had led him to think of
+      other fathers with compassion. Young or old, powerful or weak, mighty or
+      mean, they were all as little children&mdash;helpless children who would
+      sleep together in the same bed soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thinking so, Israel would have undone the evil work of earlier years; but
+      that was impossible now. Many of them that had suffered were dead; some
+      that had been cast into prison had got their last and long discharge. At
+      least Israel would have relaxed the rigour whereby his master ruled, but
+      that was impossible also. Katrina had come, and she was a vain woman and a
+      lover of all luxury, and she commanded Israel to tax the people afresh. He
+      obeyed her through three bad years; but many a time his heart reproached
+      him that he dealt corruptly by the poor people, and when he saw them
+      borrowing money for the Governor's tributes on their lands and houses, and
+      when he stood by while they and their sons were cast into prison for the
+      bonds which they could not pay to the usurers Abraham or Judah or Reuben,
+      then his soul cried out against him that he ate the bread of such a
+      mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
+      sweetness, and out of this coming of the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo came
+      deliverance for Israel from the torment of his false position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an aged and pious Moor in Tetuan, called Abd Allah, who was
+      rumoured to have made savings from his business as a gunsmith. Going to
+      mosque one evening, with fifteen dollars in his waistband, he unstrapped
+      his belt and laid it on the edge of the fountain while he washed his feet
+      before entering, for his back was no longer supple. Then a younger Moor,
+      coming to pray at the same time, saw the dollars, and snatched them up and
+      ran. Abd Allah could not follow the thief, so he went to the Kasbah and
+      told his story to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at that time Ben Aboo had the Kaid of Fez on a visit to him. &ldquo;Ask him
+      how much more he has got,&rdquo; whispered the brother Kaid to Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abd Allah answered that he did not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you two hundred dollars for the chance of all he has,&rdquo; the Kaid
+      whispered again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five bees are better than a pannier of flies&mdash;done!&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Abd Allah was sold like a sheep and carried to Fez, and there cast into
+      prison on a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars imposed upon him on
+      the pretence of a false accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel sat by the Governor that day at the gate of the hall of justice,
+      and many poor people of the town stood huddled together in the court
+      outside while the evil work was done. No one heard the Kaid of Fez when he
+      whispered to Ben Aboo, but every one saw when Israel drew the warrant that
+      consigned the gunsmith to prison, and when he sealed it with the
+      Governor's seal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abd Allah had made no savings, and, being too old for work, he had lived
+      on the earnings of his son. The son's name was Absalam (Abd es-Salem), and
+      he had a wife whom he loved very tenderly, and one child, a boy of six
+      years of age. Absalam followed his father to Fez, and visited him in
+      prison. The old man had been ordered a hundred lashes, and the flesh was
+      hanging from his limbs. Absalam was great of heart, and, in pity of his
+      father's miserable condition he went to the Governor and begged that the
+      old man might be liberated, and that he might be imprisoned instead. His
+      petition was heard. Abd Allah was set free, Absalam was cast into prison,
+      and the penalty was raised from two hundred and fifty dollars to three
+      hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel heard of what had happened, and he hastened to Ben Aboo, in great
+      agitation, intending to say &ldquo;Pay back this man's ransom, in God's name,
+      and his children and his children's children will live to bless you.&rdquo; But
+      when he got to the Kasbah, Katrina was sitting with her husband, and at
+      sight of the woman's face Israel's tongue was frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Absalam had been the favourite of his neighbours among all the gunsmiths
+      of the market-place, and after he had been three months at Fez they made
+      common cause of his calamities, sold their goods at a sacrifice, collected
+      the three hundred dollars of his fine, bought him out of prison, and went
+      in a body through the gate to meet him upon his return to Tetuan. But his
+      wife had died in the meantime of fear and privation, and only his aged
+      father and his little son were there to welcome him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends,&rdquo; he said to his neighbours standing outside the walls, &ldquo;what is
+      the use of sowing if you know not who will reap?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No use, no use!&rdquo; answered several voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If God gives you anything, this man Israel takes it away,&rdquo; said Absalam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, true! Curse him! Curse his relations!&rdquo; cried the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why go back into Tetuan?&rdquo; said Absalam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tangier is no better,&rdquo; said one. &ldquo;Fez is worse,&rdquo; said another. &ldquo;Where is
+      there to go?&rdquo; said a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into the plains,&rdquo; said Absalam&mdash;&ldquo;into the plains and into the
+      mountains, for they belong to God alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That word was like the flint to the tinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They who have least are richest, and they that have nothing are best off
+      of all,&rdquo; said Absalam, and his neighbours shouted that it was so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will clothe us as He clothes the fields,&rdquo; said Absalam, &ldquo;and feed our
+      children as He feeds the birds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In three days' time ten shops in the market-place, on the side of the
+      Mosque, were sold up and closed, and the men who had kept them were gone
+      away with their wives and children to live in tents with Absalam on the
+      barren plains beyond the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel heard of what had been done he secretly rejoiced; but Ben Aboo
+      was in a commotion of fear, and Katrina was fierce with anger, for the
+      doctrine which Absalam had preached to his neighbours outside the walls
+      was not his own doctrine merely, but that of a great man lately risen
+      among the people, called Mohammed of Mequinez, nicknamed by his enemies
+      Mohammed the Third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This madness is spreading,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Katrina; &ldquo;and if all men follow where these men lead, who will
+      supply the tables of Kaids and Sultans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do with them?&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat them up,&rdquo; said Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo proceeded to put a literal interpretation upon his wife's
+      counsel. With a company of cavalry he prepared to follow Absalam and his
+      little fellowship, taking Israel along with him to reckon their taxes,
+      that he might compel them to return to Tetuan, and be town-dwellers and
+      house-dwellers and buy and sell and pay tribute as before, or else deliver
+      themselves to prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Absalam and his people had secret word that the Governor was coming
+      after them, and Israel with him. So they rolled their tents, and fled to
+      the mountains that are midway between Tetuan and the Reef country, and
+      took refuge in the gullies of that rugged land, living in caves of the
+      rock, with only the table-land of mountain behind them, and nothing but a
+      rugged precipice in front. This place they selected for its safety,
+      intending to push forward, as occasion offered, to the sanctuaries of
+      Shawan, trusting rather to the humanity of the wild people, called the
+      Shawanis, than to the mercy of their late cruel masters. But the valley
+      wherein they had hidden is thick with trees, and Ben Aboo tracked them and
+      came up with them before they were aware. Then, sending soldiers to the
+      mountain at the back of the caves, with instructions that they should come
+      down to the precipice steadily, and kill none that they could take alive,
+      Ben Aboo himself drew up at the foot of it, and Israel with him, and there
+      called on the people to come out and deliver themselves to his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the poor people came from their hiding-places and saw that they were
+      surrounded, and that escape was not left to them on any side, they thought
+      their death was sure. But without a shout or a cry they knelt, as with one
+      accord, at the mouth of the precipice, with their backs to it, men and
+      women and children, knee to knee in a line, and joined hands, and looked
+      towards the soldiers, who were coming steadily down on them. On and on the
+      soldiers came, eye to eye with the people, and their swords were drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel gasped for his breath, and waited to see the people cut in pieces
+      at the next instant, when suddenly they began to sing where they knelt at
+      the edge of the precipice, &ldquo;God is our refuge and our strength, a very
+      present help in trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment the soldiers had drawn up as if swords from heaven had
+      fallen on them, and Israel was crying out of his dry throat, &ldquo;Fear
+      nothing! Only deliver your bodies to the Governor, and none shall harm
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Absalam rose up from his knees and called to his father and his son. And
+      standing between them to be seen by all, and first looking upon both with
+      eyes of pity, he drew from the folds of his selham a long knife such as
+      the Reefians wear, and taking his father by his white hair he slew him and
+      cast his body down the rocks. After that he turned towards his son, and
+      the boy was golden-haired and his face was like the morning, and Israel's
+      heart bled to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absalam!&rdquo; he cried in a moving voice; &ldquo;Absalam, wait, wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Absalam killed his son also, and cast him down after his father. Then,
+      looking around on his people with eyes of compassion, as seeming to pity
+      them that they must fall again into the hands of Israel and his master, he
+      stretched out his knife and sheathed it in his own breast, and fell
+      towards the precipice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel covered his face and groaned in his heart, and said, &ldquo;It is the
+      end, O Lord God, it is the end&mdash;polluted wretch that I am, with the
+      blood of these people upon me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The companions of Absalam delivered themselves to the soldiers, who
+      committed them to the prison at Shawan, and Ben Aboo went home in content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rumour of what had come to pass was not long in reaching Tetuan, and
+      Israel was charged with the guilt of it. In passing through the streets
+      the next day on his way to his house the people hissed him openly. &ldquo;Allah
+      had not written it!&rdquo; a Moor shouted as he passed. &ldquo;Take care!&rdquo; cried an
+      Arab, &ldquo;Mohammed of Mequinez is coming!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It chanced that night, after sundown, when Naomi, according to her wont,
+      led her father to the upper room, and fetched the Book of the Law from the
+      cupboard of the wall and laid it upon his knees, that he read the passage
+      whereon the page opened of itself, scarce knowing what he read when he
+      began to read it, for his spirit was heavy with the bad doings of those
+      days. And the passage whereon the book opened was this&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and
+      the other lot for the scapegoat. . . . Then shall he kill the goat of the
+      sin-offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the vail.
+      And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the
+      uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions
+      in all their sins. . . . And when he hath, made an end of reconciling the
+      holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he
+      shall bring the live goat: and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the
+      head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the
+      children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins,
+      putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the
+      hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him
+      all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same night Israel dreamt a dream. He had been asleep, and had
+      awakened in a place which he did not know. It was a great arid wilderness.
+      Ashen sand lay on every side; a scorching sun beat down on it, and nowhere
+      was there a glint of water. Israel gazed, and slowly through the blazing
+      sunlight he discerned white roofless walls like the ruins of little
+      sheepfolds. &ldquo;They are tombs,&rdquo; he told himself, &ldquo;and this is a Mukabar&mdash;an
+      Arab graveyard&mdash;the most desolate place in the world of God.&rdquo; But,
+      looking again, he saw that the roofless walls covered the ground as far as
+      the eye could see, and the thought came to him that this ashen desert was
+      the earth itself, and that all the world of life and man was dead. Then,
+      suddenly, in the motionless wilderness, a solitary creature moved. It was
+      a goat, and it toiled over the hot sand with its head hung down and its
+      tongue lolled out. &ldquo;Water!&rdquo; it seemed to cry, though it made no voice, and
+      its eyes traversed the plain as if they would pierce the ground for a
+      spring. Fever and delirium fell upon Israel. The goat came near to him and
+      lifted up its eyes, and he saw its face. Then he shrieked and awoke. The
+      face of the goat had been the face of Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Israel knew that this was no more than a dream, coming of the passage
+      which he had read out of the book at sundown, but so vivid was the sense
+      of it that he could not rest in his bed until he had first seen Naomi with
+      his waking eyes, that he might laugh in his heart to think how the eye of
+      his sleep had fooled him. So he lit his lamp, and walked through the
+      silent house to where Naomi's room was on the lower floor of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There she lay, sleeping so peacefully, with her sunny hair flowing over
+      the pillow on either side of her beautiful face, and rippling in little
+      curls about her neck. How sweet she looked! How like a dear bud of
+      womanhood just opening to the eye!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel sat down beside her for a moment. Many a time before, at such
+      hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways, and she had
+      known nothing of it. She was like any other maiden now. Her eyes were
+      closed, and who should see that they were blind? Her breath came gently,
+      and who should say that it gave forth no speech? Her face was quiet, and
+      who should think that it was not the face of a homely-hearted girl? Israel
+      loved these moments when he was alone with Naomi while she slept, for then
+      only did she seem to be entirely his own, and he was not so lonely while
+      he was sitting there. Though men thought he was strong, yet he was very
+      weak. He had no one in the world to talk to save Naomi, and she was dumb
+      in the daytime, but in the night he could hold little conversations with
+      her. His love! his dove! his darling! How easily he could trick and
+      deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and speak to me! Yes;
+      her eyes will open and see me here again, and I shall hear her voice, for
+      I love it! &ldquo;Father!&rdquo; she will say. &ldquo;Father&mdash;father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her. As he went back to his bed,
+      through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him that
+      made his hair to rise. It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream to be a
+      vision. It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream would be
+      to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything. The vision as he
+      thought he saw it was this, and these were the words of it as he thought
+      he heard them&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room, when a
+      dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed, and a voice
+      that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it, crying &ldquo;Israel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, &ldquo;Speak, Lord, Thy servant
+      heareth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Lord said, &ldquo;Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest
+      cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel answered trembling, &ldquo;I have read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Lord said to Israel, &ldquo;Look now upon Naomi, thy child, for she is
+      as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement for thy
+      transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore she is dumb
+      to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight, a soul in chains
+      and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot that is cast for
+      justice and for the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, &ldquo;Would that the lot had fallen
+      upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and
+      be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before Thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then said the Lord to Israel, &ldquo;On thee, also, hath the lot fallen, even
+      the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said,
+      &ldquo;Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people, so
+      cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo, and of his wife,
+      Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins of the people into the
+      wilderness, so, in the resurrection, shalt thou bear the sins of this man
+      and of this woman into a land that no man knoweth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were drops
+      of blood, and cried, &ldquo;What shall I do, O Lord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Lord said, &ldquo;Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee to the
+      country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard tidings,
+      and he shall show thee what thou shalt do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, &ldquo;Shall my soul live?
+      Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed, and all
+      around was darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath on
+      the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice, not in
+      his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight of all
+      common things about him&mdash;his room and his bed; and the canopy that
+      covered it. And on rising in the morning, at daydawn, so actual was the
+      sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful the impression of it,
+      that he straightway set himself to carry out the injunction it had made,
+      without question of its reality or doubt of its authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now grown
+      to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate, Israel
+      first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent from
+      Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide, and to the
+      market-place for mules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan was
+      waiting at the door. Then Israel remembered Naomi. Where was the girl,
+      that he had not seen her that morning? They answered him that she had not
+      yet left her room, and he sent the black woman Fatimah to fetch her. And
+      when she came and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in silence, his
+      heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his foot to the
+      stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio with the two
+      bondwomen beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she well?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, well&mdash;very well,&rdquo; said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.
+      Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language of
+      her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face,
+      which had used to be cheerful, was now sad. At that he almost repented of
+      his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone no
+      farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick, nothing
+      could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must let him go
+      his ways without warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last, with many
+      words of tender protest which she did not hear, he had to break away from
+      the beautiful arms that held him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier and guide and
+      muleteers and tentmen were already mounted, amid a chattering throng of
+      idle people looking on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali, my lad,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;if anything should befall Naomi while I am
+      away, will you watch over her and guard her with all your strength?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all my life,&rdquo; said Ali stoutly. He was Naomi's playfellow no longer,
+      but her devoted slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel set off on his journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a
+      Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died,
+      and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's brothers, both men of
+      yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at
+      Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a
+      land where there is one noble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and
+      descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are mired
+      with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest nobility.
+      Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth that went along
+      with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out into the
+      plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the
+      shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed him.
+      He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and lovers of
+      poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They were never
+      to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give what he had to
+      him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet whatever they said
+      was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be ministers of peace, and if
+      any man did them violence they were never to resist him. Nevertheless they
+      were not to lack for courage, but to laugh to scorn the enemies that
+      tormented them, and smile in their pains and shed no tear. And as for
+      death, if it was for their glory they were to esteem it more than life,
+      because their bodies only were corruptible, but their souls were immortal,
+      and would mount upwards when released from the bondage of the flesh. Not
+      dissenters from the Koran, but stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes
+      and not Jews, yet followers of Jesus in their customs and of Moses in
+      their doctrines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the
+      cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets,
+      from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service of
+      hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds and
+      trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty, and no
+      voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought nothing
+      with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs save the
+      stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which they drove
+      before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their fellows; and a
+      few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for their food and the
+      hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and desiring nothing,
+      having neither houses nor lands, and only considering themselves secure
+      from their rulers in having no money, this company of battered human
+      wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded, passed with their
+      leader from place to place of the waste country about Mequinez. And he,
+      being as poor as they were, though he might have been so rich, cheered
+      them always, even when they murmured against him, as Absalam had cheered
+      his little fellowship at Tetuan: &ldquo;God will feed us as He feeds the birds
+      of the air, and clothe our little ones as He clothes the fields.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his people
+      too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties were enough
+      already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a palpitating haze
+      floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom had the dusty and
+      tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the fast of Ramadhan, and
+      Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the double vexation of
+      oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his famished people, Israel
+      found it necessary at length to travel in the night. In this way his
+      journey was the shorter for the absence of some obstacles, but his time
+      was long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan, so
+      he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed through, and
+      many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes very pitiful were
+      the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was passing through his
+      own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people think but that he had
+      come to make a new assessment of their lands and holdings, their cattle
+      and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and more fully. So, to buy
+      his mercy in advance, many of them came out of their houses as he drew
+      near, and knelt on the ground before his horse, and kissed the skirts of
+      his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot in his stirrup, and called
+      him <i>Sidi</i> (master, my lord), a title never before given to a Jew,
+      and offered him presents out of their meagre substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A gift for my lord,&rdquo; they would say, &ldquo;of the little that God has given
+      us, praise His merciful name for ever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
+      by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
+      trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
+      in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep them,&rdquo; he would answer; &ldquo;keep them until I come again,&rdquo; intending to
+      tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic of
+      El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos hastened
+      before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks and
+      palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his
+      errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in the
+      early morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace be with you!&rdquo; said the Kaid. &ldquo;So my lord is going again to the
+      Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of crooked
+      lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near the
+      market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the presents
+      of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars who looked
+      on with feverish eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of
+      Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the
+      foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand
+      Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood waiting
+      to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention of his
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Welcome! welcome!&rdquo; said the Shereef; &ldquo;all you see is yours until Allah
+      shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our lord
+      the Sultan at Fez&mdash;may God prolong his life and bless him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God make you happy!&rdquo; said Israel, but he offered no answer to the
+      question that was implied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is twenty and odd years, my lord,&rdquo; the Shereef continued, &ldquo;since my
+      father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that
+      time has wrought since then, under Allah's will; but none in the past have
+      been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in the
+      future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (God keep our lord
+      Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will show,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef
+      alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel's horse
+      instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past the old
+      Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque of the
+      Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live like cattle.
+      A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy rags, a group
+      of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled renegades leaning
+      against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from their dishevelled
+      heads and bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the
+      ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company of Muslimeen&mdash;guests
+      in the house of the descendants of the Prophet&mdash;were, by special
+      Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at their
+      pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and his men
+      started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with the Shereef's
+      black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of honour, through
+      the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock that is warning to
+      strike) a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with fierce and dirty
+      faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid clouds of hot
+      dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should proclaim the
+      end of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains stood ready to
+      fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on the ground with
+      dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain rolled in their
+      fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef, and flint and
+      tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the minaret stood looking
+      abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun was lazily sinking
+      under the plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were
+      the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of
+      their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought
+      the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage,
+      and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of his
+      mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this
+      lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like
+      ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over
+      the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town,
+      through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious barks
+      of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they came in the
+      grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the Father of
+      Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept it were
+      snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Selam! M'barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!&rdquo; shouted the Shereef's black
+      guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in Israel's
+      honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him housed
+      within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came
+      yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. &ldquo;Burn your father!
+      Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Selam!&rdquo; shouted one of the black guard. &ldquo;You dog of dogs! Your father was
+      bewitched by a hyena! I'll teach you to curse your betters. Quick! get up,&mdash;or
+      I'll shave your beard. Open! or I'll ride the donkey on your head! There!&mdash;and
+      there!&mdash;and there again!&rdquo; and at every word the butt of his long gun
+      rang on the old oaken gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hamed el Wazzani!&rdquo; muttered several voices within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; shouted the Shereef's man. &ldquo;And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his way
+      to the Sultan, God grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi Israel
+      el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and snoring
+      in your dirt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys, and
+      then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two of the
+      four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse, asking
+      forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime, the other
+      two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had ridden far into the
+      town, the Kaid&mdash;against all usage of his class and country&mdash;ran
+      and met him&mdash;afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham and
+      tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you were coming,&rdquo; he panted&mdash;&ldquo;sent for by the Sultan&mdash;Allah
+      preserve him!&mdash;but had I known you were to be here so soon&mdash;I&mdash;that
+      is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace be with you!&rdquo; interrupted Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God grant you peace. The Sultan&mdash;praise the merciful Allah!&rdquo; the
+      Kaid continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup&mdash;&ldquo;he reached Fez
+      from Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will show,&rdquo; said Israel, and he pushed forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, true&mdash;yes&mdash;certainly&mdash;my lord is tired,&rdquo; puffed the
+      Kaid, bowing again most profoundly. &ldquo;Well, your lodging is ready&mdash;the
+      best in Mequinez&mdash;and your mona is cooking&mdash;all the dainties of
+      Barbary&mdash;and when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand
+      Vizier&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until
+      they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until
+      sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same&mdash;the Sultan,
+      the Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel could bear no more. &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; he said &ldquo;it is a mistake; the Sultan
+      has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not going to him?&rdquo; the Kaid echoed vacantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but to another,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and you of all men can best tell me
+      where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen&mdash;yet a poor
+      man&mdash;the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was a long silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after
+      sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and no
+      man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had gone
+      off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind him
+      his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen, who,
+      like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in dudgeon.
+      The Kaid had turned them out of the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within their
+      tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the tent-village
+      called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there passed them in the
+      fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of the soldier, riding at
+      a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and shouting to all they came
+      upon to fly from the path they had to pass over. They were messengers of
+      the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid of Mequinez, commanding him to
+      present himself at the palace without delay, that he might give good
+      account of his stewardship, or else deliver up his substance and be cast
+      into prison for the defalcations with which rumour had charged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people, who
+      toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at Fez; and
+      great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they remembered with
+      bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last in his false
+      loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly touched by a
+      sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of its whim, though
+      the victim of it had so lately turned him from his door. Miserable was the
+      man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and built his happiness on the
+      favour of princes! When the one was taken from him and the other failed
+      him, where then was the hope of that man's salvation, whether in this
+      world or the next? The dungeon, the chain, the lash, the wooden jellab&mdash;what
+      else was left to him? Only the wail of the poor whom he has made poorer,
+      the curse of the orphan whom he has made fatherless, and the execration of
+      the down-trodden whom he has oppressed. These followed him into his
+      prison, and mingled their cries with the clank of his irons, for they were
+      voices which had never yet deserted the man that made them, but clamoured
+      loud at the last when his end had come, above the death-rattle in his
+      throat. One dim hour waited for all men always, whether in the prison or
+      in the palace&mdash;one lonely hour wherein none could bear him company&mdash;and
+      what was wealth and treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on
+      earth? Was it glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth&mdash;what
+      could it be but a will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night!
+      Oh! riches of gold and silver&mdash;what had they ever been but marsh-fire
+      gathered in the dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the
+      service of the prince of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure&mdash;so far away. Though
+      all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by
+      God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from his
+      child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling! His
+      sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose anything,
+      everything, all that the world and all that the devil had given him; but
+      let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what was gold without
+      gladness, and what was plenty without peace?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the
+      musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of
+      unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped
+      like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were a
+      vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included
+      multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil
+      moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago
+      they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from
+      Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from
+      Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous
+      Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but their
+      substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them.
+      Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
+      privations patiently&mdash;the weary journeys, the exposure, the long
+      rains of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of
+      the Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of
+      both in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
+      that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or sheep
+      or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild bear, and
+      their children were crying to them for bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
+      in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
+      starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What of
+      the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them as
+      He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was seeing
+      them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour, He was
+      seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to plough
+      his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it. &ldquo;The
+      hunger is on us!&rdquo; &ldquo;Our children are perishing!&rdquo; &ldquo;Find us food!&rdquo; &ldquo;Food!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Food!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
+      madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
+      came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
+      their leader when he answered them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
+      quivering nostrils. &ldquo;Do you think I am Moses,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;that I should
+      smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full? If
+      you are naked, am I clothed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
+      was saying in a very moving voice, &ldquo;My good people, who have followed me
+      through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than you
+      can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that death
+      itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that Allah sees
+      a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that, unknown to us
+      all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass! Patience, I beg
+      of you; patience, my poor people&mdash;patience and trust!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered the
+      presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan had
+      burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes worn
+      unlawfully by vain men in that country&mdash;silver signet rings and
+      earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang on the breast as
+      safeguard against the evil eye&mdash;as well as much gold filagree of the
+      kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box and
+      laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further thought
+      to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of them, he said,
+      &ldquo;Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, 'A present to the man
+      of God and to his people in their trouble.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
+      open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him, it
+      was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had opened
+      and rained manna on their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an answer to your prayer,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;an angel from heaven has sent
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened to
+      them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched
+      throats&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of
+      men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together,
+      and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great
+      broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them succour, that they might
+      not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every man
+      looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, &ldquo;I could have
+      borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I was a
+      fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of the
+      new prophet for his guide and motto: &ldquo;Exact no more than is just; do
+      violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give to
+      the poor.&rdquo; That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if any
+      man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been an
+      idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after
+      Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom. &ldquo;I'll
+      do it,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;at all risks and all costs, I'll do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant to
+      bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his pockets
+      of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to return to
+      his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in amazement,
+      and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their ways by
+      themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan at Fez had
+      stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming behind them
+      penniless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his homeward
+      journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in his
+      waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out from
+      Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five long
+      days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the daytime.
+      Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done so much to
+      wipe out God's displeasure as he was now doing and yet would do. He had
+      said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of his vision;
+      but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the sin-offering
+      must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would meet her
+      without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance, then must her
+      debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child been so smitten
+      of God, and never had any father of an afflicted child bought God's mercy
+      at so dear a price!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared not
+      to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing God out of his love of
+      the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home, it
+      was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity and
+      pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through the
+      gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three sights
+      which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence in that
+      town and province.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east of the new
+      town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the
+      high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room for a thousand
+      women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco and
+      rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders selling
+      twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all black, and
+      of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They had lately
+      arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and the Wargha, and
+      some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others were fresh and
+      cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were adorned, after their
+      doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters, with love-charms of
+      silver worn about their necks, with their fingers pricked out with hennah,
+      and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they were drawn up in a line
+      for public auction; but before the sale of them could begin among the
+      buyers that had gathered about them in the street, the overseers of the
+      Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection for their master. This
+      the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them nicknamed Areefahs&mdash;gaunt
+      and hairless men, with the faces of evil old women and the hoarse voices
+      of ravens&mdash;had picked out three fat black maidens, the business of
+      the auction began by the sale of a negro girl of seventeen who was brought
+      out from the rest and passed around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, brothers,&rdquo; said the slave-master, &ldquo;look see; sound of wind and limb&mdash;how
+      much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighty dollars,&rdquo; said a voice from the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her&mdash;rosy lips, fit for
+      the kisses of a king, eh? How much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It's giving the girl away.
+      Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her
+      round the crowd again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now's the chance for true believers.
+      How much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred and ten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred and ten&mdash;thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel of
+      a girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles. Look at her flesh. Not
+      a flaw anywhere. Pass her round, test her, try her, talk to her&mdash;she
+      speaks good Arabic. Isn't she fit for a Sultan? She's the best thing I'll
+      offer to-day, and by the Prophet, if you are not quick I'll keep her for
+      myself. Now, for the third and last time&mdash;seventeen years of age,
+      sound, strong, plump, sweet, and intact&mdash;how much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl, and to
+      hear what shameless questions they asked of her, and with a long sigh he
+      was turning away from the crowd, when another man came up to it. The man
+      was black and old and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white
+      selham. But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him, he
+      made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people, pushed his way to
+      the girl's side, and opened his arms to her, and she fell into them with a
+      cry of joy and pain together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before, had
+      been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben Hashem,
+      having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and from his only
+      child, who thus strangely rejoined him. This story he told, in broken
+      Arabic; to those that stood around, and, hard as were the faces of the
+      bidders, and brutal as was their trade; there was not an eye among them
+      all but was melted at his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, &ldquo;I will give twenty
+      dollars to buy him the girl's liberty,&rdquo; and straightway another and
+      another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount of the
+      last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it, and the girl was
+      free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand, came to
+      Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks, and said in his
+      broken way: &ldquo;The blessing of Allah upon you, white brother, and if you
+      have a child of your own may you never lose her, but may Allah favour her
+      and let you keep her with you always!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear, and,
+      facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned down the dark arcade
+      that descends into the old town as into a vault, and having crossed the
+      markets, he came upon the second of the three sights that were to smite
+      out of his heart his pride towards God. A man in a blue tunic girded with
+      a red sash, and with a red cotton handkerchief tied about his head, was
+      driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees cut into short lengths
+      to lie over its panniers. He was clearly a Spanish woodseller and he had
+      the weary, averted, and downcast look of a race that is despised and kept
+      under. His donkey was a bony creature, with raw places on its flank and
+      shoulders where its hide had been worn by the friction of its burdens. He
+      drove it slowly; crying &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; to it in the tongue of its own country,
+      and not beating it cruelly. At the bottom of the arcade there was an open
+      place where a foul ditch was crossed by a rickety bridge. Coming to this
+      the man hesitated a moment, as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey
+      over it or to make the beast trudge through the water. Concluding to cross
+      the bridge, he cried &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; again, and drove the donkey forward with one
+      blow of his stick. But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten
+      thing gave way, and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch. The
+      donkey's legs were broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the
+      Spaniard's cry, had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water
+      on to the paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a
+      moment it was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
+      called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone. And
+      while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so&mdash;for none seemed to pity
+      him&mdash;a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
+      arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
+      dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the man
+      with bitter reproaches. &ldquo;Allah blot out your name, you thief!&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself, you dog
+      of a Nazarene!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl to
+      hold her peace. &ldquo;Silence, you young wanton!&rdquo; he cried, in a voice of
+      indignation. &ldquo;Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
+      trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a renegade
+      from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his father and
+      his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's face, and
+      said, &ldquo;You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not be a good
+      man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard when your own
+      children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in their cradles,
+      before they can speak to you to curse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
+      about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
+      sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
+      be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice to
+      part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell, and that
+      was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost everything.
+      And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved Naomi, and she
+      clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him walk humbly before
+      God, for God was great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased his
+      cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet lighter
+      spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow of the town
+      walls. It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted by a white flag;
+      and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out to the entrance. He
+      was a poor, miserable creature&mdash;ragged, dirty, and with dishevelled
+      hair&mdash;and, seeing Israel's eyes upon him, he began to talk in some
+      wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only a fierce jabber of
+      sounds that had no words in them, and of words that had no meaning. The
+      poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught he was counted a holy man
+      among his people, and put to live in this place, which was the tomb of a
+      dead saint&mdash;though not more dead to the ways of life was he who lay
+      under the floor than he who lived above it. The man continued his wild
+      jabber as long as Israel's eyes were on him, and Israel dropped two coins
+      into his hand and passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God's creatures.
+      And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type and
+      sign of how her soul was smitten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company of his
+      people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey. And then,
+      while they walked some paces together before parting, and the prophet
+      talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying in the prison at Shawan (for
+      he had heard of them from Israel), Israel himself mentioned Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;there is something that I have not told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell it now, my son,&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.
+      You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,
+      for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone, and so she is
+      very near and dear to me. But she is in the land of silence and in the
+      land of night. Nothing can she see, and nothing hear, and never has her
+      voice opened the curtains of the air, for she is blind and dumb and deaf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merciful Allah!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! is her state so terrible? I thought you would think it so. Yes, for
+      all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature of the fields that
+      knows not God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah preserve her!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me in the
+      vision, and my soul trembles for her soul. But if God has washed me with
+      water should not she also be clean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;He gives no rewards for repentance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But listen!&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;In a vision of death her mother saw her, and
+      she was afflicted no more. No, for she could see, and hear, and speak. Man
+      of God, will it come to pass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God is good,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;He needs that no man should teach Him
+      pity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I love her,&rdquo; cried Israel, &ldquo;and I vowed to her mother to guard her.
+      She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has no
+      freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will have
+      mercy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, &ldquo;The Lord sees all. Go your
+      way in trust. Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      ISRAEL'S return home was an experience at all points the reverse of his
+      going abroad. He had seven dollars in the pocket of his waistband on
+      setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred and more with which he had
+      started from Tetuan. His men had gone on before him and told their story.
+      So the people whom he came upon by the way either ignored him or jeered at
+      him, and not one that on his coming had run to do him honour now stepped
+      aside that he might pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after leaving Fez he came again to Wazzan. Women were going home
+      from market by the side of their camels, and charcoal-burners were riding
+      back to the country on the empty burdas of their mules. It was nigh upon
+      sunset when Israel entered the town, and so exactly was everything the
+      same that he could almost have tricked himself and believed that scarce
+      two minutes had passed since he had left it. There at the fountains were
+      the water-carriers waiting with their water-skins, and there in the
+      market-place sat the women and children with their dishes of soup; there
+      were the men by the booths with their pipes ready charged with keef, and
+      there was the mooddin in the minaret, looking out over the plain.
+      Everything was the same save one thing, and that concerned Israel himself.
+      No Grand Shereef stood waiting to exchange horses with him, and no black
+      guard led him through the town. Footsore and dirty, covered with dust, and
+      tired, he walked through the streets alone. And when presently the voice
+      rang out overhead, and the breathless town broke instantly into bubbles of
+      sounds&mdash;the tinkling of the bells of the water-carriers, the shouts
+      of the children, and the calls of the men&mdash;only one man seemed to see
+      him and know him. This was an Arab, wearing scarcely enough rags to cover
+      his nakedness, who was bathing his hot cheeks in water which a
+      water-carrier was pouring into his hands, and he lifted his glistening
+      face as Israel passed, and called him &ldquo;Dog!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Jew!&rdquo; and commanded him
+      to uncover his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel slept that night in one of the three squalid fondaks of Wazzan
+      inhabited by the Jews. His room was a sort of narrow box, in a square
+      court of many such boxes, with a handful of straw shaken over the earth
+      floor for a bed. On the doorpost the figure of a hand was painted in red,
+      and over the lintel there was a rude drawing of a scorpion, with an
+      imprecation written under it that purported to be from the mouth of the
+      Prophet Joshua, son of Nun. If the charm kept evil spirits from the place
+      of Israel's rest, it did not banish good ones. Israel slept in that poor
+      bed as he had never slept under the purple canopy of his own chamber, and
+      all night long one angel form seemed to hover over him. It was Naomi. He
+      could see her clearly. They were together in a little cottage somewhere.
+      The house was a mean one, but jasmine and marjoram and pinks and roses
+      grew outside of it, and love grew inside. And Naomi! How bright were her
+      eyes, for they could see! Yes, and her ears could hear, and her tongue
+      could speak!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after Israel left Wazzan he was back in the bashalic of Tetuan.
+      Each night he had dreamt the same dream, and though he knew each morning
+      when he awoke with a sigh that his dream was only a reflection of his dead
+      wife's vision, yet he could not help but think of it the long day through.
+      He tried to remember if he had ever seen the cottage with his waking eyes,
+      and where he had seen it, and to recall the voice of Naomi as he had heard
+      it in his dream, that he might know if it was the same as he used to think
+      he heard when he sat by her in his stolen watches of the night while she
+      lay asleep. Sometimes when he reflected he thought he must be growing
+      childish, so foolish was his joy in looking forward to the night&mdash;for
+      he had almost grown in love with it&mdash;that he might dream his dream
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was a dear, delicious folly, for it helped him to bear the troubles
+      of his journey, and they were neither light nor few. After passing through
+      El Kasar he had been robbed and stripped both of his small remaining
+      moneys and the better part of his clothes by a gang of ruffians who had
+      followed him out of the town. Then a good woman&mdash;the old wife, turned
+      into the servant of a Moor who had married a young one&mdash;had taken
+      pity on his condition and given him a disused Moorish jellab. His
+      misfortune had not been without its advantage. Being forced to travel the
+      rest of his way home in the disguise of a Moor, he had heard himself
+      discussed by his own people when they knew nothing of his presence. Every
+      evil that had befallen them had been attributed to him. Ben Aboo, their
+      Basha, was a good, humane man, who was often driven to do that which his
+      soul abhorred. It was Israel ben Oliel who was their cruel taxmaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel was within a day's journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge fell
+      upon the country. A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud from the
+      direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade of grass that the
+      scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it had passed
+      was as black and barren as a lava stream. The farmers were impoverished,
+      and the poorer people made beggars. Even this last disaster they charged
+      in their despair to Israel, for Allah was now cursing them for Israel's
+      sake. They were the same people that had thrust their presents upon him
+      when he was setting out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl of
+      buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water. She gave him a
+      dish of zummetta&mdash;barley roasted like coffee&mdash;and inquired if he
+      was going on to Tetuan. He told her yes, and she asked if his home was
+      there. And when he answered that it was, she looked at him again, and said
+      in a moving way, &ldquo;Then Allah help you, brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why me more than another, sister?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man,&rdquo; said the old woman.
+      &ldquo;And that is the sort he is hardest upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel faltered and said, &ldquo;He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who else but Israel the Jew?&rdquo; said she, and then added, as by a sudden
+      afterthought, &ldquo;But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has
+      stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this
+      poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been&mdash;so
+      wise and powerful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame, he
+      could not help but play with the fire that scorched him. &ldquo;They tell me,&rdquo;
+       he said, &ldquo;that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has devils.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blind and dumb, poor soul,&rdquo; said the old woman; &ldquo;but Allah has pity for
+      the afflicted&mdash;he is taking her away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel rose. &ldquo;Away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is ill since her father went to Fez.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I heard so yesterday&mdash;dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered, and
+      fled out of the hut. Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying with
+      dreams&mdash;billing and cooing with his own fancies&mdash;fondling and
+      nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and damned
+      for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them that poor men's souls
+      might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale face of
+      Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had used to
+      laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running at his utmost
+      velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting his
+      imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist against the
+      sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering to himself in awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would God not hear his prayer? God knew the child was very near and dear
+      to him, and also that he was a lonely man. &ldquo;Have pity on a lonely man, O
+      God!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Let me keep my child; take all else that I have,
+      everything, no matter what! Only let me keep her&mdash;yes, just as she
+      is, let me have her still! Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I
+      am humble, and ask that alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down on his
+      uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust, he prayed
+      this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening under the setting sun.
+      Then he thought of his Moorish jellab, and looked at himself, and saw that
+      he was returning home like a beggar; and he remembered with what splendour
+      he had started out. Should he wait for the darkness, and creep into his
+      house under the cover of it? If the thought had occurred an hour before he
+      must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of every face in Tetuan
+      than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now that he was so near he
+      was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon to learn the truth he
+      dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro on the heath outside the town,
+      paltering with himself, struggling with himself, eating out his heart with
+      eagerness, trying to believe that he was waiting for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening with
+      thick stars, Israel passed unknown through the Moorish gate, which was
+      still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square. At the gate of
+      the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked, and demanded entrance in the
+      name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards who kept it fell back at sight of him
+      with looks of consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Israel!&rdquo; cried one, and dropped his lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel whispered, &ldquo;Keep your tongue between your teeth!&rdquo; and hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again, but
+      more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and, seeing
+      his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Habeebah!&rdquo; he cried, and he knocked once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ali came to the door. &ldquo;What Moorish man are you?&rdquo; cried Ali, pushing
+      him back as he pressed forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali! Hush! It is I&mdash;Israel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ali knew him and cried, &ldquo;God save us! What has happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened here?&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Naomi,&rdquo; he faltered, &ldquo;what of
+      her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have heard?&rdquo; said Ali. &ldquo;Thank God, she is now well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel laughed&mdash;his laugh was like a scream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than that&mdash;a strange thing has befallen her since you went
+      away,&rdquo; said Ali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can hear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a lie!&rdquo; cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to the
+      floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and
+      saying, &ldquo;Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know what
+      I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true, there is
+      no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no fiend in
+      hell need envy me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ali answered through his tears, &ldquo;It is true, my father&mdash;come and
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story
+      that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered from
+      room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in the
+      evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her
+      father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and
+      the book was in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at her, poor child,&rdquo; said Fatimah. &ldquo;See, she thinks he will come as
+      usual. God bless her sweet innocent face!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made her
+      way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife of the
+      Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly through the
+      courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from there to the
+      gate of the prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither did
+      she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly, and
+      seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and silent; she did
+      not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of submission that was
+      very touching to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel,&rdquo; said Fatimah. &ldquo;How
+      long will she wait, poor darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to
+      restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands
+      were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel's fears on setting
+      out from home had been right after all. And making his own reckoning with
+      Naomi's condition, Ali went off for the only doctor living in Tetuan&mdash;a
+      Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading to the western gate.
+      This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her pulse, touched her throbbing
+      forehead, with difficulty examined her tongue, and pronounced her illness
+      to be fever. He gave some homely directions as to her treatment&mdash;for
+      he despaired of administering drugs to such a one as she was&mdash;and
+      promised to return the next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood
+      constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water;
+      Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner
+      outside the door of her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but there was
+      nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very solemnly, and
+      said, &ldquo;I will come again after two days more, when the fever must be near
+      to its height, and bring a famous leech out of Tangier along with me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Naomi's delirium continued. It was gentle as her own spirit tent
+      there was this that was strange and eerie about her unconsciousness&mdash;that
+      whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its dark cell must have been
+      mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke without ceasing throughout
+      the time of her reason's vanquishment. Not that her poor tongue in its
+      trouble uttered speech such as those that heard could follow and
+      understand, but only a restless babble of empty sounds, yet with tones of
+      varying feeling, sometimes of gladness, sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of
+      remonstrance, and sometimes of entreaty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat together
+      by her bedside, holding each other's hands like little children in great
+      fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness outside the door,
+      listening in terror to the silvery young voice that had never echoed in
+      that house before. This was the night when Israel, sleeping at the squalid
+      inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi's voice in his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone, and
+      away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the fondak,
+      which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his wet eyes in
+      the pitiless sunlight for Israel's caravan that should soon come. On the
+      first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he came upon
+      Israel's men returning without him, and telling their lying story that he
+      had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and was coming
+      behind them penniless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.
+      That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had
+      fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad
+      faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. &ldquo;Liars and thieves!&rdquo; he
+      cried; &ldquo;tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go straight
+      to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all whipped
+      through the streets for plundering my master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a
+      mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no more,
+      and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them concerning
+      their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by right of
+      nature on the tongues of Moors&mdash;they said and knew nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of
+      Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the wise leech
+      shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was sinking&mdash;in
+      plain words, she was dying&mdash;and if her father did not come before the
+      morrow he would come too late to find her alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to
+      spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly
+      become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was,
+      therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a
+      Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. &ldquo;The Imam is good, the Imam is
+      holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?&rdquo; &ldquo;Nay, but our Sidi holds not with
+      the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our lord is
+      our sultan, our lord is our king.&rdquo; &ldquo;Shoof! What is Sidi against paradise?
+      And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a follower of
+      Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her lips, and we are
+      all three blest for ever&mdash;otherwise we will burn everlastingly in the
+      fires of Jehinnum.&rdquo; &ldquo;But, alack! how can the poor girl say the Kelmah,
+      being as dumb as the grave?&rdquo; &ldquo;Then how can she say the Shemang either?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and
+      silenced both the bondwomen: &ldquo;The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is a
+      thief.&rdquo; There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his own
+      Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp in the days
+      of the Governor's marriage. This person was an old negro, bewrinkled by
+      years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still partially so, half
+      blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated slave from the
+      Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and willing to teach
+      either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he was neither a Jew
+      nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say, and not too much of
+      either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance there must have been no
+      place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that this good nondescript was
+      a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark cellar, down an alley by the
+      side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, he had sat from early morning
+      until sunset, year in year out, through thirty years on his rush-covered
+      floor, among successive generations of his boys; and as often as night
+      fell he had gone hither and thither among the sick and dying, carrying
+      comfort of kind words, and often meat and drink of his meagre substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his own
+      great trouble, he tried away for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; cried the lad, &ldquo;does it not say in the good book that the prayer
+      of a righteous man availeth much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does, my son,&rdquo; said the Taleb &ldquo;You have truth. What then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover,&rdquo; said Ali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sweet instance of simple faith. The old black Taleb dismissed his
+      scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled to
+      Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her through
+      the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and then,
+      while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and a great
+      lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and prayed, and
+      Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro's prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything; it
+      recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away and
+      might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three days
+      and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was blind
+      and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her. She was
+      his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man. He was
+      away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were gone and
+      lost&mdash;if she were dead and buried&mdash;his strong heart would be
+      broken and his very soul in peril.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it&mdash;the dumb
+      angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole of
+      her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager and
+      hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down mercy out
+      of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
+      tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by the
+      bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and Naomi
+      lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
+      features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
+      restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
+      &ldquo;El hamdu l'Illah!&rdquo; (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
+      the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete the
+      miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and
+      wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
+      Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
+      were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
+      breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept softly
+      through the night and has just awakened in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment of
+      surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was a laugh&mdash;a
+      faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And then
+      instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while the
+      notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle hand and
+      covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of dread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and they
+      were shouting &ldquo;Hallelujah!&rdquo; with one voice, thinking only that she who had
+      been dead to them was alive again. But the old Taleb cried eagerly, &ldquo;Hush!
+      my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing! I know what it is&mdash;who
+      knows so well as I? Once I was deaf, my children, but now I hear. Listen!
+      The maiden has had fever&mdash;fever of the brain. Listen! A watery humour
+      had gathered in her head. It has gone, it has flowed away. Now she will
+      hear. Listen, for it is I that know it&mdash;who knows it so well as I?
+      Yes; she will be no longer deaf. Her ears will be opened. She will hear.
+      Once she was living in a land of silence; now she is coming into the land
+      of sound. Blessed be God, for He has wrought this wondrous work. God is
+      great! God is mighty! Praise the merciful God for ever! El hamdu l'Illah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb's story seemed to be,
+      it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning in a
+      slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath, Naomi turned her
+      face full upon him; and when the black women in their ready faith, joined
+      in his shouts of praise, she turned her face towards them also; and
+      wherever a voice sounded in the room she inclined her head towards it as
+      one who knew the direction of the sounds, and also as one who was in fear
+      of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one thing
+      only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had been
+      deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now heard
+      their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
+      laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
+      black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
+      around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in answer
+      to his old Taleb's prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb's cries of
+      warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen see the old
+      man's uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes, so overpowered
+      were they with their delight, so startled and so joy drunken. But over
+      their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing shrieks. They were the
+      cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror at the first sounds that had
+      reached her of human voices. Her face was blanched, her eyelids were
+      trembling, her lips were restless, her nostrils quivered, her whole being
+      seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of dread, and, in the horrible disarray
+      of all her sensations her brain, on its wakening from its dolorous sleep
+      of three delirious days, was tottering and reeling at its welcome in this
+      world of noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their peace
+      in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the clamour of
+      tongues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in the
+      jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
+      entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
+      remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
+      was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance was
+      changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No longer
+      was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither was it as
+      the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot and
+      perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and as
+      Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no cheer
+      did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away from her
+      when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears with
+      terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then his sight
+      grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick mist seemed to
+      cover everything, and through the dense waves of semi-consciousness he
+      heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice coming to him as from far
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver! It
+      is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear father
+      has come back to her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
+      Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
+      head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
+      Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
+      hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
+      dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
+      more than he had asked or deserved!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob, yet
+      uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only holding
+      Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face. And the
+      black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb in that
+      great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose house had
+      come the wonderful work that God had wrought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face, in joy
+      over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had known
+      him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she continued
+      to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father and she
+      loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it was also
+      because he alone was silent of all that were about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears, that,
+      coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man was never
+      heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and darkling as the
+      air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit trembled in a new
+      world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a little dark chamber, a
+      vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul was ever passing to and
+      fro, asking for news of the world without? Through seventeen dark and
+      silent years the soul of Naomi had been passing and repassing within its
+      beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying daily and hourly, &ldquo;Watchman, what of
+      the world?&rdquo; At length it had found an answer, and it was terrified. The
+      world had spoken to her soul and its voice was like the reverberations of
+      a subterranean cavern, strange and deep and awful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the room,
+      all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali was saying, &ldquo;Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
+      returned yesterday, and said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the bondwomen were crying, &ldquo;Sidi, you were right when you went away!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Yes, the dear child was ill!&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, how she missed you when you were
+      gone.&rdquo; &ldquo;She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of Tetuan&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the old Taleb was muttering, &ldquo;Master, it is all by God's mercy. We
+      prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway to
+      her spirit as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi's
+      ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned them
+      out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of Naomi's
+      fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her by the
+      solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment of a soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the door
+      of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women were
+      calling to their children without, and the children were still shouting in
+      their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested her head
+      against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put her arms
+      about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart yearned to
+      speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear. Let it be but
+      one word, only one, that she might know her father's voice&mdash;for she
+      had never once heard it&mdash;and answer it with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter! My dearest! My darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
+      tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
+      years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not speak
+      lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that would
+      break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation. It was
+      terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence, hardly
+      moving, scarcely breathing&mdash;a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
+      holding Naomi in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
+      In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
+      through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
+      Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
+      little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
+      hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
+      Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
+      Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and women
+      and children&mdash;country Arabs and Barbers&mdash;were squatting around
+      the charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while
+      the ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently
+      the wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of
+      the streets came to an end; the &ldquo;Balak&rdquo; of the ass-driver was no more
+      heard, the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the
+      fires on the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts
+      of the shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew
+      the air until all was still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
+      released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh she
+      dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she would
+      have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in thankfulness
+      to God, that He was making the way of her great journey easy out of the
+      land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke over the town.
+      Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in the air, which
+      had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and long and terrible.
+      First from the direction of Marteel, over the four miles which divide
+      Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea sends before trouble
+      comes to the land&mdash;a deep moan as of waters falling from the sky.
+      Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens on the gate
+      called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to the port. Then
+      came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down the gorges of the
+      Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches far away to Kitan. Last
+      of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied themselves over the town, and
+      the rain fell in floods on the roof of the house and on the pavement of
+      the patio, and leapt up again in great loud drops, making a noise to the
+      ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a hidden multitude. Thus sound
+      after sound broke over the darkness of the night in a thousand awful
+      voices, now near, now far, now loud, now low, now long, now short, now
+      rising, now falling, now rushing, now running&mdash;a mighty tumult and a
+      fearsome anarchy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Naomi's terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her body
+      as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of touch, and
+      though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued to refer all
+      sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out her arms before
+      her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in her palms; and at the
+      sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to protect her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom. He
+      yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
+      words of love, gentle words of hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain; it
+      is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They shall
+      not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There, there, my
+      little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you. Fear not,
+      my child, fear not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears, but,
+      alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which moaned
+      about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again and
+      again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the solace
+      of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of the
+      storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its fulness
+      the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise it, so
+      sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with the
+      mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed&mdash;the blessing of a
+      pathway to his daughter's soul&mdash;a misfortune had come as well. What
+      was it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
+      And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
+      silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but a
+      circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
+      shrieked and moved around her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror, and
+      smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at length,
+      in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens seemed
+      rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell into a long
+      unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer, but wept above
+      her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing! nothing!
+      Listen! It is gone! Gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
+      soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
+      not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
+      Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in ashes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
+      grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
+      could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
+      she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the bars
+      which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came dancing
+      out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down at her
+      knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his voice
+      through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of Jacob, and
+      rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
+      foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
+      God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
+      God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
+      wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
+      she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
+      knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
+      was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
+      than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
+      he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought this
+      evil upon him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
+      manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
+      breathless quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed to
+      look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing could she
+      hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay over her hand,
+      and sighed and sank down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was back
+      in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices which had
+      startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been nothing but
+      an evil dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
+      with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her, and
+      said within himself, &ldquo;It was her baptism. Now she will walk the world with
+      confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the Lord our God is
+      king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of the
+      room on tiptoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
+      had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she had
+      been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
+      disrobed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her new
+      sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though she
+      could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached. They
+      led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to the
+      great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no more as
+      of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see them
+      through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on her
+      lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took her
+      to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod the
+      familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did she
+      exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty winds
+      about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the world
+      unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and heard the
+      breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her ears. They gave
+      Ali's harp into her hands, the same that she had played so strangely at
+      the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again as on that day did
+      she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound such as none had heard
+      before and none could follow, but only touched and fumbled them with
+      deftless fingers that knew no music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
+      pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
+      communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
+      kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
+      beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
+      of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years had
+      bleated and barked &ldquo;Beelzebub!&rdquo; And if God in His mercy had taken the
+      angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful, He had
+      given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet human
+      daughter, however helpless and frail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content. But day
+      by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange sinkings
+      of the heart. Naomi's frailty appeared to be not only of the body but also
+      of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly fallen asleep. She
+      betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her lips; no thought for
+      herself or for others seemed to animate her. She neither laughed nor wept.
+      When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not stretch out her arms as she
+      had done before to draw down his head to her lips. Calmly, silently,
+      sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day, without feeling and without
+      thought&mdash;a beautiful statue of flesh and blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself knows;
+      but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first delight in
+      the new gift with which God had gifted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
+      walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
+      childhood&mdash;the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink,
+      the thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered
+      flowers in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for
+      it was the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle,
+      and under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
+      Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths of the
+      oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the sprawling
+      limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a tributary of the
+      Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the Akhmas, over the
+      light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there&mdash;but by what impulse or
+      what chance Israel never knew&mdash;Naomi had withdrawn her hand from his
+      hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it took him to
+      stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had sunk into the
+      earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from his sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side, but
+      she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would answer
+      with the only language of her lips, the old language of her laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no sound came back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a voice
+      of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor the
+      rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
+      left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
+      and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly, until
+      the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and deadened the
+      sound of his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
+      length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
+      brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom. She
+      was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had sat
+      herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were still
+      wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old olive-tree
+      over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues; the little
+      family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny creature of
+      the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging itself on the
+      low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a sheep of solemn face&mdash;gaunt
+      and grim and ancient&mdash;was standing and palpitating before her. Bees
+      were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing, the light wind was whispering,
+      and cattle were lowing in the distance. The air of that sweet spot in that
+      sweet hour was musical with every sweet sound of the earth and sky, and
+      fragrant with all the wild odours of the wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling,&rdquo; cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
+      he paused and looked at her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the light
+      that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her head was
+      held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were flushed. She had
+      pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair had fallen over her
+      neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear, and the other strayed
+      among the plants that grew on the bank beside her. She seemed to be
+      listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and radiant joy, a pure
+      and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her beautiful face. It was
+      almost as though she believed that everything she heard with the great new
+      gift which God had given her was speaking to her, and bidding her welcome
+      and offering her love; as if the garrulous old olive over her head were
+      stretching down his arms to sport with her hair, and pattering; &ldquo;Kiss me,
+      little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss me! kiss me!&rdquo;&mdash;as if the
+      rippling river at her feet were laughing and crying, &ldquo;Catch me, naked
+      feet! catch me, catch me!&rdquo; as if the thrush on the bough were singing,
+      &ldquo;Where from, sunny locks? where from? where from?&rdquo;&mdash;as if the young
+      squirrel were chirping, &ldquo;I'm not afraid, not afraid, not afraid!&rdquo; and as
+      if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly, &ldquo;Pat me, little maiden! you
+      may, you may!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless her beautiful face!&rdquo; cried Israel. &ldquo;She listens with every
+      feature and every line of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
+      forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever&mdash;in
+      the voices of children at play&mdash;in the bleat of the goat&mdash;in the
+      footsteps of them she loved&mdash;in the hiss and whirr of her mother's
+      old spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work&mdash;and in Ali's harp,
+      when he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the ground
+      first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what change
+      was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of sound,
+      the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself nor any
+      one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a beautiful
+      and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to give herself
+      up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music she took most
+      pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened to with a simple
+      and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her joy, and the
+      joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air wheresoever she
+      went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
+      beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah's homely ditties were
+      all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times when
+      she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the caravan,
+      telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing cypress, and
+      liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales which the good
+      soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties whose silence was
+      the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love tore the veil of
+      their chastity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be the
+      yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call down love
+      out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a favourite
+      song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had learned it
+      in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she sang it over
+      the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not hear. Naomi
+      knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother's song at last, though
+      silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her chief and dear
+      delight.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O, where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song, when
+      Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it, and the simple
+      silent arts she used, being mute and blind, to show her pleasure while it
+      lasted, and to ask for it again when it was done, were very sweet and
+      touching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves that
+      child most among many children that most is helpless, so the earth-mother
+      of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes were blind. Thus she
+      seemed to hear many things that are unheard by the rest of the human
+      family. It is only a dim echo of the outer world that the ears of men are
+      allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow of the outer world that
+      the eyes of men are allowed to see; but the ears of Naomi seemed to hear
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts, and a
+      third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another in keenness even
+      as one sight differs from another in strength. And all the earth is full
+      of voices, and everything that moves upon the face of it has its sound;
+      but the bird hears that which is unheard of the beast, and the beast hears
+      that which is unheard of men. But Naomi appeared to hear all that is heard
+      of each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only, with nothing
+      that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground but she dropped
+      her face, and nothing flew in the sky but she lifted her eyes. And whereas
+      before the coming of her great gift her face had been all feeling, and she
+      seemed to feel the sunset, and to feel the sky, and to feel the thunder
+      and the light, now her face was all hearing, and her whole body seemed to
+      hear, for she was like a living soul floating always in a sea of sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,
+      building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with which God
+      had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was to her then, what the
+      sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was with its roar, and what the
+      face of man was, and the eyes of woman, none could know, and neither could
+      she tell, for her soul was not linked to other souls&mdash;soul to soul,
+      in the chains of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,
+      beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words, and that
+      words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill, made their mark on
+      the soul that listened to them. So he continued to read to her out of the
+      Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
+      custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to say,
+      &ldquo;Fool! she hears, but does she understand?&rdquo; he remembered how he had read
+      to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself, &ldquo;Shall I have
+      less faith now that she can hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's soul
+      at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to her it
+      seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern and gets
+      back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her of the sky,
+      that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the great deeps to
+      measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was green as the
+      fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour? And sometimes
+      as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words themselves which
+      he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the notes which Ali
+      struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, &ldquo;Let the Lord
+      find His own way to her spirit.&rdquo; So he continued to speak with her as
+      often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that concerned
+      their household, as well as of the greater things it was good for her soul
+      to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a touching sight&mdash;the lonely man, the outcast among his
+      people, talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling
+      her of God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that
+      his words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
+      to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
+      judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on her
+      ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was she
+      putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering them,
+      imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace for her
+      spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would, he could
+      never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He clung to
+      all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor and his
+      pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also&mdash;the
+      false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before the
+      eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some three weeks after his return from his journey, and the fierce
+      blaze of the sun continued. The storm that had broken over the town had
+      left no results of coolness or moisture, for the ground had been baked
+      hard, and the rain had been too short and swift to penetrate it. And what
+      the withering heat had spared of green leaf and shrub a deadlier blight
+      had swept away. The locusts had lately come up from the south and the
+      east, in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on millions, making the
+      air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue sky. They had swept the
+      country of its verdure, and left a trail of desolation behind them. The
+      grass was gone, the bark of the olives and almonds was stripped away, and
+      the bare trees had the look of winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.
+      Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds. A
+      Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls of the
+      town. It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town's
+      six gates. The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on
+      the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind. It
+      was a horrible place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The skinny dogs of the town soon found it. And after these scavengers of
+      the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of bones,
+      they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in search of
+      water. By this time there was none that they could come at nearer than the
+      sea, and that was salt. Nevertheless, they lapped it, so burning was their
+      thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town. Then the people hunted
+      them and killed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to death
+      on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult of the
+      streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat, that
+      went before her. The goat was grown old, but it was still her constant
+      companion and also it was now her guide and guardian, for the little dumb
+      creature seemed to know that she was frail and helpless. And so it was
+      that she was crossing the Sok el Foki, a market of the town, and
+      hearkening only to the patter of the feet of the goat going in front, when
+      suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps hurrying towards her, with shouts
+      and curses that were loud and deep. She stood in fear on the spot where
+      she was, and no eyes had she to see what happened next, and she had none
+      save the goat to tell her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward from the
+      hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude of men and boys. And
+      flying in its despair, it bit out wildly at whatever lay in its way, and
+      Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight in front of it. Then she must have
+      fallen before it, but instantly the goat flung itself across the dog's
+      open jaws, and butted at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill cries of
+      terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if the
+      madness of the monster shrank before it. But the people came down with
+      their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat and felled
+      it, and fled away. The people followed it, and then Naomi was alone in the
+      market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father's house in the
+      Mellah, and her dying champion with her. And out of this hard chance, and
+      not out of Israel's teaching, Naomi was first to learn what life is and
+      what is death. She felt the goat with her hands, and as she did so her
+      fingers shook. Then she lifted it to its feet, and when they slipped from
+      under it she raised her white face in wonder. Again she lifted it, and
+      made strange noises at its ear; but when it did not answer with its bleat
+      her lips began to tremble. Then she listened for its breathing, and felt
+      for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor the other to
+      her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast. At length she fondled it in
+      her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave back no sign of
+      motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose at her heart. At
+      last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat opened its heavy eyes
+      upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her hand. With that last
+      farewell the brave heart of the little creature broke, and it stretched
+      itself and died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw it all. His heart bled to see the parting in silence between
+      those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead than the human
+      soul that was left alive. He tried to put the goat from Naomi's arms,
+      saying, &ldquo;It was only a goat, my child; think of it no more,&rdquo; though it
+      smote him with pain to say it, for had not the creature given its life for
+      her life? And where, O God, was the difference between them? But Naomi
+      clung to the goat, and her throat swelled and her bosom fluttered, and her
+      whole body panted, and it was almost as if her soul were struggling to
+      burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might speak and ask and
+      know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
+      thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, &ldquo;It is dead, my
+      child&mdash;the goat is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in a
+      dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that hour
+      had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken of death
+      had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that he had spoken
+      of life, and of the little things which concerned their household? And if
+      Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these&mdash;if she had not
+      pondered and interpreted them&mdash;if they had fallen on her ear only as
+      voices in a dark cavern&mdash;only as dead birds on a dead sea&mdash;what
+      of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
+      and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
+      great gift a mockery?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself of
+      God's mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand? Only
+      a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi had
+      heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked and
+      cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer deaf.
+      Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication and why
+      had He received his prayer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi's new
+      gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give her speech, O Lord!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;speech that shall lift her above the
+      creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know! Give
+      her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts of the
+      young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his
+      hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will of
+      Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled the
+      land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had unjustly
+      extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had returned
+      double&mdash;once for the tax and once for the excess; and if any man,
+      having been unjustly taxed for the Kaid's tribute, had given bond on his
+      lands for his debt and been cast into the Kasbah and died, without
+      ransoming them, then to his children he had returned fourfold&mdash;double
+      for the lands and double for the death. Israel had done this continually,
+      and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out of his own purse,
+      so that from being a rich man he had fallen within a month to the
+      condition of a poor one, for what was one man's wealth among so many? Yet
+      no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity and contempt, for the people
+      that had taken his money had thanked the Kaid for it, who, according to
+      their supposals, had called on him to correct what he had done amiss. And
+      with Ben Aboo himself he had fared no better, for the Basha was provoked
+      to anger with him when he heard from Katrina of the good money that he had
+      been casting away in pity for the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have I told you a score of times?&rdquo; said the woman. &ldquo;That man has
+      mints of money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My money, burn his grandfather,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world's reckoning. When he
+      lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done the devil's
+      work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before he had made more
+      powerful. People who had showed him lip-service when he was thought to be
+      rich did not conceal the joy they had that he was brought down so near to
+      be a beggar. Upstarts, who owed their promotion to his intercession, found
+      in his charities an easy handle given them to be insolent, for, by
+      carrying to Katrina their secret messages of his mercy to the people, they
+      brought things at length to such a pass between him and the Kaid that Ben
+      Aboo openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not once or twice but many
+      times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?&rdquo; said
+      Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough to
+      twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones to the
+      dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity you've got
+      too much of it, I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are poor, Lord Basha,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;they are famishing, and
+      they have no refuge save with God and with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;A famine in my bashalic! Let no man dare to say
+      so. The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness, mistress Israel.
+      You poor old grandmother! I always suspected,&rdquo; he added, facing about upon
+      his attendants, &ldquo;I always suspected that I was served by a woman. Now I am
+      sure of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel felt the indignity. He had given good proof of his manhood in the
+      past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo between him
+      and his people, making him rich by his extortions, keeping him safe in his
+      seat, and thereby saving him from the wooden jellab which Abd er-Rahman,
+      the Sultan, kept for Kaids that could not pay. But Israel mastered his
+      anger and held his peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour of the
+      Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him in the
+      streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor, thinking
+      himself accountable to God for their sufferings. He could have crushed the
+      better part of his insulters to death in his brawny arms, but he was slow
+      to anger and long-suffering. All the heed he paid to their insults was to
+      do his good work with more secrecy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised him
+      on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this difficulty.
+      When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well down over his
+      black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his face. In this
+      innocent disguise he went out night after night for many nights among the
+      poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters of the grain markets near
+      the Bab Ramooz. How he bore himself being there, with what harmless
+      deceptions he unburdened his soul by stealth, what guileless pretences he
+      made that he might restore to the poor the money that had been stolen from
+      them, would be a long story to tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; he was asked a hundred times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend,&rdquo; he answered
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you of our trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah has angels,&rdquo; he would reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw the very
+      children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention of his
+      name. And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people whisper together
+      and say, &ldquo;He is a saint. He comes from the Kabar at nightfall. Allah sends
+      him to help poor men who have been in the clutches of Israel the Jew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for
+      good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask
+      nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it
+      was the breath of angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, about a month after his return from his journey, when he was near
+      to the end of his substance, a message came to him that the followers of
+      Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison at Shawan. Their
+      relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now, but the plague of
+      the locust had fallen on the bread-winners, and they had no more bread to
+      send. Israel concluded that it was his duty to succour them. From a just
+      view of his responsibilities he had gone on to a morbid one. If in the
+      Judgment the blood of the people of Absalam cried to God against him, he
+      himself, and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began to take a
+      view of his condition. Then he saw, to his dismay, that little as he had
+      thought he possessed, even less remained to him out of the wreck of his
+      riches. Only one thing he had still, but that was a thing so dear to his
+      heart that he had never looked to part with it. It was the casket of his
+      dead wife's jewels. Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to sell it
+      now, and, taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept it&mdash;a
+      closet that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart for ever,
+      but in his house no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the doorpost,
+      and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour came out to
+      them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried air itself
+      had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay on everything.
+      But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate shawls and gauzy
+      haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red slippers, and many
+      dainty things such as women love. And to him that came again after ten
+      heavy years they were as a dream of her that had worn them when she was
+      young that now was dead when she was beautiful that now was in the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah me, ah me! Ruth! My Ruth!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;This was her shawl. I brought
+      it from Wazzan. . . . And these slippers&mdash;they came from Rabat. Poor
+      girl, poor girl! . . . . This sash, too, it used to be yellow and white.
+      How well I remember the first time she wore it! She had put it over her
+      head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman. But her brown curls
+      fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them. And then she
+      laughed. My poor dear girl. How happy we were once in spite of everything!
+      It is all like yesterday. When I think Ah no, I must think no more, I must
+      think no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket of
+      the jewels where it stood by the wall. With trembling hands he took it and
+      opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets, and rings and
+      earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering of dust. He
+      lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers, and looked at them while
+      his eyes grew wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for myself,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;not for myself would I have sold them, not
+      for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of worlds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood by his
+      side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks and looked
+      serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed, and now at the jingling of
+      the jewels she stretched out her hand and took one of them from her
+      father's fingers, and feeling it, and finding it to be a necklace, she
+      clasped it about her neck and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed. It brought back the
+      memory of the day when she danced to her mother's death, decked in that
+      same necklace and those same ornaments. More on this head Israel could not
+      think and hold to his purpose, so he took the jewels from Naomi's neck and
+      returned them to the casket, and hastened away with it to a man to whom he
+      designed to sell it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the Jews;
+      for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop in the Sok
+      el Foki. Israel was moved to go to this person by the remembrance of two
+      things, of which either seemed enough for his preference&mdash;first, that
+      he had bought the jewels of Reuben in the beginning, and next, the Reuben
+      had never since ceased to speak of them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the
+      gems of Ethiopia and the gold of Ophir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy, he eyed
+      both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear to his covetous
+      and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself in his need, and
+      bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction that could come to
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is this that you bring me?&rdquo; said Reuben languidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A case of jewels,&rdquo; said Israel, with a downward look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jewels? umph! what jewels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor wife's. You know them, Reuben See!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel opened the casket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, your wife's. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have seen them here, Reuben.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here?&mdash;do you say here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sold them to you? Never. I don't remember it. Surely you must be
+      mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in
+      expressions of contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel watched him closely. &ldquo;Give them back to me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I can go
+      elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reuben's lip straightened instantly. &ldquo;Wrangling? Who is wrangling,
+      brother? You are too impatient, Sidi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am in haste,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said, &ldquo;The
+      things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To buy them,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Buy</i> them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't want them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they worth your money?&mdash;you don't want that either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Umph!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded to examine
+      the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems&mdash;the rich onyx, the
+      sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the topaz, and
+      first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back again. And
+      seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers, the precious jewels
+      which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist and her white neck, Israel could
+      scarcely hold back his hand from snatching them away. But how can he that
+      is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his twitching hands behind
+      him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of Absalam, and when at length
+      Reuben tendered him for the casket one half what he had paid for it, he
+      took the money in silence and went his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five hundred dollars&mdash;I can give no more,&rdquo; Reuben had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you say five hundred&mdash;five?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five&mdash;take it or leave it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through was
+      a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow wooden
+      boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a shelter
+      from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay raisins
+      and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers crouched
+      in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous straw hats,
+      with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats at their feet.
+      Under arcades of dried leaves&mdash;made, like desert graves, of upright
+      poles and dry branches thrown across&mdash;the butchers lay at their ease,
+      flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. &ldquo;Buy! buy! buy!&rdquo; they all
+      shouted together. A dense throng of the poor passed between them in torn
+      jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought. Asses and mules
+      crushed through amid shouts of &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ba-lak!&rdquo; It
+      was a lively scene, with more than enough of bustle and swearing and
+      vociferation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised with
+      subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of sugar in
+      loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers for
+      penance. &ldquo;God forgive me,&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;<i>God forgive me, God forgive
+      me,</i>&rdquo; and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer approached,
+      touched a sugar loaf and asked, &ldquo;How much?&rdquo; The merchant continued his
+      prayers and did his business at a breath. &ldquo;(<i>God forgive me</i>) How
+      much? (<i>God forgive me</i>) Four pesetas (<i>God forgive me</i>),&rdquo; and
+      round went the restless rosary. &ldquo;Too much,&rdquo; said the buyer; &ldquo;I'll give
+      three.&rdquo; The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, &ldquo;(<i>God
+      forgive me</i>) Couldn't take it for as much as you might put in your
+      tooth (<i>God forgive me</i>); gave four myself (<i>God forgive me</i>).&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Then I'll leave it, old sweet-tooth,&rdquo; said the buyer, as he moved away.
+      &ldquo;Here! take it for nothing (<i>God forgive me</i>),&rdquo; cried the merchant
+      after the retreating figure. &ldquo;(<i>God forgive me</i>) I'm giving it away (<i>God
+      forgive me</i>); I'll starve, but no matter (<i>God forgive me</i>), you
+      are my brother (<i>God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me</i>).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the
+      prisoners needed&mdash;enough for the present and for many days to come.
+      Then he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man
+      two days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he
+      knew full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of
+      Absalam receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of
+      famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his short
+      journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was highest,
+      hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to escape
+      observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came
+      to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and
+      deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate at
+      which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a strange
+      procession. It was a procession of penance and petition, asking God to
+      wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and eating up
+      the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white beard, walked
+      side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in the folds of his
+      snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews and the Imam of
+      the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors walked abreast in the
+      burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were Berbers were bareheaded
+      also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!&rdquo; the Imam cried,
+      and the Muslims echoed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the God of Jacob!&rdquo; the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words
+      after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spare us! Spare the land!&rdquo; they all cried together. &ldquo;Send rain to destroy
+      the eggs of the locust!&rdquo; cried the Rabbi. &ldquo;Else will they rise on the
+      ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor; and neither fire
+      nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we ourselves will
+      die, and our children with us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Jews cried, &ldquo;God of Jacob, be our refuge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Muslims shouted, &ldquo;Allah, save us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance&mdash;the
+      haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of
+      sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike,
+      walking and praying in the public streets together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved. And being come
+      into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the
+      motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that,
+      if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself for
+      what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no merit
+      could he make of his poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her,&rdquo; he thought. Naomi was his hope
+      and his salvation. His faith in God was his love of the child. He was only
+      bribing God to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he journeyed
+      towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for them that lay
+      there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their miseries, the
+      mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to himself. So the
+      nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his breast, as if the
+      sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head had eyes to peer into
+      his deceiving soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half
+      of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set
+      when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of the
+      mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and vineyards
+      that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners and
+      pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from Tetuan
+      and his heavy taxings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Israel ben Oliel,&rdquo; whispered one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God of Jacob, save us!&rdquo; whispered another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has followed us for the arrears of taxes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must fly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go home first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No time for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is Rachel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must warn my son&mdash;he has children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are lost. Come on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress and
+      was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within, had
+      heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild disorder of
+      all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his visit, as if
+      they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women and young children,
+      gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some with faces that were hard
+      and stony, some with faces that were weak and simple, some with eyes that
+      were red as blood, all weary with waiting and wasted with long pain, ran
+      hither and thither in the gloom of the foul place where they were immured
+      together. Shedding tears, beating their flesh, and crying out with woeful
+      clamour, these unhappy creatures of God, who had been great of soul when
+      they sang their death-song with the precipice behind them and the soldiers
+      in front, now quaked for the miserable lives which they preserved in
+      hunger and cherished in bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found
+      his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been
+      gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one
+      impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to their
+      knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women in front,
+      and mothers holding out their babes before their breasts so that he might
+      see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart made for pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head
+      was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in
+      wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arise,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and
+      God bless you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the
+      muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had
+      looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged
+      within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat. For
+      a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained their
+      wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his new
+      poverty such as his riches had never brought him&mdash;no, not once in all
+      the days of his old prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length an old man&mdash;he was a Muslim&mdash;looked steadily into
+      Israel's face and said, &ldquo;May the God of Jacob bless thee also, brother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of
+      their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet
+      with hearts so different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May the child of thy wife be blessed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;stop! you don't know what you are saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had stung
+      him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips; they pushed
+      their children under his hands for his blessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;no, no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town
+      like one who was ashamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would
+      have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered
+      into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen years
+      in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the father,
+      still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since her
+      mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears,
+      touching her hand for assent, patting her head for approval, and guiding
+      her fingers to teach them signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter, more
+      to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her sole
+      gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit gazed
+      upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and without him
+      neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out to the world.
+      Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on one side of all
+      language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a mother with her
+      first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery as pure from taint,
+      and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with her, then only did
+      Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of wonder at the
+      strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was gone from her,
+      she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's close abode,
+      waiting to be born anew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder him,
+      as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and connecting it
+      with the illness that came to her in his absence; or as seeming to see,
+      with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the world, what was to
+      befall him before he returned. He put her from him with many tender words,
+      and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead, as though to chide her
+      while he blessed her for so much love. But her dread increased, and she
+      held to him like a child to its mother's robe. And at last, when he
+      unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in anger, and after that
+      laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her meaning yet had no
+      fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a fit of weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut! tut! what is this?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will be back to-morrow. Do you hear,
+      my child?&mdash;tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed to
+      increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered, and
+      her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood she
+      walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside, sometimes
+      moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to herself in
+      noises such as none had heard from her lips before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of her
+      heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and with
+      her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the black
+      woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its master that
+      is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her fears, and
+      partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which God Himself
+      might have revealed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?&rdquo; cried Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alack! girl,&rdquo; said Habeebah, &ldquo;the maid is sickening again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless agitation.
+      She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic slumber,
+      apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she awoke in the
+      morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the evil dreams
+      seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along in them like
+      one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter, as if she were
+      living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour followed long hour,
+      but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her bosom heaved, her throat
+      throbbed, her excitement became hysterical. Sometimes she broke into wild,
+      inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the black women could have believed, in
+      spite of knowledge and reason, that she was muttering and speaking words,
+      though with a wild disorder of utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when
+      this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh
+      intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened,
+      her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear
+      nothing save the common sounds of the streets&mdash;the shouts of children
+      at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and
+      again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of the
+      Moors&mdash;only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct
+      murmur of multitudinous life coming and going on every side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears? Was her spiritual power, which was
+      unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of some
+      terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no more
+      than recollection of her father's promise to be back at sunset, and mere
+      anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw nothing.
+      All that they could do was to wring their hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would
+      serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the
+      black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her
+      fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went out
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we going?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, how should I know?&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are fools,&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic was
+      sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to custom,
+      had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of Jews stood
+      under it in earnest and passionate talk. There was a strange and bodeful
+      silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond the gate was
+      already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was empty. No
+      snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their circles of
+      squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These professors of
+      science and magic and jocularity had never before been absent. Even the
+      blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were silent. But out of the
+      mosques there came a deep low chant as of many voices, from great numbers
+      gathered within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl was right,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;something has happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, how should I know that either?&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you we are a pair of fools,&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she led.
+      Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble frame as by
+      an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed, and perhaps
+      foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these helpless children
+      of God, going whither they knew not and wherefore they knew not, save that
+      a fear that was like to madness drew them on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen! I hear something,&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way we are going,&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On and on Naomi passed from street to street. They were the same streets
+      whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her goat
+      was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither altered
+      not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight forward,
+      until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the goat had
+      fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar. Then she could
+      go no farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy saints, what is this?&rdquo; cried Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't I tell you&mdash;the girl heard something?&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God's face shine on us,&rdquo; said Habeebah. &ldquo;What is all this crowd?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and
+      overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It
+      was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered on
+      that spot on market morning&mdash;a seething, steaming, moving mass of
+      haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare shaven
+      head and plaited crown-lock&mdash;but a great crowd of dark figures in
+      black gowns and skull-caps. The assemblage was of Jews only&mdash;Jews of
+      every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher in
+      his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold braid
+      on his new kaftan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
+      to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them to
+      remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the Moors
+      themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a vacant
+      space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in their
+      open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their reed
+      pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country Berbers,
+      crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted on the
+      vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently impassively,
+      at the vast company of Jews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
+      commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
+      tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
+      their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
+      entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
+      loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every side.
+      It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were breathing out
+      threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of man, and predicting
+      fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which had befallen him early
+      or late but they were remembering it, and reckoning it up and rejoicing in
+      it. And there was no evil which had befallen themselves but they were
+      laying it to his charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
+      penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
+      that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
+      expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain fall
+      instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the thick
+      hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in the
+      sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched and
+      scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while the Muslims
+      went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and muttering to
+      themselves, &ldquo;It is written,&rdquo; they had returned to their synagogues,
+      convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like the sailors
+      of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know for whose
+      cause the evil was upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they
+      were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance of
+      ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a Synhedrin
+      and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden. But they
+      were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had been adopted,
+      and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers. So
+      three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or
+      slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had been
+      unanimous. The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel. He had sold himself to
+      their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and interest of his
+      own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race and nation into
+      exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the Kasbah, and yet
+      others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God, and God had given
+      him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was cursed with devils, a
+      daughter who had been born blind and dumb and deaf, and was still without
+      sight and speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire
+      upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this
+      devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as He
+      had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
+      Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them,
+      never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a
+      feast. Not until their judgment went out against him would God's anger be
+      appeased. Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the
+      blessed rain would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink it,
+      and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed. But let them put off any
+      longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the people, and
+      their evil time would soon come. Within eight-and-twenty days the eggs
+      would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other days the young locust
+      would have wings. Before the end of those seventy-and-six days the harvest
+      of wheat and barley would be yellow to the scythe and ripe for the
+      granary, but the locust would cover the face of the earth, and there would
+      be no grain to gather. The scythe would be idle, the granaries would be
+      empty, the tillers of the ground would come hungry into the markets, and
+      they themselves that were town-dwellers and tradesmen would be perishing
+      for bread, both they and their children with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
+      three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had&mdash;contrary
+      to Jewish custom&mdash;tried and convicted him. God would not let them
+      perish for this man's life, and neither would He charge them with his
+      blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They could
+      only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That the
+      Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel's sin? Ben
+      Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, &ldquo;It is written.&rdquo; That to
+      appease God's wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die? Convince
+      the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land of the
+      Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the whole
+      community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
+      Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
+      for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
+      their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
+      Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding on
+      to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him&mdash;though
+      sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful. But
+      the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for them,
+      upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them; but
+      visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow lane
+      of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of the
+      oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other ground
+      of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find it. At
+      length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the trial of an
+      Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset. Also they had
+      been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a capital case must
+      not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So they had broken up
+      and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they had told the crowds
+      that waited there that judgment had fallen upon Israel ben Oliel, but that
+      his doom could not be made known until sunset on the following day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That time was now come. In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood and
+      anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday. The
+      Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning. They had not
+      broken bread since yesterday, for the day that condemned a son of Israel
+      to death must be a fast-day to his judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open. The
+      sentence was not ready yet, but the judges in council were near to their
+      decision. At the open door the reader of the synagogue had stationed
+      himself, holding a flag in his hand. Under the gate of the Mellah a second
+      messenger was standing, so placed that he could see the movement of the
+      flag. If the flag fell, the sentence would be &ldquo;death,&rdquo; and the man under
+      the gate would carry the tidings to the people gathered in the
+      market-place. Then the three-and-twenty judges would come in procession
+      and tell what steps had been taken that the doom pronounced might be
+      carried into effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger which
+      seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals of a few minutes to
+      glance back towards the Mellah gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight&mdash;these
+      children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs and
+      vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking and
+      acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years before;
+      again judging it expedient that one man should die rather than the whole
+      people be brought to destruction; again probing their crafty heads, if not
+      their hearts, for an artifice whereby their scapegoat might be killed by
+      the hand of their enemy; children indeed, for all that some of their heads
+      were bald, and some of their beards were grizzled, and some of their faces
+      were wrinkled and hard and fierce; little children of God writhing in the
+      grip of their great trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings
+      of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led
+      her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching ears
+      had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness, filled
+      her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought, of great
+      and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher leading?
+      Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always, and that when
+      the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were following the blind
+      maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn was following God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,
+      though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,
+      and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had
+      infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and
+      they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from danger
+      if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a reproach,
+      nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon him found a
+      way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again and going back to the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Habeebah; &ldquo;let us go&mdash;we are not safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;let us take the poor child back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, Naomi,&rdquo; whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, &ldquo;we are going home.
+      Come, dearest, come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her. She
+      stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,
+      motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent save
+      for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet
+      listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her dumb
+      and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been
+      terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness
+      and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been learning
+      speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in that crowd
+      she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others saw she
+      felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the darkness
+      outside her eyes that were blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse,
+      jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it was&mdash;it
+      was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brothers of Tetuan,&rdquo; the old man cried, &ldquo;what are we waiting for? For the
+      verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one thing to
+      do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a humane master.
+      If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been driven to do that
+      which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say: 'Lord Basha,
+      through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has stood over us to
+      oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been silent. In that time
+      we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the houses of their fathers
+      where they have lived since their birth. We have seen them buffeted and
+      smitten, without a resting-place for the soles of their feet, and
+      perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and the want of all things.
+      Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your profit?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once more
+      silent, the thick voice went on: &ldquo;And not the seed of Israel only, but the
+      sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of misery. Under a
+      Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice, in a land that
+      breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God, our brethren the
+      Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no standing. Every day
+      brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At this moment a plague is upon
+      us. The country is bare; the town is overflowing; every man stumbles over
+      his fellow our lives hang in doubt; in the morning we say 'Would it were
+      evening'; in the evening we say, 'Would it were morning'; stretch out your
+      hand and help us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice
+      continued: &ldquo;Let us say to him 'Lord Basha, there is no way of help but
+      one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race
+      and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor,
+      any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own
+      people, and your servants will bless you.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man's voice was drowned in great shouts of &ldquo;Ben Aboo!&rdquo; &ldquo;To Ben
+      Aboo!&rdquo; &ldquo;Why wait for the judges?&rdquo; &ldquo;To the Kasbah!&rdquo; &ldquo;The Kasbah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those waves
+      of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen. Naomi knew
+      this voice also&mdash;it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the
+      synagogue, who would have been sitting among the three-and-twenty-judges
+      but that he was a usurer also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why go to the Kaid?&rdquo; said the voice like a peahen. &ldquo;Does the Basha love
+      this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such affection?
+      Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo be glad to have
+      done with this servant who has been so long his master? Then why trouble
+      him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the Kaid will thank you!
+      And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord and worship Him, that
+      He has not put it into the hearts of His people to play the game of
+      breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the races around them, the
+      Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more warm by nature, must long
+      ago have done, and that not unjustly either, or altogether to the
+      displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and merciful, and has never
+      loved that his poor people should be oppressed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the
+      crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. &ldquo;Away with the man!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Away with him!&rdquo; rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and
+      clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called
+      for mercy or for patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice
+      came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice of
+      Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does God,&rdquo; said Reuben, &ldquo;any more than Ben Aboo&mdash;blessings on
+      his life!&mdash;love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt
+      with this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has
+      His hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty
+      years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife, how
+      she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana,
+      how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the day whereon his
+      daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this offspring of sin,
+      this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and speechless!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh of a
+      breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering.
+      &ldquo;Come! Let us away!&rdquo; But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. &ldquo;Do you say that
+      the Lord gave him riches? Behold him!&mdash;he swallowed them down, but
+      has he not vomited them up? Examine him!&mdash;that which he took by
+      extortions has he not been made to restore? Does God's anger smoke against
+      him? Answer me, yes or no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; And
+      instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice, a
+      peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it&mdash;it
+      was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and still
+      deaf as a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut! What is all this talking about?&rdquo; she snapped and grunted. &ldquo;Reuben
+      Maliki, save your wind for your widows&mdash;you don't give them too much
+      of it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
+      am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
+      for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
+      Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll
+      laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is to
+      ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her a
+      miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
+      children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people laughed&mdash;it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets
+      the teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of
+      the crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the
+      counter-currents of an angry sea. &ldquo;She's right,&rdquo; said a shrill voice. &ldquo;He
+      deserves it,&rdquo; snuffled a nasal one. &ldquo;At least let us drive him out of the
+      town,&rdquo; said a third gruff voice. &ldquo;To his house!&rdquo; cried a fourth voice,
+      that pealed over all. &ldquo;To his house!&rdquo; came then from countless hungry
+      throats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, let us go,&rdquo; whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold of
+      her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
+      strange sounds to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!&rdquo; the people howled in a
+      hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
+      mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
+      people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
+      Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait for
+      the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means whereby
+      they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry the sentence
+      into effect. The procession was even then forming. It was coming out of
+      the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the Mellah; it was
+      approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front of it. At its tail
+      came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were the soldiers and
+      muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his pilgrimage to that
+      enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez. By-and-by they were
+      to betray him to Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and
+      turning like worms on an upturned turf. &ldquo;Why sack his house?&rdquo; cried some.
+      &ldquo;Why drive him out?&rdquo; cried others. &ldquo;A poor revenge!&rdquo; &ldquo;Kill him!&rdquo; &ldquo;Kill
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had
+      waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly in
+      the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of &ldquo;He is
+      there!&rdquo; and then there was a great silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town
+      walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from
+      Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one mule
+      and leading another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers of
+      Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out of their
+      dry throats, saying, &ldquo;May the God of Jacob bless you also, brother!&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;May the child of your wife be blessed!&rdquo; Ah! those blessings, he could
+      hear them still! They followed him as he walked. He did not fly from them
+      any longer, for they sang in his ears and were like music in his melted
+      soul. Once before he had heard such music. It was in England. The organ
+      swelled and the voices rose, and he was a lonely boy, for his mother lay
+      in her grave at his feet. His mother! How strangely his heart was softened
+      towards himself and-all the world And Ruth! He could think of nothing
+      without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the sun was nigh two hours down, and
+      Naomi would be waiting for him at home, for she was as one that had no
+      life without his presence. What would befall if he were taken from her?
+      That thought was like the sweeping of a dead hand across his face. So his
+      body stooped as he walked with his staff, and his head was held down, and
+      his step was heavy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were
+      gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing and
+      hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first
+      surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi heard them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the
+      air, crying, &ldquo;God has given him into our hands!&rdquo; After that all sounds
+      seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled
+      by the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great throat,
+      the crowd encompassed Israel crying, &ldquo;Kill him!&rdquo; Israel stopped, and
+      lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out nor make
+      any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their midst, and
+      massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their fury. They fell
+      upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his face, another tore
+      at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on to his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl
+      that stood there&mdash;blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly
+      beautiful&mdash;a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the
+      thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and
+      terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash
+      of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust
+      herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she was
+      standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God loosed
+      her tongue, for she was crying, &ldquo;Mercy! Mercy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man dared
+      to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against him
+      dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the midst of
+      it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow like a spirit.
+      And like a spirit she had driven back the people from their deed of blood
+      as with the voice of God&mdash;she, the blind, the frail, the helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the procession
+      of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how it was that
+      in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come upon Naomi, his
+      heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over his enemies and
+      say, &ldquo;You thought God's arm was against me, but behold how God has saved
+      me out of your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
+      seemed to have dropped upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, &ldquo;Father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the cup of Israel's heart was full. His throat choked him. So he took
+      her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they passed
+      through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes were to the
+      earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted up, and his
+      tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her gift
+      of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different tongues of
+      men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself, and to put
+      out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than a child
+      untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and broke down,
+      and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must do, only
+      quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because she was a girl
+      and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and thinking shame of
+      it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her father when she halted
+      in her talk with him, and still more humbled by Ali's impetuous help when
+      she miscalled her syllables, she fell back again on silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
+      when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the
+      Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;No,&rdquo; notwithstanding
+      Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings, and Habeebah's
+      breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst of
+      the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the
+      voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw bed
+      of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he had
+      possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,&rdquo; Israel
+      would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and
+      lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was
+      returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor
+      quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money
+      which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife's jewels. The
+      night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were
+      almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was
+      late, very late, and far and near the town was still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm, Israel
+      had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed to cross it
+      after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through the sleeping
+      streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of the summer
+      night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift of
+      speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past. He
+      had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill him.
+      Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing had
+      not come to pass. Man's extremity had indeed been God's opportunity and
+      Ruth's vision was all but realised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Ruth! Ruth! It had escaped Israel's notice until then that he had been
+      thinking of his dead wife the whole night through. When he put it to
+      himself so, he saw the reason of it at once. It was because there was a
+      sort of secret charm in the certainty that where she was she must surely
+      know that her dream was come true. There was also a kind of bitter pathos
+      in the regret that she was only an angel now and not a woman; therefore
+      she could not be with him to share his human joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again: how she had
+      sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear. Sung? Yes, he could
+      almost fancy that he heard her singing yet. That voice so soft, so clear
+      even in its whispers&mdash;there had been nothing like it in all the
+      world. And her songs! Israel could also fancy that he heard her favourite
+      one. It was a song of love, a pure but passionate melody wherein his own
+      delicious happiness in the earlier days, before the death of the old Grand
+      Rabbi, had seemed to speak and sing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel began to laugh at himself as he walked. To think that the warmth
+      and softness of the night, the sweet caressing night, the light and beauty
+      of the moon and the stillness and slumber of the town, could betray an old
+      fellow into forgotten dreams like these!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had taken out of his pocket the big key of the clamped door to his
+      house, and was crossing the shadowed lane in front of it, when suddenly he
+      thought he heard music coating in the air above him. He stopped and
+      listened. Then he had no longer any doubt. It was music, it was singing;
+      he knew the song, and he knew the voice. The song was the song he had been
+      thinking of, and the voice was the voice of Ruth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Israel felt himself rooted to the spot, and he stood some time without
+      stirring. He looked around. All else was still. The night was as silent as
+      death. He listened attentively. The singing seemed to come from his own
+      house. Then he thought he must be dreaming still, and he took a step
+      forward. But he stopped again and covered both his ears. That was of no
+      avail, for when he removed his hands the voice was there as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shiver ran over his limbs, yet he could not believe what his soul was
+      saying. The key dropped out of his hand and rang on the stone. When the
+      clangour was done the voice continued. Israel bethought him then that his
+      household must be asleep, and it flashed on his mind that if this were a
+      human voice the singing ought to awaken them. Just at that moment the
+      night guard went by and saluted him. &ldquo;God bless your morning!&rdquo; the guard
+      cried; and Israel answered, &ldquo;Your morning be blessed!&rdquo; That was all. The
+      guard seemed to have heard nothing. His footsteps were dying away, but the
+      voice went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a strange emotion filled Israel's heart, and he reflected that even
+      if it were Ruth she could have come on no evil errand. That thought gave
+      him courage, and he pushed forward to the door. As he fumbled the key into
+      the lock he saw that a beggar was crouching by the doorway in the shadow
+      cast by the moonlight. The man was asleep. Israel could hear his
+      breathing, and smell his rags. Also he could hear the thud of his own
+      temples like the beating of a drum in his brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, as he was groping feebly through the crooked passage, a new
+      thought came to him. &ldquo;Naomi,&rdquo; he told himself in a whisper of awe. It was
+      she. By the full flood of the moonlight in the patio he saw her. She was
+      on the balcony. Her beautiful white-robed figure was half sitting on the
+      rail, half leaning against the pillar. The whole lustre of the moon was
+      upon her. A look of joy beamed on her face. She was singing her mother's
+      song with her mother's voice, and all the air, and the sky, and the quiet
+      white town seemed to listen:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice
+     Sings&mdash;&ldquo;Love, great Love
+     O come and claim shine own,
+     O come and take thy throne
+     Reign ever and alone,
+     Reign, glorious golden Love.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel's fear was turned to rapture. Why had he not thought of this
+      before? Yet how could he have thought of it? He had never once heard
+      Naomi's voice save in the utterance of single words. But again, why had he
+      not remembered that before the tongues of children can speak words of
+      their own they sing the words of others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The singing ended, and then Israel, struggling with his dry throat,
+      stepped a pace forward&mdash;his foot grated on the pavement&mdash;and he
+      called to the singer&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below, but
+      Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you learn it?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fatimah, she taught me,&rdquo; Naomi answered; and then she added quickly, as
+      if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean, &ldquo;Oh yes,
+      it was I! Was I not beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that night Naomi's shyness of speech dropped away from her, and what
+      was left was only a sweet maidenly unconsciousness of all faults and
+      failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran in and out among the
+      simple words that fell from her red lips like a young squirrel among the
+      fallen leaves of autumn. It would be a long task to tell how her lisping
+      tongue turned everything then to favour and to prettiness. On the coming
+      of the gift of hearing, the world had first spoken to her; and now, on the
+      coming of the gift of speech, she herself was first speaking to the world.
+      What did she tell it at that first sweet greeting? She told it what she
+      had been thinking of it in those mute days that were gone, when she had
+      neither hearing nor speech, but was in the land of silence as well as in
+      the land of night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fancies of the blind maid so long shut up within the beautiful casket
+      of her body were strange and touching ones. Israel took delight in them at
+      the beginning. He loved to probe the dark places of the mind they came
+      from, thinking God Himself must surely have illumined it at some time with
+      a light that no man knew, so startling were some of Naomi's replies, so
+      tender and so beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, not long after she had first spoken, he was sitting with her
+      on the roof of their house as the sun was going down over the palpitating
+      plains towards Arzila and Laraiche and the great sea beyond. Twilight was
+      gathering in the Feddan under the Mosque, and the last light of day, which
+      had parleyed longest with the snowy heights of the Reef Mountains, was
+      glowing only on the sky above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sweetheart,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;what is the sun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sun is a fire in the sky,&rdquo; Naomi answered; &ldquo;my Father lights it every
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly, little one, thy Father lights it,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;thy Father which
+      is in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sweetheart,&rdquo; he said again, &ldquo;what is darkness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, darkness is cold,&rdquo; said Naomi promptly, and she seemed to shiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the light must be warmth, little one?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and noise,&rdquo; she answered; and then she added quickly, &ldquo;Light is
+      alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, she crept closer to his side, and knelt there, and by her old
+      trick of love she took his hand in both of hers, and pressed it against
+      her cheek, and then, lifting her sweet face with its motionless eyes she
+      began to tell him in her broken words and pretty lisp what she thought of
+      night. In the night the world, and everything in it, was cold and quiet.
+      That was death. The angels of God came to the world in the day. But God
+      Himself came in the night, because He loved silence, and because all the
+      world was dead. Then He kissed things, and in the morning all that God had
+      kissed came to life again. If you were to get up early you would feel
+      God's kiss on the flowers and on the grass. And that was why the birds
+      were singing then. God had kissed them in the night, and they were glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day Israel took Naomi to the mearrah of the Jews, the little cemetery
+      outside the town walls where he had buried Ruth. And there he told her of
+      her mother once more; that she was in the grave, but also with God; that
+      she was dead, but still alive; that Naomi must not expect to find her in
+      that place, but, nevertheless, that she would see her yet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember her, Naomi?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you remember her in the old
+      days, the old dark and silent days? Not Fatimah, and not Habeebah, but
+      some one who was nearer to you than either, and loved you better than
+      both; some one who had soft hands, and smooth cheeks, and long, silken,
+      wavy hair&mdash;do you remember, little one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y-es, I think&mdash;I <i>think</i> I remember,&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was your mother, my darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you don't know what a mother is, sweetheart. How should you? And how
+      shall I tell you? Listen. She is the one who loves you first and last and
+      always. When you are a babe she suckles you and nourishes you and fondles
+      you, and watches for the first light of your smile, and listens for the
+      first accent of your tongue. When you are a young child she plays with
+      you, and sings to you, and tells you little stories, and teaches you to
+      speak. Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine, and your childish
+      lisp more sweet than music. If you are sick she is beside you constantly,
+      and when you are well she is behind you still. Though you sin and fall and
+      all men spurn you, yet she clings to you; and if you do well and God
+      prospers you, there is no joy like her joy. Her love never changes, for it
+      is a fount which the cold winds of the world cannot freeze. . . . And if
+      you are a little helpless girl&mdash;blind and deaf and dumb maybe&mdash;then
+      she loves you best of all. She cannot tell you stories, and she cannot
+      sing to you, because you cannot hear; she cannot smile into your eyes,
+      because you cannot see; she cannot talk to you, because you cannot speak;
+      but she can watch your quiet face, and feel the touch of your little
+      fingers and hear the sound of your merry laughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother! my mother!&rdquo; whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the
+      days before your great gifts came to you. But she is gone, she has left
+      us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of
+      memory can she smile back upon us now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears, and
+      she said abruptly, &ldquo;People who die are deceitful. They want to go out in
+      the night to be with God. That is where they are when they go away. They
+      are wandering about the world when it is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no
+      search availed to find her. She was not in the Mellah, and therefore she
+      must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at sunset.
+      Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or among the
+      Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before their tents.
+      At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there he found her. It
+      was dark, and the lonesome place was silent. The reflection of the lights
+      of the town rose into the sky above it, and the distant hum of voices came
+      over the black town walls. And there, within the straggling hedge of
+      prickly pear, among the long white stones that lay like sheep asleep among
+      the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the darkness of the night and of
+      her blindness was running to and fro, and crying, &ldquo;Mother! Mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea
+      might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat and
+      fumes of the town. The day was soft and beautiful, the water was quiet,
+      and only a gentle wind came creeping over it. But Naomi listened to every
+      sound with eager intentness&mdash;the light plash of the blue wavelets
+      that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when the Levanter
+      chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the boatman, the
+      rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the fierce
+      vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to unload the
+      cargoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees, with
+      his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him
+      another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing in the world
+      that did not die at night, and it was water. That was because water was
+      the way from heaven to earth. It went up into the mountains and over them
+      into the air until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His angels came
+      and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why it was always
+      moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day. And the angels
+      were always singing. That was why the waters were always making a noise,
+      and were never silent like the grass. Sometimes their song was joyful, and
+      sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil spirits were struggling with
+      the angels, and that was when the waters were terrible. Every time the sea
+      made a little noise on the shore, an angel had stepped on to the earth.
+      The angel was glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart. Where
+      had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out these beautiful
+      dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come upon the joy of
+      hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was and what life was,
+      and death and heaven? The question was soon decided for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
+      Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her. Alone, without
+      help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on to the
+      water. It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made of ribs of
+      rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark. In this frail craft
+      she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing, but sitting
+      quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind was rising, and
+      the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with breakers. Israel
+      put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes began to fill when
+      she heard his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling, my darling!&rdquo; cried Israel; &ldquo;where did you think you were
+      going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To heaven,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly she had all but gone there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart of this
+      creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril. Naomi was no
+      more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone, but in more danger
+      from herself than any child before her, because deprived of two of her
+      senses until she had grown to be a maid, and no control could be imposed
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening while
+      Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting, and there were
+      noises in the streets below of the Jewish people shuffling back into the
+      Mellah, he told her that she was blind. The word made no impression upon
+      her mind at first. She had heard it before, and it had passed her by like
+      a sound that she did not know. She had been born blind, and therefore
+      could not realise what it was to see. To open a way for the awful truth
+      was difficult, and Israel's heart smote him while he persisted. Naomi
+      laughed as he put his fingers over her eyes that he might show her. She
+      laughed again when he asked if she could see the people whom she could
+      only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun had gone down, and the
+      mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, and he asked if
+      she could see the old blind man in the minaret, where he was crying, &ldquo;God
+      is great! God is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you see him, little one?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See him?&rdquo; said Naomi; &ldquo;why yes, you dear old father, of course I can see
+      him. Listen,&rdquo; she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger, and
+      holding her head aslant, &ldquo;listen: God is great! God is great! There&mdash;I
+      saw him then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is only hearing him, Naomi&mdash;hearing him with your ears&mdash;with
+      this ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did her father mean to ask her if she could <i>feel</i> the mooddin in his
+      minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant. There was a
+      pause, and then she cried impulsively&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>I</i> know. But, you foolish old father, how <i>can</i> I? He is
+      too far away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences, &ldquo;I have seen
+      my <i>father</i> anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it. He told her,
+      with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like other maidens&mdash;not
+      like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah; that she was a being
+      afflicted of God; that there was something she had not got, something she
+      could not do, a world she did not know, and had never yet so much as
+      dreamt of. Darkness was more than cold and quiet, and light was more than
+      warmth and noise. The one was day&mdash;day ruled by the fiery sun in the
+      sky&mdash;and the other was night, lit by the pale moon and the bright
+      stars in heaven. And the face of man and the eyes of woman were more than
+      features to feel&mdash;they were spirit and soul, to watch and to follow
+      and to love without any hand being near them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a great world about you, little one,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;which you have
+      never seen, though you can hear it and feel it and speak to it. Yes, it is
+      true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen the mountains and the
+      dangerous gullies on their rocky sides. You have never seen the mighty
+      deep, and the storms that heave and swell in it. You have never seen man
+      or woman or child. Is that very strange, little one? Listen: your mother
+      died nine years ago, and you had never seen her. Your father is holding
+      your head in his hands at this moment, but you have never seen his face.
+      And if the dark curtains were to fall from your eyes, and you were to see
+      him now, you would not know him from another man, or from woman, or from a
+      tree. You are blind, Naomi, you are blind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested nervously
+      on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn, and then
+      filled with tears. Israel's throat swelled. To tell her of all this,
+      though he must needs do it for her safety, was like reproaching her with
+      her infirmity. But it was only the trouble in her father's voice that had
+      found its way to the sealed chamber of Naomi's mind. The awful and
+      crushing truth of her blindness came later to her consciousness, probed in
+      and thrust home by a frailer and lighter hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had always loved little children, and since the coming of her hearing
+      she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues, their pretty
+      broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts, all fitted
+      with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself, though grown
+      to be a lovely maid. And of all children those she loved best were not the
+      children of the Jews, nor yet the children of the Moorish townsfolk, but
+      the ragged, barefoot, black and olive-skinned mites who came into Tetuan
+      with the country Arabs and Berbers on market mornings. They were simplest,
+      their little tongues were liveliest, and they were most full of joy and
+      wonder. So she would gather them up in twos and threes and fours, on
+      Wednesdays and Sundays, from the mouths of their tents on the Feddan, and
+      carry them home by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope, suspended
+      from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this Naomi would sport
+      with her little ones. She would be swinging in the midst of them, with one
+      tiny black maiden on the seat beside her, and one little black man with
+      high stomach and shaven poll holding on to the rope behind her, and
+      another mighty Moor in a diminutive white jellab pushing at their feet in
+      front, and all laughing together, or the children singing as the swing
+      rose, and she herself listening with head aslant and all her fair hair
+      rip-rip-rippling down her back and over her neck, and her smiling white
+      face resting on her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it came the first
+      great shadow of the blind girl's life. For it chanced one day that one of
+      the children&mdash;a tiny creature with a slice of the woman in her&mdash;brought
+      a present for Naomi out of her mother's market-basket. It was a flower,
+      but of a strange kind, that grew only in the distant mountains where lay
+      the little black one's home. Naomi passed her fingers over it, and she did
+      not know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's blue,&rdquo; said the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is blue?&rdquo; said Naomi
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blue&mdash;don't you know?&mdash;blue!&rdquo; said the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is blue?&rdquo; Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her restless
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, dear me! can't you see?&mdash;blue&mdash;the flower, you know,&rdquo; said
+      the child, in her artless way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's relief.
+      &ldquo;Blue is a colour,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A colour?&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, like&mdash;like the sea,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea? Blue? How?&rdquo; Naomi asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali tried again. &ldquo;Like the sky,&rdquo; he said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi's face looked perplexed. &ldquo;And what is the sky like?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face, and her
+      great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes. The lad was
+      pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer that leapt up to his
+      tongue. &ldquo;Like,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;like&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like your own eyes, Naomi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes with her
+      hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her what her other senses
+      could not tell. But the solemn mystery had dawned on her mind at last:
+      that she was unlike others; that she was lacking something that every one
+      else possessed; that the little children who played with her knew what she
+      could never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off; that there was
+      a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying round about her, where
+      every one else might sport and find delight, but that her spirit could not
+      enter it, because she was shut off from it by the great hand of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time forward everything seemed to remind her of her affliction,
+      and she heard its baneful voice at all times. Even her dreams, though they
+      had no visions, were full of voices that told of them. If a bird sang in
+      the air above her, she lifted her sightless eyes. If she walked in the
+      town on market morning and heard the din of traffic&mdash;the cries of the
+      dealers, the &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; of the camel-men, the &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; of the muleteers, and
+      the twanging ginbri of the story-tellers&mdash;she sighed and dropped her
+      head into her breast. Listening to the wind, she asked if it had eyes or
+      was sightless; and hearing of the mountains that their snowy heads rose
+      into the clouds, she inquired if they were blind, and if they ever talked
+      together in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child, and
+      became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more of the world
+      than in all the years of her life before. She was no longer a restless
+      gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy, but a weak, patient, blind
+      maiden, conscious of her great infirmity, humbled by it, and thinking
+      shame of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out with the
+      children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered far down the
+      banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced, the little
+      black people plucked the wild flowers, and called to the cattle and the
+      sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets that whistled to their
+      young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening, the
+      evening into twilight, the twilight into early night. Then the air grew
+      empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell upon the children, and they
+      crept to Naomi's side in fear, and took her hands and clung to her gown.
+      She turned back towards the town, and as they walked in the double silence
+      of their own hushed tongues and the songless and voiceless world, the
+      fingers of the little ones closed tightly upon her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the children cried in terror, &ldquo;See!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little ones could not tell her. It was only the noiseless summer
+      lightning, but the children had never seen it before. With broad white
+      flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the
+      valley to the white peaks of the mountains. At every flash the little
+      people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort them
+      save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw. With
+      helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the
+      darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light,
+      leading on, yet seeing nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel saw Naomi's shame. The blindness which was a sense of
+      humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him. He had asked
+      God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied. &ldquo;Give her
+      speech, O Lord,&rdquo; he had cried, &ldquo;speech that shall lift her above the
+      creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know.&rdquo; But
+      what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind? What was
+      all the world to one who had never seen it? Only as Paradise is to Man,
+      who can but idly dream of its glories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel took back his prayer. There were things to know that words could
+      never tell. Now was Naomi blind for the first time, being no longer dumb.
+      &ldquo;Give her sight, O Lord,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;open her eyes that she may see; let
+      her look on Thy beautiful world and know it! Then shall her life be safe,
+      and her heart be happy, and her soul be Thine, and Thy servant at last be
+      satisfied!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok, and
+      no rain had yet fallen. The eggs of the locust might be hatched at any
+      time. Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the earth like
+      snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were coming green
+      out of the ground would wither before them. The country people were in
+      despair. They were all but stripped of their cattle; they had no milk; and
+      they came afoot to the market. Death seemed to look them in the face.
+      Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they offer petitions to
+      God for rain. They had long ceased their prayers. Only in the Feddan at
+      the mouths of their tents did they lift up their heavy eyes to the hot
+      haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, &ldquo;It is written!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was busy with other matters. During these six-and-twenty days he
+      had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.
+      He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he
+      held under the Kaid. No longer could he serve two masters. Too long had he
+      held to the one, thinking that by recompense and restitution, by fair
+      dealing and even-handed justice, he might atone to the other. Recompense
+      was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was no
+      longer possible&mdash;his own purse being empty&mdash;without robbery of
+      the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope
+      in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in
+      his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human
+      torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of the man
+      beneath him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible,
+      and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina,
+      was a waste of shame and spirit. Besides, and above all, Israel remembered
+      that God had given him grace in the sacrifices which he had made already.
+      Twice had God rewarded him, in the mercy He had shown to Naomi, for
+      putting by the pomp and circumstance of the world. Would His great hand be
+      idle now&mdash;now when he most needed its mighty and miraculous power
+      when Naomi, being conscious of her blindness, was mourning and crying for
+      sweet sight of the world and he himself was about to put under his feet
+      the last of his possessions that separated him from other men&mdash;his
+      office that he wrought for in the early days with sweat of brow and blood,
+      and held on to in the later days through evil report and hatred, that he
+      might conquer the fate that had first beaten him down!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat of his
+      desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan. He made his preparations, and
+      they were few. His money was gone already, and so were his dead wife's
+      jewels. He had determined that he would keep his house, if only as a
+      shelter to Naomi (for he owed something to her material comfort as well as
+      her spiritual welfare), but that its furniture and belongings were more
+      luxurious than their necessity would require or altered state allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and great chairs
+      which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets from Rabat, the
+      silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies from Morocco city. When
+      these were gone, and nothing remained but the simple rugs and mattresses
+      which are all that the house of a poor man needs in that land where the
+      skies are kind, he called his servants to him as he sat in the patio&mdash;Ali
+      as well as the two bondwomen&mdash;for he had decided that he must part
+      with them also, and they must go their ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good people,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you have been true and faithful servants to me
+      this many a year&mdash;you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah, since before
+      the days when my wife came to me&mdash;and you too, Ali, my lad, since you
+      grew to be big and helpful. Little I thought to part with you until my
+      good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary is over already,
+      and to-morrow I shall be less than the least of all men in Tetuan. So this
+      is what I have concluded to do. You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah, being
+      given to me as bondwomen by the Kaid in the old days when my power, which
+      now is little and of no moment, was great and necessary&mdash;you belong
+      to me. Well, I give you your liberty. Your papers are in the name of Ben
+      Aboo, and I have sealed them with his seal&mdash;that is the last use but
+      one that I shall put it to. Here they are, both of them. Take them to the
+      Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will ratify your title. Then you
+      will be free women for ever after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel's words with
+      exclamations of surprise and consternation. &ldquo;Allah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Bismillah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Holy
+      Saints!&rdquo; &ldquo;By the beard of the Prophet!&rdquo; And when at length he put the
+      deeds of emancipation into their hands they fell into loud fits of
+      hysterical weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for you, Ali, my son,&rdquo; Israel continued, &ldquo;I cannot give you your
+      freedom, for you are a freeman born. You have been a son to me these
+      fourteen years. I have another task for you&mdash;a perilous task, a
+      solemn duty&mdash;and when it is done I shall see you no more. My brave
+      boy, you will go far, but I do not fear for you. When you are gone I shall
+      think of you; and if you should sometimes think of your old master who
+      could not keep you, we may not always be apart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment. That strange
+      disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea that had forced
+      itself upon his unwilling mind. But that Israel, the greatest, noblest,
+      mightiest man in the world&mdash;let the dogs of rasping Jews and the
+      scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark as they would&mdash;should fall to be
+      less than the least in Tetuan, and, having fallen that he should send him
+      away&mdash;him, Ali, his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi's old
+      playfellow&mdash;Allah! Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did
+      his master mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali's big eyes began to fill, and great beads rolled down his black
+      cheeks. Then, recovering his speech he blurted out that he would not go.
+      He would follow his father and serve him until the end of his life. What
+      did he want with wages? Who asked for any? No going his ways for him! A
+      pretty thing, wasn't it, that he should go off, and never see his father
+      again, no, nor Naomi&mdash;Naomi&mdash;that-that&mdash;but God would show!
+      God would show!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, following Ali's lead, Fatimah stepped up to Israel and offered her
+      paper back. &ldquo;Take it,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I don't want any liberty. I've got
+      liberty enough as I am. And here&mdash;here,&rdquo; fumbling in her waistband
+      and bringing out a knitted purse; &ldquo;I would have offered it before, only I
+      thought shame. My wages? Yes. You've paid us wages these nine years,
+      haven't you; and what right had we to any, being slaves? You will not take
+      it, my lord? Well, then, my dear master, if I must go, if I must leave
+      you, take my papers and sell me to some one. I shall not care, and you
+      have a right to do it. Perhaps I'll get another good master&mdash;who
+      knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brows had been knitted, and she had tried to look stern and angry, but
+      suddenly her cheeks were a flood of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a fool!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I'll never get a good master again; but if I get
+      a bad one, and he beats me, I'll not mind, for I'll think of you, and my
+      precious jewel of gold and silver, my pretty gazelle, Naomi&mdash;Allah
+      preserve her!&mdash;that you took my money, and I'm bearing it for both of
+      you, as we might say&mdash;working for you&mdash;night and day&mdash;night
+      and day&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel could endure no more. He rose up and fled out of the patio into his
+      own room, to bury his swimming face. But his soul was big and triumphant.
+      Let the world call him by what names it would&mdash;tyrant, traitor,
+      outcast pariah&mdash;there were simple hearts that loved and honoured him&mdash;ay,
+      honoured him&mdash;and they were the hearts that knew him best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The perilous task reserved for Ali was to go to Shawan and to liberate the
+      followers of Absalam, who, less happy than their leader, whose strong soul
+      was at rest, were still in prison without abatement of the miseries they
+      lay under. He was to do this by power of a warrant addressed to the Kaid
+      of Shawan and drawn under the seal of the Kaid of Tetuan. Israel had drawn
+      it, and sealed it also, without the knowledge or sanction of Ben Aboo;
+      for, knowing what manner of man Ben Aboo was, and knowing Katrina also,
+      and the sway she held over him, and thinking it useless to attempt to move
+      either to mercy, he had determined to make this last use of his office, at
+      all risks and hazards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo might never hear that the people were at large, for Ali was to
+      forbid them to return to Tetuan, and Shawan was sixty weary miles away.
+      And if he ever did hear, Israel himself would be there to bear the brunt
+      of his displeasure, but Ali the instrument of his design, must be far
+      away. For when the gates of the prison had been opened, and the prisoners
+      had gone free, Ali was neither to come back to Tetuan nor to remain in
+      Morocco, but with the money that Israel gave him out of the last wreck of
+      his fortune he was to make haste to Gibraltar by way of Ceuta, and not to
+      consider his life safe until he had set foot in England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;England!&rdquo; cried Ali. &ldquo;But they are all white men there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White-hearted men, my lad,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and a Jewish man may find rest
+      for the sole of his foot among them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same day the black boy bade farewell to Israel and to Naomi. He was
+      leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted. Israel was his father,
+      Naomi was his sister, and never again should he set his eyes on either.
+      But in the pride of his perilous mission he bore himself bravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, good-night,&rdquo; he said, taking Naomi's hand, but not looking into her
+      blind face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; she answered, and then, after a moment, she flung her arms
+      about his neck and kissed him. He laughed lightly, and turned to Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, father,&rdquo; he said in a shrill voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A safe journey to you, my son,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and may you do all my
+      errands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God burn my great-grandfather if I do not!&rdquo; said Ali stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with that word of his country his brave bearing at length broke down,
+      and drawing Israel aside, that Naomi might not hear, he whispered, sobbing
+      and stammering, &ldquo;When&mdash;when I am gone, don't, don't tell her that I
+      was black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then in an instant he fled away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In peace!&rdquo; cried Israel after him. &ldquo;In peace! my brave boy, simple,
+      noble, loyal heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Israel, leaving Naomi at home, set off for the Kasbah, that
+      he might carry out his great resolve to give up the office he held under
+      the Kaid. And as he passed through the streets his head was held up, and
+      he walked proudly. A great burden had fallen from him, and his spirit was
+      light. The people bent their heads before him as he passed, and scowled at
+      him when he was gone by. The beggars lying at the gate of the Mosque spat
+      over their fingers behind his back, and muttered &ldquo;Bismillah! In the name
+      of God!&rdquo; A negro farmer in the Feddan, who was bent double over a hoof as
+      he was shoeing a bony and scabby mule, lifted his ugly face, bathed in
+      sweat, and grinned at Israel as he went along. A group of Reefians, dirty
+      and lean and hollow-eyed, feeding their gaunt donkeys, and glancing
+      anxiously at the sky over the heads of the mountains, snarled like dogs as
+      he strode through their midst. The sky was overcast, and the heads of the
+      mountains were capped with mist. &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; sounded in Israel's ears from
+      every side. &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; came constantly at his heels. A sweet-seller with his
+      wooden tray swung in front of him, crying, &ldquo;Sweets, all sweets, O my lord
+      Edrees, sweets, all sweets,&rdquo; changed the name of the patron saint of
+      candies, and cried, &ldquo;Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all
+      sweets!&rdquo; The girl selling clay peered up impudently into Israel's eyes,
+      and the oven-boy, answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms
+      thrust out at doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with
+      a mocking echo of Israel's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What matter? Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.
+      Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave. This
+      morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be one of themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air about it that
+      brought back recollections of the day&mdash;now nearly four years past&mdash;of
+      the children's gathering at Katrina's festival. The lusty-lunged Arabs
+      squatting at the gates among soldiers in white selhams and peaked
+      shasheeahs the women in blankets standing in the outer court, the dark
+      passages smelling of damp, the gusts of heavy odour coming from the inner
+      chambers, and the great patio with the fountain and fig-trees&mdash;the
+      same voluptuous air was over everything. And as on that day so on this, in
+      the alcove under the horseshoe arch sat Ben Aboo and his Spanish wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face of the
+      Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey and his
+      hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise he was the same
+      man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss of some teeth of the
+      upper row, was the same woman. And if the children had risen up before
+      Israel's eyes as he stood on the threshold of the patio, he could not have
+      drawn his breath with more surprise than at the sight of the man who stood
+      that morning in their place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mohammed of Mequinez. He had come to ask for the release of the
+      followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan. In defiance of courtesy
+      his slippers were on his feet. He was clad in a piece of untanned
+      camel-skin, which reached to his knees and was belted about his waist. His
+      head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a flower, was
+      held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing. He was not supplicating
+      for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and taxing Ben Aboo
+      as a tyrant to his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me them up, Ben Aboo,&rdquo; he was saying as Israel came to the
+      threshold, &ldquo;or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray what is that?&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo's brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made
+      pretence to laugh, and then said, &ldquo;And pray, my lord, who shall the
+      murderer be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered, &ldquo;Yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in his
+      seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed. He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was master
+      of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of this man
+      whom the people called a prophet. And partly out of this fear, and partly
+      because he had more regard to Mohammed's courageous behaviour in thus
+      bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than to the
+      anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised him at
+      that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation
+      against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had
+      openly denounced her marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait, Sidi,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Is not this the fellow that has gone up and down
+      your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the law of
+      Mohammed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he made
+      pretence to laugh again, and said, &ldquo;Allah! so it is! Mohammed the Third,
+      eh? Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You could never
+      think how long I've waited that I might look face to face upon the prophet
+      that has denounced a Kaid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but
+      Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant. &ldquo;Wait no longer,
+      O Ben Aboo,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;but look upon him now, and know that what you have
+      done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ben Aboo's passion mastered him. He rose to his feet in his anger,
+      and cried, &ldquo;Prophet, you have destroyed yourself. Listen to me! The
+      turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish
+      of hunger and rot of their sores. By the beard of my father, I swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mohammed did not flinch. Throwing back his head, he answered, &ldquo;If I am a
+      prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy. Before that which you say shall come
+      to pass, both you and your father's house will be destroyed. Never yet did
+      a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it like a
+      dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of barefooted
+      Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, &ldquo;Take him! He will escape!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and
+      Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt you
+      had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought on
+      our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you. And within
+      this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest, your
+      whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing and
+      your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with you,
+      for all else had forsaken you&mdash;all save one, and that was your enemy,
+      and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you with his
+      heart, because you were fallen and dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again and reeled
+      backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward at his feet where
+      the eyes of Mohammed had rested. It was almost as if he saw the awful
+      thing of which Mohammed had spoken, so strong was the power of the vision
+      upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But recovering himself quickly, he cried, &ldquo;Away! In the name of God,
+      away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go,&rdquo; said Mohammed; &ldquo;and beware what you do while I am gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you threaten me?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Will you go to the Sultan? Will you
+      appeal to Abd er-Rahman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Ben Aboo; but to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place, for no man
+      hindered him. Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat as one that was
+      speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body availed him, or the
+      silver on his breast, against that simple man in camel-skin, who owned
+      nothing and asked nothing, and feared neither Kaid nor King.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing at the doorway,
+      and he beckoned to him with the downward motion, which is the Moorish
+      manner. And rising on his quaking limbs he took him aside and said, &ldquo;I
+      know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and visions he has
+      gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I dare not take him!
+      Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas! Camel-skin coat?
+      Allah! a fine disguise! Bismillah! Bismillah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision saw his body
+      lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and said, &ldquo;Listen!
+      You have my seal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband, and
+      drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right! Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God. Do not liberate
+      these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them so much as bread to eat
+      or water to drink, but let such as own them feed them. And if ever the
+      thing of which that fellow has spoken should come to pass&mdash;do you
+      hear?&mdash;in the hour wherein it befalls&mdash;Allah preserve me!&mdash;in
+      that hour draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan and seal it with my seal&mdash;are
+      you listening?&mdash;a warrant to put every man, woman, and child to the
+      sword. Ya Allah! Allah! We will deal with these spies of Abd er-Rahman! So
+      shall there be mourning at my burial&mdash;Holy Saints! Holy Saints!&mdash;mourning,
+      I say, among them that look for joy at my death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking into
+      loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words into
+      Israel's ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel made no answer. His eyes had become dim&mdash;he scarcely saw the
+      walls of the place wherein they stood. His ears had become dense&mdash;he
+      scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo, though the Kaid's hot breath was
+      beating upon his cheek. But through the haze he saw the shadow of one
+      figure tramping furiously to and fro, and through the thick air the voice
+      of another figure came muffled and harsh. For Katrina, having chased away
+      with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel and was
+      saying&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter&mdash;this Naomi of yours&mdash;that
+      she has recovered her speech and hearing! When did that happen, pray? No
+      answer? Ah, I see, you are tired of the deception. You kept it up well
+      between you. But is she still blind? So? Dear me! Blind, poor child. Think
+      of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless on the same
+      place, holding the seal in his hand. And Ben Aboo, in his restless
+      tramping up and down, came to him again, and said, &ldquo;Why are you a Jew,
+      Israel ben Oliel? The dogs of your people hate you. Witness to the
+      Prophet! Resign yourself! Turn Muslim, man&mdash;what's to hinder you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Israel made no reply. But Ben Aboo continued: &ldquo;Listen! The people
+      about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all you are the best
+      servant I have ever had. Say the Kelmah, and I'll make you my Khaleefa. Do
+      you hear?&mdash;my Khaleefa, with power equal to my own. Man, why don't
+      you speak? Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; said Israel&mdash;he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced
+      calmness&mdash;&ldquo;Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that&mdash;this
+      hand of mine shall never seal that warrant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut, man!&rdquo; whispered Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Do your new measles break out everywhere?
+      Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his
+      great resolve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; he said again calmly and quietly, &ldquo;if you were Sultan and could
+      make me your Vizier, I would not do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo; &ldquo;why? why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;I am here to deliver up your seal to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You? Grace of God!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am here,&rdquo; continued Israel, as calmly as before, &ldquo;to resign my office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Man, man, are
+      you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Basha, not to-day,&rdquo; said Israel quietly. &ldquo;I must have been that when
+      I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his anger,
+      his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel with
+      torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and terrible
+      thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers under his
+      breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and said, &ldquo;There is
+      something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let me think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown
+      white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct of
+      a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, &ldquo;What does
+      it mean? What does it mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; he
+      cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people
+      about him. &ldquo;Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez? The
+      Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I knew
+      it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought him.
+      Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread should
+      spy and pry on me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for
+      no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and
+      protests. &ldquo;O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.
+      Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites&mdash;his thieves,
+      his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib
+      es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want
+      to squeeze me of my little wealth&mdash;my just savings&mdash;my hard
+      earnings after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O
+      Merciful! O Compassionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by
+      the beard of my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it.
+      I'm an old soldier&mdash;they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the
+      jellab&mdash;but I'll stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd
+      er-Rahman hate me? It's because I'm his brother&mdash;that's it, that's
+      it! But I've never risen against him. Never, never! I've paid him all!
+      All! I tell you I've paid everything. I've got nothing left. You know it
+      yourself, Israel, you know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded and
+      entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary and
+      tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up at length,
+      with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if anything had
+      been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the
+      service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of
+      the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty, and
+      rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as slowly
+      and calmly as at first, &ldquo;Basha, have no fear; I have not sold myself to
+      Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez&mdash;but not to see the
+      Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing of me. I
+      know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for myself
+      alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the
+      other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made what
+      poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he had just
+      betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's steadfast
+      face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn of his own
+      words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of braggadocio, and
+      to make believe that they had been no more than a humorous pretence, and
+      that no man would be so simple as to think he had truly meant them. But,
+      after this mockery, he turned to Israel again, and, being relieved of his
+      fears, he fell back to his savage mood once more, without disguise and
+      without shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray, sir,&rdquo; said he, with a ghastly smile, &ldquo;what riches have you
+      gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; said Israel shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with
+      Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray, again,&rdquo; he said, with a curl of the lip, &ldquo;without office and
+      without riches how may you hope to live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a poor man among poor men,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;serving God and trusting to
+      His mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel stood
+      quiet and silent, and gave no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serving God is hard bread,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serving the devil is crust!&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed it,
+      the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah! What do you mean?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Who are you that you dare wag your
+      insolent tongue at me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am your scapegoat, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel, with an awful calm&mdash;&ldquo;your
+      scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people. Your
+      scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them by
+      bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and have
+      long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets among
+      your people&mdash;hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off&mdash;you
+      are up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth,
+      and the mistaken love of all men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the
+      opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy
+      cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose
+      and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his turban
+      two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face to
+      face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke again and
+      said, &ldquo;Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your business
+      nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is your seal.
+      It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these
+      five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as he
+      offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of the
+      patio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most
+      merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A
+      prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery
+      his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and
+      lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who said it was the Sultan?&rdquo; he cried again. &ldquo;He was a fool. Abd
+      er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That's it!
+      That's it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of Mohammed
+      himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side to side
+      like a caged and angry beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I am a tyrant,&rdquo; he said in a thick voice, &ldquo;who made me so? If I
+      oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain
+      devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false
+      judgments&mdash;what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver
+      dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people
+      that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head did
+      all this? Why, yours&mdash;yours&mdash;Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of
+      the Prophet, I swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he
+      answered calmly and sadly, &ldquo;God's ways are not our ways, neither are His
+      thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His
+      ministers. I thought God's justice had failed, but it has overtaken
+      myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to
+      oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with lips
+      whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan restlessly
+      on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And now, at this
+      last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn in its note of
+      suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said lightly, &ldquo;Ah! I
+      thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its teeth, poor
+      thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the time that you were, madam,&rdquo; said Israel, lifting his heavy eyes
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. &ldquo;Husband,&rdquo; she cried,
+      turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, &ldquo;I hope you now see
+      that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you from the first
+      what would come of him. But no, you would have your own foolish way. It
+      was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him. Yet you would not
+      believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are, you are believing
+      him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I tell you again this
+      man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh, trust him, he's got
+      his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it! He'll be master in
+      Tetuan yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes
+      laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry cry.
+      And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers, who
+      stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, &ldquo;Arabs, Berbers, Moors,
+      Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may, you'll lie in
+      the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile
+      came back into the face of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah! This
+      is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and I gave
+      him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him place and
+      rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could find no one to
+      serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his enemies, and imprisoned
+      those he hated. After his wife had died, and none came near him, and he
+      was left to howk out her grave with his own hands, I gave him prisoners to
+      bury her, and when he was done with them I set them free. All these years
+      I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya Allah! His master! No, but his servant,
+      doing his will at the lifting of his finger. And all for what? For this!
+      For this! For this! Ingrate!&rdquo; he cried in his thick voice, turning hotly
+      upon Israel again, &ldquo;if you must give up your seal, why should you do it
+      like a fool? Could you not come to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary;
+      I am rich, and have enough; I have served you long and faithfully; let me
+      rest'&mdash;why not? I say, why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel answered calmly, &ldquo;Because it would have been a lie, Basha.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it would,&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo sharply, &ldquo;so it would: you are right&mdash;it
+      would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and
+      say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have
+      sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it is true, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and
+      awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the
+      patio, he said, &ldquo;There is another thing that is true. It is true that on
+      the other side of that wall there is a prison,&rdquo; and, lifting his voice to
+      a shriek, he added, &ldquo;you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel. One
+      step more&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and the
+      threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling throat. If
+      only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of
+      him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble
+      in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort
+      upon his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his
+      ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of rage and
+      fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin, shrieking,
+      bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was the master
+      in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood. But for the
+      strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head wherewith he had
+      guarded him, where would the man be now? In the dungeons of Abd er-Rahman,
+      having gone thither by way of the Sultan's wooden jellabs and his houses
+      of fierce torture. By the mind's eye Israel could see him there at that
+      instant&mdash;sightless, eyeless, hungry, gaunt. But no, he was still here&mdash;fat,
+      sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And good men lay perishing in his prisons,
+      and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself, his
+      servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood he had
+      sweated, stood before him there like an old lion, who had been wandering
+      far and was beaten back by his cubs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should he
+      speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither read nor
+      write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the Shereefean
+      Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should he do so?
+      Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man's house; yet
+      why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully? He had said
+      his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage had been
+      written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then courage!
+      courage!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Husband,&rdquo; cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile to
+      Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, &ldquo;you must scour this vermin out of
+      Tetuan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I
+      will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice
+      of mockery, &ldquo;Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?
+      But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well, and
+      all that's in it, and leave this town as a beggar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel stood unmoved. &ldquo;As you will,&rdquo; he said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are the two women&mdash;the slaves?&rdquo; asked Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At home,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are mine, and I take them back,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he only
+      drew a longer breath, and said again, &ldquo;As you will, Basha.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo's voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. &ldquo;Where is
+      your money?&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;the money that you have made out of my service&mdash;out
+      of me&mdash;<i>my</i> money&mdash;where is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a lie&mdash;another lie!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Oh yes, I've heard of
+      your charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they?
+      Were they? Were they, I ask?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you say, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I know!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo; &ldquo;but all you had is not gone that way. You're
+      a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys&mdash;the keys of
+      your house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel hesitated, and then said, &ldquo;Let me return for a minute&mdash;it is
+      all I ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the woman laughed hysterically. &ldquo;Ah! he has something left after
+      all!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, &ldquo;Yes, madam, I <i>have</i>
+      something left&mdash;after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying, &ldquo;El
+      Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true, madam,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;it is true that I have a treasure
+      there. My daughter&mdash;my little blind Naomi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;but it is enough. Let me fetch her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't allow it!&rdquo; cried Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. &ldquo;Make me
+      homeless if you will,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;turn me like a beggar out of your town,
+      but let me fetch my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll not thank you,&rdquo; cried Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She loves me,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;I am growing old, I am numbering the steps
+      of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.
+      Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am
+      yours, and no one save her father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Ah! Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had
+      been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. &ldquo;Trust
+      me,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I know what daughters are. Girls like better things. No,
+      I'll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, &ldquo;Madam, I would
+      rather see her dead at my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, &ldquo;Don't wag your tongue at your mistress,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Your</i> mistress, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;not mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down
+      upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not
+      flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood trickled
+      over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from
+      behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood
+      in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered the
+      patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and how she
+      had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets scarce any one&mdash;even
+      when time sufficed to arrange the scattered thoughts of the Makhazni, the
+      guard at the gate&mdash;could clearly tell. She stood under the arch, with
+      one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly with emotion, and the other
+      hand stretched out to touch the open iron-clamped door, as if for help and
+      guidance. Her head was held up, her lips were apart, and her motionless
+      blind eyes seemed to stare wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had
+      heard the sound of the blow that followed them. Her father was smitten!
+      Her father! Her father! It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes
+      turned to her. Quaking, reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down
+      the patio. Soul and sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind
+      face. What did it all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as
+      if they must burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
+      has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into His
+      world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous flash, as
+      if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which had hung for
+      seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
+      girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips, her
+      brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair before, so
+      full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then but a blank.
+      Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time. This, only this,
+      was she!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been newly
+      born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face, eye to
+      eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light, everything
+      had entered at a blow&mdash;the white glare of the sun, the blue sky, the
+      tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his soldiers, and of
+      the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the fringe of his
+      eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know what vision
+      was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone out from its
+      dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. &ldquo;Oh! oh!&rdquo; she cried,
+      and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The picture of the world
+      seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her eyes with her hands,
+      that she might abolish it altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw everything. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he cried in a choking voice, and stretched
+      out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked, and paused
+      and hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her eyes
+      once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and only
+      listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into her
+      father's arms. And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her to his
+      breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, &ldquo;Madam, we are in the
+      hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His servant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God in
+      the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his
+      maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done
+      before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object of
+      his terror. &ldquo;O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us!
+      Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on
+      them both! Allah! Allah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled
+      together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brava!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long
+      ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well
+      acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of his
+      crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of Naomi,
+      a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the lowest
+      hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and at the
+      next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk
+      barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, 'So shall it be done
+      to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a
+      play-actor and a cheat!' Thus let them pass through the streets and
+      through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then
+      cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE RAINBOW SIGN
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great blessing
+      had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed for&mdash;the
+      good and blessed rain&mdash;had come at last. In gentle drops like dew it
+      had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had gathered
+      over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of such
+      moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring down
+      like a flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!
+      The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and
+      whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which had
+      reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome
+      river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the falling
+      of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The streets and the
+      marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they wandered up and down
+      in the drenching flood, without fear or thought of harm, with laughing
+      eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their palms to the rain and
+      drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of boys, jesting and
+      shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came without aim or
+      direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering like jays, and
+      the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers cried &ldquo;Balak&rdquo; in
+      tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers sat idle at their
+      doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs stood in knots, with
+      faces that shone under the closed hoods of their dark jellabs; and the
+      bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square capered about like
+      flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long guns into the air
+      for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and sometimes embraced
+      each other, thinking of their homes that were far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that the
+      procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from the Kasbah. At
+      the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and gorgeous&mdash;notwithstanding
+      the rain&mdash;in peaked shasheeah and crimson selham. Behind him were
+      four black police, and on either side of the company were two criers of
+      the street, each carrying a short staff festooned with strings of copper
+      coin, which he rattled in the air for a bell. Between these came the
+      victims of the Basha's order&mdash;Naomi first, barefooted, bareheaded,
+      stripped of all but the last garment that hid her nakedness, her head held
+      down, her face hidden, and her eyes closed&mdash;and Israel afterwards,
+      mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A further guard of black police walked
+      at the back of all. Thus they came down the steep arcades into the
+      market-square, where the greater body of the townspeople had gathered
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from
+      every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent, and
+      booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud
+      exclamations of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!&rdquo; cried the Moors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!&rdquo; cried the people of the Mellah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?&rdquo; they all asked
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to
+      force a passage through the thronging multitude. &ldquo;Attention! By your
+      leave! Away! Out of the way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as they walked the criers chanted, &ldquo;So shall it be done to every man
+      who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a
+      cheat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to look
+      black into each other's face, to mutter oaths between their teeth, and to
+      say in voices of no pity or rush, &ldquo;He deserved it!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ya Allah, but he's
+      well served!&rdquo; &ldquo;Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!&rdquo; &ldquo;Look at him
+      now!&rdquo; &ldquo;There he is at last!&rdquo; &ldquo;Brave end to all his great doings!&rdquo; &ldquo;Curse
+      him! Curse him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
+      of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came
+      still the cry of the crier, &ldquo;So shall it be done to every man who is an
+      enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter, and
+      after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they
+      derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now he
+      seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an imposture.
+      Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To think that they
+      had ever been afraid of him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in a
+      blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of the
+      Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck Israel
+      with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her husband
+      and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel had succoured
+      both when he went about on his secret excursions after nightfall in the
+      disguise of a Moor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak! Balak!&rdquo; cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the
+      crier rang out over all other noises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At every step the throng increased. The strong and lusty bore down the
+      weak in the struggle to get near to the procession. Blind beggars and
+      feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at Israel
+      from the back of the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came
+      out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to the
+      Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house; the other was a company
+      of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and Judah ben
+      Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized the people.
+      They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal progress&mdash;the
+      departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan. The soldier and police fell into
+      the humour of the multitude. Salaams were made to Israel; selhams were
+      flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi. Reuben Maliki pushed through
+      the crowd, and walked backward, and cried, in his harsh, nasal croak&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him! Make way!
+      make way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the
+      hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people's heads a
+      huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and the
+      black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over
+      Israel's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless our Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saviour of his people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Benefactor! King of men!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing
+      humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned with
+      a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked by the
+      soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the Jews,
+      spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed with
+      bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and at that
+      sight his heart bled and his spirit burred. And, thinking that it was he
+      who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to reach her
+      side and whisper in her ear, and say, &ldquo;Forgive me, my child, forgive me.&rdquo;
+       But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered what God had that day
+      done for her; and taking it for a sign of God's pleasure, and a warranty
+      that he had done well, he raised his eyes on her with tears of bitter joy,
+      and thought, in the wild fever of his soul, &ldquo;She is sharing the triumph of
+      my humiliation. She is walking through the mocking and jeering crowd, but
+      see! God Himself is walking beside her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+      going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow and the
+      concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a
+      stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and
+      said, so that all might hear, &ldquo;Look at the crowds that have come out to
+      speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember
+      this day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you shall!&rdquo; cried Israel. &ldquo;Until your days of death you shall all
+      remember it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his
+      answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts
+      of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and
+      followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice of a brother. They had
+      been insulting calamity itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the
+      procession moved again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of Israel's last temptation. Not a glance in his face
+      disclosed passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed to be jarring
+      at his ear, &ldquo;Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you have come
+      to this? Were they worth the sacrifice? You might have been rich and
+      great, and riding on their heads. They would have honoured you then, but
+      now they despise you. Fool! You have sold all and given to the poor, and
+      this is the end of it.&rdquo; But in the throes and last gasp of his agony,
+      hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted on the
+      stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper, &ldquo;Be strong.
+      Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done, servant of God,
+      well done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted his
+      head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron of faces
+      black and white. &ldquo;O pity of men!&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;What devil is tempting <i>them</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near to
+      the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no longer
+      falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by sight of a
+      rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately over the arch
+      of the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand in the
+      heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land
+      beyond&mdash;the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged&mdash;God
+      Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life
+      seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First the voice of the crier, &ldquo;So shall it be done to every man who is an
+      enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the voice of the soldier, &ldquo;Balak! Balak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then
+      to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that
+      was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi by
+      the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi were
+      settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north of the
+      town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak which lies
+      on the road to Tangier. From the hour wherein the gates had closed behind
+      them, everything had gone well with both. The country people who lay
+      encamped on the heath outside had gathered around and shown them kindness.
+      One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi's shame, had come behind without a word
+      and cast a blanket over her head and shoulders. Then a girl of the Berber
+      folk had brought slippers and drawn them on to Naomi's feet. The woman
+      wore no blanket herself, and the feet of the girl were bare. Their own
+      people were haggard and hollow-eyed and hungry, but the hearts of all were
+      melted towards the great man in his dark hour. &ldquo;Allah had written it,&rdquo;
+       they muttered, but they were more merciful than they thought their God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer of kind
+      words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered on
+      through the country from village to village, until in the evening, an hour
+      after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made their home. It was
+      a poor, mean place&mdash;neither a round tent, such as the mountain
+      Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone, with its garden in a
+      court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears for his homestead, but an
+      oblong shed, roofed with rushes and palmetto leaves in the manner of an
+      Irish cabin. And, indeed, the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been, who,
+      escaping at Gibraltar from the ship that was taking him to Sidney, had
+      sailed in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the land
+      until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa. Unlike the better part
+      of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and gloomy temper,
+      and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours, and when he died
+      his house had been left alone. That was the chance whereby Israel and
+      Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and unclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and values,
+      yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes only from
+      the hand of God. Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses grew at the
+      foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had first caught
+      the eyes of Israel. For suddenly through the mazes of his mind, where
+      every perception was indistinct at that time, there seemed to come back to
+      him a vague and confused recollection of the abandoned house, as if the
+      thing that his eyes then saw they had surely seen before. How this should
+      be Israel could not tell, seeing that never before to his knowledge had he
+      passed on his way to Tangier so near to Semsa. But when he questioned
+      himself again, it came to him, like light beaming into a dark room, that
+      not in any waking hour at all had he seen the little place before, but in
+      a dream of the night when he slept on the ground in the poor fondak of the
+      Jews at Wazzan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with Naomi;
+      this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to hear and a
+      tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which when he awoke
+      on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in his dream; and now
+      it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass. Israel's heart was
+      full, and being at that time ready to see the leading of Heaven in
+      everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without more ado than
+      such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with Naomi in the
+      place they had chanced upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer
+      until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,
+      lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought
+      to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was poor, but not penniless. Out of the wreck of his fortune, after
+      he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three hundred
+      dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was cast out of
+      the town. These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen. He hired land
+      also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the hand of a
+      neighbour to the market at Tetuan. The rains continued, the eggs of the
+      locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the ground, and Israel
+      found bread for both of them. With such simple husbandry, and in such a
+      home, giving no thought to the morrow, he passed with cheer and comfort
+      from day to day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the
+      loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of his
+      new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always
+      present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his
+      hope. He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed the
+      hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far away
+      under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town lamps
+      sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are yonder,&rdquo; he would think, &ldquo;wrangling, contending, fighting,
+      praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from them
+      by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet odour
+      of God's proper air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former life
+      was the recollection of Naomi. God had given back all her gifts, and what
+      were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing? They were as dust,
+      they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and riches of gold
+      and silver had been without it. And higher than the joy of Israel's
+      constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now see, and deaf
+      and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was the solemn thought
+      that all this was but the sign and symbol of God's pleasure and assurance
+      to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had been lifted away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man was his
+      delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life. She was like a creature born
+      afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened into a world of strange
+      sights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure. What had happened
+      to her was, after all, a simple thing. Born with cataract on the pupils of
+      her eyes, the emotion of the moment at the Kasbah, when her father's life
+      seemed to be once more in danger, had&mdash;like a fall or a blow&mdash;luxated
+      the lens and left the pupils clear. That was all. Throughout the day
+      whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when they were cast out
+      of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through the country until
+      they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes steadfastly closed. The
+      light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate lids, and gave her pain.
+      When for a moment she lifted her lashes and saw the trees, she put out her
+      hand as if to push them away; and when she saw the sky, she raised her
+      arms as if to hold it off. Everything seemed to touch her eyes. The bars
+      of sunlight seemed to smite them. Not until the falling of darkness did
+      her fears subside and her spirits revive. Throughout the day that followed
+      she sat constantly in the gloom of the blackest corner of their hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world of
+      darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air had been her
+      baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence. Within three days
+      afterwards her terror began to give place to joy; and from that time
+      forward the world was full of wonder to her opened eyes. Then sweet and
+      beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy, were her amazement and delight in
+      every little thing that lay about her&mdash;the grass, the weeds, the
+      poorest flower that blew, even the rude implements of the house and the
+      common stones that worked up through the mould&mdash;all old and familiar
+      to her fingers, but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an
+      angel out of heaven had dropped them down to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise
+      everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life in the
+      cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her on the
+      eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up at him as he
+      stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant, being still in the
+      mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes again, and put out
+      her hand to touch him, did her face brighten with recognition and her lips
+      utter his name. &ldquo;My father,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back to
+      the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower in her
+      hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it in her broken,
+      lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her that there were flowers
+      that could see? Here was one which while she looked upon it had opened its
+      beautiful eye and laughed at her. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked; &ldquo;what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A daisy, my child,&rdquo; Israel answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A daisy!&rdquo; she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and quick
+      inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed her nervous
+      fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and then said
+      very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, &ldquo;Oh, yes, so it is; it is
+      only a daisy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with
+      what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a
+      long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside the coast, but
+      from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one
+      day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly at
+      his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, &ldquo;The sky! the sky! Look!
+      It has fallen on to the land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the sea, my child,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea!&rdquo; she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and then
+      opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed out and
+      her beautiful face looked aside, &ldquo;So it is&mdash;yes, it is the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her mind
+      were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she mounted
+      the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she walked
+      farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields where
+      lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn by the
+      enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun, until at
+      last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast. Still the wonder
+      of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized upon her sight. The
+      gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless sea-birds. From high up
+      in the rocks above, and from far down in the chasm below, from every cleft
+      on every side, they flew out, with white wings and black ones and grey and
+      blue, and sent their voices into the air, until the echoing place seemed
+      to shriek and yell with a deafening clangour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long hour
+      in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father, she told
+      him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea, and
+      fought in the air and killed each other. &ldquo;And see!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;look at
+      this, and this, and this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the devilish
+      warfare that she had witnessed and &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said he, lifting one of them,
+      &ldquo;is a sea-bird's feather; and this,&rdquo; lifting another, &ldquo;is a sea-bird's
+      egg; and this,&rdquo; lifting the third, &ldquo;is a dead sea-bird itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes
+      and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her. &ldquo;Ah
+      yes,&rdquo; she said meekly, looking into her father's eye, with a smile, &ldquo;they
+      are only that after all.&rdquo; And then she said very quietly, as if speaking
+      to herself, &ldquo;What a long time it is before you learn to see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of
+      Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took
+      shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening, when she
+      had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came
+      back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the
+      sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like
+      fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes, and went down behind the
+      world together, passing out of the earth through the gates of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel listened to her and said, &ldquo;That was the sunset my child. Every
+      morning the sun rises and every night it sets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame at her sweet
+      errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and
+      Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, &ldquo;After all, the eyes are
+      deceitful.&rdquo; Vision was life's new language, and she had yet to learn it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world to
+      be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part of it,
+      the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself
+      alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off
+      with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still, the sea was smooth,
+      the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky was
+      blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little island,
+      which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with heather and
+      long stalks of seeding grass. Through whispering beds of rushes they
+      glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming fishes were at
+      play. Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger at their
+      invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on the pebbles
+      and great stones. It was a morning of God's own making, and, for joy of
+      its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi rose in the
+      boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it played with the
+      rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and embrace it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden
+      knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she
+      knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of
+      the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where
+      they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun's reflected disc on
+      the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and then
+      saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she cried with alarm, &ldquo;a face in the water! Look! look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is your own, my child,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Mine!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reflection of your face,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;the light and the water make
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly in this
+      thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at
+      her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and
+      asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had
+      grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was like
+      a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child in her
+      unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at rest she
+      leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How beautiful!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;how beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water was
+      the wonder of her dancing eyes. &ldquo;Oh! how very beautiful!&rdquo; she cried
+      without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke and
+      her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed again
+      with a heart of glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all his
+      sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he could
+      not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long the pain and
+      shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny himself this
+      choking rapture of her recovery. &ldquo;Live on like a child always, little
+      one,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;be a child as long as you can, be a child for ever, my
+      dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that I myself should be a
+      child at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly some
+      new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the earth seemed
+      to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the flowers. Also
+      she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with as little shame
+      and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery dawned that drops
+      on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and when it has covered
+      her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still. Nay, she was a child
+      a second time, for while she had been blind she had seemed for a little
+      while to become a woman in the awful revelation of her infirmity and
+      isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden no longer, but a
+      reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of human sunlight
+      gathering sunshine into her father's house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the better
+      part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length in rare
+      perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but voice was
+      the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so deep, so soft a
+      voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never heard before.
+      Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete with sparkling
+      life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart. All day long Naomi
+      used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was still singing when
+      she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her, they came first upon
+      the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across the fields, and
+      sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their hut. Often she
+      seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and only known to be
+      there by the outbursts of its song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely from
+      her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her
+      favourite song was still her mother's:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Oh, come and claim thine own,
+     Oh, come and take thy throne,
+     Reign ever and alone
+     Reign glorious, golden Love.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper
+      fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was
+      almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a maid
+      and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think of
+      Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was even
+      as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she were
+      walking in the way of its outstretched wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like the
+      drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future would rise
+      up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the rapture, the
+      blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating joy. He knew it
+      must come some day&mdash;perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow. And when it
+      came it would be like a sixth sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In quieter moments&mdash;generally at night, when he would take a candle
+      and look at her where she lay asleep&mdash;Israel would carry his dreams
+      into Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of
+      young motherhood. Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride
+      and joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red
+      fingers fastening on her white bosom&mdash;oh, what a glimpse was there
+      revealed to him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could not
+      help but feel pain from them also. They had a perilous fascination for
+      him, but he grudged them to Naomi. He thought he could have given his
+      immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give. That was his
+      poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty as a
+      father. He dreaded the coming of that time when another&mdash;some other
+      yet unseen&mdash;should come before him, and he should lose the daughter
+      that was now his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross like
+      a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour it was gone.
+      The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense but wonder. Once
+      she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of something which she
+      believed to have happened to her in the night. She had been carried away
+      from him&mdash;she could not say when&mdash;and she knew no more until she
+      found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed with tiles. Men were
+      standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white kaftans. And
+      before them all was one old man in garments that were of the colour of the
+      afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells, a curling silver
+      knife at his waistband, and little leather bags hung by yellow cords about
+      his neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing cruel face; and
+      she herself, Naomi&mdash;alone her father being nowhere near&mdash;stood
+      in the midst with all eyes upon her. What happened next she did not know,
+      for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in that interval they who had
+      taken her away must have brought her back. For when she opened her eyes
+      she was in her own bed, and the things of their little home were about
+      her, and her father's eyes were looking down at her, and his lips were
+      kissing her, and the sun was shining outside, and the birds were singing,
+      and the long grass was whispering in the breeze, and it was the same as if
+      she had been asleep during the night and was just awakening in the
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a dream, my child,&rdquo; said Israel, thinking only with how vivid a
+      sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight the picture
+      of that day at the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dream!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;no, no! I <i>saw</i> it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt of her own
+      people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch of their hands or
+      the sound of their voices. By one of these she had always known them, and
+      sometimes it had been her mother's arms that had been about her, and
+      sometimes her father's lips that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes
+      Ali's voice that had rung in her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both of her
+      dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart, &ldquo;She is a child, a
+      child born into life as a maid, and without the strength of a child's
+      weakness. Oh! great is the wisdom which orders it so that we come into the
+      world as babes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus realising Naomi's childishness, Israel kept close guard and watch
+      upon her afterwards. But if she was a gleam of sunlight in his lonely
+      dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found her
+      near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a passing
+      traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out
+      of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was
+      gazing full into the man's gross face, answering his evil questions with
+      the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between them;
+      and in a moment he had torn Naomi away. And that night, while she wept out
+      her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown her, Israel
+      himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out a new petition to
+      God. &ldquo;O Lord, my God,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;when she was blind and dumb and deaf she
+      was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril from herself for Thy hand
+      did guide her, and in none from the world, for no man dared outrage her
+      infirmity. But now she is a maid, and her dangers are many, for she is
+      beautiful, and the heart of man is evil. Keep me with her always, O Lord,
+      to guard and guide her! Let me not leave her, for she is without knowledge
+      of good and evil. Spare me a little while longer, though I am stricken in
+      years. For her sake spare me, Oh Lord&mdash;it is the last of my prayers&mdash;the
+      last, O Lord, the last&mdash;for her sake spare me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      God did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers
+      came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The
+      release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had
+      become known by the blind gratitude of one of them, who, hastening to
+      Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL IN PRISON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Short as the time was&mdash;some three months and odd days&mdash;since the
+      prison at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had
+      sealed without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied by
+      other prisoners. The remoteness of the town in the territory of the
+      Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis, had made the old fortress
+      a favourite place of banishment to such Kaids of other provinces as looked
+      for heavier ransoms from the relatives of victims, because the locality of
+      their imprisonment was unknown or the danger of approaching it was
+      terrible. And thus it happened that some fifty or more men and boys from
+      near and far were already living in the dungeon from which Israel and Ali
+      together had set the other prisoners free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from Naomi
+      and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa. &ldquo;Ya Allah!
+      Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his pups!&rdquo; said
+      Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel to the Kaid of
+      Shawan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning of the
+      second day after his arrest. The sun was shining as he approached the rude
+      old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down to the dungeon.
+      In a little court at the door of the place the Kaid el habs, the jailer,
+      was sitting on a mattress, which served him for chair by day and bed by
+      night. He was amusing himself with a ginbri, playing loud and low
+      according as the tumult was great or little which came from the other side
+      of a barred and knotted doorway behind him, some four feet high, and
+      having a round peephole in the upper part of it. On the wall above hung
+      leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Israel's approach there were some facetious comments between the jailer
+      and the guard. Why the ginbri? Was he practising for the fires of
+      Jehinnum? Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon? Well, what was a man to do
+      while the dogs inside were snarling? Were the thongs for the correction of
+      persons lacking understanding? Why, yes; everybody knew their old saying,
+      &ldquo;A hint to the wise, a blow to the fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A bunch of great keys rattled, the low doorway was thrown open, Israel
+      stooped and went in, the door closed behind him, the footsteps of the
+      guard died away, and the twang of the ginbri began again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prison was dark and noisome, some sixty feet long by half as many
+      broad, supported by arches resting on rotten pillars, lighted only by
+      narrow clefts at either hand, exuding damp from its walls, dropping
+      moisture from its roof, its air full of vermin, and its floor reeking of
+      filth. And only less horrible than the prison itself was the condition of
+      the prisoners. Nearly all wore iron fetters on their legs, and some were
+      shackled to the pillars. At one side a little group of them&mdash;they
+      were Shereefs from Wazzan&mdash;were conversing eagerly and gesticulating
+      wildly; and at the other side a larger company&mdash;they were Jews from
+      Fez&mdash;were languidly twisting palmetto leaves into the shape of
+      baskets. Four Berbers at the farther end were playing cards, and two Arabs
+      that were chained to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a
+      battered old draughtboard between them. From both groups of players came
+      loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation and of
+      indignant and sarcastic comment. Down went the cards with triumphant
+      bangs, and the moves of the &ldquo;dogs&rdquo; were like lightning. First a mocking
+      voice: &ldquo;<i>You</i> call yourself a player! There!&mdash;there!&mdash;there!&rdquo;
+       Then a meek, piping tone: &ldquo;So&mdash;so&mdash;verily, you are my master.
+      Well, let us praise Allah for your wisdom.&rdquo; But soon a wild burst of
+      irony: &ldquo;You are like him who killed the dog and fell into the river. See!
+      thus I teach you to boast over your betters! I shave your beard! There!&mdash;there!&mdash;and
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of light
+      from the clefts at the ends might fall on them&mdash;a barber-doctor was
+      bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. &ldquo;We're all having it done,&rdquo; he
+      was saying. &ldquo;It's good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of
+      pilgrims once.&rdquo; A wild-looking creature sat in a corner&mdash;he was a
+      saint, a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa&mdash;rocking himself to and
+      fro, and crying &ldquo;Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!&rdquo; Near to this
+      person a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his
+      prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa,
+      brotherhood&mdash;a juggler who had travelled through the country with a
+      lion by a halter&mdash;was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn
+      to a tune that he had heard on the coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the companions
+      that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in the clamour of
+      their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The prisoners knew him,
+      and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every mouth was agape.
+      Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind him. He looked around,
+      made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer vainly through the darkness
+      for bed or mattress, and then sat down helplessly by a pillar on the
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of
+      bread. &ldquo;Hungry, brother? No?&rdquo; said the youth. &ldquo;Cheer up, Sidi! No good
+      letting the donkey ride on your head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This person was the Irishman of the company&mdash;a happy, reckless,
+      facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing for
+      his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs on
+      every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     El Arby was a black man
+     They called him &ldquo;'Larby Kosk:&rdquo;
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. &ldquo;Stay here,&rdquo;
+       he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was quelled;
+      &ldquo;never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.&rdquo;
+       After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither insult nor tyranny
+      had availed to force a word or a cry out of him. He had walked on in
+      silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the faces of his guard, and
+      never breaking his fast save with a draught of water by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by their
+      own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a number
+      of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was a wild
+      and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of the
+      prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild shouts as
+      each one found his own. &ldquo;Blessed be God! She's here! here!&rdquo; Then the
+      maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come. &ldquo;My Ayesha!
+      Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?&rdquo; After that the
+      shrieks of despair from such as learned that their breadwinners were dying
+      off one by one. &ldquo;Dead, you say?&rdquo; &ldquo;Dead!&rdquo; &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, yes!&rdquo; &ldquo;No, no, I
+      say!&rdquo; &ldquo;I say yes! God forgive me! died last week. But don't you die too.
+      Here take this bag of zummetta.&rdquo; Then inquiries after absent children.
+      &ldquo;Little Selam, where is he?&rdquo; &ldquo;Begging in Tetuan.&rdquo; &ldquo;Poor boy! poor boy! And
+      pretty M'barka, what of her?&rdquo; &ldquo;Alas! M'barka's a public woman now in
+      Hoolia's house at Marrakesh. No, don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child
+      was driven to it. What were we to do with the children crying for bread?
+      And then there was nothing to fetch you this journey, Jellali.&rdquo; &ldquo;I'll not
+      eat it now it's brought. My boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah!
+      May the Kaid that keeps me here roast alive in the fires of hell!&rdquo; Then,
+      apart in one quiet corner, a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the
+      lap of his beautiful young wife. &ldquo;You'll not be long coming again,
+      dearest?&rdquo; he whispers. She wipes her eyes and stammers, &ldquo;No&mdash;that is&mdash;well&mdash;&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;What's amiss?&rdquo; &ldquo;Ali, I must tell you&mdash;&rdquo; &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; &ldquo;Old Aaron Zaggoory
+      says I must marry him, or he'll see that both of us starve.&rdquo; &ldquo;Allah! And
+      you&mdash;<i>you</i>?&rdquo; &ldquo;Don't look at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on
+      me, and whatever happens I&mdash;I can love nobody else.&rdquo; &ldquo;Curses on Aaron
+      Zaggoory! Curses on you! Curses on everybody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this 'Larby the negro
+      swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of bread&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Rusks are good and kiks are sweet
+     And kesksoo is both meat and drink;
+     It's this for now, and that for then,
+     But khalia still for married men.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're like me, Sidi,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you want nothing,&rdquo; and he made an upward
+      movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence. That was
+      the gay rascal's way of saying that he stole from the bags of his comrades
+      while they slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? Fasting yet?&rdquo; he said, and went off singing as he came&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     It will make your ladies love you;
+     It will make them coo and kiss&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; he shouted to some one across the prison &ldquo;eating khalia in the
+      bird-cage? Bad, bad, bad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this came to Israel's mind through thick waves of half-consciousness,
+      but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air of the place must
+      have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he had first placed
+      himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow eyes he gazed at
+      everything, but nothing did he see. Sometimes he had the look of one who
+      listens, but never did he hear. Thus in silence and languor he passed from
+      day to day, and from night to night, scarcely sleeping, rarely eating, and
+      seeming always to be waiting, waiting, waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fresh prisoners came at short intervals, and then only was Israel's
+      interest awakened. One question he asked of all. &ldquo;Where from?&rdquo; If they
+      answered from Fez, from Wazzan, from Mequinez, or from Marrakesh, Israel
+      turned aside and left them without more words. Then to his fellows they
+      might pour out their woes in loud wails and curses, but Israel would hear
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangers from Europe travelling through the country were allowed to look
+      into the prison through the round peephole of the door kept by the Kaid el
+      habs, who played the ginbri. The Jews who made baskets took this
+      opportunity to offer their work for sale; and so that he might see the
+      visitors and speak with them Israel would snatch up something and hang it
+      out. Always his question was the same. &ldquo;Where from last?&rdquo; he would say in
+      English, or Spanish, or French, or Moorish. Sometimes it chanced that the
+      strangers knew him. But he showed no shame. Never did their answers
+      satisfy him. He would turn back to his pillar with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus weeks went on, and Israel's face grew worn and tired. His fellow
+      prisoners began to show him deference in their own rude way. When he came
+      among them at the first they had grinned and laughed a little. To do that
+      was always the impulse of the poor souls, so miserably imprisoned, when a
+      new comrade joined him. But the majesty and the suffering in Israel's face
+      told on their hearts at last. He was a great man fallen, he had nothing
+      left to him; not even bread to eat or water to drink. So they gathered
+      about him and hit on a way to make him share their food. Bringing their
+      sacks to his pillar, they stacked them about it, and asked him to serve
+      out provisions to all, day by day, share and share alike. He was honest,
+      he was a master, no one would steal from him, it was best, the stuff would
+      last longest. It was a touching sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the old eagerness betrayed itself in Israel's weary manner as often
+      as the door opened and fresh prisoners arrived. Once it happened that
+      before he uttered his usual question he saw that the newcomers were from
+      Tetuan, and then his restlessness was feverish. &ldquo;When&mdash;were you&mdash;have
+      you been of late&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered, and seemed unable to go farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Tetawanis knew and understood him. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said one in answer to the
+      unspoken question; &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; said another; &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; said a third, &ldquo;Nor I
+      neither,&rdquo; said a fourth, as Israel's rapid eyes passed down the line of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away without a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked
+      vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo was
+      a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a harlot
+      whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising the entire
+      bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child in the streets was
+      safe, and no woman, whether wife or daughter, whom God had made comely,
+      dare show herself on the roofs. Their own women had been carried off to
+      the palace at the Kasbah. That was why they themselves were there in
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was about a month after the coming of Israel to Shawan. Then his
+      reason began to unsettle. It was pitiful to see that he was conscious of
+      the change that was befalling him. He wrestled with madness with all the
+      strength of a strong man. If it should fall upon him, where then would be
+      his hope and outlook? His day would be done, his night would be closed in,
+      he would be no more than a helpless log, rolling in an ice-bound sea, and
+      when the thaw came&mdash;if it ever came&mdash;he would be only a broken,
+      rudderless, sailless wreck. Sometimes he would swear at nothing and fling
+      out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame hang down his head and
+      mutter, &ldquo;No, no, Israel; no, no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Other prisoners arrived from Tetuan, and all told the same story. Israel
+      listened to them with a stupid look, seeming hardly to hear the tale they
+      told him. But one morning, as life began again for the day in that slimy
+      eddy of life's ocean, every one became aware that an awful change had come
+      to pass. Israel's face had been worn and tired before, but now it looked
+      very old and faded. His black hair had been sprinkled with grey, and now
+      it was white; and white also was his dark beard, which had grown long and
+      ragged. But his eye glistened, and his teeth were aglitter in his open
+      mouth. He was laughing at everything, yet not wildly, not recklessly, not
+      without meaning or intention, but with the cheer of a happy and contented
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was mad, and his madness was a moving thing to look upon. He
+      thought he was back at home and a rich man still, as he had been in
+      earlier days, but a generous man also, as he was in later ones. With
+      liberal hand he was dispensing his charities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take what you need; eat, drink, do not stint; there is more where this
+      has come from; it is not mine; God has lent it me for the good of all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such words, graciously spoken, he served out the provisions according
+      to his habit, and only departed from his daily custom in piling the
+      measures higher, and in saluting the people by titles&mdash;Sid, Sidi,
+      Mulai, and the like&mdash;in degree as their clothes were poor and ragged.
+      It was a mad heart that spoke so, but also it was a big one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time forward he looked upon the prisoners as his guests, and
+      when fresh prisoners came to the prison he always welcomed them as if he
+      were host there and they were friends who visited him. &ldquo;Welcome!&rdquo; he would
+      say; &ldquo;you are very welcome. The place is your own. Take all. What you
+      don't see, believe we have not got it. A thousand thousand welcomes home!&rdquo;
+       It was grim and painful irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's comrades began to lose sense of their own suffering in observing
+      the depth of his, and they laid their heads together to discover the cause
+      of his madness. The most part of them concluded that he was repining for
+      the loss of his former state. And when one day another prisoner came from
+      Tetuan with further tales of the Basha's tyranny, and of the people's
+      shame at thought of how they had dealt by Israel, the prisoners led the
+      man back to where Israel was standing in the accustomed act of dispensing
+      bounty, that he might tell his story into the rightful ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're always crying for you,&rdquo; said the Tetawani; &ldquo;'Israel ben Oliel!
+      Israel ben Oliel!' that's what you hear in the mosques and the streets
+      everywhere.' Shame on us for casting him out, shame on us! He was our
+      father!' Jews and Muslimeen, they're all saying so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless. The glad tidings could not find their way. That black page
+      of Israel's life which told of the people's ingratitude was sealed in the
+      book of memory. Israel laughed. What could his good friend mean? Behold!
+      was he not rich? Had he not troops of comrades and guests about him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoners turned aside, baffled and done. At length one man&mdash;it
+      was no other than 'Larby the wastrel&mdash;drew some of them apart and
+      said, &ldquo;You are all wrong. It's not his former state that he's thinking of.
+      <i>I</i> know what it is&mdash;who knows so well as I? Listen! you hear
+      his laughter! Well, he must weep, or he will be mad for ever. He must be
+      <i>made</i> to weep. Yes, by Allah! and I must do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the prisoners
+      tied up their cotton headkerchiefs and lay down to sleep, 'Larby sat
+      beside Israel's place with sighs and moans and other symptoms of a
+      dejected air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidi, master,&rdquo; he faltered, &ldquo;I had a little brother once, and he was
+      blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother's son. But you wouldn't think how
+      happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi he never missed anything, and so
+      his little face was like laughing water! By Allah! I loved that boy better
+      than all the world! Women? Why&mdash;well, never mind! He was six and I
+      was eighteen, and he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over, Sidi,
+      and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn't see. Well a
+      bleeder came from Soos&mdash;curse his great-grandfather! Looked at little
+      Hosain&mdash;'Scales!' said he&mdash;burn his father! Bleed him and he'll
+      see! So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for a minute&mdash;half
+      a minute! 'Oh, 'Larby,' he cried&mdash;I was holding him; then he&mdash;he&mdash;'
+      'Larby,' he cried faint, like a lamb that's lost in the mountains&mdash;and
+      then&mdash;and then&mdash;'Oh, oh, 'Larby,' he moaned Sidi, Sidi, I <i>paid</i>
+      that bleeder&mdash;there and then&mdash;<i>this</i> way! That's why I'm
+      here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lie, but 'Larby acted it so well that his voice broke in his
+      throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect on Israel himself was strange and even startling. While 'Larby
+      was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling: &ldquo;Where? When?
+      Naomi!&rdquo; as if grappling for lost treasures in an ebbing sea. And when
+      'Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. &ldquo;And you are weeping for
+      that?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You think it much that the sweet child is dead&mdash;God
+      rest him! So it is to the like of you, but look at me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries. &ldquo;Look at me! Am I
+      weeping? No; I would scorn to weep. But I have more cause a thousandfold.
+      Listen! Once I was rich; but what were riches without children? Hard bread
+      with no water for sop. I asked God for a child. He gave me a daughter; but
+      she was born blind and dumb and deaf. I asked God to take my riches and
+      give her hearing. He gave her hearing; but what was hearing without
+      speech? I asked God to take all I had and give her speech. He gave her
+      speech, but what was speech without sight? I asked God to take my place
+      from me and give her sight. He gave her sight, and I was cast out of the
+      town like a beggar. What matter? She had all, and I was forgiven. But when
+      I was happy, when I was content, when she filled my heart with sunshine,
+      God snatched me away from her. And where is she now? Yonder, alone,
+      friendless, a child new-born into the world at the mercy of liars and
+      libertines. And where am I? Here, like a beast in a trap, uttering
+      abortive groans, toothless, stupid, powerless, mad. No, no, not mad,
+      either! Tell me, boy, I am not mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling like a drowning
+      man. &ldquo;Yet I do not weep,&rdquo; he cried in a thick voice. &ldquo;God has a right to
+      do as He will. He gave her to me for seventeen years. If she dies she'll
+      be mine again soon. Only if she lives&mdash;only if she falls into evil
+      hands&mdash;Tell me, <i>have</i> I been mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave no time for an answer. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he cried, and the name broke in
+      his throat. &ldquo;Where are you now? What has&mdash;who have&mdash;your father
+      is thinking of you&mdash;he is&mdash;No, I will not weep. You see I have a
+      good cause, but I tell you I will never weep. God has a right&mdash;Naomi!&mdash;Na&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly he rose
+      and cried in an awful voice, &ldquo;Oh, I'm a fool! God has done nothing for me.
+      Why should I do anything for God? He has taken all I had. He has taken my
+      child. I have nothing more to give Him but my life. Let Him take that too.
+      Take it, I beseech Thee!&rdquo; he cried&mdash;the vault of the prison rang&mdash;&ldquo;Take
+      it, and set me free!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place, and was sobbing
+      like a little child. The other prisoners had risen in their amazement, and
+      'Larby, who was shedding hot tears over his cold ones, was capering down
+      the floor, and singing, &ldquo;El Arby was a black man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot into
+      the dark place. The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier, who carried an
+      order for Israel's release. Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, was to keep the
+      feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo, to celebrate the visit, had
+      pardoned Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was coals of fire on Israel's head. &ldquo;God is good,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;I
+      shall see her again. Yes, God has a right to do as He will. I shall see
+      her soon. God is wise beyond all wisdom. I must lose no time. Jailer can I
+      leave the town to-night? I wish to start on my journey. To-night?&mdash;yes,
+      to-night! Are the gates open? No? You will open them? You are very good.
+      Everybody is very good. God is good. God is mighty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late intemperate
+      outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, &ldquo;A man's a
+      fool when he loses his only child. I don't mean by death. Time heals that.
+      But the living child&mdash;oh, it's an unending pain! You would never
+      think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her
+      voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was very
+      fond of the little one&mdash;I was quite miserable if I lost sight of her
+      for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must hasten back.
+      The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well she'll be looking
+      out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in the morning. It's
+      always the way of these tender creatures, is it not? So we must humour
+      them. Yes, yes, that's so that's so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief
+      knotted under his chin&mdash;gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light
+      of the jailer's lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, brothers!&rdquo; he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and
+      brought it to their breasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, master!&rdquo; &ldquo;Peace, Sidi!&rdquo; &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo; &ldquo;Peace!&rdquo; &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps dying away
+      outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then silence&mdash;empty
+      and ghostly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a
+      croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     El Arby was a black man,
+     They called him &ldquo;'Larby Kosk;&rdquo;
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel
+      lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which
+      she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them, she
+      sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil which
+      had befallen her, but with her father's warning voice and his last words
+      in her ear: &ldquo;Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay
+      here. I will come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and
+      fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she
+      knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of
+      this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she
+      was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look to
+      her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink beside her,
+      but no skill to make and take them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother has been
+      swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom. It was not so
+      much love as loss. What to do, where to look, which way to turn first, she
+      knew no longer, and could not think, for lack of the hand that had been
+      wont to guide her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi, and some of
+      the women among them came to see her. They were poor farming people,
+      oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things they saw were the
+      cattle and sheep, and the next thing was the simple girl with the
+      child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways wherein a lonely woman must
+      fend for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot live here alone, my daughter,&rdquo; they said; &ldquo;you would perish.
+      Then think of the danger&mdash;a child like you, with a face like a
+      flower! No, no, you must come to us. We will look to you like one of our
+      own, and protect you from evil men. And as for the creatures&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he said I was never to leave this place,&rdquo; said Naomi. &ldquo;'Stay here,'
+      he said; 'whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and
+      murdered. It was in vain. Naomi's answer was always the same: &ldquo;He told me
+      to stay here, and surely I must do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger. &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; they
+      thought, &ldquo;what should we want with the Jew child? Allah! Was there ever
+      such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too! And as for her
+      father, he'll never come back&mdash;never. Trust the Basha for that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness,
+      they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple offices&mdash;milking
+      and churning, and baking and delving&mdash;in pity of the sweet girl with
+      the great eyes who had been left to live alone. And Naomi, seeing her
+      helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy it, so that in a
+      little while she was able to do for herself nearly everything that her
+      neighbours at first did for her. Then they would say among themselves,
+      &ldquo;Allah! she's not such a baby after all; and if she wasn't quite so
+      beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn't so wicked&mdash;but then,
+      God is great! God is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her father
+      had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp alight
+      by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under the dropping
+      eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the radiance of the
+      sun she had whispered to herself and said, &ldquo;He will come back, Naomi; only
+      wait, only wait; maybe it will be tonight, maybe it will be to-day; you
+      will see, you will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon her
+      as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been
+      there, her old content in her father's command that she should never leave
+      that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing. If the Kaid finds him
+      in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom. That will come
+      to the same thing in the end, or he'll die in prison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought she
+      did not listen. And though it was little she understood of Kaids and
+      ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father's peril, and at
+      length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she
+      should and must. With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind of a
+      child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman, and
+      her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and love
+      were born in it. &ldquo;He must be starving in prison,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;and I will
+      take him food.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in
+      consternation and horror. &ldquo;God be gracious to my father!&rdquo; they cried.
+      &ldquo;Shawan? You? Alone? Child, you'll be lost, lost&mdash;worse, a thousand
+      times worse! Shoof! you're only a baby still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as
+      their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it. &ldquo;He must be
+      starving in prison,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I will take him food.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah!&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;who would have believed it, that the little
+      pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey. She saved
+      up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the country;
+      also she churned some butter in the simple way which the women had taught
+      her, and put the milk that was left in a goat's-skin. In three days she
+      was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf panniers of a
+      mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got up before them
+      on the front of the burda, after the manner of the wives whom she had seen
+      going past to market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild
+      errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. &ldquo;Keep to the track
+      as far as Tetuan,&rdquo; they said to her, &ldquo;and then ask for the road to
+      Shawan.&rdquo; One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a way that
+      it might cover her face. &ldquo;Faces like yours are not for the daylight,&rdquo; the
+      old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her journey. The women
+      watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up to the fondak, and
+      then sinks out of sight beyond it. &ldquo;Poor mad little fool,&rdquo; they whimpered;
+      &ldquo;that's the end of her! She'll never come back. Too many men about for
+      that. And now,&rdquo; they said, facing each other with looks of suspicion and
+      envy, &ldquo;what of the creatures?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was
+      awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had
+      thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do
+      so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her, and
+      she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing
+      pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women
+      trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the
+      herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing
+      barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this
+      cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear which
+      had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her neighbour
+      had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as they passed
+      her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood to tingle.
+      They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning of shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward. &ldquo;He
+      is starving in prison,&rdquo; she told herself; &ldquo;I must lose no time.&rdquo; It was a
+      weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything was
+      terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she travelled she
+      came upon men and women and children. It was so strange that all the world
+      was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more people everywhere.
+      That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no house in sight and
+      never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener she wished that the
+      people were not so many; and that was when the children mocked at her
+      mule, or the women jeered at her as if she must needs be a base person
+      because she was alone, or the men laughed and leered into her uncovered
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail. Everything was
+      unlike what she expected. She had thought the world so good that she had
+      but to say to any that asked her of her errand, &ldquo;My father is in prison,
+      they say that he is starving; I am taking him food,&rdquo; and every one would
+      help her forward. Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had
+      reckoned in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours. But no
+      one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill, and
+      fewer still with pity and cheer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast, had flattened
+      the panniers that hung by its side, and made the round cakes of bread to
+      protrude from the open mouth of one of them. Seeing this, a line of
+      market-women going by, with bags of charcoal on their backs, snatched a
+      cake each as they passed and munched them and laughed. Naomi tried to
+      protest. &ldquo;The bread is for my father,&rdquo; she faltered; &ldquo;he is in prison;
+      they say he&mdash;&rdquo; But the expostulation that began thus timidly broke
+      down of itself, for the women laughed again out of their mouths choked
+      with the bread, and in another moment they were gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi's spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front still.
+      To speak of her father again would be to shame him. The poor little
+      illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which, in spite of
+      vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled, since the coming of her
+      sight, to build up in her fresh young soul, were now tumbling to pieces.
+      After all, the world was very cruel. It was the same as if an angel out of
+      the clouds had fallen on to the earth and found her feet mired with clay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a fondak which
+      stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan on the south-western side.
+      The darkness had closed in by this time, and she must needs rest there for
+      the night, but never until then had she reflected that for such
+      accommodation she would need money. Only a few coppers were necessary,
+      only twenty moozoonahs, that she might lie in the shelter and safety of
+      one of the pens that were built for the sleep of human creatures, and that
+      her mule might be tethered and fed on the manure heap that constituted the
+      square space within. At last she bethought her of her eggs, and, though it
+      went to her heart to use for herself what was meant for her father, she
+      parted with twelve of them, and some cakes of the bread besides, that she
+      might be allowed to pass the gate, telling herself repeatedly, with big
+      throbs of remorse between her protestations, that unless she did so her
+      father might never get anything at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go on
+      to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden, and of
+      countless dogs. It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal, and between
+      the twilight and the coming of night certain of the men watched for the
+      new moon, and when its thin bow appeared in the sky they signalled its
+      advent after their usual manner by firing their flintlocks into the air,
+      while their women, who were squatting around, kept up a cooing chorus.
+      Then came eating and drinking, and laughing and singing, and playing the
+      ginbri, and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and quarrelling and
+      fighting, and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel wielded by the keeper
+      of the fondak. With such exercises the night passed into morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi was sick. Her head ached. The smell of rotten fish, the stench of
+      the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs, the
+      grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her light-headed.
+      She could neither eat nor sleep. Almost as soon as it was light she was up
+      and out and on her way. &ldquo;I must lose no time,&rdquo; she thought, trying not to
+      realise that the blue sky was spinning round her, that noises were ringing
+      in her head, and that her poor little heart, which had been so stout only
+      yesterday, was sinking very low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must be starving,&rdquo; she told herself again, and that helped her to
+      forget her own troubles and to struggle on. But oh, if the world were only
+      not so cruel, oh, if there were anyone to give her a word of cheer, nay, a
+      glance of pity! But nobody had looked at her except the women who stole
+      her bread and the men who shamed her with their wicked eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That one day's experience did more than all her life before it to fill her
+      with the bitter fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Her
+      illusions fell away from her, and her sweet childish faith was broken
+      down. She saw herself as she was: a simple girl, a child ignorant of the
+      ways of the world, going alone on a long journey unknown to her, thinking
+      to succour her father in prison, and carrying a handful of eggs and a few
+      poor cakes of bread. When at length the scales fell from the eyes of her
+      mind, and as she trudged along on her bony mule, afraid to ask her way,
+      she saw herself, with all her fine purposes shrivelled up, do what she
+      would to be brave, she could not help but cry. It was all so vain, so
+      foolish; she was such a weak little thing. Her father knew this, and that
+      was why he told her to stay where he left her. What if he came home while
+      she was absent! Should she go back?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had almost resolved to return, struggle as she might to push forward,
+      when going close under the town walls, near to the very gate, the Bab Toot
+      whereat she had been cast out with her father remembering this scene of
+      their abasement with a new sense of its cruelty and shame born of her own
+      simple troubles, she lit upon a woman who was coming out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Habeebah. She was now the slave of Ben Aboo, and was just then
+      stealing away from the Kasbah in the early morning that she might go in
+      search of Naomi, whose whereabouts and condition she had lately learned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled, but that Naomi
+      had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In another moment the poor
+      frightened girl, with all her brave bearing gone, was weeping on the black
+      woman's breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whither are you going?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my father,&rdquo; Naomi began. &ldquo;He is in prison; they say he is starving; I
+      was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don't know my way; and besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very thing!&rdquo; cried Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win emancipation at
+      the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died. Naomi,
+      who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima. That was all. Then her troubles
+      would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her, and her father who
+      was in prison would be set free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant.
+      The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father was
+      everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah's bold promises like a
+      drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father will be let out of prison? You are sure&mdash;quite sure?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure,&rdquo; answered Habeebah stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi's hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and her poor
+      little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born
+      worldliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I will turn Muslima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes afterwards she was riding by Habeebah's side into the town,
+      through the Bab Toot across the Feddan, and up to the courtyard of the
+      Kasbah, which had witnessed the beginning of her own and her father's
+      degradation. Then, tethering the beast in the open stables there, Habeebah
+      took Naomi into her own little room and left her alone for some minutes,
+      while she hastened to Ben Aboo in secret with her wondrous news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Basha,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the beautiful Jewess Naomi, the daughter of
+      Israel ben Oliel, will turn Muslima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidi,&rdquo; said Habeebah, &ldquo;I have promised that you will liberate her
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fetch her,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo, &ldquo;and it shall be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah's room and found Naomi there,
+      and heard of the vain hope which had brought her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My sweet jewel of gold and silver,&rdquo; the black woman cried, &ldquo;you don't
+      know what you are doing. Turn Muslima, and you will be parted from your
+      father for ever. He is a Jew, and will have no right to you any more. You
+      will never, never see him again. He will be lost to you&mdash;lost&mdash;I
+      say&mdash;lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Habeebah, with two of the guard, came back to take Naomi to Ben Aboo. The
+      poor girl was bewildered. She had seen nothing but her father in Fatimah's
+      protest, just as she had seen nothing but her father in Habeebah's
+      promises. She did not know what to do, she was such a poor weak little
+      thing, and there was no strong hand to guide her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They led her through dark passages to an open place which she thought she
+      had seen before. It was a great patio, paved and walled with tiles. Men
+      were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white kaftans.
+      And before them all was one old man in garments that were of the colour of
+      the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells, a silver knife
+      at his waistband, and little leather bags, hung by yellow cords, about his
+      neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing cruel face, and she
+      herself, Naomi, stood in the midst, with every eye upon her. Where had she
+      seen all this before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he committed
+      her father to prison. He cherished schemes concerning her which he did not
+      share with his wife Katrina. But he had hitherto been withheld by two
+      considerations: the first being that he was beset with difficulties
+      arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money than he could
+      find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity that might perchance
+      arise of recalling Israel to his post. Out of these grave bedevilments he
+      had extricated himself at length by imposing dues on certain tribes of
+      Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the Sultan's authority, and by
+      calling on the Sultan's army to enforce them. The Sultan had come in
+      answer to his summons, the Reefians had been routed, their villages burnt,
+      and that morning at daybreak he had received a message saying that Abd
+      er-Rahman intended to keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan. So this
+      capture of Naomi was the luckiest chance that could have befallen him at
+      such a moment. She should witness to the Prophet; her father, the Jew,
+      would thereby lose his rights in her; and he himself, as her sole
+      guardian, would present her as a peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing
+      the boundary of his bashalic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing the
+      news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to Katrina.
+      But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid, so tired,
+      yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the light of
+      the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet mouth of a
+      child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back to his
+      former scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you wish to turn Muslima?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear &ldquo;No,
+      no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with protests
+      and remonstrances. &ldquo;She said so,&rdquo; Habeebah cried. &ldquo;'I will turn Muslima,'
+      she said. Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you say so?&rdquo; asked Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Naomi faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo; and he
+      told her what was the penalty of apostasy. It was death. She must choose
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead
+      with her. Still she saw one thing only. &ldquo;But what of my father?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He shall be liberated,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But shall I see him again? Shall I go back to him?&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl is a simpleton!&rdquo; said Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is only a child,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more at her
+      flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments of his
+      women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds, with
+      a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room that was stifling
+      from many perfumes, and certain smaller chambers. The garden was inhabited
+      by a gazelle, whose great startled eyes looked out through the long grass;
+      and the oblong room by a number of women of varying ages, among whom were
+      a matronly Mooress, called Tarha, in a scarlet head-dress, and with a
+      string of great keys swung from shoulder to waist; a Circassian, called
+      Hoolia, in a gorgeous rida of red silk and gold brocade; a Frenchwoman,
+      called Josephine, with embroidered red slippers and black stockings; and a
+      Jewess, called Sol, with a band of silk handkerchiefs tied round her
+      forehead above her coal-black curls, with her fingers pricked out with
+      henna and her eyes darkened with kohl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were Ben Aboo's wives and concubines and captives, whom he had not
+      divorced according to his promise; and when Naomi came among them they did
+      their duty by their master faithfully. Being trapped themselves, they
+      tried to entrap Naomi also. They overwhelmed her with caresses, they went
+      into ecstasies over her beauty, and caused the future which awaited her to
+      shine before her eyes. She would have a noble husband, magnificent
+      dresses, a brilliant palace, and the world would be at her feet. &ldquo;And
+      what's the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?&rdquo; said Sol; &ldquo;look at me!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; said Josephine, &ldquo;there's nothing to choose between them.&rdquo; &ldquo;For my
+      part,&rdquo; said Tarha, &ldquo;I don't see what it matters to us; they say Paradise
+      is for the men!&rdquo; &ldquo;And think of the jewels, and the earrings as big as a
+      bracelet,&rdquo; said Hoolia, &ldquo;instead of this,&rdquo; and she drew away between her
+      thumb and first finger the blanket which Naomi's neighbour had given her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all to no purpose. &ldquo;But what of my father?&rdquo; Naomi asked again and
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations,
+      ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs. &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; they
+      said, &ldquo;why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan? She would
+      only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their tales,
+      their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon Naomi at
+      last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child. In this
+      hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no occupation
+      but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education but devising
+      new means of pleasing the lust of their husband's eye, no delight than
+      that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but jealousy, no
+      diversion but sporting on the roofs, no end but death and the Kabar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi to the
+      prison, and set Habeebah to guard her. The black woman was in terror at
+      the turn that events had taken. There was nothing to do now but to go on,
+      so she importuned Naomi with prayers. How could she be so hard-hearted?
+      Could she keep her father famishing in prison when one word out of her
+      lips would liberate him? Naomi had no answer but her tears. She remembered
+      the hareem, and cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ben Aboo thought of a daring plan. He called the Grand Rabbi, and
+      commanded him to go to Naomi and convert her to Islam. The Rabbi obeyed
+      with trembling. After all, it was the same God that both peoples
+      worshipped, only the Moors called Him Allah and the Jews Jehovah. Naomi
+      knew little of either. It was not of God that she was thinking: it was
+      only of her father. She was too innocent to see the trick, but the Rabbi
+      failed. He kissed her, and went away wiping his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rumour of Naomi's plight had passed through the town, and one night a
+      number of Moors came secretly to a lane at the back of the Kasbah, where a
+      narrow window opened into her cell. They told her in whispers that what
+      she held as tragical was a very simple matter. &ldquo;Turn Muslima,&rdquo; they
+      pleaded, &ldquo;and save yourself. You are too young to die. Resign yourself,
+      for God's sake.&rdquo; But no answer came back to them where they were gathered
+      in the darkness, save low sobs from inside the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Ben Aboo made two announcements. The first, a public one, was that
+      Abd er-Rahman would reach Tetuan within two days, on the opening of the
+      feast of the Moolood, and the other, a private one, that if Naomi had not
+      said the Kelmah by first prayers the following morning she should die and
+      her father be cut off as the penalty of her apostasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was occupied
+      by a group of Jews. &ldquo;Sister,&rdquo; they whispered, &ldquo;sister of our people,
+      listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has robbed us of all we had
+      that he may pay for the Sultan's visit. Listen! We have heard something.
+      We want Israel ben Oliel back among us. He was our father, he was our
+      brother. Save his life for the sake of our children, for the Basha has
+      taken their bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we pray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi broke down at last. Next morning at dawn, kneeling among men in the
+      Grand Mosque in the Metamar, she repeated the Word after the Iman: &ldquo;I
+      testify that there is no God but God, and that our Lord Mohammed is the
+      messenger of God; I am truly resigned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she was taken back to the women's apartments, and clad gorgeously.
+      Her child face was wet with tears. She was only a poor weak little thing,
+      she knew nothing of religion, she loved her father better than God, and
+      all the world was against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Such was the method of Israel's release. But, knowing nothing of the price
+      which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy. Nay, his
+      happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness which hung over
+      his life been lifted away. Any one who had seen him in prison would have
+      been puzzled by the change as he came away from it. He laughed with the
+      courier who walked with him to the town gate, and jested with the gate
+      porter as with an old acquaintance. His voice was merry, his eye gleamed
+      in the rays of the lantern, his face was flushed, and his step was light.
+      &ldquo;Afraid to travel in the night? No, no, I'll meet nothing worse than
+      myself. Others <i>may</i> who meet me? Ha, ha! Perhaps so, perhaps so!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;No evil with you, brother?&rdquo; &ldquo;No evil, praise be God.&rdquo; &ldquo;Well, peace be to
+      you!&rdquo; &ldquo;On you be peace!&rdquo; &ldquo;May your morning be blessed! Good-night!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Good-night!&rdquo; Then with a wave of the hand he was gone into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wonderful night. The moon, which was in its first quarter, was
+      still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead, making a silvery
+      dome that almost obliterated the blue. Rivers were rumbling on the
+      hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance, kine that could not be seen
+      were chewing audibly near at hand, and sheep like patches of white in the
+      gloom were scuttling through the grass before Israel's footsteps. Israel
+      walked quickly, tracing his course between the two arms of the Jebel
+      Sheshawan, whose summits were visible against the sky. The air was cool
+      and moist, and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Oh! the joy of it
+      to him who had lain long months in prison! Israel drank in the night air
+      as a young colt drinks in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel's heart. &ldquo;I
+      am going to be happy,&rdquo; he told himself, &ldquo;yes, very happy, very happy.&rdquo; He
+      raised his eyes to heaven, and a star, bigger and brighter than the rest,
+      hung over the path before him. &ldquo;It is leading me to Naomi,&rdquo; he thought. He
+      knew that was folly, but he could not restrain his mind from foolishness.
+      And at least she had the same moon and stars above her sleep, for she
+      would be sleeping now. &ldquo;I am coming,&rdquo; he cried. He fixed his eye on the
+      bright star in front and pushed forward, never resting, never pausing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning dawned. Long rippling waves of morning air came down the
+      mountains, cool, chill, and moist. The grey light became tinged with red.
+      Then the sun rose somewhere. It had not yet appeared, but the peak of the
+      western hill was flushed and a raven flew out and perched on the point of
+      light. Israel's breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer step. &ldquo;She
+      will be waking soon,&rdquo; he told himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing&mdash;the wheatear
+      in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the
+      rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth
+      below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like vast
+      spiders' webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat, dogs to bark, kine to
+      low, horses to cross each other's necks, and over the freshness of the air
+      came the smell of peat and of green boughs burning. Israel did not stop,
+      but pushed on with new eagerness. &ldquo;She will have risen now,&rdquo; he told
+      himself. He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door and looking out
+      for him in the sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little thing,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;how she misses me! But I am coming, I am
+      coming!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed since he saw it
+      last. Then it had been like a dead man's face; now it was like a face that
+      was always smiling. And though the year was so old it seemed to be quite
+      young. No tired look of autumn, no warning of winter; only the freshness
+      and vigour of spring. &ldquo;I am going to see my child, and I shall be happy
+      yet,&rdquo; thought Israel. The dust of life seemed to hang on him no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer&mdash;&ldquo;the house of the
+      poor one.&rdquo; The place did not even justify its name, for it was a cinereous
+      wreck. Not a living creature was to be seen anywhere. The village had been
+      sacked by the Sultan's army, and its inhabitants had fled to the
+      mountains. Israel paused a moment, and looked into one of the ruined
+      houses. He knew it must have been the house of a Jew, for he could
+      recognise it by its smell. The floor was strewn over with rubbish&mdash;cans,
+      kettles, water-bottles, a woman's handkerchief, and a dainty red slipper.
+      On the ragged grass in the court within there were some little stones
+      built up into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the ground in
+      lines. A young girl had lived in that house; children had played there;
+      the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits still. &ldquo;Poor souls!&rdquo;
+       thought Israel, but the troubles of others could not really touch him. At
+      that very moment his heart was joyful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was warm, but not too hot for walking. Israel did not feel weary,
+      and so he went on without resting. He reckoned how far it was from Shawan
+      to his home near Semsa. It was nearly seventy miles. That distance would
+      take two days and two nights to cover on foot. He had left the prison on
+      Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset before he reached Naomi.
+      It was now Thursday morning. He must lose no time. &ldquo;You see, the poor
+      little thing will be waiting, waiting, waiting,&rdquo; he told himself. &ldquo;These
+      sweet creatures are all so impatient; yes, yes, so foolishly impatient.
+      God bless them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They answered
+      his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their trouble.
+      Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred dollars which
+      they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he had ransacked
+      their houses and then gone on with his great army, his twenty wives, and
+      fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel hardly knew what
+      they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their story. He was
+      thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi he was to leave
+      Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty, noble, beautiful
+      England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little white island of the
+      sea! His mother's home! England! Yes, he would go back to it. True, he had
+      no friends there now; but what matter of that? Ah, yes, he was old, and
+      the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful gaps. His mother! Ruth!
+      But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name aloud, softly, tenderly,
+      caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on her hair. Then recovering
+      himself, he laughed to think that he could be so childish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place. It
+      was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were
+      picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the
+      voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning
+      under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel that
+      he had not eaten since the previous day. &ldquo;I must have food,&rdquo; he thought,
+      &ldquo;though I do not feel hungry.&rdquo; So he stopped, and the wandering Arabs
+      hailed him. &ldquo;Markababikum!&rdquo; they cried from where they sat within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!&rdquo; Their land was the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled beans
+      and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a woman,
+      half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while she
+      worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles. Some
+      fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young girl
+      was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and baking cakes
+      on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three stones. All
+      were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On a long journey, brother?&rdquo; said the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, oh no, no,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Only to Semsa, no farther.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you must sleep here to-night,&rdquo; said the Arab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I cannot do that,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor child,
+      and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of a man to
+      stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient, you know.
+      And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I suppose we must
+      humour them&mdash;that's what I always say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!&rdquo; said the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Well, peace! Farewell
+      all, farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the
+      darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense black
+      cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness ahead of
+      him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on every side.
+      Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort. The ground
+      seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses. He began to
+      feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke out on his brow,
+      and at length, when the sound of a river came from somewhere near, though
+      on which side of him he could not tell, he had no choice but to stop.
+      &ldquo;After all, it is better,&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;Strange, how things happen for the
+      best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I will get no sleep at
+      all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and to ask and to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept
+      upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense night
+      between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in a childish
+      way that he might comfort his aching heart. &ldquo;Yes, I must sleep&mdash;sleep&mdash;to-morrow
+      <i>she</i> must sleep and I must watch by her&mdash;watch by her as I used
+      to do&mdash;used to do&mdash;how soft and beautiful&mdash;how beautiful&mdash;sleeping&mdash;sleep&mdash;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance,
+      the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the
+      borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river,
+      which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was now
+      Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his home
+      near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white walls,
+      and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with the
+      snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange orchards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
+      Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown
+      dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could see
+      now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi's eyes!
+      Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world was new
+      to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far sweeter
+      youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi&mdash;Naomi&mdash;always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as
+      she had appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.
+      But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two
+      months and a half&mdash;it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown
+      from a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big,
+      slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.
+      Nevertheless, he was her father still&mdash;her old, tired, dim-eyed
+      father; and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He
+      could see and hear it all. First Naomi's voice: &ldquo;A bow in the sky&mdash;red,
+      blue, crimson&mdash;oh!&rdquo; Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome
+      darkness: &ldquo;A rainbow, child!&rdquo; Ah! the dreams were beautiful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice&mdash;the voice of his
+      poor dead Ruth&mdash;and to remember the song that she used to sing&mdash;the
+      song she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he
+      was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the
+      street&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he sang
+      it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was making
+      was Naomi's voice and not his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the Sultan's
+      gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping sewers, and
+      there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation that had come
+      out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his face they were
+      shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true, but strong and
+      firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had passed, and he was
+      coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering, infirm old man of
+      eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but after a pause one of
+      them&mdash;Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name was Solomon
+      Laredo&mdash;stepped up and said, &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel, our poor Tetuan is in
+      trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God has punished
+      us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of you; for we have
+      heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of Seedna
+      Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also something
+      they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel, who was to bombard
+      Marteel. But Israel heard very little. &ldquo;I think my hearing must be failing
+      me,&rdquo; he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if that did not greatly
+      matter. &ldquo;And to tell you the truth, though I pity my poor brethren, I can
+      no longer help them. God will raise up a better minister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; cried the Jews in many voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyhow,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;my life among you is ended. I set no store by
+      place and power. What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand of God
+      I stand.' Shakespeare&mdash;oh, a mighty creature&mdash;one who knew where
+      the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you've not lived in England. Do you
+      know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You remember
+      her&mdash;Naomi&mdash;a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and
+      speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am going
+      to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one will be
+      waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was on
+      every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation stood
+      and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him of
+      some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began to think
+      of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His absence had
+      been so long, and so many things might have happened since he went away.
+      In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain shamble. At nearly
+      every step the body lurched for poise and balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the little
+      rush-covered house ought to be seen. &ldquo;It's yonder,&rdquo; he cried, and pointed
+      it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and its
+      strong rays were in his face. &ldquo;She's there, I see her!&rdquo; he shouted. A few
+      minutes later he was near the door. &ldquo;No, my eyes deceived me,&rdquo; he said in
+      a damp voice. &ldquo;Or perhaps she has gone in&mdash;perhaps she's hiding&mdash;the
+      sweet rogue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he
+      called in a voice like a caress. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; His voice trembled now. &ldquo;Come to
+      me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!&rdquo; He listened.
+      There was not a sound, not a movement. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; The name was like a gurgle
+      in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly and simply,
+      &ldquo;She's not here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a slipper
+      covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his face. Dead?
+      Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before&mdash;for himself, for
+      others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him. Death!
+      Oh, oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the
+      floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He
+      flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi&mdash;it must be
+      she!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had
+      been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too
+      suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. &ldquo;Where is she laid?&rdquo; he
+      said in a voice of awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatimah saw his error instantly. &ldquo;Naomi is alive,&rdquo; she said, and, seeing
+      how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, &ldquo;and well, very
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a cry
+      of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what she
+      had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she not
+      here? Lead me to her, lead me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; she said, weeping, &ldquo;that
+      cannot be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel steadied himself and waited. &ldquo;She cannot come to you, and neither
+      can you go to her.&rdquo; said Fatimah. &ldquo;But she is well, oh! very well. Poor
+      child, she is at the Kasbah&mdash;no, no, not the prison&mdash;oh no, she
+      is happy&mdash;I mean she is well, yes, and cared for&mdash;indeed, she is
+      at the palace&mdash;the women's palace&mdash;but set your mind easy&mdash;she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
+      and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
+      lived a lifetime in that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The palace!&rdquo; he said in a bewildered way. &ldquo;The women's palace&mdash;the
+      women's&mdash;&rdquo; and then broke off shortly. &ldquo;Fatimah, I want to go to
+      Naomi,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Fatimah stammered, &ldquo;Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fatimah,&rdquo; said Israel, with an awful calm. &ldquo;Can't you see, woman, I have
+      come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not understand?&mdash;I
+      want to go to my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;but you can never go to her any more. She is in
+      the women's apartments&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;only listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
+      everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. &ldquo;Silence!&rdquo;
+       he cried. &ldquo;What need is there for words? She is in the palace!&mdash;that's
+      enough. The women's palace&mdash;the hareem&mdash;what more is there to
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in all
+      its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. &ldquo;O God!&rdquo; he
+      cried, &ldquo;my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting, starving. I
+      think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home to her. But
+      where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy. Curse her! . .
+      . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not that, whatever
+      happens! But the palace&mdash;the women's palace. Naomi! My little
+      daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn that she
+      was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to see that she
+      loved me! And now the hareem&mdash;that hell, and Ben Aboo&mdash;that
+      libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine&mdash;I
+      wrestled with God for it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
+      his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven, and
+      cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, &ldquo;Kill her, O God! Kill
+      her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of
+      tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned
+      the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way while
+      sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look. Sometimes
+      he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own condition: &ldquo;I
+      am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed my heart in
+      vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh slipped. . .
+      . I am as one whom his mother comforteth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple
+      foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly and
+      tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared to
+      think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer&mdash;always
+      the same&mdash;that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he
+      seemed to hear a voice that cried, &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Here! Israel is here!&rdquo; he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling him.
+      The Kaid was the King. &ldquo;Yes, I will go back to the King,&rdquo; he said. Then he
+      looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt, and tried
+      to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged threads of it.
+      At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he were a master
+      still, &ldquo;Bring me robes&mdash;clean robes&mdash;white robes; I am going
+      back to the King!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty, the
+      Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away, encamped
+      with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment of his army,
+      somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed for eight
+      o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were everywhere
+      afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and nothing was to be
+      heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of the streets, and the
+      hanging of flags and of carpets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum, and
+      crying in a hoarse voice, &ldquo;Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord! Awake!
+      Awake!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds. The
+      sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel of gold
+      down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange orchards lying to
+      the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red rather than yellow,
+      and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above them were crimson
+      rather than white. In the town itself the small red flag that is the
+      Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets of various colours
+      swung on many walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It was
+      a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment of
+      Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their heads&mdash;a
+      big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They poured
+      into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and squeezed
+      their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the air, and
+      shouting as they went, &ldquo;Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is coming!
+      Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
+      perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
+      through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
+      that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
+      himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
+      there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
+      spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file, not hand
+      to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a hundred
+      miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking, or faint
+      or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping blood; the
+      faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines of sweat. And
+      thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight of God's own morning,
+      under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the many-coloured carpets of Rabat,
+      to the Kasbah beyond the market-place. They were Reefians whose homes the
+      Sultan had just stripped, whose villages he had just burnt, whose wives
+      and children he had just driven into the mountains. And they were going to
+      die in his dungeons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's
+      train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
+      human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
+      Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the streets
+      were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban within
+      range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the principal
+      thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their haiks, had
+      already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next, a body of
+      the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the walls to protect
+      the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was coming. Then into
+      the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from their own little
+      quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish people, in their
+      black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and children, carrying
+      banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at tambourines and crying
+      in wild discords, &ldquo;God bless our Lord!&rdquo; &ldquo;God give victory to our Lord the
+      Sultan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the Caliphs
+      of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them with
+      exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar crouching at
+      the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your slippers&mdash;Abd
+      er-Rahman is coming!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed, jostled,
+      and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners were torn out
+      of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their voices were drowned,
+      and finally they were driven back into their Mellah and shut up there, and
+      forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan even from their roofs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
+      having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
+      themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
+      and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the Sultan's
+      train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls, donkeys with
+      packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified old camel. It
+      was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces thrust into white
+      ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and clenched fists uplifted.
+      Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like hyenas, shrill and guttural,
+      piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings, quarrellings, cursings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curses on your grandfather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah! Allah! Allah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak! Balak! Balak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of the
+      Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by the
+      Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were thrust
+      back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the street,
+      and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen who
+      had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused and
+      disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they came up
+      to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs could see
+      them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river, none could
+      help but hear their shouts and oaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
+      camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
+      himself was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
+      their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
+      four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
+      outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And
+      then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him, came
+      the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks, his
+      rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father of
+      Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in gorgeous
+      trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold. Solomon's
+      seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar&mdash;a
+      safeguard against the evil eye&mdash;was suspended from its neck. Its
+      saddle was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups
+      were of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of
+      his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
+      girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
+      transparent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the Kasbah
+      boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his stirrup, and the
+      crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless our Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sultan Abd er-Rahman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God prolong the life of our Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
+      Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to the
+      left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless the
+      people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening acclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All's well, all's well,&rdquo; they told each other, and pointed to the white
+      horse&mdash;the sign of peace&mdash;which the Sultan rode, and to the
+      riderless black horse&mdash;the sign of strife&mdash;that pranced behind
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
+      Sultan with a shrill ululation: &ldquo;Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some of
+      them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
+      coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
+      articulate cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
+      Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
+      cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
+      State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
+      head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
+      greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem. The
+      ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their heart
+      of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they knew that
+      the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their taxes. Not a
+      man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he saved from
+      dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his messages,
+      nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed only for
+      himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues. And yet his
+      people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,
+      whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind
+      beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he
+      dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet
+      streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses
+      tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk unheard
+      and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold significance
+      passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And this was the
+      way and the word of it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is back in the Kasbah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has fallen sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is saved
+      from the Sultan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the present, only for the-present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
+      news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ya Allah! well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark! A footstep on the street&mdash;some one is near&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But quick. Behind the Mahdi&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
+      before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
+      state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
+      bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
+      him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all his
+      bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had entered
+      Tetuan that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like a
+      conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
+      come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under the
+      walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the rabble
+      of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load of
+      kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each man.
+      Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of the
+      market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades. Black
+      jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and story-tellers
+      both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous ginbri, had been
+      seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and their women. But the
+      Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Away!&rdquo; he had cried. &ldquo;Away with your uncleanness and deception.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the indecent
+      gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk off like a
+      pariah dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan were
+      going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of excited
+      spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in line from
+      opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some standing.
+      Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at full gallop,
+      firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length, throwing their
+      barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping back, amid deafening
+      shouts of &ldquo;Allah! Allah! Allah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah indeed!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without fear.
+      &ldquo;That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and
+      bloodshed. Away, away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he
+      approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for the
+      mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out in
+      all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked men, and
+      one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the Mukaddameen,
+      three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark flowing robes
+      and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive and eaten raw;
+      while women and children; crouching in the gathering darkness overhead
+      looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the frenzy increased
+      among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each fanatic turned upon
+      himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head against the stones
+      until blood ran like water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fools and blind guides!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like
+      sheep. &ldquo;Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the
+      abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but
+      forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away!
+      Away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after various
+      parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding ways of the
+      gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha's presence. The Basha
+      received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his face. Ben
+      Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog with his
+      muzzle on his forepaws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Welcome,&rdquo; he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious
+      posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi did not sit. &ldquo;Ben Aboo,&rdquo; he said in a voice that was half choked
+      with anger, &ldquo;I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to you if
+      you send me away unsatisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,
+      &ldquo;What is it now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which
+      his dusky muzzle had rested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, do not lie to me,&rdquo; cried the Mahdi. &ldquo;I know where she is&mdash;she is
+      in prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime
+      but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the
+      other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some
+      half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled about
+      in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and said with
+      an air of mock inquiry, &ldquo;Ya Allah! who is this infidel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, &ldquo;Sir, I know who you are! You
+      come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your
+      purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you were
+      a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here&mdash;my guest and protector.
+      You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin our
+      religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by Allah
+      you shall die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his
+      superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half
+      deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi took
+      a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to
+      death. You dare not and you cannot do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a swagger.
+      &ldquo;What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man need know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;do you think you are talking to a child? Do you
+      think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than
+      ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for my
+      return? And do you think, too,&rdquo; he cried, lifting one hand and his voice
+      together, &ldquo;that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on an errand
+      of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I say; you are
+      a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage. But he was cowed. He
+      hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of braggadocio&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what if I do not liberate the girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;if any evil befalls her the consequences shall be
+      on your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What consequences?&rdquo; said the Basha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse consequences than you expect or dream,&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What consequences?&rdquo; said the Basha again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;You are walking in darkness, and do not know
+      where you are going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What consequences?&rdquo; the Basha cried once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is God's secret,&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo began to laugh. &ldquo;Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,&rdquo; he shouted
+      to his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi. &ldquo;I have delivered my message. Now woe to you,
+      Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come
+      no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison.
+      Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward
+      awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword
+      will reach to your soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where
+      he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, &ldquo;This is the last word
+      that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben Aboo&mdash;I
+      to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt, and death
+      and hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place
+      where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks under
+      a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed through
+      it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the stars before
+      the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, &ldquo;Abd er-Rahman! Abd
+      er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the sound of the trumpet
+      and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me for my country, but
+      the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd er-Rahman! You have
+      filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you, slave of the
+      Compassionate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of the
+      hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But his
+      voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly thing,
+      and no man raised a hand to stop him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Mahdi,&rdquo; they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers
+      of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms,
+      were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from
+      these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos
+      and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the
+      M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret. It
+      was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had
+      visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also of
+      her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as well
+      as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in gasps,
+      without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he listened to
+      her with emotion while the agitated black face was before him, and when it
+      was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of night, a silent man,
+      with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was imprisoned in the dungeons
+      of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father, who supposed that she was
+      living in luxury in the palace of his enemy while he himself lay sick in
+      the poor hut which had been their home. These false notions, which were at
+      once the seed and the fruit of Israel's madness, should at least be
+      dispelled. Let come what would, the man should neither live nor die in
+      such bitterness of cruel error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
+      and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet, the
+      traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's following
+      had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a wonderful night. The
+      air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter, but not a breath of
+      wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the town wall did not
+      send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf. Stars were out and
+      the big moon of the East shone white on the white walls and minarets.
+      Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as in an Eastern city.
+      Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white roofs, and between them
+      were the dark streets going in and out, trailing through and along, like
+      to narrow streams of black water in a bed of quarried chalk. Here or
+      there, where a belated townsman lit himself homeward with a lamp, a red
+      light gleamed out of one of the thin darknesses, crept along a few paces,
+      and then was gone. Sometimes a clamour of voices came up with their own
+      echo from some unseen place, and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep,
+      all was sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Tetuan,&rdquo; thought the Mahdi, &ldquo;how soon will your streets be uprooted and
+      your sanctuaries destroyed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
+      gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the dawn.
+      He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the bare soil
+      outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to be awake. Even
+      their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the circles where they
+      had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled and still saddled,
+      were up and feeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
+      had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
+      were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
+      which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
+      right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected air,
+      a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was one
+      worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare. But
+      so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not until
+      then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on him
+      only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man who for
+      good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled with God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside Israel
+      at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way, telling
+      him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came, and
+      whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a brave
+      show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen clod,
+      whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves of his
+      fingers were also frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the head.
+      He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to prison,
+      and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he described
+      the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how she fell
+      into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face that the
+      affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully. At last he
+      recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had yielded at
+      length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child, seeing her father
+      in everything and thinking to save his life, though she herself must see
+      him no more (for all this he had gathered from Fatimah), and then the
+      great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers trembled, and his face
+      twitched, and the hot tears rained down his cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor darling!&rdquo; he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he asked
+      in a faltering voice where she was at that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against the
+      fortune intended for her&mdash;that of becoming a concubine of the Sultan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brave girl!&rdquo; he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
+      that was both pride and pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she could
+      hear: &ldquo;Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old father;
+      forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
+      and said in almost a childish tone, &ldquo;I suppose there is no help for it
+      now, sir. I meant to take her to England&mdash;to my poor mother's home,
+      but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, rising to
+      his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he had
+      thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
+      clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
+      impulse, should at length be carried into effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali's, for the black
+      lad was back in Tetuan. After he had fulfilled his errand of mercy at
+      Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there, with a spirit afire for the
+      wrongs of his master, from whom he was so cruelly parted, he had set
+      himself with shrewdness and daring to incite the Spanish powers to
+      vengeance upon his master's enemies. This had been a task very easy of
+      execution, for just at that time intelligence had come from the Reef, of
+      barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo upon mountain tribes that had hitherto
+      offered allegiance to the Spanish crown. A mission had gone up to Fez, and
+      returned unsatisfied. War was to be declared, Marteel was to be bombarded,
+      the army of Marshal O'Donnel was to come up the valley of the river, and
+      Tetuan was to be taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely
+      revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was the
+      feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the eighth
+      night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to give a
+      &ldquo;gathering of delight,&rdquo; to the Sultan, his Ministers, his Kaids, his
+      Kadis, his Khaleefas, his Umana, and great rascals generally. Ali's stout
+      heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the Spaniards brought up to the
+      gates of the town, on the very night when the whole majesty and iniquity
+      of Barbary would be gathered in one room; then, locking the entire kennel
+      of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and burning it to the
+      ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like rats in a trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One danger attended his bold adventure, for Naomi's person was within the
+      Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to find his way into the
+      dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate, and deliver up to another
+      the key that should serve as a signal for the beginning of the great
+      night's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah
+      there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment for
+      the siege&mdash;no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely not to
+      lead them blindfold into a trap. To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in
+      search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help in
+      the downfall of his master's enemies by leading the Spaniards at the right
+      moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing Ali's story, the Mahdi had been aflame with tender thoughts of
+      Naomi's trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo's tyrannies, and pity of Israel's
+      miseries. But at first his humanity had withheld him from sympathy with
+      Ali's dark purpose, so full, as it seemed, of barbarity and treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;is it not all you wish for to get Naomi out of prison
+      and take her back to her father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sidi,&rdquo; Ali had answered promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don't want to torture these tyrants if you can do what you desire
+      without it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o, Sidi,&rdquo; Ali had said doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; the Mahdi had said, &ldquo;let us try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the Mahdi was gone to Tetuan on his errand of warning that proved
+      so vain, Ali had crept back behind him, so that secretly and independently
+      he might carry out his fell design. The towns-people were ready to receive
+      him, for the air was full of rebellion, and many had waited long for the
+      opportunity of revenge. To certain of the Jews, his master's people, who
+      were also in effect his own, he went first with his mission, and they
+      listened with eagerness to what he had come to say. When their own time
+      came to speak they spoke cautiously, after the manner of their race, and
+      nervously, like men who knew too well what it was to be crushed and kept
+      under; but they gave their help notwithstanding, and Ali's scheme
+      progressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than three days the entire town, Moorish and Jewish, was
+      honeycombed with subterranean revolt. Even the civil guard, the soldiers
+      of the Kasbah, the black police that kept the gates, and the slaves that
+      stood before the Basha's table were waiting for the downfall to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi had gone again by this time, and the people had resumed their
+      mock rejoicings over the Sultan's visit. These were the last kindlings of
+      their burnt-out loyalty, a poor smouldering pretence of fire. Every
+      morning the town was awakened by the deafening crackle of flintlocks,
+      which the mountaineers discharged in the Feddan by way of signal that the
+      Sultan was going to say his prayers at the door of some saint's house.
+      Beside the firing of long guns and the twanging of the ginbri the chief
+      business of the day seemed to be begging. One bow-legged rascal in a
+      ragged jellab went about constantly with a little loaf of bread, crying,
+      &ldquo;An ounce of butter for God's sake!&rdquo; and when some one gave him the alms
+      he asked he stuck the white sprawling mess on the top of the loaf and
+      changed his cry to &ldquo;An ounce of cheese for God's sake!&rdquo; A pert little
+      vagabond&mdash;street Arab in a double sense&mdash;promenaded the town
+      barefoot, carrying an odd slipper in his hand, and calling on all men by
+      the love of God and the face of God and the sake of God to give him a
+      moozoonah towards the cost of its fellow. Every morning the Sultan went to
+      mosque under his red umbrella, and every evening he sat in the hall of the
+      court of justice, pretending to hear the petitions of the poor, but
+      actually dispensing charms in return for presents. First an old wrinkled
+      reprobate with no life left in him but the life of lust: &ldquo;A charm to make
+      my young wife love me!&rdquo; Then an ill-favoured hag behind a blanket: &ldquo;A
+      charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has taken instead of
+      me!&rdquo; Again, a young wife with a tearful voice: &ldquo;A charm to make me bear
+      children!&rdquo; A greasy smile from the fat Sultan, a scrap of writing to every
+      supplicant, chinking coins dropped into the bag of the attendant from the
+      treasury, and then up and away. It was a nauseous draught from the
+      bitterest waters of Islam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived by the outward
+      marks of devotion. At the corners of the streets, on the Feddan, by the
+      fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard, there they stood in
+      little groups, crossing their forefingers, the sign of strife, or rubbing
+      them side by side, the sign of amity. It was clear that, notwithstanding
+      the hubbub of their loyalty to the sultan, they knew that the Spaniard was
+      coming and were glad of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Ali waited with impatience for the day that was to see the end of
+      his enterprise. To beguile himself of his nervousness in the night, during
+      the dark hours that trailed on to morning, he would venture out of the
+      lodging where he lay in hiding throughout the day, and pick his steps in
+      the silence up the winding streets, until he came under a narrow opening
+      in an alley which was the only window to Naomi's prison. And there he
+      would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought that besides the
+      comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi, the tramp, tramp, tramp of
+      his footsteps, which once or twice provoked the challenge of the
+      night-guard on his lonely round, would be company to her in her solitude.
+      And sometimes, watching his opportunity that he might be unseen and
+      unheard, he would creep in the darkness under the window and cry up the
+      wall in an underbreath, &ldquo;Naomi! Naomi! It is I, Ali! I have come back! All
+      will be well yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then if he heard nothing from within he would torture himself with a
+      hundred fears lest Naomi should be no longer there, but in a worse place;
+      and if he heard a sob he would slink away like a dog with his muzzle to
+      the dust, and if he heard his own name echoed in the softer voice he knew
+      so well he would go off with head erect, feeling like a man who walked on
+      the stars rather than the stones of the street. But, whatever befell,
+      before the day dawned he went back to his lodging less sore at heart for
+      his lonely vigil, but not less wrathful or resolute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day of the feast came at length, and then Ali's impatience rose to
+      fever. All day he longed for the night, that the thing he had to do could
+      be done. At last the sunset came and the darkness fell, and from his place
+      of concealment Ali saw the soldiers of the assaseen going through the
+      streets with lanterns to lead honoured guests to the banquet. Then he set
+      out on his errand. His foresight and wit had arranged everything. The
+      negro at the gate of the Kasbah pretended to recognise him as a messenger
+      of the Vizier's, and passed him through. He pushed his way as one with
+      authority along the winding passages to the garden where the Mahdi had
+      called on Abd er-Rahman and foretold his fate. The garden opened upon the
+      great hall, and a number of guests were standing there, cooling themselves
+      in the night air while they waited for the arrival of the Sultan. His
+      Shereefian Majesty came at length, and then, amid salaams and
+      peace-blessings, the company passed in to the banquet. &ldquo;Peace on you!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;And on you the peace!&rdquo; &ldquo;God make your evening!&rdquo; &ldquo;May your evening be
+      blessed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment? No, a thousand times no!
+      While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen and
+      scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup and to laugh and
+      to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel broken and alone in the
+      poor hut which had been described to him, and Naomi lying in her damp cell
+      beyond the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests
+      entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop
+      in after them with great dishes under huge covers. Then he held a short
+      parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him, and in
+      another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi's prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down to
+      the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he had
+      never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of all&mdash;the
+      fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by the gift of
+      sight, and would now first look upon <i>him</i>. That he would be the same
+      as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was; that she
+      would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to belie the
+      evidence of the newborn sense&mdash;this was the least of Ali's trouble.
+      By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had haunted him in
+      the days before he left her with her father on his errand to Shawan. He
+      was black, and she would see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,
+      flashed upon his mind. His shame was abject. It cut him to the quick. On
+      the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him since
+      times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood. She had played with
+      him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face. And she was
+      fair as the morning, and he was black as the night! He had come to deliver
+      her. Would she recoil from him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything. But
+      his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose. &ldquo;What matter?&rdquo;
+       he thought. &ldquo;What matter about me?&rdquo; he asked himself aloud in a shrill
+      voice and with a brave roll of his round head. Then he found himself
+      inside the cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief. Naomi must have
+      been lying at the farther end of it. She spoke when the door was opened.
+      As though by habit, she framed the name of her jailer Habeebah, and then
+      stopped with a little nervous cry and seemed to rise to her feet. In his
+      confusion Ali said simply, &ldquo;It is I,&rdquo; as though that meant everything.
+      Recovering himself in a moment he spoke again, and then she knew his
+      voice: &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Ali,&rdquo; she whispered to herself. After that she cried in a trembling
+      undertone &ldquo;Ali! Ali! Ali!&rdquo; and came straight in the accustomed darkness to
+      the spot where he stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, gathering courage and voice together, Ali told her hurriedly why he
+      was there. When he said that her father was no longer in prison, but at
+      their home near Semsa and waiting to receive her, she seemed almost
+      overcome by her joy. Half laughing, half weeping, clutching at her breast
+      as if to ease the wild heaving of her bosom she was transformed by his
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said Ali; &ldquo;not a sound until we are outside the town,&rdquo; and Naomi
+      knitted her fingers in his palm, and they passed out of the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors where
+      they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by, and coming into
+      the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle of laughter from the great
+      hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals feasted together. They reached
+      the quiet alley outside the Kasbah (for the negro was gone from his post),
+      and drew a lone breath, and thanked Heaven that this much was over. There
+      had been no group of beggars at the gate, and the streets around it were
+      deserted; but in the distance, far across the town in the direction of the
+      Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel, they heard a low hum as
+      of vast droves of sheep. The Spaniard was coming, and the townsmen were
+      going out to meet him. Casual passers-by challenged them, and though Ali
+      knew that even if recognised they had nothing to fear from the people, yet
+      more than once his voice trembled when he answered, and sometimes with a
+      feeling of dread he turned to see that no one was following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame of
+      that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door of
+      Naomi's prison. By the light of the lamps in the hands of the passers-by
+      Naomi was looking at him. Again and again, as the glare fell for an
+      instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face. At such moments he
+      thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them
+      seemed wider. But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head
+      aside, and hastened on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matter about me?&rdquo; he whispered again. But the brave word brought him
+      no comfort. &ldquo;Now she's looking at my hand,&rdquo; he told himself, but he could
+      not draw it away. &ldquo;She is doubting if I am Ali after all,&rdquo; he thought.
+      &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he tried to say with averted head, so that once again the sound
+      of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and he could
+      not speak. Still he pushed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has
+      been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a
+      loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to move
+      and pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of
+      Israel's humiliation and Naomi's shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,
+      came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people. It was the
+      Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the town
+      on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the gates
+      were coming in on the east. The Mahdi himself was locking the synagogues
+      and the sanctuaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lock them up,&rdquo; he was saying. &ldquo;It is enough that the foreigner must burn
+      down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought her,&rdquo; he said breathlessly; &ldquo;Naomi, Israel's daughter,
+      this is she.&rdquo; And then there was a moment of surprise and joy, and pain
+      and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look of the eyes
+      of the three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi looked at Naomi, and his face lightened. Naomi looked at Ali,
+      and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair
+      across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break from
+      her mouth. Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted and her eyes
+      shone. Ali looked at both, and his face twitched and fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was only the work of an instant, but it was enough. Enough for the
+      Mahdi, for it told him a secret that the wisdom of life had not yet
+      revealed; enough for Naomi, for a new sense, a sixth sense, had surely
+      come to her; enough for Ali also, for his big little heart was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matter about me?&rdquo; thought Ali again. &ldquo;Take her, Mahdi,&rdquo; he said
+      aloud in a shrill voice. &ldquo;Her father is waiting for her&mdash;take her to
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;can you trust me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then without a word she went to him; like the needle to the magnet she
+      went to the Mahdi&mdash;a stranger to her, when all strangers were as
+      enemies&mdash;and laid her hand in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali began to laugh, &ldquo;I'm a fool,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Who could have believed it?
+      Why, I've forgotten to lock the Kasbah! The villains will escape. No
+      matter, I'll go back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear. &ldquo;I'll see to it yet,&rdquo; he
+      cried, turning on his heel. &ldquo;Good night, Sidi! God bless you! My love to
+      my father! Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in another moment he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the doom
+      that was impending. Squatting on the floor in little circles, around
+      little tables covered with steaming dishes, wherein each plunged his
+      fingers, they began the feast with ceremonious wishes, pious exclamations,
+      cant phrases, and downcast eyes. First, &ldquo;God lengthen your age,&rdquo; &ldquo;God
+      cover you,&rdquo; and &ldquo;God give you strength.&rdquo; Then a dish of dates, served with
+      abject apologies from Ben Aboo: &ldquo;You would treat us better in Fez, but
+      Tetuan is poor; the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!&rdquo; Then fish in
+      garlic, eaten with loud &ldquo;Bismillah's.&rdquo; Then kesksoo covered with powdered
+      sugar and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned fowls, and fowls and
+      olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters, each eaten in its turn amid
+      a chorus of &ldquo;La Ilah illa Allah's.&rdquo; Finally three cups of green tea, as
+      thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many &ldquo;Do me the favour's,&rdquo; and
+      countless &ldquo;Good luck's.&rdquo; Last of all, the washing of hands, and the
+      fumigating of garments and beard and hair by the live embers of scented
+      wood burning in a brass censer, with incessant exchanges of &ldquo;The Prophet&mdash;God
+      rest him&mdash;loved sweet odours almost as much as sweet women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed down
+      to a warm and flowing brotherhood. Lolling at ease on their rugs, trifling
+      with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries for idleness more
+      than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling on the pavement the
+      carved ends of their silver knife-shields, they laughed and jested, and
+      told dubious stories, and held doubtful discourse generally. The talk
+      turned on the distinction between great sins and little ones. In the
+      circle of the Sultan it was agreed that the great sins were two: unbelief
+      in the Prophet, whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking keef and
+      tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and unquestionable
+      Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five prayers a day,
+      thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the Koran, and as many
+      inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and as for murder and
+      adultery, and bearing false witness&mdash;well, God was Merciful, God was
+      Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors of the great
+      sins. These were terrible. Putting on a profound air, the Vizier, a fat
+      man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco and denied the Prophet
+      had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned in his grave with his
+      face from Mecca. Then the Kaid of Fez, head of the Mosque and general
+      Grand Mufti, led away with stories of the little sins. These were
+      delightful. They pictured the shifts of pretty wives, married to worn out
+      old men, to get at their youthful lovers in the dark by clambering in
+      their dainty slippers from roof to roof. Also of the discomfiture of pious
+      old husbands and the wicked triumph of rompish little ladies, under
+      pretences of outraged innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told, was the
+      conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah. At every fresh
+      story the laughter became louder, and soon the reserve and dignity of the
+      Moor were left behind him and forgotten. At length Ben Aboo, encouraged by
+      the Sultan's good fellowship, broke into loud praises of Naomi, and yet
+      louder wails over the doom that must be the penalty of her apostasy; and
+      thereupon Abd er-Rahman, protesting that for his part he wanted nothing
+      with such a vixen, called on him to uncover her boasted charms to them.
+      &ldquo;Bring her here, Basha,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;let us see her,&rdquo; and this command was
+      received with tumultuous acclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the beginning of the end. In less than a minute more, while the
+      rascals lolled over the floor in half a hundred different postures, with
+      the hazy lights from the brass lamps and the glass candelabras on their
+      dusky faces, their gleaming teeth, and dancing eyes, the messenger who had
+      been sent for Naomi came back with the news that she was gone. Then Ben
+      Aboo rose in silent consternation, but his guests only laughed the louder,
+      until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running with more
+      startling news. Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards; the army of
+      Marshall O'Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan, and their own people were
+      opening the gates to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not
+      need to be detailed. Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to
+      the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of
+      horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark
+      corridors of men carrying torches and flares. There was no attempt at
+      resistance. That was seen to be useless. Both the civil guard and the
+      soldiery had deserted. The Kasbah was betrayed. Terror spread like fire.
+      In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and
+      eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of their
+      disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on the
+      southern side of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman. He remembered that he had
+      treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it. There were
+      fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people. No one
+      knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he had killed
+      the mason who built it. In the dark he found the place, and taking bags in
+      both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his selham, he tried to
+      escape from the Kasbah unseen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and Ben
+      Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground, near the
+      wall of the Kasbah gate. From that dark cell, crouching on the grain,
+      which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds of the
+      night. First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead; then the
+      furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of the crowd.
+      &ldquo;Damn it&mdash;they've given us the slip.&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes; they've crawled off like
+      rats from a sinking ship.&rdquo; &ldquo;Curse it all, it's only a bungle.&rdquo; This in the
+      Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country Ben Aboo heard
+      the guttural shouts of his own people: &ldquo;Sidi, try the palace.&rdquo; &ldquo;Try the
+      apartments of his women, Sidi.&rdquo; &ldquo;Abd er-Rahman's gone, but Ben Aboo's
+      hiding.&rdquo; &ldquo;Death to the tyrant!&rdquo; &ldquo;Down with the Basha!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ben Aboo! Ben
+      Aboo!&rdquo; Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence. &ldquo;Silence, you
+      shrieking hell-babies, silence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to
+      hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.
+      So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked the
+      Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for the
+      women's apartments, and rattled at their door. It was folly, it was
+      lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone. He could
+      hear the sounds of voices within&mdash;wailing and weeping of the women&mdash;but
+      no one answered his knocking. Again and again he knocked with his elbows
+      (still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw
+      through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood. Still the door
+      remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for company,
+      fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that led to the
+      alley behind the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers who were
+      helping her flight. &ldquo;We are safe,&rdquo; she whispered&mdash;&ldquo;they've gone back
+      into the Feddan&mdash;come;&rdquo; and by the light of a lamp which she carried
+      she made for the winding corridor that led past the bath and the sanctuary
+      to the Kasbah gate. But Ben Aboo only cursed her, and fumbled at the low
+      door of the passage that went out from the alcove to the alley. He was
+      lumbering through with his armless roll, intending to clash the door back
+      in Katrina's face, when there was a fierce shout behind him, and for some
+      minutes Ben Aboo knew no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shout was Ali's. After leaving the Mahdi on the heath outside the Bab
+      Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha. When the Spanish soldiers
+      abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search. Up and down he had traversed
+      the place in the darkness; and finding Ben Aboo at last, on the spot where
+      he had first seen him, he rushed in upon him and brought him to the
+      ground. Seeing Ben Aboo down, the black soldiers fell upon Ali. The brave
+      lad died with a shout of triumph. &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel,&rdquo; he cried, as if he
+      thought that name enough to save his soul and damn the soul of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ben Aboo was not yet done with his own. The blow that had been aimed
+      at his heart had no more than grazed his shoulder. &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; whispered
+      Katrina, half in wrath; and while she stooped to look for his wounds, her
+      face and hands as seen in the dim light of the lantern were bedaubed with
+      his blood. At that moment the guards were crying that the Kasbah was
+      afire, and at the next they were gone, leaving Katrina alone with the
+      unconscious man. &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; she cried again, and tugging at Ben Aboo's
+      unconscious body she struck it in her terror and frenzy. It was every one
+      for himself in that bad hour. Katrina followed the guards, and was never
+      afterwards heard of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ben Aboo came to himself the patio was aglow with flames. He
+      staggered to his feet, still grappling to his breast the money-bags hidden
+      under his selham. Then, bleeding from his shoulder and with blood upon his
+      beard, he made afresh for the passage leading to the back alley. The
+      passage was narrow and dark. There were three winding steps at the end of
+      it. Ben Aboo was dizzy and he stumbled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the passage was silent, it was safe, and out in the alley a sea of
+      voices burst upon him. He could hear the tramp of countless footsteps, the
+      cries of multitudes of voices, and the rattle of flintlocks. Lanterns,
+      torches, flares and flashes of gunpowder came and went at both ends of the
+      long dark tunnel. In the light of these he saw a struggling current of
+      angry faces. The living sea encircled him. He knew what had happened. At
+      the first certainty that his power was gone and that there was nothing to
+      fear from his vengeance, his own people had gathered together to destroy
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two small mean houses on the opposite side of the alley, and
+      Ben Aboo tried to take refuge in the first of them. But the woman who came
+      with uncovered face to the door was the widow of the mason who had built
+      his strong-room. &ldquo;Murderer and dog!&rdquo; she cried, and shut the door against
+      him. He tried the other house. It was the house of the mason's son.
+      &ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I am corrected by Allah! Yes, yes, it is true I
+      did wrong by your father, but forgive me and save me.&rdquo; Thus he pleaded,
+      throwing himself on the ground and crawling there. &ldquo;Dog and coward,&rdquo; the
+      young man shouted, and beat him back into the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo's terror was now appalling to look upon. His face was that of a
+      snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick breath,
+      he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where he thought
+      he might find a friend. &ldquo;Alee, don't you know me?&rdquo; &ldquo;Mohammed, it is I, Ben
+      Aboo.&rdquo; &ldquo;See, El Arby, here's money, money; it's yours, only save me, save
+      me!&rdquo; With such frantic cries he raced about in the darkness like a hunted
+      wolf. But not a house would shelter him. Everywhere he met relatives of
+      men who had died through his means, and he was driven away with curses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, a rumour that Ben Aboo was in the streets had been bruited
+      abroad among the people, and their lust of blood was thereby raised to
+      madness. Screaming and spitting and raving, and firing their flintlocks,
+      they poured from street into street, watching for their victim and seeing
+      him in every shadow. &ldquo;He's here!&rdquo; &ldquo;He's there!&rdquo; &ldquo;No, he's yonder!&rdquo; &ldquo;He's
+      scaling the high wall like a cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo heard them. Their inarticulate cries came to him laden with one
+      message only&mdash;death. He could see their faces, their snarling teeth.
+      Sometimes he would rave and blaspheme. Then he would make another effort
+      for his life. But the whirlpool was closing in upon him; and at last, like
+      one who flings himself over a precipice from dizziness, fears, and
+      irresistible fascination, he flung himself into the middle of the
+      infuriated throng as they scurried across the open Feddan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that moment Ben Aboo's doom was sealed. The people received him with
+      a long furious roar, a cry of triumphant execration, as if their own
+      astuteness at length had entrapped him. He stood with his back to the high
+      wall; the bellowing crowd was before him on either side. By the torches
+      that many carried all could see him. Turban and shasheeah had fallen off,
+      and the bald crown of his head was bare. His face retained no human
+      expression but fear. He was seen to draw his arms from beneath his selham,
+      to hold both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a hand into the
+      necks of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people. &ldquo;Silver,&rdquo; he
+      cried; &ldquo;silver, silver for everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The despairing appeal was useless. Nobody touched the money. It flashed
+      white through the air, and fell unheard. &ldquo;Death to the Kaid!&rdquo; was shouted
+      on every side. Nevertheless, though half the men carried guns, no man
+      fired. By unspoken consent it seemed to be understood that the death of
+      Ben Aboo was not to be the act of one, but of all. &ldquo;Stones,&rdquo; cried
+      somebody out of the crowd, and in another moment everybody was picking
+      stones, and piling them at his feet or gathering them in the skirt of his
+      jellab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo knew his awful fate. Gesticulating wildly, having flung the
+      money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was seen
+      to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips working
+      visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant the
+      stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he reeled
+      under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself like the
+      neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that came from
+      his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and fro, and grunted,
+      with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue lolling out. Faster
+      and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered upon him, darting out of
+      the darkness like swallows of the night. His clothes were rent, his blood
+      spirted over them, he staggered as a beast staggers in the slaughter, and
+      at length his thick knees doubled up, and he fell in a round heap like a
+      ball.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of Ben
+      Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower upon his
+      body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it. Then they left it
+      with curses of content and went their ways. When the Spanish soldiers, who
+      had stood aside while the work was done, came up with their lanterns to
+      look at this monument of Eastern justice, the heap of stones was still
+      moving with the terrific convulsions of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;ALLAH-U-KABAR&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      Travelling through the night,&mdash;Naomi laughing and singing snatches in
+      her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals at the huge
+      outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,&mdash;they came to the
+      hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day. But they had come too late.
+      Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England. He was going
+      on a longer journey. His lonely hour had come to him, his dark hour
+      wherein none could bear him company. On a mattress by the wall he lay
+      outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end. Two neighbours from the
+      village were with him, and but for these he must have been alone&mdash;the
+      mighty man in his downfall deserted by all save the great Judge and God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her, what
+      she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task to tell.
+      Oh, the irony of fate! Ay, the irony of God! That scene, and what followed
+      it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest&mdash;none the less cruel
+      because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless to go out in search of a doctor. The country was as
+      innocent of leechcraft as the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham. All
+      they could do was to submit, absolutely and unconditionally. They were in
+      God's hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves as
+      Israel awoke to consciousness. He opened his eyes as if from sleep, and
+      saw Naomi beside him. No surprise did he show at this, and neither did he
+      at first betray pleasure. Dimly and softly he looked upon her, and then
+      something that might have been a smile but for lack of strength passed
+      like sunshine out of a cloud across his wasted face. Naomi pressed a
+      pillow-under his loins, and another under his head, thinking to ease the
+      one and raise the other. But the iron hand of unconsciousness fell upon
+      him again, and through many hours thereafter Naomi and the Mahdi sat
+      together in silence with the multitudinous company of invisible things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of
+      Tetuan. The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of
+      his Ministers had escaped. Ben Aboo had tried to follow them, but he had
+      been killed in the alcove of the patio. Ali had killed him. He had rushed
+      in upon him through a line of his guards. One of the guards had killed
+      Ali. The brave black lad had fallen with the name of Israel on his lips
+      and with a dauntless shout of triumph. The Kasbah was afire; it had been
+      burning since the banquet of the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that
+      the end was very near. Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and the
+      Mahdi was standing at his left. Israel looked at the girl with a world of
+      tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening his noble
+      face. More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he wished to say
+      something, and yet could not do so, because the power of life was low; but
+      at last his voice found strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have left it too late,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I cannot go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words, and it
+      was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think no more of that,&rdquo; he said, and then he stopped, as if the word that
+      he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard to leave her,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;for she is alone; and who will
+      protect her when I am gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God lives,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;and He is Father to the fatherless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what Jew,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;would not repeat for her her father's
+      troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who that trusts in God,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;need fear the Kaid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what man can save her?&rdquo; cried Israel again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi's tears as well as her father's
+      importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace, peace! If there is no one else to take her, from this day forward
+      she shall go with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes as he
+      has often since, but had never before seen there, and Israel ben Oliel who
+      had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly at his wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo; he said, as well as he could for the two angels, the
+      angel of love and the angel of death, were struggling at his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel looked steadily at the Mahdi for a moment more, and then said very
+      softly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Death may come to me now; I am ready. Farewell, my father! I tried to do
+      your bidding. Do you remember your watchword? But God <i>has</i> given me
+      rewards for repentance&mdash;see,&rdquo; and he turned his eyes towards the eyes
+      of Naomi with a wasting yet sunny smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God is good,&rdquo; said the Mahdi; &ldquo;lie still, lie still,&rdquo; and he laid his
+      cool hand on Israel's forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am leaving her to you,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and you alone can protect her of
+      all men living in this land accursed of God, for God's right arm is round
+      you. Yes, God is good. As long as you live you will cherish her. Never was
+      she so dear to me as now, so sweet, so lovable, so gentle. But you will be
+      good to her. God is very good to me. Guard her as the apple of your eye.
+      It will reward you. And let her think of me sometimes&mdash;only
+      sometimes. Ah! how nearly I shipwrecked all this! Remember! Remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, hush! Do not increase your pains,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;Are you feeling
+      better now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am feeling well,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;and happy&mdash;so happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun had set, and the swift twilight was passing into night, when
+      another messenger arrived from Tetuan. It was Ali's old Taleb, shedding
+      tears for his boy, but boasting loudly of his brave death. He had heard of
+      it from the black guards themselves. After Ali fell he lived a moment,
+      though only in unconsciousness. The boy must have thought himself back at
+      Israel's side, &ldquo;I've done it, father,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;he'll never hurt you
+      again. You won't drive me away from you any more; will you, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They could see that Israel had heard the story. The eyes of the dying are
+      dry, but well they knew that the heart of the man was weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Taleb came with the idea that Israel also was gone, for a rumour to
+      that effect had passed through the town. &ldquo;El hamdu l'Illah!&rdquo; he cried,
+      when he saw that Israel was still alive. But then he remembered something,
+      and whispered in the Mahdi's farther ear that a vast concourse of Moors
+      and Jews including his own vast fellowship was even then coming out to
+      bury Israel, thinking he was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel overheard him and smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little also.
+      &ldquo;It will soon be true,&rdquo; he muttered under his breath, that came so quick.
+      And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the distance. It
+      was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear. First a mighty bass
+      voice: &ldquo;Allah Akbar!&rdquo; Again another and another voice: &ldquo;Allah Akbar!&rdquo; and
+      then the long roar of a vast multitude: &ldquo;Al&mdash;l&mdash;lah-u-kabar!&rdquo;
+       Finally a slow melancholy wail, rising and falling on the darkening air:
+      &ldquo;There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a solemn sound&mdash;nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive
+      to hear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O gratitude that is only a death-song! O fame that is only a funeral!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel listened and smiled again. &ldquo;Ah, God is great!&rdquo; he whispered; &ldquo;God
+      is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to the
+      door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession approaching&mdash;a
+      moving black shadow against the sky. Also over their billowy heads he
+      could see a red glow far away in the clouds. It was the last smouldering
+      of the fire of the modern Sodom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice behind
+      him. It was Israel's voice. He was speaking to Naomi. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he was
+      saying, &ldquo;it is hard to part. We were going to be very happy. . . . But you
+      must not cry. Listen! When I am there&mdash;eh? you know, <i>there</i>&mdash;I
+      will want to say, 'Father, you did well to hear my prayer. My little
+      daughter&mdash;she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.'
+      So you must not weep. Never, never, never! Remember! . . . . Ah! that's
+      right, that's right. My simple-hearted darling! My sunny, merry, happy
+      girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father's will. She was
+      combing his white beard with her fingers&mdash;it was knotted and tangled&mdash;and
+      he was labouring hard to speak again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, do you remember?&rdquo; he said; and then he tried to sing, and even to
+      lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done. &ldquo;Do you
+      remember&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
+     Sings 'Love'&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing it,&rdquo; he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure. And
+      then the brave girl&mdash;all courage and strength, a quivering bow of
+      steel&mdash;took up the song where he had left it, though her voice
+      trembled and the tears started to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her, though
+      once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast. When she had
+      done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her, and smiled, as if
+      he and she and the song were one to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again, now nearer
+      than before, and louder. Israel heard it. &ldquo;Hark! They are coming. Keep
+      close,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan. The Mahdi
+      thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct of help that a
+      woman has in scenes like these, understood him better. In the disarray of
+      his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself that he might
+      listen the easier to the song outside. The girl slid her arm under his
+      neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest. &ldquo;Ah! closer. 'God is
+      great'!&rdquo; he murmured again. &ldquo;'God&mdash;is&mdash;great'!&rdquo; With that word
+      on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back. It was now quite dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel's feet the dying man seemed
+      to have been feeling for his hand. Taking it now, he brought it to his
+      breast, where Naomi's hand lay under his own trembling one. With that last
+      effort, and a look into the girl's face that must have pursued him home,
+      his grand eyes closed for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell of
+      the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air: &ldquo;Allah Akbar!
+      Al-lah-u-kabar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had come
+      out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has gone,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes
+      towards heaven, he added, &ldquo;TO THE KING!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> Notes: <br /> <br /> 1. Where spelling inconsistencies in the printed
+      text appear to be unintentional, they have been made consistent in this
+      Etext version, either by adopting the dictionary spelling or the spelling
+      most frequently used in the printed text. <br /> <br /> 2. In the printed
+      text, many representations of Arabic words use accented characters; in
+      this Etext version, the accents have been removed to allow transmission by
+      email using the 7-bit character set.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1303 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #1303 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1303)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Scapegoat
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2006 [EBook #1303]
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCAPEGOAT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alan Cleary and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SCAPEGOAT
+
+By Hall Caine
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     PREFACE
+     1. ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+     2. THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+     3. THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+     4. THE DEATH OF RUTH
+     5. RUTH'S BURIAL
+     6. THE SPIRIT-MAID
+     7. THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+     8. THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+     9. ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+     10. THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+     11. ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+     12. THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+     13. NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+     14. ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+     15. THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+     16. NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+     17. ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+     18. THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+     19. THE RAINBOW SIGN
+     20. LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+     21. ISRAEL IN PRISON
+     22. HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+     23. ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+     24. THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+     25. THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+     26. ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+     27. THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+     28. “AT ALLAH-U-KABAR”
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+_Within sight of an English port, and within hail of English ships as
+they pass on to our empire in the East, there is a land where the ways
+of life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago; a land
+wherein government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny, wherein
+justice is bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich and a
+danger to be poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man, and women
+is no more than a creature of lust--a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to
+the century, an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion! That land is
+Morocco!_
+
+_This is a story of Morocco in the last years of the Sultan Abd
+er-Rahman. The ashes of that tyrant are cold, and his grandson sits in
+his place; but men who earned his displeasure linger yet in his noisome
+dungeons, and women who won his embraces are starving at this hour in
+the prison-palaces in which he immured them. His reign is a story of
+yesterday; he is gone, he is forgotten; no man so meek and none so mean
+but he might spit upon his tomb. Yet the evil work which he did in his
+evil time is done to-day, if not by his grandson, then in his grandson's
+name--the degradation of man's honour, the cruel wrong of woman's, the
+shame of base usury, and the iniquity of justice that may be bought! Of
+such corruption this story will tell, for it is a tale of tyranny that
+is every day repeated, a voice of suffering going up hourly to the
+powers of the world, calling on them to forget the secret hopes and
+petty jealousies whereof Morocco is a cause, to think no more of any
+scramble for territory when the fated day of that doomed land has come,
+and only to look to it and see that he who fills the throne of Abd
+er-Rahman shall be the last to sit there._
+
+_Yet it is the grandeur of human nature that when it is trodden down
+it waits for no decree of nations, but finds its own solace amid the
+baffled struggle against inimical power in the hopes of an exalted
+faith. That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the
+narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning
+of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where
+humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt. On the one hand, the hard
+experience of daily existence; on the other hand, the soul crying out
+that the things of this world are not the true realities. Savage vices
+make savage virtues. God and man are brought face to face._
+
+_In the heart of Morocco there is one man who lives a life that is like
+a hymn, appealing to God against tyranny and corruption and shame. This
+great soul is the leader of a vast following which has come to him from
+every scoured and beaten corner of the land. His voice sounds throughout
+Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him, and wheresoever
+women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy and the shelter of his
+face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but
+that is the best thing of all--it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope
+in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him. Man that
+veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter, and science that
+reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God, have no place
+with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty; the miracle is all in all
+to him; he throngs the air with marvels; God speaks to him in dreams
+when he sleeps, and warns and directs him by signs when he is awake._
+
+_With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the joyous
+child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with a
+beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond the
+wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged fellowship
+of the poor behind them, having no homes and no possessions, pass
+from place to place, unharmed and unhindered, through that land of
+intolerance and iniquity, being protected and reverenced by virtue of
+the superstition which accepts them for Saints. Who are they? What have
+they been?_
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+
+
+Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was
+the daughter of a banker in London. The father's name was Oliel; the
+mother's was Sara. Oliel had held business connections with the house of
+Sara's father, and he came over to England that he might have a personal
+meeting with his correspondent. The English banker lived over his
+office, near Holborn Bars, and Oliel met with his family. It consisted
+of one daughter by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a second
+wife, still living. They were not altogether a happy household, and the
+chief apparent cause of discord was the child of the first wife in the
+home of the second. Oliel was a man of quick perception, and he saw the
+difficulty. That was how it came about that he was married to Sara. When
+he returned to Morocco he was some thousand pounds richer than when he
+left it, and he had a capable and personable wife into his bargain.
+
+Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and
+spending, always taking care to have much of the one, and no more than
+he could help of the other. Sara was a nervous and sensitive little
+woman, hungering for communion and for sympathy. She got little of
+either from her husband, and grew to be as silent as he. With the people
+of the country of her adoption, whether Jews or Moors, she made no
+headway. She never even learnt their language.
+
+Two years passed, and then a child was born to her. This was Israel, and
+for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely woman. His
+coming made no apparent difference to his father. He grew to be a tall
+and comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be of a sweet and
+cheerful disposition. But the school of his upbringing was a hard one. A
+Jewish child in Morocco might know from his cradle that he was not born
+a Moor and a Mohammedan.
+
+When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife,
+his first wife being still alive. This was lawful, though unusual in
+Tangier. The new marriage, which was only another business transaction
+to Oliel, was a shock and a terror to Sara. Nevertheless, she supported
+its penalties through three weary years, sinking visibly under them day
+after day. By that time a second family had begun to share her husband's
+house, the rivalry of the mothers had threatened to extend to the
+children, the domesticity of home was destroyed and its harmony was no
+longer possible. Then she left Oliel, and fled back to England, taking
+Israel with her.
+
+Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers was
+not warm. They had no sympathy with her rebellion against her husband's
+second marriage. If she had married into a foreign country, she should
+abide by the ways of it. Sara was heartbroken. Her health had long been
+poor, and now it failed her utterly. In less than a month she died.
+On her deathbed she committed her boy to the care of her brothers, and
+implored them not to send him back to Morocco.
+
+For years thereafter Israel's life in London was a stern one. If he had
+no longer to submit to the open contempt of the Moors, the kicks and
+insults of the streets, he had to learn how bitter is the bread that one
+is forced to eat at another's table. When he should have been still at
+school he was set to some menial occupation in the bank at Holborn Bars,
+and when he ought to have risen at his desk he was required to teach the
+sons of prosperous men the way to go above him. Life was playing an evil
+game with him, and, though he won, it must be at a bitter price.
+
+Thus twelve years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty, was a
+tall, silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects, and a
+master of figures. Never once during that time had his father written
+to him, or otherwise recognised his existence, though knowing of his
+whereabouts from the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles.
+Then one day a letter came written in distant tone and formal manner,
+announcing that the writer had been some time confined to his bed, and
+did not expect to leave it; that the children of his second wife had
+died in infancy; that he was alone, and had no one of his own flesh
+and blood to look to his business, which was therefore in the hands of
+strangers, who robbed him; and finally, that if Israel felt any duty
+towards his father, or, failing that, if he had any wish to consult his
+own interest, he would lose no time in leaving England for Morocco.
+
+Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
+nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
+landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
+before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
+thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
+lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the
+ruins of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the little
+Jewish cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and
+cousins' cousins, to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of
+sentiment, were busily dividing his inheritance among them.
+
+Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
+restitution of his father's substance. But his cousins made the Kadi,
+the judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
+impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father's
+letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi
+to the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed
+cases; but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan
+law to offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the
+British Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention,
+being a subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage. Meantime, his
+dispute with his cousins was set at rest for ever by the Governor of the
+town, who, concluding that his father had left neither will nor heirs,
+confiscated everything he had possessed to the public treasury--that is
+to say, to the Kaid's own uses.
+
+Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco, whether as a
+Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger in his father's country, and
+openly branded as a cheat. That he did not return to England promptly
+was because he was already a man of indomitable spirit. Besides that,
+the treatment he was having now was but of a piece with what he had
+received at all times. Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing
+ever does avail to crush a man of character. But the obstacles and
+torments which make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make
+a very sensible impression on his heart; the mind triumphs, it is
+the heart that suffers; the mind strengthens and expands after every
+besetting plague of life, but the heart withers and wears away.
+
+So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together to
+beat him down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means of
+settling there.
+
+His opportunity came early. The Governor, either by qualm of conscience
+or further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the
+Oomana, the three Administrators of Customs at Tangier. He held the post
+six months only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid, but amid the
+muttered discontent of the merchants and tradesmen. Then the Governor of
+Tetuan, a bigger town lying a long day's journey to the east, hearing
+of Israel that as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled the custom revenues in
+half a year, invited him to fill an informal, unofficial, and irregular
+position as assessor of tributes.
+
+Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did in
+his new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and appointed a
+Mut'hasseb, a clerk of the market, to collect them--so many moozoonahs
+for every camel sold, so many for every horse, mule, and ass, so many
+floos for every fowl, and so many metkals for the purchase and sale of
+every slave; how he numbered the houses and made lists of the trades,
+assessing their tribute by the value of their businesses--so much for
+gun-making, so much for weaving, so much for tanning, and so on through
+the line of them, great and small, good and bad, even from the trades
+of the Jewish silversmiths and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the
+callings of the Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.
+
+All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran, which
+entitled the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever; but it would
+not wrong the truth to say that he did it also by the impulse of a sour
+and saddened heart. The world had shown no mercy to him, and he need
+show no mercy to the world. Why talk of pity? It was only a name, an
+idea a mocking thought. In the actual reckoning of life there was no
+such name as pity. Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings,
+whatever their severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.
+
+And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed
+it.
+
+“Ya Allah! Allah!” the Moors would cry. “Who is this Jew--this son of
+the English--that he should be made our master?”
+
+They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him, and at
+length they insulted him openly. Since his return from England he had
+resumed the dress of his race in his country--the long dark gabardine
+or kaftan, with a scarf for girdle, the black slippers, and the black
+skull-cap. And, going one day by the Grand Mosque, a group of the
+beggars; who lay always by the gate, called on him to uncover his feet.
+
+“Jew! Dog!” they cried, “there is no god but God! Curses on your
+relations! Off with your slippers!”
+
+He paid no heed to their commands, but made straight onward. Then one
+blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and struck off his cap
+with a crutch. He picked it up again without a look or a word, and
+strode away. But next morning, at early prayers, there was a place empty
+at the door of the mosque. Its accustomed occupant lay in the prison at
+the Kasbah.
+
+And if the Muslimeen hated Israel for what he was doing for their
+Governor, the Jews hated him yet more because it was being done for a
+Moor.
+
+“He has sold himself to our enemy,” they said, “against the welfare of
+his own nation.”
+
+At the synagogue they ignored him, and in taking the votes of their
+people they counted others and passed him by. He showed no malice. Only
+his strong face twitched at each fresh insult and his head was held
+higher. Only this, and one other sign of suffering in that secret place
+of his withering heart, which God's eye alone could see.
+
+Thus far he had done no more to Moor and Jew than exact that tenth part
+of their substance which the faiths of both required that they should
+pay. But now his work went further. A little group of old Jews, all held
+in honour among their people--Abraham Ohana, nicknamed Pigman, son of
+a former rabbi; Judah ben Lolo, an elder of his synagogue; and Reuben
+Maliki, keeper of the poor-box--were seized and cast into the Kasbah for
+gross and base usury.
+
+At this the Jewish quarter was thrown into wild hubbub. The hand that
+was on their people was a daring and terrible one. None doubted whose
+hand it was--it was the hand of young Israel the Jew.
+
+When the three old usurers had bought themselves out of the Kasbah, they
+put their heads together and said, “Let us drive this fellow out of the
+Mellah, and so shall he be driven out of the town.” Then the owner of
+the house which Israel rented for his lodging evicted him by a poor
+excuse, and all other Jewish owners refused him as tenant. But the
+conspiracy failed. By command of the Governor, or by his influence,
+Israel was lodged by the Nadir, the administrator of mosque property,
+in one of the houses belonging to the mosque on the Moorish side of the
+Mellah walls.
+
+Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said, “Let
+us see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life be a
+burden.” Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him, and
+when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not obey the
+unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes out of the Soudan he
+was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave. But the conspiracy failed
+again. Two black female slaves from Soos, named Fatimah and Habeebah,
+were bought in the name of the Governor and assigned to Israel's
+service.
+
+And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel's
+material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
+again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they
+said, “He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named
+the prophetess put her curse upon him.” Then she who was so called, one
+Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
+of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki kept,
+crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
+predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo
+with the groans of God's elect, so should his own spirit be broken
+within them and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he
+heard her out, and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only
+smiled coldly, and passed on in silence.
+
+“The clouds are not hurt,” he thought, “by the bark of dogs.”
+
+Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture
+him; yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter
+of their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was young,
+and God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many young
+Jewish men, of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he favour. Of
+Israel's duty she knew little, save what report had said of it, that
+it was evil; and of the act which had made him an outcast among his
+own people, and an Ishmael among the sons of Ishmael she could form
+no judgment. But what a woman's eyes might see in him, without help of
+other knowledge, that she saw.
+
+She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
+manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been
+cheated of his youth and had missed his early manhood, the when he was
+ignored he ignored his insult, and when he was reviled he answered not
+again; in a word, the he was silent and strong and alone, and, above all
+that he was sad.
+
+These were credentials enough to the true girl's favour, and Israel soon
+learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him. There the lonely man
+first found himself. The cold eyes of his little world had seen him as
+his father's son, but the light and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw
+him as the son of his mother also. The Rabbi himself was old, very
+old--ninety years of age--and length of days had taught him charity.
+And so it was that when, in due time, Israel came with many excuses and
+asked for Ruth in marriage, the Rabbi gave her to him.
+
+The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses stood
+beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief; and, when
+the marriage came in its course, few stood beside the Chief Rabbi.
+Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan
+were alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a
+great company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them,
+gathered in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss and jeer.
+
+The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio,
+and when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him above
+the tumult, crying, “Woe to her that has married the enemy of her
+nation, and woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people!
+They shall taste death. He shall see them fall from his side and die,”
+ then the old man listened and trembled visibly. In confusion and fierce
+anger he rose up and stumbled through the crooked passage to the door,
+and flinging it wide, he stood in the doorway facing them that stood
+without.
+
+“Peace! Peace!” he cried, “and shame! shame! Remember the doom of him
+that shall curse the high priest of the Lord.”
+
+This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath. Then suddenly, his voice
+failing him, he said in a broken whisper, “My good people, what is this?
+Your servant is grown old in your service. Sixty and odd years he has
+shared your sorrows and your burdens. What has he done this day that
+your women should lift up their voices against him?”
+
+But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in
+the darkness were silent and made no answer. Then he staggered back, and
+Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to compose
+him. But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.
+
+When the Rabbi's death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered,
+“It is the first-fruits!” and the Moors touched their foreheads and
+murmured “It is written!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+
+
+Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the
+building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in
+comfort many years together. In the south-east corner of the Mellah
+he placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the
+English fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a
+marble staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but
+also with windows and with doors. And when his house was raised he put
+no haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for
+tables and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in
+this wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and
+Jews.
+
+And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out
+of the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly
+it occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had
+built was a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a
+prison for his wife. In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his
+intimates by one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had
+reduced even her friends to that number. Her father was dead; if she was
+the daughter of a Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast, the
+companion of a pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone.
+Even their bondwomen still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with
+them was mainly by signs.
+
+Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on
+Israel's mind, one hope on his heart--that Ruth might soon bear a child.
+Then would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman
+might know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would make
+amends.
+
+Israel thought of this again and again. The delicious hope pursued him.
+It was his secret, and he never gave it speech. But time passed, and no
+child was born. And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she began
+to cast down her head before her husband. Israel's hope was of longer
+life, but the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he perceived
+that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him. He had been
+thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she
+had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he
+never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the
+cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss
+of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given
+no children.
+
+This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
+half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the
+woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and
+she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, “Israel ben Oliel,
+the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise
+up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!”
+
+“Out upon you, woman!” cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
+his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions
+had passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut
+himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to
+him.
+
+Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
+angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What
+was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had
+first beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his
+feet? Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was
+the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.
+
+That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and
+his spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
+offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might
+persuade himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the
+ordinances and commandments of God.
+
+Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
+since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of
+their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might
+straightway be divorced by her husband.
+
+Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
+would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
+still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
+his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.
+
+“Send me away from you!” she cried. “Send me away!”
+
+“Not for the place of the Kaid,” he answered stoutly; “no, nor the
+throne of the Sultan!”
+
+At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their
+tears together. But he comforted her at length, and said, “Look up, my
+dearest! look up! I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord
+may deal with me. And which of us shall murmur against God?”
+
+At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full
+of a sudden thought.
+
+“Then let us ask of the Lord,” she whispered hotly, “and surely He will
+hear our prayer.”
+
+“It is the voice of the Lord Himself!” cried Israel; “and this day it
+shall be done!”
+
+At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand
+together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki. And
+Ruth knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and
+the candles that hung above it, and she prayed: “O Lord, have pity on
+this Thy servant, and take away her reproach among women. Give her grace
+in Thine eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed. Grant her a
+child of Thy mercy, that his eye may smile upon her. Yet not as
+she willeth, but as Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be
+satisfied.”
+
+But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart and his
+eyes to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not
+be appeased, saying: “How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? My enemies
+triumph over me and foretell Thy doom upon me. They sit in the
+lurking-places of the streets to deride me. Confound my enemies, O Lord,
+and rebuke their counsels. Remember Ruth, I beseech Thee, that she is
+patient and her heart is humbled. Give her children of Thy servant, and
+her first-born shall be sanctified unto Thee. Give her one child, and
+it shall be Thine--if it is a son, to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues. Hear
+me, O Lord, and give heed to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee.
+One child, but one, only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is
+before Thee. How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?”
+
+The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble
+was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come without
+delay to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues. This
+request the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef
+was a prince of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces the
+believers paid him tribute. So in three days' time Israel was ready
+to set out on his journey, with men and mules at his door, and camels
+packed with tents. He was likely to be some months absent from Tetuan,
+and it was impossible that Ruth should go with him. They had never been
+separated before, and Ruth's concern was that they should be so long
+parted, but Israel's was a deeper matter.
+
+“Ruth,” he said when his time came, “I am going away from you, but my
+enemies remain. They see evil in all my doings, and in this act also
+they will find offence. Promise me that if they make a mock at you for
+your husband's sake you will not see them; if they taunt you that you
+will not hear them; and if they ask anything concerning me that you will
+answer them not at all.”
+
+And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her she should
+be as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that was deaf, and
+if they questioned her concerning her husband as one that was dumb. Then
+they parted with many tears and embraces.
+
+Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,
+having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan
+loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers and
+attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him to the door
+of his own house.
+
+And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with
+tears of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great
+news on her tongue.
+
+“Listen,” she whispered; “I have something to tell you--”
+
+“Ah, I know it,” he cried; “I know it already. I see it in your eyes.”
+
+“Only listen,” she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck of his
+kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.
+
+Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child they had
+asked for was to come.
+
+Israel was like a man beside himself with joy. He burst in upon the
+message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again,
+and kissed her. Long they stood together so, while he told her of the
+chances which had befallen him during his absence from her, and she
+told him of her solitude of six long months, unbroken save for the poor
+company of Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind and deaf and
+dumb to all the world.
+
+During the months thereafter until Ruth's time was full Israel sat with
+her constantly. He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company. He
+covered her chamber with fruits and flowers. There was no desire of her
+heart but he fulfilled it. And they talked together lovingly of how they
+would name the child when the time came to name it. Israel concluded
+that if it was a son it should be called David, and Ruth decided that if
+it was a daughter it should be called Naomi. And Ruth delighted to tell
+of how when it was weaned she should take it up to the synagogue and
+say, “O Lord: I am the woman that knelt before Thee praying. For this
+child I prayed, and Thou hast heard my prayer.” And Israel told of how
+his son should grow up to be a Rabbi to minister before God, and how
+in those days it should come to pass that the children of his father's
+enemies should crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of
+bread. Thus they built themselves castles in the air for the future of
+the child that was to come.
+
+Ruth's time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast of
+the Passover, being in the month of Nisan. This was a cause of joy to
+Israel, for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face, and
+he could not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So
+he set a supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg
+of an ox, the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three
+Mitzvoth, and the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife
+had been summoned, and it was the day of the night of the Seder.
+
+Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests. Only
+his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers, and
+among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman, Judah ben Lolo,
+and Reuben Maliki. “They cursed me,” he thought, “and I shall look on
+their confusion.” His heart thirsted to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also,
+but well he knew that her dainty masters would not sit at meat with her.
+
+And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves and
+refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man should
+sit save in his own house and at his own table. But Israel was not to be
+gainsaid. He went out to them himself, and said, “Come, let bygones be
+bygones. It is the feast of our nation. Let us eat and drink together.”
+ So, partly by his importunity, but mainly in their bewilderment, yet
+against all rule and custom, they suffered themselves to go with him.
+
+And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table
+in the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine and blessed
+it, and passed it to all, and they had drunk together, he could not keep
+back his tongue from taunting them. Then when he had washed again and
+dipped the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk of the wine once
+more, he taunted them afresh and laughed. But nothing yet had they
+understood of his meaning, and they looked into each other's faces and
+asked, “What is it?”
+
+“Wait! Only wait!” Israel answered. “You shall see!”
+
+At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.
+
+“I am a sorrowful woman,” she said. “Some evil is about to befall--I
+know it, I feel it.”
+
+But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy on the
+morrow. Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes had been
+broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat and drink
+as much as their hearts desired.
+
+They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight of
+Israel's frenzy. The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben, rose
+to go, but Israel cried, “Stay! Stay, and see what is come!” and under
+the very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.
+
+Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them. In the wild torrent of
+his madness he called them by names they knew and by names they did not
+know--Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu--and at every new name he laughed
+again. And while he carried himself so in the outer court the slave
+woman Fatimah came from the inner room with word that the child was
+born.
+
+At that Israel was like a man distraught. He leapt up from the table and
+faced full upon his guests, and cried, “Now you know what it is; and now
+you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice
+with me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!” And he
+lifted a winecup and drank himself.
+
+They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into
+the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.
+
+“You will not drink?” he said. “Then listen to me.” He dashed the
+winecup out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor. His
+laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill
+cry. “You foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made
+me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women
+to prophesy that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a
+reproach and a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a
+son like the best of you. More than that--more than that--my son shall
+yet see--”
+
+The slave woman was touching his arm. “It is a girl,” she said; “a
+girl!”
+
+For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, “No matter!
+She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them
+mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against
+them! She shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate
+places! And now you can go! Go! go!”
+
+He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was
+driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded and with their
+eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.
+
+It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in
+to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct,
+followed him and listened from the threshold.
+
+Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came
+from them.
+
+And Israel said, “How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and pride
+of my pride?”
+
+Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said “The Lord has counted
+my prayer to me as sin--look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!”
+
+At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered out of his
+dry throat, “No, no, never believe it!”
+
+“True, true, it is true,” she moaned; “the child has not uttered a cry,
+and its eyelids have not blinked at the light.”
+
+“Never believe it, I say!” Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his
+arms to try it.
+
+But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon
+the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the
+eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then
+his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his
+arms and laid it again on its mother's bosom.
+
+And Ruth wept over it, saying, “Even if it were a son never could it
+serve in the synagogue! Never! Never!”
+
+At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed
+themselves into the chamber, and they cried, “Peace! Peace!” And old
+Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, “Is it
+not written that no one afflicted of God shall minister in His temples?”
+
+Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into
+the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he
+had bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, “What matter?
+Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!” But after that he staggered,
+his knees gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a
+falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.
+
+The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with
+water; but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves,
+“The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and
+into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to
+slip.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+
+
+Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object
+of contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low,
+God Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him
+mercy?
+
+But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult
+him. And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the
+rabble to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus,
+they would call their dogs and their asses by his name, and the dogs
+would be the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses the laziest in the
+market.
+
+He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at
+the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of
+pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily,
+“Accursed old Israel! Get on home to your mother!” Then, turning quickly
+round, he would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent
+countenance was cudgelling his donkey by that title.
+
+He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound
+of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white
+walls crying “Allah! Allah! Allah!” would suddenly change their cry to
+“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!” “Go on! Go on! Go on!”
+
+He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of
+laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his
+direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his
+voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.
+
+His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God's
+displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight
+of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber--they all despised him!
+
+Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed
+him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his
+soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with
+God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.
+
+There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form
+of warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other,
+the better for his person.
+
+It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known
+as Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other
+than the late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman,
+though by another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan's brother in
+Morocco is not to be a Sultan's favourite, but a possible aspirant to
+his throne. Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the
+Sultan's army, and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry.
+In that capacity he had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni
+Hasan, the Beni Idar, and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit
+the country near to Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been
+first directed to that town. When he had returned from his expedition he
+offered the Sultan fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha
+or Governor, and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.
+The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha
+at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man
+was summoned to the Sultan's presence, accused of appropriating the
+Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.
+
+That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of
+how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no
+less curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious
+transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He
+was a valiant soldier--the black blood of his slave-mother had counted
+for so much; but he was a bad administrator--he could neither read nor
+write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would
+have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this
+man had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him.
+He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and
+his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters
+of his name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel, his scribe the notary,
+Hosain ben Hashem, styled Haj, because he had made the pilgrimage to
+Mecca, but he was also the Imam, or head of the Mosque, and the wily
+Ben Aboo foresaw the danger of some day coming into collision with the
+religious sentiment of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed
+ben Arby, but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he
+wanted a man who should be under his hand. That was the combination of
+circumstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan.
+
+Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master
+entirely. He had carried the Basha's seal and acted for him in all
+affairs of money. The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars, so
+that the Basha had twenty thousand to the good. Then Ben Aboo's ambition
+began to override itself. He started an oil-mill, and wanted Israel to
+select a hundred houses owned by rich men, that he might compel each
+house to take ten kollahs of oil--an extravagant quantity, at seven
+dollars for each kollah--an exorbitant price. Israel had refused. “It is
+not just,” he had said.
+
+Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but
+Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor
+had pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a
+gross and wicked tax, but Israel's answer had been the same. “There is
+no evil in the world but injustice,” he had said. “Do justice, and you
+do all that God can ask or man expect.”
+
+For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have
+been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by
+day. Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn
+of that day whereon he should need him no more.
+
+But since the disaster which had befallen Israel's house everything
+had undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious
+means of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning
+the very air itself into money--ransoms, promissory notes, and false
+judgments--but Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to
+send his small currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver
+dollars at the rate of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was
+worth ten in currency. And after certain of the shopkeepers, having
+changed fifty thousand dollars at that rate, fled to the Sultan to
+complain, Israel advised that their debtors should be called together,
+their debts purchased, and bonds drawn up and certified for ten times
+the amounts of them. Thus a few were banished from their homes in fear
+of imprisonment, many were sorely harassed, and some were entirely
+ruined.
+
+It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public
+streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and
+their asses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty must
+answer to it.
+
+Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching at his
+indignities nor glorying in his power. He beheld the wreck of families
+without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry of children
+without a qualm. Neither did he delight in the sufferings of them that
+had derided him. His evil impulse was a higher matter--his faith in
+justice had been broken up. He had been wrong. There was no such thing
+as justice in the world, and there could, therefore, be no such thing
+as injustice. There was no thing but the blind swirl of chance, and the
+wild scramble for life. The man had quarrelled with God.
+
+But Israel's heart was not yet dead. There was one place, where he who
+bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great
+tenderness. That place was his own home. What he saw there was enough to
+stir the fountains of his being--nay, to exhaust them, and to send him
+abroad as a river-bed that is dry.
+
+In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before
+the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of
+himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only of the
+babe.
+
+The child was born blind and dumb and deaf. At the feast of life there
+was no place left for it. So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall,
+and called on God to take it.
+
+“Take it!” she cried--“take it! Make haste, O God, make haste and take
+it!”
+
+But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself
+suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over
+it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little
+by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived
+her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side
+and whisper “Take heart of hope, O Ruth! God does not afflict willingly.
+Perhaps the child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is
+not dumb. Who shall ye say? Wait and see!”
+
+And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no
+difference in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she
+would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an
+the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the
+little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she
+would look at the pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and
+full as a shell on the shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the
+sea was not heard in it, and that all within was silence.
+
+So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
+“It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and
+see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue
+will yet speak to me, and make me very glad.” And then an ineffable
+serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.
+
+But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar
+with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its
+little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful
+perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child did not open
+in seeing, but lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that
+a child's ears should hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a
+mother's love, and its tongue begin to give back the words in lisping
+sounds, the ear of Ruth's child heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.
+
+Then Ruth's spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to
+come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, “Wait, Ruth; only
+wait, only a little longer.”
+
+So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched
+for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the
+prattle of its little lips. But never a sound as of speech seemed to
+break the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue,
+and never once across her baby's face passed the light of her tearful
+smile. It was a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful
+of all for the pains she was at to conceal them. Thus, every day at
+midday she would carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its
+eyes should blink in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon
+her then, she would drop her head and say, “How sweet the air is to-day,
+and how pleasant to sit in the sun!”
+
+“So it is,” he would answer, “so it is.”
+
+Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the
+court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if
+its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh--a little
+shrill laugh like a cry--and cover her face in confusion.
+
+“How merry you are, sweetheart,” he would say, and then pass into the
+house.
+
+For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw,
+and pretending not to hear what he heard. But every day his heart bled
+at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very
+soul had sickened, and he cried, “Have done, Ruth!--for mercy's sake,
+have done! The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison. Her
+eyes are darkness, like the tomb's, and her ears are silence, like the
+grave's. Never will she smile to her mother's smile, or answer to her
+father's speech. The first sound she will hear will be the last trump,
+and the first face she will see will be the face of God.”
+
+At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.
+The hope that she had cherished was dead. Israel could comfort her no
+longer. The fountain of his own heart was dry. He drew a long breath,
+and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.
+
+The child lived and thrived. They had called her Naomi, as they had
+agreed to do before she was born, though no name she knew of herself,
+and a mockery it seemed to name her. At four years of age she was
+a creature of the most delicate beauty. Notwithstanding her Jewish
+parentage, she was fair as the day and fresh as the dawn. And if her
+eyes were darkness, there was light within her soul; and if her ears
+were silence, there was music within her heart. She was brighter than
+the sun which she could not see, and sweeter than the songs which she
+could not hear. She was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage, and never
+did she fret at the bars which bound her. And, like the bird that sings
+at midnight, her cheery soul sang in its darkness.
+
+Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was the
+sound of laughter. With this she lay down to sleep at night, and rose
+again in the morning. She laughed as she combed her hair, and laughed
+again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.
+
+She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the
+sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day from
+the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark. She
+knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by
+the brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew in the fields
+outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap,
+as other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands. She
+seemed almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she
+would twine in her hair were red, and the white were those which she
+would lay on her bosom. And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto
+the wind alone could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.
+
+Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them
+that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she
+knew no delight like to that of playing with other children. But her
+father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was
+allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met
+in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did
+she ever meet.
+
+Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of
+the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel. She
+herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi
+was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child that is the only
+child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off
+from the parents of other children; and yet again, once more, alone as a
+child that is blind and dumb.
+
+But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him from the
+Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and big innocent white
+eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel. The boy's name was
+Ali, and he was four years old. His father had killed his mother for
+infidelity and neglect of their child, and, having no one to buy him out
+of prison, he had that day been executed. Then little Ali had been left
+alone in the world, and so Israel had taken him.
+
+Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him. He had been born a Mohammedan,
+but secretly she brought him up as a Jew. And for some years thereafter
+no difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes
+could see. They ate together, they walked abroad together, they played
+together, they slept together, and the little black head of the boy lay
+with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.
+
+Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles of
+humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them. First, on Ali's
+part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi, “Come!” she did
+not hear, when he asked “Why?” she did not answer; and when he said
+“Look!” she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed to gaze full into
+his face. Then, a sort of amused bewilderment that her little nervous
+fingers were always touching his arms and his hands, and his neck and
+his throat. But long before he had come to know that Naomi was not as
+he was, that Nature had not given her eyes to see as he saw, and ears to
+hear as he heard, and a tongue to speak as he spoke, Nature herself had
+overstepped the barriers that divided her from him. He found that Naomi
+had come to understand him, whatever in his little way he did, and
+almost whatever in his little way he said. So he played with her as he
+would have played with any other playmate, laughing with her, calling
+to her, and going through his foolish little boyish antics before her.
+Nevertheless, by some mysterious knowledge of Nature's own teaching, he
+seemed to realise that it was his duty to take care of her. And when the
+spirit and the mischief in his little manly heart would prompt him to
+steal out of the house, and adventure into the streets with Naomi by his
+side, he would be found in the thick of the throng perhaps at the heels
+of the mules and asses, with Naomi's hand locked in his hand, trying to
+push the great creatures of the crowd from before her, and crying in his
+brave little treble, “Arrah!” “Ar-rah!” “Ar-r-rah!”
+
+As for Naomi, the coming of little black Ali was a wild delight to her.
+Whatever Ali did, that would she do also. If he ran she would run; if he
+sat she would sit; and meanwhile she would laugh with a heart of glee,
+though she heard not what he said, and saw not what he did, and knew not
+what he meant. At the time of the harvest, when Ruth took them out into
+the fields, she would ride on Ali's back, and snatch at the ears of
+barley and leap in her seat and laugh, yet nothing would she see of the
+yellow corn, and nothing would she hear of the song of the reapers, and
+nothing would she know of the cries of Ali, who shouted to her while
+he ran, forgetting in his playing that she heard him not. And at night,
+when Ruth put them to bed in their little chamber, and Ali knelt with
+his face towards Jerusalem, Naomi would kneel beside him with a reverent
+air, and all her laughter would be gone. Then, as he prayed his prayer,
+her little lips would move as if she were praying too, and her little
+hands would be clasped together, and her little eyes would be upraised.
+
+“God bless father, and mother, and Naomi, and everybody,” the black boy
+would say.
+
+And the little maid would touch his hands and hi throat, and pass her
+fingers over his face from his eyelids to his lips, and then do as he
+did, and in her silence seem to echo him.
+
+Pretty and piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One
+thing at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison,
+nevertheless it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it
+could not die, but was immortal and unmaimed and waited only for the
+hour when it should be linked to other souls, soul to soul in the chains
+of speech. But the years went on, and Naomi grew in beauty and increased
+in sweetness, but no angel came down to open the darkened windows of her
+eyes, and draw aside the heavy curtains of her ears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DEATH OF RUTH
+
+
+For all her joy and all her prettiness, Naomi was a burden which only
+love could bear. To think of the girl by day, and to dream of her by
+night, never to sit by her without pity of her helplessness, and never
+to leave her without dread of the mischances that might so easily
+befall, to see for her, to hear for her, to speak for her, truly the
+tyranny of the burden was terrible.
+
+Ruth sank under it. Through seven years she was eyes of the child's
+eyes, and ears of her ears, and tongue of her tongue. After that her
+own sight became dim, and her hearing faint. It was almost as if she had
+spent them on Naomi in the yearning of dove and pity. Soon afterwards
+her bodily strength failed her also, and then she knew that her time had
+come, and that she was to lay down her burden for ever. But her burden
+had become dear, and she clung to it. She could not look upon the child
+and think it, that she, who had spent her strength for her from the
+first, must leave her now to other love and tending. So she betook
+herself to an upper room, and gave strict orders to Fatimah and Habeebah
+that Naomi was to be kept from her altogether, that sight of the child's
+helpless happy face might tempt her soul no more.
+
+And there in her death-chamber Israel sat with her constantly, settling
+his countenance steadfastly, and coming and going softly. He was more
+constant than a slave, and more tender than a woman. His love was great,
+but also he was eating out his big heart with remorse. The root of his
+trouble was the child. He never talked of her, and neither did Ruth
+dwell upon her name. Yet they thought of little else while they sat
+together.
+
+And even if they had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to
+say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings,
+no simple broken speech, no pretty lisp--they had nothing to bring back
+out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that
+lies stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That
+way everything was a waste. Always, as Israel entered her room, Ruth
+would say, “How is the child?” And always Israel would answer, “She is
+well.” But, if at that moment Naomi's laughter came up to them from the
+patio, where she played with Ali, they would cover their faces and be
+silent.
+
+It was a melancholy parting. No one came near them--neither Moor
+nor Jew, neither Rabbi nor elder. The idle women of the Mellah would
+sometimes stand outside in the street and look up at their house,
+knowing that the black camel of death was kneeling at their gate. Other
+company they had none. In such solitude they passed four weeks, and when
+the time of the end seemed near, Israel himself read aloud the prayer
+for the dying, the prayer Shema' Yisrael, and Ruth repeated the words of
+it after him.
+
+Meantime, while Ruth lay in the upper chamber little Naomi sported and
+played in the patio with Ali, but she missed her mother constantly. This
+she made plain by many silent acts of helpless love that knew no way to
+speak aloud. Thus she would lay flowers on the seats where her mother
+had used to sit, and, if at night she found them untouched where she
+had left them, her little face would fall, and her laughter die off her
+lips; but if they had withered and some one had cast them into the oven,
+she would laugh again and fetch other flowers from the fields, until
+the house would be full of the odour of the meadow and the scent of the
+hill.
+
+And well they knew, who looked upon her then, whom she missed, and what
+the question was that halted on her tongue; yet how could they answer
+her? There was no way to do that until she herself knew how to ask.
+
+But this she did on a day near to the end. It was evening, and she
+was being put to bed by Habeebah, and had just risen from her innocent
+pantomime of prayer beside Ali, when Israel, coming from Ruth's chamber,
+entered the children's room. Then, touching with her hand the seat
+whereon Ruth had used to sit, Naomi laid down her head on the pillow,
+and then rose and lay down again, and rose yet again and rose yet again
+lay down, and then came to where Israel was and stood before him. And at
+that Israel knew that the soul of his helpless child had asked him, as
+plainly as words of the tongue can speak, how often she should lie to
+sleep at night and rise to play in the morning before her mother came to
+her again.
+
+The tears gushed into his eyes, and he left the children and returned to
+his wife's chamber.
+
+“Ruth,” he cried, “call the child to you, I beseech you!”
+
+“No, no, no!” cried Ruth.
+
+“Let her come to you and touch you and kiss you, and be with you before
+it is too late,” said Israel. “She misses you, and fills the house with
+flowers for you. It breaks my heart to see her.”
+
+“It will break mine also,” said Ruth.
+
+But she consented that Naomi should be called, and Fatimah was sent to
+fetch her.
+
+The sun was setting, and through the window which looked out to the
+west, over the river and the orange orchards and the palpitating plains
+beyond, its dying rays came into the room in a bar of golden light. It
+fell at that instant on Ruth's face, and she was white and wasted. And
+through the other window of the room, which looked out over the Mellah
+into the town, and across the market-place to the mosque and to the
+battery on the hill, there came up from the darkening streets below the
+shuffle of the feet of a crowd and the sound of many voices. The Jews
+of Tetuan were trooping back to their own little quarter, that their
+Moorish masters might lock them into it for the night.
+
+Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her
+nightdress. She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she
+laughed as Fatimah held her by the hand, and danced as she was led to
+her mother's chamber. But when she was come to the door of it, suddenly
+her laughter ceased, and her little face sobered, as if something in the
+close abode of pain had troubled the senses that were left to her.
+
+It is, perhaps, the most touching experience of the deaf and blind that
+no greeting can ever welcome them. When Naomi stood like a little white
+vision at the threshold of the room, Israel took her hand in silence,
+and drew her up to the pillow of the bed where her mother rested, and in
+silence Ruth brought the child to her bosom.
+
+For a moment Naomi seemed to be perplexed. She touched her mother's
+fingers, and they were changed, for they had grown thin and long. Then
+she felt her face, and that was changed also, for it was become withered
+and cold. And, missing the grasp of one and the smile of the other, she
+first turned her little head aside as one that listens closely, and then
+gently withdrew herself from the arms that held her.
+
+Ruth had watched her with eyes that overflowed, and now she burst into
+sobs outright.
+
+“The child does not know me!” she cried. “Did I not tell you it would
+break my heart?”
+
+“Try her again,” said Israel; “try her again.”
+
+Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back
+to her side. Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck,
+she bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were
+on her wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child.
+This she did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind to
+her always. But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only to
+know, by the quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely,
+and giving no thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp of
+recognition and the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again from her
+mother's arms, and bounded into the middle of the room, and suddenly
+began to laugh and to dance.
+
+The sun's dying light, which had rested on Ruth's wasted face, now
+glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed on
+her blind eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened her white
+nightdress, while she danced and laughed to her mother's death. Nothing
+did the child know of death, any more than Adam himself before Abel was
+slain, and it was almost as if a devil out of hell had entered into her
+innocent heart and possessed it, that she might make a mock of the dying
+of the dearest friend she had known on earth.
+
+On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child's
+uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down
+at speech, but wildly and deliriously. The room was darkening fast, but
+still across the nether end, by the foot of the bed, streamed the dull
+red bar of sunlight with the little red figure leaping and prancing and
+laughing in the midst of it.
+
+With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to
+the wall. The black woman dropped her head that she might not see. And
+Israel covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, “O Lord God,
+long hast Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with
+scorpions!”
+
+Ruth recovered herself quickly. “Bring her to me again!” she faltered;
+and once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside. Then, embracing
+and kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her
+trouble that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, “It's your mother,
+Naomi! your mother, darling, though so sick and changed! Don't you know
+her, Naomi? Your mother, your own mother, sweet one, your dear mother
+who loves you so, and must leave you now and see you no more!”
+
+Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness of the
+child at last, only God Himself can say. But first Naomi's cheeks grew
+pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they reddened,
+and then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth's hands again, and
+then her little lips trembled, and then, at length, she flung herself
+along Ruth's bosom and nestled close in her embrace.
+
+Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman
+stood and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any
+longer was melted and unmanned. The sun had gone down, and the room was
+darkening rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short; the streets
+were quiet, and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret was chanting in
+the silence, “God is great, God is great!”
+
+After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother's bosom, and,
+seeing this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back
+to her own bed; but Ruth said, “No; leave her, let me have her with me
+while I may.”
+
+“No one shall take her from you,” said Israel.
+
+Then she gazed down at the child's face and said, “It is hard to leave
+her and never once to have heard her voice.”
+
+“That is the bitterest cup of all,” said Israel.
+
+“I shall not return to her,” said Ruth, “but she shall come to me, and
+then, perhaps--who knows?--perhaps in the resurrection I shall hear it.”
+
+Israel made no answer.
+
+Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, “My helpless darling! Who
+will care for you when I am gone?”
+
+“Rest, rest, and sleep!” said Israel.
+
+“Ah, yes, I know,” said Ruth. “How foolish of me! You are her father,
+and you love her also. Yet promise me--promise--”
+
+“For love and tending she shall never lack,” said Israel. “And now lie
+you still, my dearest; lie still and sleep.”
+
+She stretched out her hand to him. “Yes, that was what I meant,” she
+said, and smiled. Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom. “But when
+I am gone,” she said, “will Naomi ever know that her mother who is dead
+had wronged her?”
+
+“You have never wronged her,” said Israel. “Have done, oh, have done!”
+
+“God punished us for our prayer, my husband,” said Ruth.
+
+“Peace, peace!” said Israel.
+
+“But God is good,” said Ruth, “and surely He will not afflict our child
+much longer.”
+
+“Hush! Hush! You will awaken her,” said Israel, not thinking what he
+said. “Now lie still and sleep, dearest. You are tired also.”
+
+She lay quiet for a time, gazing, while the light remained, into the
+face of the sleeping child, and listening, when the light failed, to her
+gentle breathing. Then she babbled and crooned over her with a childish
+joy. “Yes, yes, father is right, and mother must lie quiet--very quiet,
+and so her little Naomi will sleep long--very long, and wake happy and
+well in the morning. How bonny she will look! How fresh and rosy!”
+
+She paused a moment. Her laboured breathing came quick and fast. “But
+shall I be here to see her? shall I?”
+
+She paused again, and then, as though to banish thought, she began to
+sing in a low voice that was like a moan. Presently her singing ceased,
+and she spoke again, but this time in broken whispers.
+
+“How soft and glossy her hair is! I wonder if Fatimah will remember to
+wash it every day. She should twist it around her fingers to keep it in
+pretty curls. . . . Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . .
+Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves, it's a
+chance if Habeebah has seen to it. Then there's her underclothing. . . .
+Will she be deaf and blind and dumb always? I wonder if I shall see her
+when I. . . . They say that angels are sent. . . . Yes, yes, that's it,
+when I am there--there--I will go to God and say, 'O Lord! my little
+girl whom I have left behind, she is. . . . You would never think, O
+Lord, how many things may happen to one like her. Let me go--only let me
+watch over her--O Lord, let me be her guar--'”
+
+Her weakness had conquered her, and she was quiet at last. Israel sat in
+silence by the post of the bed. His heart was surging itself out of his
+choking breast. The black woman stood somewhere by the wall. After a
+time Ruth seemed to awake as from sleep. She was in great excitement.
+
+“Israel, Israel!” she cried in a voice of joy, “I have seen a vision. It
+was Naomi. She was no longer deaf and blind and dumb. She was grown to
+be a woman, but I knew her instantly. Not a woman either, but a young
+maiden, and so beautiful, so beautiful! Yes, and she could see and hear
+and speak.”
+
+Israel thought Ruth had become delirious, and he tried to soothe her,
+but her agitation was not to be overcome. “The Lord hath seen our
+tears at last,” she cried. “He has put our sin beneath His feet. We are
+forgiven. It will be well with the child yet.”
+
+Israel did not try to gainsay her, and at sight and sound of her joy,
+seeing it so beautiful, yet thinking it so vain, he could not help at
+last but weep. Presently she became quiet again, and then again, after a
+little while, she woke as from a sleep.
+
+“I am ready now,” she said in a whisper, “quite ready, sweet Heaven,
+quite, quite ready now.”
+
+Then with her one free hand she felt in the darkness for Israel, where
+he sat beside her, and touching his forehead she smoothed it, and said
+very softly, “Farewell, my husband!”
+
+And Israel answered her, “Farewell!”
+
+“Good-night!” she whispered.
+
+And Israel drew down her hand from his forehead to his lips and sobbed,
+and said, “Good-night, beloved!”
+
+Then she put her white lips to the child's blind eyes, and at that
+moment the spirit of the Lord came to her, and the Lord took her, and
+she died.
+
+When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw that the end
+had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth's bosom, but the child
+awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers about the
+dead mother's neck and covered the mouth with kisses. And when she felt
+that the lips did not answer to her lips, and that the arms which had
+held her did not hold her any longer, but fell away useless, she clung
+the closer, and tears started to her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RUTH'S BURIAL
+
+
+The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth of his
+sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him. By noon of the day
+following the night of Ruth's death, Israel knew that he was to be left
+alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death
+in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the
+first service thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra
+Kadisha of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make
+arrangements for burial. Early prayers had been held in the synagogue
+at eight o'clock that morning, and no one had yet come near to Israel's
+house. The men of the Hebra were going about their ordinary occupations.
+They knew nothing of Ruth's death by official announcement. The clerk
+had not published it. Israel remembered with bitterness that notice
+of it had not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout
+Tetuan. There was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken
+it to each house he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little
+groups of idle Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the
+streets outside, talking of it in whispers and looking up at the
+darkened windows with awe. But the synagogue knew nothing of it.
+Israel had omitted the customary ceremony, and in that omission lay the
+advantage of his enemies. He must humble himself and send to them. Until
+he did so they would leave him alone.
+
+Israel did not send. Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed
+the threshold of the synagogue. He would not cross it now, whether in
+body or in spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he
+had lost the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews
+that a body should be buried within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from
+the time of death. He must do something immediately. Some help must be
+summoned. What help could it be?
+
+It was useless to think of the Muslimeen. No believer would lend a hand
+to dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead. It
+was just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of
+this burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that he would
+have need to know more. And of Christians of any sort or condition there
+were none in all Tetuan.
+
+The gall of Israel's heart rose to his throat. Was he to be left alone
+with his dead wife? Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave
+with his own hands? Or did they expect him to come to them with bowed
+forehead and bended knee? Either way their reckoning was a mistake.
+They might leave him terribly and awfully alone--alone in his hour of
+mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when
+he had married the dear soul who was dead. But his strength and energy
+they should not crush: his vital and intellectual force they should
+not wither away. Only one thing they could do to touch him--they could
+shrivel up his last impulse of sweet human sympathy. They were doing it
+now.
+
+When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message
+to the Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six State
+prisoners, fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.
+
+The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed
+by Jewish custom. It was twilight when the body was brought down from
+the upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that
+had been raised for it on chairs standing back to back. And there, too,
+sat Israel, with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.
+
+Israel's manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock, and
+his dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.
+Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself, down to
+the least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in
+the larger sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his
+riches except to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down and to
+abash the enemies who still menaced him. Nothing was lacking that money
+could buy in Tetuan to make this burial an imposing ceremony. Only one
+thing it wanted--it wanted mourners, and it had but one.
+
+Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited. She ran to and fro,
+clutched at Israel's clothes and seemed to look into his face, clasped
+the hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear. Whether she knew
+what work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or
+sense she learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the
+presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah
+brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black
+women clinging to it, kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke
+away from Israel and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her
+little white arms upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need
+to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in
+dread to her father's side.
+
+“God be gracious to my father, look at that,” whispered Fatimah.
+
+“My child, my poor child,” said Israel, “is there but one thing in life
+that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!”
+
+It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of
+the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs
+according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger
+had wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had
+sunken their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them,
+and concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep,
+rich, velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two
+remaining prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand--the
+right arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a
+soldier, carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the
+twilight, and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone.
+Thus they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated
+at the door, through the streets of the Mellah and out into the
+marketplace, and up the narrow lane that leads to the chief town gate.
+
+There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage, and
+the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel. As the procession went
+through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent until
+it had gone. Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing fowls
+and taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work and fell
+back as the procession approached. A blind beggar crouching at the other
+side of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close
+at his elbow were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were
+playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the
+procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler
+was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller
+was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the
+juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the
+storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of
+the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling of the bells of the
+water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from the country were
+dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their panniers full of
+street-filth, were drawn up by the wall. From the market-place and out
+of the shops, out of the houses and out of the mosque itself, the people
+came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close line on either side
+of the course which the procession must take. And through this avenue
+of onlookers the strange company made its way--the two prisoners
+bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the two soldiers
+carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported and alone.
+Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of the feet
+of the six men, and the clank of their chains.
+
+The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every
+one knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet
+he did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither
+to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.
+
+The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the
+procession came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white
+tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock
+of sheep asleep among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence,
+and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.
+
+Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi
+her father. He had asked no man's permission to do so, but if no one had
+helped at that day's business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
+when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
+forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch
+in his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white
+earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a
+padlock and flung away the key. Last of all, when the body had been
+taken out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in
+after it, and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern. And
+then, kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both
+his hands, and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down
+at her where she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the
+synagogue, and speaking to her as though she heard: “Ruth, my wife, my
+dearest, for the cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered
+you to marry me, being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people,
+forgive me now, my beloved, and ask God to forgive me also.”
+
+The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two
+soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted
+man kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the
+custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet
+no more until the resurrection itself reunited them! The traffic of the
+streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel
+had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.
+
+The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for
+each carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day
+following. But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened
+mind. As he had plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over
+his shoulder, saying, “They shall spring in the cities as the grass in
+the earth,” he had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the
+world were peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was
+dead. God had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert. Only one
+glimpse of human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken
+from him for ever.
+
+And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again. She was
+a helpless exile among men, a creature banished from all human
+intercourse, a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a
+good God who had taken the mother from such a child--the child from such
+a mother? Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not
+God but the devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that
+governed it.
+
+Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's
+loss and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to
+be saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
+fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
+strange and beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SPIRIT-MAID
+
+
+The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should
+not lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time
+forward he became as father and mother both to the child.
+
+At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
+it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of
+the tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and
+blind, but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied.
+It implied that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest
+of the family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart
+as if she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could
+reach her in joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In
+the midst of a world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was
+in a world of silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a
+living and buried soul.
+
+And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had
+memory, for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had
+love, for she had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love
+and memory without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet
+locked in a casket--idle and useless to any purposes of man or the
+world.
+
+Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
+affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
+but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
+twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not
+merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human
+speech.
+
+For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
+father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows he must have
+soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
+beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
+must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
+though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
+might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if
+she felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he
+must have known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the
+world and what the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book
+for her to read. But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of
+being deaf, being dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation
+of her state, the blank void of her isolation--cut off, apart, aloof,
+shut in, imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other
+souls: alive, and yet dead?
+
+Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
+Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and
+silent soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to
+her, that he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his
+own great comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but
+the one gift only whereof he had known from the beginning--the gift of
+touch and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light
+should always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or
+silence should be her speech for ever.
+
+Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
+stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not
+hear, and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent
+to England for many books written on the treatment of these children
+of affliction, and when they were come he pondered them closely and was
+thrilled by the marvellous works they described. But when he came to
+practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the
+impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always,
+to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child
+through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought
+nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense
+were the walls of the prison that encompassed it. “Yes” was a mystery
+that could not at first be revealed to her, and “No” was a problem
+beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and frowns were useless to teach
+her. No discipline could be addressed to her mind or heart. Except mere
+bodily restraint, no control could be imposed upon her. She was swayed
+by her impulses alone.
+
+Israel did not despair. If he was broken down today he strengthened his
+hands for tomorrow. At length he had got so far, after a world of toil
+and thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was for
+approval, and when he touched her hand it was for assent. Then he
+stopped very suddenly. His hope had not drooped, and neither had his
+energy failed, but the conviction had fastened upon him that such effort
+in his case must be an offence against Heaven. Naomi was not merely an
+infirm creature from the left hand of Nature; she was an afflicted being
+from the right hand of God. She was a living monument of sin that was
+not her own. It was useless to go farther. The child must be left where
+God had placed her.
+
+But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human
+kind, she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they
+possessed. It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her,
+and from that source alone could she have imbibed her power. To tell of
+all she could do to guide her steps, and to minister to her pleasures,
+and to cherish her affections, would be to go beyond the limit of
+belief. Truly it seemed as if Naomi, being blind with her bodily eyes,
+could yet look upon a light that no one else could see, and, being deaf
+with her bodily ears, could yet listen to voices that no one else could
+hear.
+
+Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew
+when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.
+Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears
+had taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her
+hands to take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it
+against her cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms
+to encircle his neck; and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to
+her bosom; and always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by. Did she go
+with Ali into the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of
+the town, and the narrow lanes from the open Sok. Did she pass the lofty
+mosque in the market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled
+under and behind and around. Did a troop of mules and camels come near
+her, she knew them from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two
+streets crossed, she would stand and face both ways.
+
+And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around
+Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah
+and the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river
+under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and
+even some of their rocky gorges. She could find her way among them all
+without help or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her
+to keep her out of the way of harm. While Ali was a little fellow he was
+her constant companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet
+heart suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school
+every day early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny
+white goat which her father had bought to be another playfellow.
+
+And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the
+crown of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her
+feet felt the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded
+whether the sun was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from
+the rising of the morning until the coming of the stars. So, casting off
+her slippers and the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and
+clad in her white woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of
+airy grace, and with the little goat going before her, though she could
+neither see nor hear it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery,
+and stand on the summit, like a spirit poised in air. She could see
+nothing of the green valley then stretched before her, or of the white
+town lying below, with its domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult
+in her lofty place, and to drink new life from the rush of mighty winds
+about her. Then coming back to the dale, she would seem, to those who
+looked up at her, with fear and with awe, to leap as the goat leapt
+in the rocky places; and as a bird sweeps over the grass with wings
+outstretched, so with her arms spread out, and her long fair hair flying
+loose, she would sweep down the hill, as though her very tiptoes did not
+touch it.
+
+By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were
+the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind,
+which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child
+into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring,
+when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were
+abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder
+thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic
+tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her she would run
+and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter
+would be on her lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and,
+having found her in the pelting storm without covering on her head or
+shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand, and as they
+passed through the streets together his forehead would be bowed and his
+eyes bent down.
+
+But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
+joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature
+of joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
+darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
+though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did
+not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with
+a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
+maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
+seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant
+flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars
+of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars
+that stood in it. And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress
+increased as well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things;
+it was a wild passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled
+in native grace about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness.
+She was happy as a day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.
+The ripple of her laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed
+to follow in the air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her
+father, she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.
+
+Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel
+in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that
+the little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling
+could only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and
+many throbs of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially
+at seasons when no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful
+silence haunted the air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick
+longing from causes that were beyond Israel's power to fathom. Then her
+sweet face would sadden, and her beautiful blind eyes would fill, and
+her pretty laughter would echo no more through the house. And sometimes,
+in the dead of the night, she would rise from her bed and go through
+the dark corridors, for darkness and light were as one to her, until she
+came to Israel's room, and he would awake from his sleep to find her,
+like a little white vision, standing by his bedside. What she wanted
+there he could never know, for neither had he power to ask nor she to
+answer, whether she were sick or in pain, or whether in her sleep she
+had seen a face from the invisible world, and heard a voice that called
+her away, or whether her mother's arms had seemed to be about her once
+again and then to be torn from her afresh, and she had come to him on
+awakening in her trouble, not knowing what it is to dream, but thinking
+all evil dreams to be true fact and new sorrow. So, with a sigh, he
+would arise and light his lamp and lead her back to her bed, and more
+scalding than the tears that would be standing in Naomi's eyes would be
+the hot drops that would gush into his own.
+
+“My poor darling,” he would say, “can you not tell me your trouble, that
+I may comfort you? No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot comfort her.
+My darling, my darling.”
+
+Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle
+out of heaven to find a way to the little maiden's mind that she might
+ask and answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it, for still
+greater than his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath of God.
+And out of this fear there came to him at length an awful and terrible
+thought: though so severed on earth, his child and he, yet before the
+bar of judgment they would one day be brought together, and then how
+should it stand with her soul?
+
+Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man. Would God
+condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever? No, no, no! God would
+not ask her for good works in the land of silence, and for labour in the
+land of night. She had no eyes to see God's beautiful world, and no ears
+to hear His holy word. God had created her so, and He would not destroy
+what He had made. Far rather would He look with love and pity on His
+little one, so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to
+be a blessed saint in heaven.
+
+Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain. He was a
+Jew to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself out of his
+own mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God's will, that
+had sent Naomi into the world as she was. Then, on the day of the great
+account, how should he answer to her for her soul?
+
+Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul that
+knew not God. These were the most awful terrors of his sleepless nights,
+but at length peace came to him, for he saw his path of duty. It was his
+duty to Naomi that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the
+Lord to her! What matter if she could not hear? Though she had senses as
+the sands of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could
+lead her. What matter though she could not see? The soul was the eye
+that saw God, and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.
+
+So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and led
+her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and, fetching
+from a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her of
+the commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets, and of the
+Kings. And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet, with his one
+free hand in both of her hands, clasped close against her cheek.
+
+What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom, what
+mystery it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks into
+darkness could see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun had
+set--for she knew when the sun was gone--Naomi herself would take her
+father by the hand, and lead him to the upper room, and fetch the book
+to his knees.
+
+And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,
+and make a mock at him, and say, “The child is deaf and hears not--go
+read your book in the tombs!” But he only hardened his neck and laughed
+proudly. And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say, “Why waste
+yourself in this misspent desire? The child is buried while she is still
+alive, and who shall roll away the stone?” But Israel only answered, “It
+is for the Lord to do miracles, and the Lord is mighty.”
+
+So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night, and when
+his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice would be hoarse,
+and he would read the law which says, “_Thou shalt not curse the deaf,
+nor put a stumbling-block before the blind._” But when his heart was
+at peace his voice would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel
+sanctified to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he
+answered--
+
+“_And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
+and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp
+of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was,
+and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel, and he
+answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou
+calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and
+lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and
+went to Eli and said, Here am I for thou didst call me. And he answered,
+I called not my son; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the
+Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him._”
+
+And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book, and sing
+out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says, “It is good for me that
+I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes.”
+
+Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read
+of the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter, who was both
+blind and deaf. And though Naomi heard not, and neither did she see, yet
+in their silent hour together there was another in their chamber always
+with them--there was a third, for there was God.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+
+
+When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then
+fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife.
+The woman's name was Katrina. She was a Spaniard by birth, and had
+first come to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy, which travelled
+through Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez. What her belongings
+were, and what her antecedents had been, no one appeared to know, nor
+did Ben Aboo himself seem to care. She answered all his present needs in
+her own person, which was ample in its proportions and abundant in its
+charms.
+
+In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions. The first
+was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement of
+four Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as the many
+concubines that he had annexed in his way through life, and now kept
+lodged in one unquiet nest in the women's hidden quarter of the Palace.
+The second condition was, that she herself should never be banished
+to such seclusion, but, like the wife of any European governor, should
+openly share the state of her husband.
+
+Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan,
+and he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to
+abide by, but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a
+prelude to that public life which she intended to live by his side, she
+insisted on a public marriage.
+
+They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church by a
+Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival lasted
+six days. Great was the display, and lavish the outlay. Every morning
+the cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill, every
+evening the tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats of
+powder-play in the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa from
+Mequinez yelled and shrieked in the enclosure called the M'salla, near
+the Bab er-Remoosh. Feasts were spread in the Kasbah, and relays of
+guests from among the chief men of the town were invited daily to
+partake of them.
+
+No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute of a
+present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light
+of their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though
+it galled the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage of a
+Christian and a Muslim--no man except Israel, and he excused himself
+with what grace he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick with
+sorrow of the heart.
+
+The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid. She had taken her measure of
+the man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel should
+pay her court and tribute before all. Therefore she caused him to be
+invited again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman, and with
+some lack of courtesy he excused himself afresh.
+
+Katrina was not yet done. She was a creature of resource, and having
+heard of Naomi with strange stories concerning her, she devised a
+children's feast for the last day of the marriage festival, and
+caused Ben Aboo to write to Israel a formal letter, beginning “To our
+well-beloved the excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise to the one God,”
+ and setting forth that on the morrow, when the “Sun of the world” should
+“place his foot in the stirrup of speed,” and gallop “from the kingdom
+of shades,” the Governor would “hold a gathering of delight” for all the
+children of Tetuan and he, Israel, was besought to “lighten it with the
+rays of his face, rivalled only by the sun,” and to bring with him
+his little daughter Naomi, whose arrival “similar to a spring breeze,”
+ should “dissipate the dark night of solitude and isolation.” This
+despatch written in the common cant of the people, concluded with
+quotations from the Prophet on brotherly love and a significant and
+more sincere assurance that the Basha would not admit of excuses “of the
+thickness of a hair.”
+
+When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious. He
+leapt to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi, the
+Spanish woman, who must know of the child's condition desired only to
+make a show of it. But, after a fume, he put that thought from him as
+uncharitable and unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.
+
+And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi's
+own eagerness must have driven it away. The little maid seemed to know
+that something unusual was going on. Troops of poor villagers from every
+miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating
+drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them--bullocks,
+cows, and sheep--and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and
+were glad. Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in
+the marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle
+everywhere.
+
+Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement. The
+children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had
+been summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be
+dancing and singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself,
+who had lately practised the kanoon--the lute, the harp--under his
+teacher, was to show his skill before the Governor. Therefore, great
+was the little black man's excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would
+talk to every one of the event forthcoming--to Fatima, to Habeebah, and
+often to Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to
+him, or perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him,
+and then, thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them
+like a fury, and they would scamper away.
+
+When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and
+Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs. Every
+child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then
+a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling
+them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly
+happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree
+of the knowledge of good and evil.
+
+Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and
+followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the
+lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through
+the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women
+stood together closely covered in their blankets--the mothers and
+sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into
+the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther--then down the crooked passage,
+past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and
+finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+
+This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a
+great company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors,
+Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white
+and blue and black and red--they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and,
+perhaps, a beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.
+
+As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every
+eye was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made
+for them, he heard the whispered exclamations of the people. “Shoof!”
+ muttered a Moor. “See!” “It's himself,” said a Jew. “And the child,”
+ said another Jew. “Allah has smitten her,” said an Arab “Blind and
+dumb and deaf,” said another Moor “God be gracious to my father!” said
+another Arab.
+
+Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and
+from the flat roof above it the women of the Governor's hareem, not yet
+dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were
+gazing furtively down from behind their haiks. There was a fountain in
+the middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an
+alcove that opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with
+stalactites, against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat
+rugs of many colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.
+
+It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at
+the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome
+woman, but plainly a heartless one--selfish, vain, and vulgar.
+
+Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina
+drew Naomi to her side.
+
+“So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?” said
+Katrina.
+
+Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman's
+feet.
+
+“The darling is as fair as an angel,” said Katrina, and she kissed
+Naomi.
+
+The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.
+
+Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a
+pretty and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the
+black shadows of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people
+massed around the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going
+in the middle of it. First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered
+hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting
+and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then,
+a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish
+manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around
+with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above
+their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the
+Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and
+chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by
+a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song
+of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little
+black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in
+his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of
+pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting,
+and his face aglow.
+
+Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been
+agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes
+playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.
+It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going
+forward, and knew that they were children who were making it. Perhaps
+the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or
+perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to
+her sensitive body. Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to
+her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was
+full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.
+
+But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
+his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement. The girl
+leaped up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost
+rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to
+the boy's side. And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it,
+and then a low cry came from her lips. Again she touched it, and her
+eyes, though blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire. Then, with
+both her hands she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she
+kissed it, while her whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.
+
+Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with
+wild thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope. As well as he
+could in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the
+little maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave
+her.
+
+“Leave her!” she cried. “Let us see what the child will do!”
+
+At that moment Ali's playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp
+pass to Naomi's clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling
+on the ground beside it, the girl took it to herself. She caressed it,
+she patted it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then a faint
+smile crossed her rosy lips. She laid her cheek against it and touched
+its strings again, and then she laughed aloud. She flung off her
+slippers and the garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid
+her pure flesh against the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and
+touched its strings once more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh
+with delight.
+
+Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious
+saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds
+so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet
+heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes
+of a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds
+such as no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.
+
+It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion
+to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found
+to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them
+some of the sensations of sound--the trembling of the air after thunder,
+the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls
+after the ringing of mighty bells--so Naomi, who was blind as well and
+had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up the
+force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument
+of music the movement of things that moved about her--the patter of the
+leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great
+winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling
+of the levanter in her hair.
+
+This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion
+in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the
+music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings of the
+harp. But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of
+sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it. She lifted
+her head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she
+played, she laughed again and again.
+
+There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the
+beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through
+the robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white
+fingers flying across the strings. There was something gruesome and
+awful, as well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard
+nothing of the sounds that her fingers were making.
+
+Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was
+agape. And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from
+their first surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words
+they passed between them. “Where has she learnt it?” asked a Moor.
+“From her master himself,” muttered a Jew. “Who is it?” asked the Moor.
+“Beelzebub,” growled the Jew. “God pity me, the evil eye is on her,”
+ said an Arab. “God will show,” said a Shereef from Wazzan. “They say
+her mother was a childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah's
+blessing at the tomb of Rabbi Amran.” “No,” said the Arab; “she sent her
+girdle.” “Anyhow, the child is a saint,” whispered the Shereef. “No, but
+a devil,” snorted the Jew.
+
+“Brava, brava, brava!” cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered
+and laughed as the girl played. “What did I tell you?” she said, looking
+toward her husband. “The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either. Oh,
+it's a brave imposture! Brava, brave!”
+
+Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded, her head
+dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp and
+sighed audibly.
+
+“Good again!” cried the woman. “Very good!” and she clapped her
+hands, whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread, felt
+constrained to follow her example, and they cheered in their wilder way,
+but the Jews continued to mutter, “Beelzebub, Beelzebub!”
+
+Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind and the
+confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight of what Naomi did.
+Had God opened a gateway to her soul? Were the poor wings of her spirit
+to spread themselves out at last? Was this, then, the way of speech
+that Heaven had given her? But hardly had Israel overflowed with the
+tenderness of such thoughts when the bleating and barking of the faces
+about him awakened his anger. Then, like blows on his brain, came the
+cries of the wife of the Governor, who cheered this awakening of
+the girl's soul as it were no better than a vulgar show; and at that
+Israel's wrath rose to his throat.
+
+“Brava, brava!” cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel, she said,
+“You shall leave the child with me. I must have her with me always.”
+
+Israel's throat seemed to choke him at that word. He looked at Katrina,
+and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and vain of heart, who
+had married Ben Aboo because he was rich. Then he looked at Naomi,
+and remembered that her heart was clear as the water, and sweet as the
+morning, and pure as the snow.
+
+And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the
+people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to
+take up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the
+spell had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp, her head
+had dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to
+her face.
+
+“Take her in!” said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped
+up to where the little maiden lay. But before they had touched her
+Israel strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.
+
+“Stop!” he cried.
+
+The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.
+
+“Do as you are bidden--take her in!” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Stop!” cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.
+Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up the
+unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.
+
+“Madam,” he cried, “I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor, but
+my child belongs to me.”
+
+So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms,
+and in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed to
+know what he had done until he was gone.
+
+Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event he
+found courage in his heart to begin his task again. Let his enemies
+bleat and bark “Beelzebub,” yet the child was an angel, though suffering
+for his sin, and her soul was with God. She was a spirit, and the songs
+she had played were the airs of paradise. But, comforting himself so,
+Israel remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered her
+powers. He had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death, but
+would the Lord yet bring it to pass? Would God in His mercy some day
+take the angel out of his house, though so strangely gifted, so radiant
+and beautiful and joyful, and give him instead for the hunger of his
+heart as a man this sweet human child, his little, fair-haired Naomi,
+though helpless and simple and weak?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+
+
+Israel's instinct had been sure: the coming of Katrina proved to be
+the beginning of his end. He kept his office, but he lost his power. No
+longer did he work his own will in Tetuan; he was required to work the
+will of the woman. Katrina's will was an evil one, and Israel got the
+blame of it, for still he seemed to stand in all matters of tribute and
+taxation between the people and the Governor. It galled him to take the
+woman's wages, but it vexed him yet more to do her work. Her work was to
+burden the people with taxes beyond all their power of paying; her wages
+was to be hated as the bane of the bashalic, to be clamoured against
+as the tyrant of Tetuan, and to be ridiculed by the very offal of the
+streets.
+
+One day a gang of dirty Arabs in the market-place dressed up a blind
+beggar in clothes such as Israel wore, and sent him abroad through the
+town to beg as one that was destitute and in a miserable condition. But
+nothing seemed to move Israel to pity. Men were cast into prison for no
+reason save that they were rich, and the relations of such as were there
+already were allowed to redeem them for money, so that no felon suffered
+punishment except such as could pay nothing. People took fright and fled
+to other cities. Israel's name became a curse and a reproach throughout
+Barbary.
+
+Yet all this time the man's soul was yearning with pity for the people.
+Since the death of Ruth his heart had grown merciful. The care of the
+child had softened him. It had brought him to look on other children
+with tenderness, and looking tenderly on other children had led him to
+think of other fathers with compassion. Young or old, powerful or weak,
+mighty or mean, they were all as little children--helpless children who
+would sleep together in the same bed soon.
+
+Thinking so, Israel would have undone the evil work of earlier years;
+but that was impossible now. Many of them that had suffered were
+dead; some that had been cast into prison had got their last and long
+discharge. At least Israel would have relaxed the rigour whereby his
+master ruled, but that was impossible also. Katrina had come, and she
+was a vain woman and a lover of all luxury, and she commanded Israel to
+tax the people afresh. He obeyed her through three bad years; but many
+a time his heart reproached him that he dealt corruptly by the poor
+people, and when he saw them borrowing money for the Governor's tributes
+on their lands and houses, and when he stood by while they and their
+sons were cast into prison for the bonds which they could not pay to the
+usurers Abraham or Judah or Reuben, then his soul cried out against him
+that he ate the bread of such a mistress.
+
+But out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
+sweetness, and out of this coming of the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo came
+deliverance for Israel from the torment of his false position.
+
+There was an aged and pious Moor in Tetuan, called Abd Allah, who was
+rumoured to have made savings from his business as a gunsmith. Going to
+mosque one evening, with fifteen dollars in his waistband, he unstrapped
+his belt and laid it on the edge of the fountain while he washed his
+feet before entering, for his back was no longer supple. Then a younger
+Moor, coming to pray at the same time, saw the dollars, and snatched
+them up and ran. Abd Allah could not follow the thief, so he went to the
+Kasbah and told his story to the Governor.
+
+Just at that time Ben Aboo had the Kaid of Fez on a visit to him. “Ask
+him how much more he has got,” whispered the brother Kaid to Ben Aboo.
+
+Abd Allah answered that he did not know.
+
+“I'll give you two hundred dollars for the chance of all he has,” the
+Kaid whispered again.
+
+“Five bees are better than a pannier of flies--done!” said Ben Aboo.
+
+So Abd Allah was sold like a sheep and carried to Fez, and there cast
+into prison on a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars imposed upon
+him on the pretence of a false accusation.
+
+Israel sat by the Governor that day at the gate of the hall of justice,
+and many poor people of the town stood huddled together in the court
+outside while the evil work was done. No one heard the Kaid of Fez when
+he whispered to Ben Aboo, but every one saw when Israel drew the warrant
+that consigned the gunsmith to prison, and when he sealed it with the
+Governor's seal.
+
+Abd Allah had made no savings, and, being too old for work, he had lived
+on the earnings of his son. The son's name was Absalam (Abd es-Salem),
+and he had a wife whom he loved very tenderly, and one child, a boy of
+six years of age. Absalam followed his father to Fez, and visited him in
+prison. The old man had been ordered a hundred lashes, and the flesh was
+hanging from his limbs. Absalam was great of heart, and, in pity of his
+father's miserable condition he went to the Governor and begged that the
+old man might be liberated, and that he might be imprisoned instead.
+His petition was heard. Abd Allah was set free, Absalam was cast into
+prison, and the penalty was raised from two hundred and fifty dollars to
+three hundred.
+
+Israel heard of what had happened, and he hastened to Ben Aboo, in great
+agitation, intending to say “Pay back this man's ransom, in God's name,
+and his children and his children's children will live to bless you.”
+ But when he got to the Kasbah, Katrina was sitting with her husband, and
+at sight of the woman's face Israel's tongue was frozen.
+
+Absalam had been the favourite of his neighbours among all the gunsmiths
+of the market-place, and after he had been three months at Fez they
+made common cause of his calamities, sold their goods at a sacrifice,
+collected the three hundred dollars of his fine, bought him out of
+prison, and went in a body through the gate to meet him upon his return
+to Tetuan. But his wife had died in the meantime of fear and privation,
+and only his aged father and his little son were there to welcome him.
+
+“Friends,” he said to his neighbours standing outside the walls, “what
+is the use of sowing if you know not who will reap?”
+
+“No use, no use!” answered several voices.
+
+“If God gives you anything, this man Israel takes it away,” said
+Absalam.
+
+“True, true! Curse him! Curse his relations!” cried the others.
+
+“Then why go back into Tetuan?” said Absalam.
+
+“Tangier is no better,” said one. “Fez is worse,” said another. “Where
+is there to go?” said a third.
+
+“Into the plains,” said Absalam--“into the plains and into the
+mountains, for they belong to God alone.”
+
+That word was like the flint to the tinder.
+
+“They who have least are richest, and they that have nothing are best
+off of all,” said Absalam, and his neighbours shouted that it was so.
+
+“God will clothe us as He clothes the fields,” said Absalam, “and feed
+our children as He feeds the birds.”
+
+In three days' time ten shops in the market-place, on the side of the
+Mosque, were sold up and closed, and the men who had kept them were gone
+away with their wives and children to live in tents with Absalam on the
+barren plains beyond the town.
+
+When Israel heard of what had been done he secretly rejoiced; but Ben
+Aboo was in a commotion of fear, and Katrina was fierce with anger, for
+the doctrine which Absalam had preached to his neighbours outside the
+walls was not his own doctrine merely, but that of a great man lately
+risen among the people, called Mohammed of Mequinez, nicknamed by his
+enemies Mohammed the Third.
+
+“This madness is spreading,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Yes,” said Katrina; “and if all men follow where these men lead, who
+will supply the tables of Kaids and Sultans?”
+
+“What can I do with them?” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Eat them up,” said Katrina.
+
+Ben Aboo proceeded to put a literal interpretation upon his wife's
+counsel. With a company of cavalry he prepared to follow Absalam and his
+little fellowship, taking Israel along with him to reckon their taxes,
+that he might compel them to return to Tetuan, and be town-dwellers
+and house-dwellers and buy and sell and pay tribute as before, or else
+deliver themselves to prison.
+
+But Absalam and his people had secret word that the Governor was coming
+after them, and Israel with him. So they rolled their tents, and fled to
+the mountains that are midway between Tetuan and the Reef country, and
+took refuge in the gullies of that rugged land, living in caves of the
+rock, with only the table-land of mountain behind them, and nothing but
+a rugged precipice in front. This place they selected for its safety,
+intending to push forward, as occasion offered, to the sanctuaries of
+Shawan, trusting rather to the humanity of the wild people, called the
+Shawanis, than to the mercy of their late cruel masters. But the valley
+wherein they had hidden is thick with trees, and Ben Aboo tracked them
+and came up with them before they were aware. Then, sending soldiers
+to the mountain at the back of the caves, with instructions that they
+should come down to the precipice steadily, and kill none that they
+could take alive, Ben Aboo himself drew up at the foot of it, and
+Israel with him, and there called on the people to come out and deliver
+themselves to his will.
+
+When the poor people came from their hiding-places and saw that they
+were surrounded, and that escape was not left to them on any side, they
+thought their death was sure. But without a shout or a cry they knelt,
+as with one accord, at the mouth of the precipice, with their backs
+to it, men and women and children, knee to knee in a line, and joined
+hands, and looked towards the soldiers, who were coming steadily down on
+them. On and on the soldiers came, eye to eye with the people, and their
+swords were drawn.
+
+Israel gasped for his breath, and waited to see the people cut in pieces
+at the next instant, when suddenly they began to sing where they knelt
+at the edge of the precipice, “God is our refuge and our strength, a
+very present help in trouble.”
+
+In another moment the soldiers had drawn up as if swords from heaven
+had fallen on them, and Israel was crying out of his dry throat, “Fear
+nothing! Only deliver your bodies to the Governor, and none shall harm
+you.”
+
+Absalam rose up from his knees and called to his father and his son.
+And standing between them to be seen by all, and first looking upon both
+with eyes of pity, he drew from the folds of his selham a long knife
+such as the Reefians wear, and taking his father by his white hair he
+slew him and cast his body down the rocks. After that he turned towards
+his son, and the boy was golden-haired and his face was like the
+morning, and Israel's heart bled to see him.
+
+“Absalam!” he cried in a moving voice; “Absalam, wait, wait!”
+
+But Absalam killed his son also, and cast him down after his father.
+Then, looking around on his people with eyes of compassion, as seeming
+to pity them that they must fall again into the hands of Israel and his
+master, he stretched out his knife and sheathed it in his own breast,
+and fell towards the precipice.
+
+Israel covered his face and groaned in his heart, and said, “It is the
+end, O Lord God, it is the end--polluted wretch that I am, with the
+blood of these people upon me!”
+
+The companions of Absalam delivered themselves to the soldiers, who
+committed them to the prison at Shawan, and Ben Aboo went home in
+content.
+
+Rumour of what had come to pass was not long in reaching Tetuan, and
+Israel was charged with the guilt of it. In passing through the streets
+the next day on his way to his house the people hissed him openly.
+“Allah had not written it!” a Moor shouted as he passed. “Take care!”
+ cried an Arab, “Mohammed of Mequinez is coming!”
+
+It chanced that night, after sundown, when Naomi, according to her wont,
+led her father to the upper room, and fetched the Book of the Law from
+the cupboard of the wall and laid it upon his knees, that he read the
+passage whereon the page opened of itself, scarce knowing what he read
+when he began to read it, for his spirit was heavy with the bad doings
+of those days. And the passage whereon the book opened was this--
+
+“_Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and
+the other lot for the scapegoat. . . . Then shall he kill the goat of
+the sin-offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the
+vail. And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of
+the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their
+transgressions in all their sins. . . . And when he hath, made an end of
+reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and
+the altar, he shall bring the live goat: and Aaron shall lay both his
+hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the
+iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in
+all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send
+him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat
+shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited._”
+
+That same night Israel dreamt a dream. He had been asleep, and
+had awakened in a place which he did not know. It was a great arid
+wilderness. Ashen sand lay on every side; a scorching sun beat down on
+it, and nowhere was there a glint of water. Israel gazed, and slowly
+through the blazing sunlight he discerned white roofless walls like the
+ruins of little sheepfolds. “They are tombs,” he told himself, “and this
+is a Mukabar--an Arab graveyard--the most desolate place in the world
+of God.” But, looking again, he saw that the roofless walls covered the
+ground as far as the eye could see, and the thought came to him that
+this ashen desert was the earth itself, and that all the world of
+life and man was dead. Then, suddenly, in the motionless wilderness, a
+solitary creature moved. It was a goat, and it toiled over the hot sand
+with its head hung down and its tongue lolled out. “Water!” it seemed
+to cry, though it made no voice, and its eyes traversed the plain as if
+they would pierce the ground for a spring. Fever and delirium fell upon
+Israel. The goat came near to him and lifted up its eyes, and he saw its
+face. Then he shrieked and awoke. The face of the goat had been the face
+of Naomi.
+
+Now Israel knew that this was no more than a dream, coming of the
+passage which he had read out of the book at sundown, but so vivid was
+the sense of it that he could not rest in his bed until he had first
+seen Naomi with his waking eyes, that he might laugh in his heart to
+think how the eye of his sleep had fooled him. So he lit his lamp, and
+walked through the silent house to where Naomi's room was on the lower
+floor of it.
+
+There she lay, sleeping so peacefully, with her sunny hair flowing over
+the pillow on either side of her beautiful face, and rippling in little
+curls about her neck. How sweet she looked! How like a dear bud of
+womanhood just opening to the eye!
+
+Israel sat down beside her for a moment. Many a time before, at such
+hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways, and she
+had known nothing of it. She was like any other maiden now. Her eyes
+were closed, and who should see that they were blind? Her breath came
+gently, and who should say that it gave forth no speech? Her face was
+quiet, and who should think that it was not the face of a homely-hearted
+girl? Israel loved these moments when he was alone with Naomi while she
+slept, for then only did she seem to be entirely his own, and he was not
+so lonely while he was sitting there. Though men thought he was strong,
+yet he was very weak. He had no one in the world to talk to save Naomi,
+and she was dumb in the daytime, but in the night he could hold little
+conversations with her. His love! his dove! his darling! How easily he
+could trick and deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and
+speak to me! Yes; her eyes will open and see me here again, and I
+shall hear her voice, for I love it! “Father!” she will say.
+“Father--father--”
+
+Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!
+
+Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her. As he went back to his bed,
+through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him that
+made his hair to rise. It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.
+
+Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream to be a
+vision. It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream would be
+to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything. The vision as he
+thought he saw it was this, and these were the words of it as he thought
+he heard them--
+
+It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room, when
+a dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed, and a
+voice that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it, crying “Israel!”
+
+And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, “Speak, Lord, Thy servant
+heareth.”
+
+Then the Lord said, “Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest
+cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat.”
+
+And Israel answered trembling, “I have read.”
+
+Then the Lord said to Israel, “Look now upon Naomi, thy child, for
+she is as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement for thy
+transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore she is
+dumb to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight, a soul
+in chains and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot that is
+cast for justice and for the Lord.”
+
+And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, “Would that the lot had
+fallen upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou
+speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before
+Thee.”
+
+Then said the Lord to Israel, “On thee, also, hath the lot fallen, even
+the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of God.”
+
+And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said,
+“Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people, so
+cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo, and of his wife,
+Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins of the people into the
+wilderness, so, in the resurrection, shalt thou bear the sins of this
+man and of this woman into a land that no man knoweth.”
+
+Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were
+drops of blood, and cried, “What shall I do, O Lord?”
+
+And the Lord said, “Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee to
+the country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard
+tidings, and he shall show thee what thou shalt do.”
+
+Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, “Shall my soul live?
+Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?”
+
+But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed, and
+all around was darkness.
+
+Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath on
+the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice, not in
+his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight of all
+common things about him--his room and his bed; and the canopy that
+covered it. And on rising in the morning, at daydawn, so actual was the
+sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful the impression of
+it, that he straightway set himself to carry out the injunction it had
+made, without question of its reality or doubt of its authority.
+
+Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now
+grown to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate,
+Israel first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent
+from Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide, and to the
+market-place for mules.
+
+Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan was
+waiting at the door. Then Israel remembered Naomi. Where was the girl,
+that he had not seen her that morning? They answered him that she had
+not yet left her room, and he sent the black woman Fatimah to fetch
+her. And when she came and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in
+silence, his heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his
+foot to the stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio with
+the two bondwomen beside her.
+
+“Is she well?” he asked.
+
+“Oh yes, well--very well,” said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.
+Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language
+of her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face,
+which had used to be cheerful, was now sad. At that he almost repented
+of his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone
+no farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick,
+nothing could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must
+let him go his ways without warning.
+
+He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last, with many
+words of tender protest which she did not hear, he had to break away
+from the beautiful arms that held him.
+
+Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier and guide
+and muleteers and tentmen were already mounted, amid a chattering throng
+of idle people looking on.
+
+“Ali, my lad,” said Israel, “if anything should befall Naomi while I am
+away, will you watch over her and guard her with all your strength?”
+
+“With all my life,” said Ali stoutly. He was Naomi's playfellow no
+longer, but her devoted slave.
+
+Then Israel set off on his journey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+
+
+MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a
+Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died,
+and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's brothers, both men of
+yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at
+Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a
+land where there is one noble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and
+descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are
+mired with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest
+nobility. Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth
+that went along with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.
+
+He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out into
+the plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the
+shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed
+him. He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and
+lovers of poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They
+were never to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give
+what he had to him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet
+whatever they said was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be
+ministers of peace, and if any man did them violence they were never to
+resist him. Nevertheless they were not to lack for courage, but to laugh
+to scorn the enemies that tormented them, and smile in their pains and
+shed no tear. And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to
+esteem it more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible,
+but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released
+from the bondage of the flesh. Not dissenters from the Koran, but
+stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews, yet followers of
+Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.
+
+And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the
+cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets,
+from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service
+of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds
+and trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty,
+and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought
+nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs
+save the stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which
+they drove before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their
+fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for
+their food and the hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and
+desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering
+themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of
+battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded,
+passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about
+Mequinez. And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been
+so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as
+Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan: “God will feed
+us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He
+clothes the fields.”
+
+Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his
+people too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties
+were enough already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a
+palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom
+had the dusty and tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the
+fast of Ramadhan, and Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the
+double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his
+famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the
+night. In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some
+obstacles, but his time was long.
+
+And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan,
+so he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed
+through, and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes
+very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was
+passing through his own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people
+think but that he had come to make a new assessment of their lands and
+holdings, their cattle and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and
+more fully. So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of
+their houses as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse,
+and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot
+in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord), a title never
+before given to a Jew, and offered him presents out of their meagre
+substance.
+
+“A gift for my lord,” they would say, “of the little that God has given
+us, praise His merciful name for ever!”
+
+Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
+by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
+trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
+in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.
+
+Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.
+
+“Keep them,” he would answer; “keep them until I come again,” intending
+to tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.
+
+And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic
+of El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos
+hastened before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks
+and palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his
+errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in
+the early morning.
+
+“Peace be with you!” said the Kaid. “So my lord is going again to the
+Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!”
+
+Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of
+crooked lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near
+the market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the
+presents of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars
+who looked on with feverish eyes.
+
+Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of
+Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the
+foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand
+Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood
+waiting to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention
+of his journey.
+
+“Welcome! welcome!” said the Shereef; “all you see is yours until Allah
+shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our
+lord the Sultan at Fez--may God prolong his life and bless him!”
+
+“God make you happy!” said Israel, but he offered no answer to the
+question that was implied.
+
+“It is twenty and odd years, my lord,” the Shereef continued, “since my
+father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that
+time has wrought since then, under Allah's will; but none in the past
+have been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in
+the future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (God keep
+our lord Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him.”
+
+“God will show,” said Israel.
+
+No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef
+alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel's
+horse instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past
+the old Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque
+of the Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live
+like cattle. A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy
+rags, a group of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled
+renegades leaning against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from
+their dishevelled heads and bowed.
+
+That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the
+ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company of Muslimeen--guests
+in the house of the descendants of the Prophet--were, by special
+Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at
+their pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and
+his men started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with
+the Shereef's black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of
+honour, through the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock
+that is warning to strike) a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with
+fierce and dirty faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid
+clouds of hot dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should
+proclaim the end of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains
+stood ready to fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on
+the ground with dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain
+rolled in their fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef,
+and flint and tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the
+minaret stood looking abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun
+was lazily sinking under the plain.
+
+Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were
+the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of
+their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought
+the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage,
+and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of
+his mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this
+lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!
+
+Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like
+ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over
+the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town,
+through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious
+barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they
+came in the grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the
+Father of Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept
+it were snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.
+
+“Selam! M'barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!” shouted the Shereef's
+black guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in
+Israel's honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him
+housed within.
+
+From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came
+yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. “Burn your father!
+Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!”
+
+“Selam!” shouted one of the black guard. “You dog of dogs! Your father
+was bewitched by a hyena! I'll teach you to curse your betters. Quick!
+get up,--or I'll shave your beard. Open! or I'll ride the donkey on your
+head! There!--and there!--and there again!” and at every word the butt
+of his long gun rang on the old oaken gate.
+
+“Hamed el Wazzani!” muttered several voices within.
+
+“Yes,” shouted the Shereef's man. “And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his
+way to the Sultan, God grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi
+Israel el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and
+snoring in your dirt.”
+
+There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys,
+and then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two
+of the four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse,
+asking forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime,
+the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had
+ridden far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his class and
+country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham
+and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.
+
+“I heard you were coming,” he panted--“sent for by the Sultan--Allah
+preserve him!--but had I known you were to be here so soon--I--that
+is--”
+
+“Peace be with you!” interrupted Israel.
+
+“God grant you peace. The Sultan--praise the merciful Allah!” the Kaid
+continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup--“he reached Fez from
+Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him.”
+
+“God will show,” said Israel, and he pushed forward.
+
+“Ah, true--yes--certainly--my lord is tired,” puffed the Kaid, bowing
+again most profoundly. “Well, your lodging is ready--the best in
+Mequinez--and your mona is cooking--all the dainties of Barbary--and
+when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand Vizier--”
+
+Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until
+they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until
+sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same--the Sultan, the
+Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!
+
+Israel could bear no more. “Basha,” he said “it is a mistake; the Sultan
+has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him.”
+
+“Not going to him?” the Kaid echoed vacantly.
+
+“No, but to another,” said Israel; “and you of all men can best tell me
+where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen--yet a poor
+man--the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez.”
+
+Then there was a long silence.
+
+Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after
+sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and
+no man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had
+gone off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind
+him his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen,
+who, like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in
+dudgeon. The Kaid had turned them out of the town.
+
+Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within
+their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the
+tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there
+passed them in the fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of
+the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and
+shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had to pass
+over. They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid
+of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace without
+delay, that he might give good account of his stewardship, or else
+deliver up his substance and be cast into prison for the defalcations
+with which rumour had charged him.
+
+Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people,
+who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at
+Fez; and great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they
+remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last
+in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly
+touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of
+its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his
+door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and
+built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken
+from him and the other failed him, where then was the hope of that man's
+salvation, whether in this world or the next? The dungeon, the chain,
+the lash, the wooden jellab--what else was left to him? Only the wail
+of the poor whom he has made poorer, the curse of the orphan whom he
+has made fatherless, and the execration of the down-trodden whom he has
+oppressed. These followed him into his prison, and mingled their cries
+with the clank of his irons, for they were voices which had never yet
+deserted the man that made them, but clamoured loud at the last when his
+end had come, above the death-rattle in his throat. One dim hour waited
+for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace--one lonely
+hour wherein none could bear him company--and what was wealth and
+treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on earth? Was it
+glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth--what could it be but a
+will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night! Oh! riches of
+gold and silver--what had they ever been but marsh-fire gathered in the
+dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the service of the
+prince of it!
+
+Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure--so far away. Though
+all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by
+God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from
+his child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling!
+His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose
+anything, everything, all that the world and all that the devil had
+given him; but let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what
+was gold without gladness, and what was plenty without peace?
+
+Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the
+musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of
+unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped
+like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were
+a vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included
+multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil
+moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago
+they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from
+Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from
+Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous
+Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but
+their substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them.
+Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
+privations patiently--the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains
+of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the
+Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of both
+in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
+that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or
+sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild
+bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.
+
+So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
+in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
+starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What
+of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them
+as He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was
+seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour,
+He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to
+plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it.
+“The hunger is on us!” “Our children are perishing!” “Find us food!”
+ “Food!” “Food!”
+
+With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
+madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
+came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
+their leader when he answered them.
+
+First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
+quivering nostrils. “Do you think I am Moses,” he cried, “that I should
+smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full?
+If you are naked, am I clothed?”
+
+But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
+was saying in a very moving voice, “My good people, who have followed
+me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than
+you can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that
+death itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that
+Allah sees a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that,
+unknown to us all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass!
+Patience, I beg of you; patience, my poor people--patience and trust!”
+
+At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered
+the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan
+had burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes
+worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings and
+earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang on the breast
+as safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much gold filagree of the
+kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box
+and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further
+thought to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of
+them, he said, “Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, 'A
+present to the man of God and to his people in their trouble.'”
+
+And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
+open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him,
+it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had
+opened and rained manna on their heads.
+
+“It is an answer to your prayer,” he cried; “an angel from heaven has
+sent it.”
+
+Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened
+to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched
+throats--
+
+“Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!”
+
+And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of
+men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together,
+and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great
+broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them succour, that they
+might not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every
+man looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, “I could
+have borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I
+was a fool.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+
+
+Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of
+the new prophet for his guide and motto: “Exact no more than is just; do
+violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give
+to the poor.” That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if
+any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been
+an idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after
+Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom.
+“I'll do it,” he said; “at all risks and all costs, I'll do it.”
+
+And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant
+to bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his
+pockets of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to
+return to his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in
+amazement, and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their
+ways by themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan
+at Fez had stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming
+behind them penniless.
+
+But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his
+homeward journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in
+his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out
+from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five
+long days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the
+daytime. Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done
+so much to wipe out God's displeasure as he was now doing and yet would
+do. He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of
+his vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the
+sin-offering must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would
+meet her without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance,
+then must her debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child
+been so smitten of God, and never had any father of an afflicted child
+bought God's mercy at so dear a price!
+
+Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared
+not to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing God out of his love
+of the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home,
+it was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity
+and pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through
+the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three
+sights which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence
+in that town and province.
+
+First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east of the new
+town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the
+high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room for a thousand
+women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco
+and rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders
+selling twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all
+black, and of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They
+had lately arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and
+the Wargha, and some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others
+were fresh and cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were
+adorned, after their doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters,
+with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers
+pricked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they
+were drawn up in a line for public auction; but before the sale of them
+could begin among the buyers that had gathered about them in the street,
+the overseers of the Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection
+for their master. This the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them
+nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces of evil old
+women and the hoarse voices of ravens--had picked out three fat black
+maidens, the business of the auction began by the sale of a negro girl
+of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and passed around.
+
+“Now, brothers,” said the slave-master, “look see; sound of wind and
+limb--how much?”
+
+“Eighty dollars,” said a voice from the crowd.
+
+“Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her--rosy lips, fit for the
+kisses of a king, eh? How much?”
+
+“A hundred dollars.”
+
+“A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It's giving the girl away.
+Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound.”
+
+The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her
+round the crowd again.
+
+“Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now's the chance for true
+believers. How much?”
+
+“A hundred and ten.”
+
+“A hundred and ten--thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel of a
+girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles. Look at her flesh. Not
+a flaw anywhere. Pass her round, test her, try her, talk to her--she
+speaks good Arabic. Isn't she fit for a Sultan? She's the best thing
+I'll offer to-day, and by the Prophet, if you are not quick I'll keep
+her for myself. Now, for the third and last time--seventeen years of
+age, sound, strong, plump, sweet, and intact--how much?”
+
+Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl, and to
+hear what shameless questions they asked of her, and with a long sigh he
+was turning away from the crowd, when another man came up to it. The man
+was black and old and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white
+selham. But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him,
+he made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people, pushed his
+way to the girl's side, and opened his arms to her, and she fell into
+them with a cry of joy and pain together.
+
+It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before,
+had been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben
+Hashem, having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and
+from his only child, who thus strangely rejoined him. This story he
+told, in broken Arabic; to those that stood around, and, hard as were
+the faces of the bidders, and brutal as was their trade; there was not
+an eye among them all but was melted at his story.
+
+Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, “I will give
+twenty dollars to buy him the girl's liberty,” and straightway another
+and another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount of
+the last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it, and the
+girl was free.
+
+Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand, came to
+Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks, and said in his
+broken way: “The blessing of Allah upon you, white brother, and if you
+have a child of your own may you never lose her, but may Allah favour
+her and let you keep her with you always!”
+
+That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear,
+and, facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned down the
+dark arcade that descends into the old town as into a vault, and having
+crossed the markets, he came upon the second of the three sights that
+were to smite out of his heart his pride towards God. A man in a blue
+tunic girded with a red sash, and with a red cotton handkerchief tied
+about his head, was driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees
+cut into short lengths to lie over its panniers. He was clearly a
+Spanish woodseller and he had the weary, averted, and downcast look of
+a race that is despised and kept under. His donkey was a bony creature,
+with raw places on its flank and shoulders where its hide had been worn
+by the friction of its burdens. He drove it slowly; crying “Arrah!” to
+it in the tongue of its own country, and not beating it cruelly. At
+the bottom of the arcade there was an open place where a foul ditch was
+crossed by a rickety bridge. Coming to this the man hesitated a moment,
+as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey over it or to make the beast
+trudge through the water. Concluding to cross the bridge, he cried
+“Arrah!” again, and drove the donkey forward with one blow of his stick.
+But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten thing gave way,
+and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch. The donkey's legs were
+broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry,
+had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water on to the
+paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a moment
+it was dead.
+
+At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
+called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.
+And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed to pity
+him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
+arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
+dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the
+man with bitter reproaches. “Allah blot out your name, you thief!” she
+cried. “You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself,
+you dog of a Nazarene!”
+
+This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl
+to hold her peace. “Silence, you young wanton!” he cried, in a voice
+of indignation. “Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
+trouble?”
+
+It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a
+renegade from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his
+father and his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's
+face, and said, “You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not
+be a good man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard when
+your own children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in
+their cradles, before they can speak to you to curse you.”
+
+Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
+about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
+sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
+be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!
+
+He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice
+to part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell,
+and that was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost
+everything. And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved
+Naomi, and she clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him
+walk humbly before God, for God was great.
+
+Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased his
+cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet
+lighter spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow of
+the town walls. It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted by a
+white flag; and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out to
+the entrance. He was a poor, miserable creature--ragged, dirty, and with
+dishevelled hair--and, seeing Israel's eyes upon him, he began to talk
+in some wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only a fierce
+jabber of sounds that had no words in them, and of words that had no
+meaning. The poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught he was
+counted a holy man among his people, and put to live in this place,
+which was the tomb of a dead saint--though not more dead to the ways of
+life was he who lay under the floor than he who lived above it. The
+man continued his wild jabber as long as Israel's eyes were on him, and
+Israel dropped two coins into his hand and passed on.
+
+Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God's creatures.
+And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type and
+sign of how her soul was smitten.
+
+On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company of
+his people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey.
+And then, while they walked some paces together before parting, and the
+prophet talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying in the prison at
+Shawan (for he had heard of them from Israel), Israel himself mentioned
+Naomi.
+
+“My father,” he said, “there is something that I have not told you.”
+
+“Tell it now, my son,” said the Mahdi.
+
+“I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.
+You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,
+for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone, and so she is
+very near and dear to me. But she is in the land of silence and in the
+land of night. Nothing can she see, and nothing hear, and never has
+her voice opened the curtains of the air, for she is blind and dumb and
+deaf.”
+
+“Merciful Allah!” cried the Mahdi.
+
+“Ah! is her state so terrible? I thought you would think it so. Yes, for
+all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature of the fields that
+knows not God.”
+
+“Allah preserve her!” cried the Mahdi.
+
+“And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me in the
+vision, and my soul trembles for her soul. But if God has washed me with
+water should not she also be clean?”
+
+“God knows,” said the Mahdi. “He gives no rewards for repentance.”
+
+“But listen!” said Israel. “In a vision of death her mother saw her, and
+she was afflicted no more. No, for she could see, and hear, and speak.
+Man of God, will it come to pass?”
+
+“God is good,” said the Mahdi. “He needs that no man should teach Him
+pity.”
+
+“But I love her,” cried Israel, “and I vowed to her mother to guard her.
+She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has
+no freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will
+have mercy?”
+
+The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, “The Lord sees all. Go your
+way in trust. Farewell!”
+
+“Farewell!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+
+
+ISRAEL'S return home was an experience at all points the reverse of his
+going abroad. He had seven dollars in the pocket of his waistband on
+setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred and more with which he
+had started from Tetuan. His men had gone on before him and told their
+story. So the people whom he came upon by the way either ignored him or
+jeered at him, and not one that on his coming had run to do him honour
+now stepped aside that he might pass.
+
+Two days after leaving Fez he came again to Wazzan. Women were going
+home from market by the side of their camels, and charcoal-burners were
+riding back to the country on the empty burdas of their mules. It
+was nigh upon sunset when Israel entered the town, and so exactly
+was everything the same that he could almost have tricked himself and
+believed that scarce two minutes had passed since he had left it. There
+at the fountains were the water-carriers waiting with their water-skins,
+and there in the market-place sat the women and children with their
+dishes of soup; there were the men by the booths with their pipes ready
+charged with keef, and there was the mooddin in the minaret, looking
+out over the plain. Everything was the same save one thing, and that
+concerned Israel himself. No Grand Shereef stood waiting to exchange
+horses with him, and no black guard led him through the town. Footsore
+and dirty, covered with dust, and tired, he walked through the
+streets alone. And when presently the voice rang out overhead, and the
+breathless town broke instantly into bubbles of sounds--the tinkling
+of the bells of the water-carriers, the shouts of the children, and the
+calls of the men--only one man seemed to see him and know him. This was
+an Arab, wearing scarcely enough rags to cover his nakedness, who was
+bathing his hot cheeks in water which a water-carrier was pouring into
+his hands, and he lifted his glistening face as Israel passed, and
+called him “Dog!” and “Jew!” and commanded him to uncover his feet.
+
+Israel slept that night in one of the three squalid fondaks of Wazzan
+inhabited by the Jews. His room was a sort of narrow box, in a square
+court of many such boxes, with a handful of straw shaken over the earth
+floor for a bed. On the doorpost the figure of a hand was painted in
+red, and over the lintel there was a rude drawing of a scorpion, with an
+imprecation written under it that purported to be from the mouth of
+the Prophet Joshua, son of Nun. If the charm kept evil spirits from the
+place of Israel's rest, it did not banish good ones. Israel slept in
+that poor bed as he had never slept under the purple canopy of his own
+chamber, and all night long one angel form seemed to hover over him.
+It was Naomi. He could see her clearly. They were together in a little
+cottage somewhere. The house was a mean one, but jasmine and marjoram
+and pinks and roses grew outside of it, and love grew inside. And Naomi!
+How bright were her eyes, for they could see! Yes, and her ears could
+hear, and her tongue could speak!
+
+Two days after Israel left Wazzan he was back in the bashalic of Tetuan.
+Each night he had dreamt the same dream, and though he knew each morning
+when he awoke with a sigh that his dream was only a reflection of his
+dead wife's vision, yet he could not help but think of it the long day
+through. He tried to remember if he had ever seen the cottage with his
+waking eyes, and where he had seen it, and to recall the voice of Naomi
+as he had heard it in his dream, that he might know if it was the same
+as he used to think he heard when he sat by her in his stolen watches of
+the night while she lay asleep. Sometimes when he reflected he thought
+he must be growing childish, so foolish was his joy in looking forward
+to the night--for he had almost grown in love with it--that he might
+dream his dream again.
+
+But it was a dear, delicious folly, for it helped him to bear the
+troubles of his journey, and they were neither light nor few. After
+passing through El Kasar he had been robbed and stripped both of his
+small remaining moneys and the better part of his clothes by a gang of
+ruffians who had followed him out of the town. Then a good woman--the
+old wife, turned into the servant of a Moor who had married a young
+one--had taken pity on his condition and given him a disused Moorish
+jellab. His misfortune had not been without its advantage. Being forced
+to travel the rest of his way home in the disguise of a Moor, he had
+heard himself discussed by his own people when they knew nothing of his
+presence. Every evil that had befallen them had been attributed to him.
+Ben Aboo, their Basha, was a good, humane man, who was often driven to
+do that which his soul abhorred. It was Israel ben Oliel who was their
+cruel taxmaster.
+
+When Israel was within a day's journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge fell
+upon the country. A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud from
+the direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade of grass
+that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it
+had passed was as black and barren as a lava stream. The farmers
+were impoverished, and the poorer people made beggars. Even this last
+disaster they charged in their despair to Israel, for Allah was now
+cursing them for Israel's sake. They were the same people that had
+thrust their presents upon him when he was setting out.
+
+At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl of
+buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water. She gave him
+a dish of zummetta--barley roasted like coffee--and inquired if he
+was going on to Tetuan. He told her yes, and she asked if his home was
+there. And when he answered that it was, she looked at him again, and
+said in a moving way, “Then Allah help you, brother.”
+
+“Why me more than another, sister?” said Israel.
+
+“Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man,” said the old
+woman. “And that is the sort he is hardest upon.”
+
+Israel faltered and said, “He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean--”
+
+“Who else but Israel the Jew?” said she, and then added, as by a sudden
+afterthought, “But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has
+stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this
+poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been--so
+wise and powerful!”
+
+Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame,
+he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him. “They
+tell me,” he said, “that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has
+devils.”
+
+“Blind and dumb, poor soul,” said the old woman; “but Allah has pity for
+the afflicted--he is taking her away.”
+
+Israel rose. “Away?”
+
+“She is ill since her father went to Fez.”
+
+“Ill?”
+
+“Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying.”
+
+Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered,
+and fled out of the hut. Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying
+with dreams--billing and cooing with his own fancies--fondling and
+nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and damned
+for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them that poor men's
+souls might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale
+face of Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had
+used to laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?
+
+With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running at his
+utmost velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting his
+imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist against the
+sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering to himself in awe.
+
+Would God not hear his prayer? God knew the child was very near and dear
+to him, and also that he was a lonely man. “Have pity on a lonely man,
+O God!” he whispered. “Let me keep my child; take all else that I have,
+everything, no matter what! Only let me keep her--yes, just as she is,
+let me have her still! Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I am
+humble, and ask that alone.”
+
+On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down on
+his uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust, he
+prayed this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.
+
+When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening under the setting
+sun. Then he thought of his Moorish jellab, and looked at himself, and
+saw that he was returning home like a beggar; and he remembered with
+what splendour he had started out. Should he wait for the darkness, and
+creep into his house under the cover of it? If the thought had occurred
+an hour before he must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of
+every face in Tetuan than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now
+that he was so near he was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon
+to learn the truth he dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro on the
+heath outside the town, paltering with himself, struggling with himself,
+eating out his heart with eagerness, trying to believe that he was
+waiting for the night.
+
+The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening with
+thick stars, Israel passed unknown through the Moorish gate, which was
+still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square. At the gate
+of the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked, and demanded entrance in
+the name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards who kept it fell back at sight
+of him with looks of consternation.
+
+“Israel!” cried one, and dropped his lantern.
+
+Israel whispered, “Keep your tongue between your teeth!” and hurried on.
+
+At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again,
+but more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and,
+seeing his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.
+
+“Habeebah!” he cried, and he knocked once more.
+
+Then Ali came to the door. “What Moorish man are you?” cried Ali,
+pushing him back as he pressed forward.
+
+“Ali! Hush! It is I--Israel.”
+
+Then Ali knew him and cried, “God save us! What has happened?”
+
+“What has happened here?” said Israel. “Naomi,” he faltered, “what of
+her?”
+
+“Then you have heard?” said Ali. “Thank God, she is now well.”
+
+Israel laughed--his laugh was like a scream.
+
+“More than that--a strange thing has befallen her since you went away,”
+ said Ali.
+
+“What?”
+
+“She can hear!”
+
+“It's a lie!” cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to
+the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and
+saying, “Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know
+what I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true,
+there is no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no
+fiend in hell need envy me.”
+
+And Ali answered through his tears, “It is true, my father--come and
+see.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+
+
+WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story
+that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered
+from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in
+the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her
+father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and
+the book was in her hands.
+
+“Look at her, poor child,” said Fatimah. “See, she thinks he will come
+as usual. God bless her sweet innocent face!”
+
+On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made
+her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife
+of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly
+through the courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from
+there to the gate of the prison.
+
+The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither
+did she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly,
+and seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and
+silent; she did not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of
+submission that was very touching to see.
+
+“Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel,” said Fatimah. “How
+long will she wait, poor darling?”
+
+On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to
+restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands
+were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.
+
+It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel's fears on
+setting out from home had been right after all. And making his own
+reckoning with Naomi's condition, Ali went off for the only doctor
+living in Tetuan--a Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading
+to the western gate. This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her
+pulse, touched her throbbing forehead, with difficulty examined her
+tongue, and pronounced her illness to be fever. He gave some homely
+directions as to her treatment--for he despaired of administering drugs
+to such a one as she was--and promised to return the next day.
+
+About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood
+constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water;
+Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner
+outside the door of her room.
+
+The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but
+there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very
+solemnly, and said, “I will come again after two days more, when the
+fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out of
+Tangier along with me!”
+
+Meantime, Naomi's delirium continued. It was gentle as her own
+spirit tent there was this that was strange and eerie about her
+unconsciousness--that whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its
+dark cell must have been mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke
+without ceasing throughout the time of her reason's vanquishment. Not
+that her poor tongue in its trouble uttered speech such as those that
+heard could follow and understand, but only a restless babble of empty
+sounds, yet with tones of varying feeling, sometimes of gladness,
+sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of remonstrance, and sometimes of
+entreaty.
+
+All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat
+together by her bedside, holding each other's hands like little children
+in great fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness
+outside the door, listening in terror to the silvery young voice that
+had never echoed in that house before. This was the night when Israel,
+sleeping at the squalid inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi's
+voice in his dreams.
+
+At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone,
+and away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the
+fondak, which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his
+wet eyes in the pitiless sunlight for Israel's caravan that should soon
+come. On the first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he
+came upon Israel's men returning without him, and telling their lying
+story that he had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and
+was coming behind them penniless.
+
+Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.
+That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had
+fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad
+faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. “Liars and thieves!”
+ he cried; “tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go
+straight to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all
+whipped through the streets for plundering my master.”
+
+The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a
+mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no
+more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them
+concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by
+right of nature on the tongues of Moors--they said and knew nothing.
+
+While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of
+Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the
+wise leech shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was
+sinking--in plain words, she was dying--and if her father did not come
+before the morrow he would come too late to find her alive.
+
+Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to
+spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly
+become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was,
+therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a
+Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. “The Imam is good, the Imam
+is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?” “Nay, but our Sidi holds
+not with the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our
+lord is our sultan, our lord is our king.” “Shoof! What is Sidi against
+paradise? And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a
+follower of Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her
+lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn
+everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum.” “But, alack! how can the poor
+girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?” “Then how can she say
+the Shemang either?”
+
+Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and
+silenced both the bondwomen: “The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is
+a thief.” There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his
+own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp
+in the days of the Governor's marriage. This person was an old negro,
+bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still
+partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated
+slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and
+willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he
+was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say,
+and not too much of either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance
+there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that
+this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark
+cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar,
+he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through
+thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive generations
+of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither and thither
+among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words, and often meat
+and drink of his meagre substance.
+
+Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his
+own great trouble, he tried away for him.
+
+“Father,” cried the lad, “does it not say in the good book that the
+prayer of a righteous man availeth much?”
+
+“It does, my son,” said the Taleb “You have truth. What then?”
+
+“Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover,” said Ali.
+
+It was a sweet instance of simple faith. The old black Taleb dismissed
+his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled
+to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her
+through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and
+then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and
+a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and
+prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
+
+The negro's prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything;
+it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away
+and might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three
+days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was
+blind and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her.
+She was his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man.
+He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were
+gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart would be
+broken and his very soul in peril.
+
+Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb
+angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole
+of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager
+and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down
+mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.
+
+And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
+tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by
+the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and
+Naomi lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
+features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
+restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.
+
+The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
+“El hamdu l'Illah!” (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
+the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete
+the miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and
+wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
+Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
+were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
+breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept
+softly through the night and has just awakened in the morning.
+
+Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment
+of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was
+a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And
+then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while
+the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle
+hand and covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of
+dread.
+
+So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and
+they were shouting “Hallelujah!” with one voice, thinking only that
+she who had been dead to them was alive again. But the old Taleb cried
+eagerly, “Hush! my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing!
+I know what it is--who knows so well as I? Once I was deaf, my children,
+but now I hear. Listen! The maiden has had fever--fever of the brain.
+Listen! A watery humour had gathered in her head. It has gone, it has
+flowed away. Now she will hear. Listen, for it is I that know it--who
+knows it so well as I? Yes; she will be no longer deaf. Her ears will be
+opened. She will hear. Once she was living in a land of silence; now
+she is coming into the land of sound. Blessed be God, for He has wrought
+this wondrous work. God is great! God is mighty! Praise the merciful God
+for ever! El hamdu l'Illah!”
+
+And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb's story seemed to be,
+it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning in
+a slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath, Naomi turned
+her face full upon him; and when the black women in their ready faith,
+joined in his shouts of praise, she turned her face towards them also;
+and wherever a voice sounded in the room she inclined her head towards
+it as one who knew the direction of the sounds, and also as one who was
+in fear of them.
+
+But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one
+thing only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had
+been deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now
+heard their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
+laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
+black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
+around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in
+answer to his old Taleb's prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb's
+cries of warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen
+see the old man's uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes,
+so overpowered were they with their delight, so startled and so joy
+drunken. But over their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing
+shrieks. They were the cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror
+at the first sounds that had reached her of human voices. Her face
+was blanched, her eyelids were trembling, her lips were restless, her
+nostrils quivered, her whole being seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of
+dread, and, in the horrible disarray of all her sensations her brain,
+on its wakening from its dolorous sleep of three delirious days, was
+tottering and reeling at its welcome in this world of noise.
+
+Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their
+peace in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the
+clamour of tongues.
+
+It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in
+the jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
+entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
+remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
+was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance
+was changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No
+longer was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither
+was it as the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot
+and perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and
+as Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no
+cheer did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away
+from her when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears
+with terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then
+his sight grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick
+mist seemed to cover everything, and through the dense waves of
+semi-consciousness he heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice
+coming to him as from far away.
+
+“My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver!
+It is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear
+father has come back to her!”
+
+Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
+Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
+head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
+Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
+hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
+dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
+more than he had asked or deserved!
+
+Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob,
+yet uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only
+holding Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face.
+And the black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb
+in that great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose
+house had come the wonderful work that God had wrought.
+
+No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face, in
+joy over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had
+known him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she
+continued to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father
+and she loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it
+was also because he alone was silent of all that were about her.
+
+When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears,
+that, coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man
+was never heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and
+darkling as the air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit
+trembled in a new world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a
+little dark chamber, a vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul
+was ever passing to and fro, asking for news of the world without?
+Through seventeen dark and silent years the soul of Naomi had been
+passing and repassing within its beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying
+daily and hourly, “Watchman, what of the world?” At length it had found
+an answer, and it was terrified. The world had spoken to her soul and
+its voice was like the reverberations of a subterranean cavern, strange
+and deep and awful.
+
+In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the
+room, all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.
+
+Ali was saying, “Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
+returned yesterday, and said--”
+
+And the bondwomen were crying, “Sidi, you were right when you went
+away!” “Yes, the dear child was ill!” “Oh, how she missed you when
+you were gone.” “She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of
+Tetuan--”
+
+And the old Taleb was muttering, “Master, it is all by God's mercy. We
+prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway
+to her spirit as well.”
+
+Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi's
+ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned
+them out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of
+Naomi's fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her
+by the solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment
+of a soul.
+
+And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the
+door of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women
+were calling to their children without, and the children were still
+shouting in their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested
+her head against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put
+her arms about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart
+yearned to speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear.
+Let it be but one word, only one, that she might know her father's
+voice--for she had never once heard it--and answer it with a smile.
+
+“Daughter! My dearest! My darling.”
+
+Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
+tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
+years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not
+speak lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that
+would break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation.
+It was terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence,
+hardly moving, scarcely breathing--a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
+holding Naomi in his arms.
+
+It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
+In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
+through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
+Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
+little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
+hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
+Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
+Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and
+women and children--country Arabs and Barbers--were squatting around the
+charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while the
+ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently the
+wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the
+streets came to an end; the “Balak” of the ass-driver was no more heard,
+the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the fires on
+the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts of the
+shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew the air
+until all was still.
+
+At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
+released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh she
+dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she
+would have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in
+thankfulness to God, that He was making the way of her great journey
+easy out of the land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke
+over the town. Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in
+the air, which had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and
+long and terrible. First from the direction of Marteel, over the four
+miles which divide Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea
+sends before trouble comes to the land--a deep moan as of waters falling
+from the sky. Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens
+on the gate called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to
+the port. Then came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down
+the gorges of the Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches
+far away to Kitan. Last of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied
+themselves over the town, and the rain fell in floods on the roof of the
+house and on the pavement of the patio, and leapt up again in great loud
+drops, making a noise to the ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a
+hidden multitude. Thus sound after sound broke over the darkness of the
+night in a thousand awful voices, now near, now far, now loud, now
+low, now long, now short, now rising, now falling, now rushing, now
+running--a mighty tumult and a fearsome anarchy.
+
+At last Naomi's terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her
+body as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of
+touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued
+to refer all sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out
+her arms before her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in
+her palms; and at the sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to
+protect her head.
+
+Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom.
+He yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
+words of love, gentle words of hope.
+
+“Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain;
+it is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They
+shall not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There,
+there, my little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you.
+Fear not, my child, fear not!”
+
+Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears,
+but, alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which
+moaned about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again
+and again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the
+solace of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of
+the storm.
+
+Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its
+fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise
+it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with
+the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed--the blessing of a
+pathway to his daughter's soul--a misfortune had come as well. What was
+it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
+And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
+silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but
+a circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
+shrieked and moved around her?
+
+Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror,
+and smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at
+length, in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens
+seemed rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell
+into a long unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer,
+but wept above her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name--
+
+“Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing!
+nothing! Listen! It is gone! Gone!”
+
+With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
+soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
+not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
+Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in
+ashes!
+
+Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
+grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
+could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
+she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the
+bars which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came
+dancing out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down
+at her knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his
+voice through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of
+Jacob, and rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.
+
+If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
+foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
+God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
+God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
+wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
+she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
+knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
+was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
+than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
+he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought
+this evil upon him!
+
+But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
+manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
+breathless quiet.
+
+And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed
+to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing
+could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay
+over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was
+back in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices
+which had startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been
+nothing but an evil dream.
+
+In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
+with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,
+and said within himself, “It was her baptism. Now she will walk the
+world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the
+Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!”
+
+Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of
+the room on tiptoe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+
+
+With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
+had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she
+had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
+disrobed.
+
+It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her
+new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though
+she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached.
+They led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to
+the great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no
+more as of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see
+them through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on
+her lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took
+her to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod
+the familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did
+she exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty
+winds about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the
+world unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and
+heard the breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her
+ears. They gave Ali's harp into her hands, the same that she had played
+so strangely at the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again
+as on that day did she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound
+such as none had heard before and none could follow, but only touched
+and fumbled them with deftless fingers that knew no music.
+
+She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
+pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
+communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
+kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
+beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.
+
+Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
+of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years
+had bleated and barked “Beelzebub!” And if God in His mercy had taken
+the angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful,
+He had given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet
+human daughter, however helpless and frail.
+
+Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content. But
+day by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange
+sinkings of the heart. Naomi's frailty appeared to be not only of the
+body but also of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly
+fallen asleep. She betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her
+lips; no thought for herself or for others seemed to animate her. She
+neither laughed nor wept. When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not
+stretch out her arms as she had done before to draw down his head to her
+lips. Calmly, silently, sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day,
+without feeling and without thought--a beautiful statue of flesh and
+blood.
+
+What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself
+knows; but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first
+delight in the new gift with which God had gifted her.
+
+To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
+walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
+childhood--the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink, the
+thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered flowers
+in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for it was
+the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle, and
+under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
+Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
+direction.
+
+On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths
+of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the
+sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a
+tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the
+Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there--but by what
+impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had withdrawn her hand
+from his hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it
+took him to stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had
+sunk into the earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from
+his sight.
+
+Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,
+but she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would
+answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her
+laugh.
+
+“Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?”
+
+But no sound came back to him.
+
+Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a
+voice of fear.
+
+“Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?”
+
+Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor
+the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.
+
+Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
+left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
+and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly,
+until the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and
+deadened the sound of his voice.
+
+Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
+length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
+brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom.
+She was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had
+sat herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were
+still wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old
+olive-tree over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues;
+the little family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny
+creature of the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging
+itself on the low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a
+sheep of solemn face--gaunt and grim and ancient--was standing and
+palpitating before her. Bees were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing,
+the light wind was whispering, and cattle were lowing in the distance.
+The air of that sweet spot in that sweet hour was musical with every
+sweet sound of the earth and sky, and fragrant with all the wild odours
+of the wood.
+
+“My darling,” cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
+he paused and looked at her again.
+
+The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the
+light that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her
+head was held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were
+flushed. She had pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair
+had fallen over her neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear,
+and the other strayed among the plants that grew on the bank beside her.
+She seemed to be listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and
+radiant joy, a pure and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her
+beautiful face. It was almost as though she believed that everything she
+heard with the great new gift which God had given her was speaking to
+her, and bidding her welcome and offering her love; as if the garrulous
+old olive over her head were stretching down his arms to sport with her
+hair, and pattering; “Kiss me, little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss
+me! kiss me!”--as if the rippling river at her feet were laughing and
+crying, “Catch me, naked feet! catch me, catch me!” as if the thrush
+on the bough were singing, “Where from, sunny locks? where from? where
+from?”--as if the young squirrel were chirping, “I'm not afraid, not
+afraid, not afraid!” and as if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly,
+“Pat me, little maiden! you may, you may!”
+
+“God bless her beautiful face!” cried Israel. “She listens with every
+feature and every line of it.”
+
+It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
+forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever--in
+the voices of children at play--in the bleat of the goat--in the
+footsteps of them she loved--in the hiss and whirr of her mother's old
+spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work--and in Ali's harp, when
+he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.
+
+But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the
+ground first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what
+change was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of
+sound, the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself
+nor any one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a
+beautiful and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to
+give herself up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music
+she took most pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened
+to with a simple and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her
+joy, and the joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air
+wheresoever she went.
+
+There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
+beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah's homely ditties were
+all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times
+when she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the
+caravan, telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing
+cypress, and liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales
+which the good soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties
+whose silence was the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love
+tore the veil of their chastity.
+
+But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be
+the yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call
+down love out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a
+favourite song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had
+learned it in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she
+sang it over the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not
+hear. Naomi knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother's song at
+last, though silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her
+chief and dear delight.
+
+     O, where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+
+In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song, when
+Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it, and the simple
+silent arts she used, being mute and blind, to show her pleasure while
+it lasted, and to ask for it again when it was done, were very sweet and
+touching.
+
+And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves
+that child most among many children that most is helpless, so the
+earth-mother of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes were
+blind. Thus she seemed to hear many things that are unheard by the rest
+of the human family. It is only a dim echo of the outer world that the
+ears of men are allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow of the
+outer world that the eyes of men are allowed to see; but the ears of
+Naomi seemed to hear all.
+
+There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts, and a
+third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another in keenness
+even as one sight differs from another in strength. And all the earth
+is full of voices, and everything that moves upon the face of it has its
+sound; but the bird hears that which is unheard of the beast, and the
+beast hears that which is unheard of men. But Naomi appeared to hear all
+that is heard of each.
+
+Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only, with
+nothing that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground but
+she dropped her face, and nothing flew in the sky but she lifted her
+eyes. And whereas before the coming of her great gift her face had been
+all feeling, and she seemed to feel the sunset, and to feel the sky, and
+to feel the thunder and the light, now her face was all hearing, and
+her whole body seemed to hear, for she was like a living soul floating
+always in a sea of sound.
+
+Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,
+building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with which
+God had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was to her then,
+what the sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was with its roar,
+and what the face of man was, and the eyes of woman, none could know,
+and neither could she tell, for her soul was not linked to other
+souls--soul to soul, in the chains of speech.
+
+And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,
+beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words, and that
+words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill, made their mark
+on the soul that listened to them. So he continued to read to her out of
+the Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
+custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to
+say, “Fool! she hears, but does she understand?” he remembered how he
+had read to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself,
+“Shall I have less faith now that she can hear?”
+
+But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's
+soul at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to
+her it seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern
+and gets back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her
+of the sky, that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the
+great deeps to measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was
+green as the fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour?
+And sometimes as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words
+themselves which he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the
+notes which Ali struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at
+her feet.
+
+Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, “Let the
+Lord find His own way to her spirit.” So he continued to speak with
+her as often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that
+concerned their household, as well as of the greater things it was good
+for her soul to know.
+
+It was a touching sight--the lonely man, the outcast among his people,
+talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling her of
+God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that his
+words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
+to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
+judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.
+
+Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on
+her ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was
+she putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering
+them, imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace
+for her spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would,
+he could never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He
+clung to all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor
+and his pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also--the
+false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before
+the eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.
+
+It was some three weeks after his return from his journey, and the
+fierce blaze of the sun continued. The storm that had broken over the
+town had left no results of coolness or moisture, for the ground had
+been baked hard, and the rain had been too short and swift to penetrate
+it. And what the withering heat had spared of green leaf and shrub a
+deadlier blight had swept away. The locusts had lately come up from
+the south and the east, in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on
+millions, making the air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue
+sky. They had swept the country of its verdure, and left a trail of
+desolation behind them. The grass was gone, the bark of the olives and
+almonds was stripped away, and the bare trees had the look of winter.
+
+The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.
+Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds. A
+Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls of the
+town. It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town's
+six gates. The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on
+the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind. It
+was a horrible place.
+
+The skinny dogs of the town soon found it. And after these scavengers
+of the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of
+bones, they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in
+search of water. By this time there was none that they could come at
+nearer than the sea, and that was salt. Nevertheless, they lapped it, so
+burning was their thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town. Then
+the people hunted them and killed them.
+
+Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to
+death on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult of
+the streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat,
+that went before her. The goat was grown old, but it was still her
+constant companion and also it was now her guide and guardian, for the
+little dumb creature seemed to know that she was frail and helpless. And
+so it was that she was crossing the Sok el Foki, a market of the town,
+and hearkening only to the patter of the feet of the goat going in
+front, when suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps hurrying towards her,
+with shouts and curses that were loud and deep. She stood in fear on the
+spot where she was, and no eyes had she to see what happened next, and
+she had none save the goat to tell her.
+
+But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward from
+the hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude of men and boys.
+And flying in its despair, it bit out wildly at whatever lay in its way,
+and Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight in front of it. Then she
+must have fallen before it, but instantly the goat flung itself across
+the dog's open jaws, and butted at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill
+cries of terror.
+
+The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if
+the madness of the monster shrank before it. But the people came down
+with their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat and
+felled it, and fled away. The people followed it, and then Naomi was
+alone in the market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.
+
+Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father's house in the
+Mellah, and her dying champion with her. And out of this hard chance,
+and not out of Israel's teaching, Naomi was first to learn what life is
+and what is death. She felt the goat with her hands, and as she did so
+her fingers shook. Then she lifted it to its feet, and when they slipped
+from under it she raised her white face in wonder. Again she lifted it,
+and made strange noises at its ear; but when it did not answer with its
+bleat her lips began to tremble. Then she listened for its breathing,
+and felt for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor
+the other to her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast. At length she
+fondled it in her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave
+back no sign of motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose
+at her heart. At last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat
+opened its heavy eyes upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her
+hand. With that last farewell the brave heart of the little creature
+broke, and it stretched itself and died.
+
+Israel saw it all. His heart bled to see the parting in silence between
+those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead than the
+human soul that was left alive. He tried to put the goat from Naomi's
+arms, saying, “It was only a goat, my child; think of it no more,”
+ though it smote him with pain to say it, for had not the creature given
+its life for her life? And where, O God, was the difference between
+them? But Naomi clung to the goat, and her throat swelled and her bosom
+fluttered, and her whole body panted, and it was almost as if her soul
+were struggling to burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might
+speak and ask and know.
+
+“Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?”
+
+Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
+thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, “It is dead, my
+child--the goat is dead.”
+
+But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in
+a dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that
+hour had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken
+of death had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that
+he had spoken of life, and of the little things which concerned their
+household? And if Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these--if
+she had not pondered and interpreted them--if they had fallen on her ear
+only as voices in a dark cavern--only as dead birds on a dead sea--what
+of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
+and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?
+
+Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
+great gift a mockery?
+
+Israel's feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself
+of God's mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand?
+Only a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi
+had heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked
+and cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer
+deaf. Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication
+and why had He received his prayer?
+
+But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi's new
+gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.
+
+“Give her speech, O Lord!” he cried, “speech that shall lift her above
+the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know!
+Give her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+
+
+AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts of
+the young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his
+hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will
+of Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled
+the land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had
+unjustly extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had
+returned double--once for the tax and once for the excess; and if any
+man, having been unjustly taxed for the Kaid's tribute, had given
+bond on his lands for his debt and been cast into the Kasbah and
+died, without ransoming them, then to his children he had returned
+fourfold--double for the lands and double for the death. Israel had done
+this continually, and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out
+of his own purse, so that from being a rich man he had fallen within
+a month to the condition of a poor one, for what was one man's wealth
+among so many? Yet no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity and
+contempt, for the people that had taken his money had thanked the Kaid
+for it, who, according to their supposals, had called on him to correct
+what he had done amiss. And with Ben Aboo himself he had fared no
+better, for the Basha was provoked to anger with him when he heard from
+Katrina of the good money that he had been casting away in pity for the
+poor.
+
+“What have I told you a score of times?” said the woman. “That man has
+mints of money.”
+
+“My money, burn his grandfather,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world's reckoning. When he
+lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done the devil's
+work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before he had made
+more powerful. People who had showed him lip-service when he was thought
+to be rich did not conceal the joy they had that he was brought down
+so near to be a beggar. Upstarts, who owed their promotion to his
+intercession, found in his charities an easy handle given them to be
+insolent, for, by carrying to Katrina their secret messages of his mercy
+to the people, they brought things at length to such a pass between him
+and the Kaid that Ben Aboo openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not
+once or twice but many times.
+
+“And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?”
+ said Ben Aboo. “Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough
+to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones
+to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity
+you've got too much of it, I say.”
+
+“The people are poor, Lord Basha,” said Israel; “they are famishing, and
+they have no refuge save with God and with us.”
+
+“Tut!” cried Ben Aboo. “A famine in my bashalic! Let no man dare to say
+so. The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness, mistress Israel.
+You poor old grandmother! I always suspected,” he added, facing about
+upon his attendants, “I always suspected that I was served by a woman.
+Now I am sure of it.”
+
+Israel felt the indignity. He had given good proof of his manhood in the
+past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo between
+him and his people, making him rich by his extortions, keeping him safe
+in his seat, and thereby saving him from the wooden jellab which Abd
+er-Rahman, the Sultan, kept for Kaids that could not pay. But Israel
+mastered his anger and held his peace.
+
+Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour of
+the Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him in
+the streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor, thinking
+himself accountable to God for their sufferings. He could have crushed
+the better part of his insulters to death in his brawny arms, but he was
+slow to anger and long-suffering. All the heed he paid to their insults
+was to do his good work with more secrecy.
+
+Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised
+him on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this
+difficulty. When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well
+down over his black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his
+face. In this innocent disguise he went out night after night for many
+nights among the poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters of the
+grain markets near the Bab Ramooz. How he bore himself being there,
+with what harmless deceptions he unburdened his soul by stealth, what
+guileless pretences he made that he might restore to the poor the money
+that had been stolen from them, would be a long story to tell.
+
+“Who are you?” he was asked a hundred times.
+
+“A friend,” he answered
+
+“Who told you of our trouble?”
+
+“Allah has angels,” he would reply.
+
+Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw the
+very children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention
+of his name. And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people whisper
+together and say, “He is a saint. He comes from the Kabar at nightfall.
+Allah sends him to help poor men who have been in the clutches of Israel
+the Jew.”
+
+Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for
+good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask
+nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it
+was the breath of angels.
+
+One day, about a month after his return from his journey, when he
+was near to the end of his substance, a message came to him that the
+followers of Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison at Shawan.
+Their relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now, but the
+plague of the locust had fallen on the bread-winners, and they had no
+more bread to send. Israel concluded that it was his duty to succour
+them. From a just view of his responsibilities he had gone on to a
+morbid one. If in the Judgment the blood of the people of Absalam cried
+to God against him, he himself, and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into
+hell.
+
+Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began to take
+a view of his condition. Then he saw, to his dismay, that little as he
+had thought he possessed, even less remained to him out of the wreck of
+his riches. Only one thing he had still, but that was a thing so dear to
+his heart that he had never looked to part with it. It was the casket
+of his dead wife's jewels. Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to
+sell it now, and, taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept
+it--a closet that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart
+for ever, but in his house no more.
+
+Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the
+doorpost, and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour
+came out to them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried
+air itself had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay
+on everything. But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate
+shawls and gauzy haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red
+slippers, and many dainty things such as women love. And to him that
+came again after ten heavy years they were as a dream of her that had
+worn them when she was young that now was dead when she was beautiful
+that now was in the grave.
+
+“Ah me, ah me! Ruth! My Ruth!” he murmured. “This was her shawl. I
+brought it from Wazzan. . . . And these slippers--they came from Rabat.
+Poor girl, poor girl! . . . . This sash, too, it used to be yellow and
+white. How well I remember the first time she wore it! She had put it
+over her head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman. But her
+brown curls fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them. And
+then she laughed. My poor dear girl. How happy we were once in spite of
+everything! It is all like yesterday. When I think Ah no, I must think
+no more, I must think no more.”
+
+Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket of
+the jewels where it stood by the wall. With trembling hands he took it
+and opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets, and rings
+and earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering of
+dust. He lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers, and looked at
+them while his eyes grew wet.
+
+“Not for myself,” he murmured, “not for myself would I have sold them,
+not for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of
+worlds!”
+
+All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood
+by his side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks and
+looked serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed, and now at the
+jingling of the jewels she stretched out her hand and took one of
+them from her father's fingers, and feeling it, and finding it to be a
+necklace, she clasped it about her neck and laughed.
+
+At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed. It brought back
+the memory of the day when she danced to her mother's death, decked in
+that same necklace and those same ornaments. More on this head Israel
+could not think and hold to his purpose, so he took the jewels from
+Naomi's neck and returned them to the casket, and hastened away with it
+to a man to whom he designed to sell it.
+
+This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the
+Jews; for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop
+in the Sok el Foki. Israel was moved to go to this person by the
+remembrance of two things, of which either seemed enough for his
+preference--first, that he had bought the jewels of Reuben in the
+beginning, and next, the Reuben had never since ceased to speak of
+them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the gems of Ethiopia and the gold of
+Ophir.
+
+But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy, he
+eyed both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear to his
+covetous and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself in his
+need, and bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction that
+could come to it.
+
+“And what is this that you bring me?” said Reuben languidly.
+
+“A case of jewels,” said Israel, with a downward look.
+
+“Jewels? umph! what jewels?”
+
+“My poor wife's. You know them, Reuben See!”
+
+Israel opened the casket.
+
+“Ah, your wife's. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere.”
+
+“You have seen them here, Reuben.”
+
+“Here?--do you say here?”
+
+“Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago.”
+
+“Sold them to you? Never. I don't remember it. Surely you must be
+mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these.”
+
+Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in
+expressions of contempt.
+
+Israel watched him closely. “Give them back to me,” he said; “I can go
+elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling.”
+
+Reuben's lip straightened instantly. “Wrangling? Who is wrangling,
+brother? You are too impatient, Sidi.”
+
+“I am in haste,” said Israel.
+
+“Ah!”
+
+There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said,
+“The things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with
+them?”
+
+“To buy them,” said Israel.
+
+“_Buy_ them?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“But I don't want them.”
+
+“Are they worth your money?--you don't want that either.”
+
+“Umph!”
+
+A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded to
+examine the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems--the rich onyx,
+the sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the
+topaz, and first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back
+again. And seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers, the
+precious jewels which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist and her white
+neck, Israel could scarcely hold back his hand from snatching them away.
+But how can he that is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his
+twitching hands behind him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of
+Absalam, and when at length Reuben tendered him for the casket one half
+what he had paid for it, he took the money in silence and went his way.
+
+“Five hundred dollars--I can give no more,” Reuben had said.
+
+“Do you say five hundred--five?”
+
+“Five--take it or leave it.”
+
+It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through
+was a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow
+wooden boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a
+shelter from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay
+raisins and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers
+crouched in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous
+straw hats, with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats
+at their feet. Under arcades of dried leaves--made, like desert graves,
+of upright poles and dry branches thrown across--the butchers lay at
+their ease, flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. “Buy! buy!
+buy!” they all shouted together. A dense throng of the poor passed
+between them in torn jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought.
+Asses and mules crushed through amid shouts of “Arrah!” “Arrah!” and
+“Balak!” “Ba-lak!” It was a lively scene, with more than enough of
+bustle and swearing and vociferation.
+
+There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised
+with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of
+sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers
+for penance. “God forgive me,” he muttered, “_God forgive me, God
+forgive me,_” and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer
+approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, “How much?” The merchant
+continued his prayers and did his business at a breath. “(_God forgive
+me_) How much? (_God forgive me_) Four pesetas (_God forgive me_),” and
+round went the restless rosary. “Too much,” said the buyer; “I'll give
+three.” The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, “(_God
+forgive me_) Couldn't take it for as much as you might put in your tooth
+(_God forgive me_); gave four myself (_God forgive me_).” “Then I'll
+leave it, old sweet-tooth,” said the buyer, as he moved away. “Here!
+take it for nothing (_God forgive me_),” cried the merchant after the
+retreating figure. “(_God forgive me_) I'm giving it away (_God forgive
+me_); I'll starve, but no matter (_God forgive me_), you are my brother
+(_God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me_).”
+
+Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the
+prisoners needed--enough for the present and for many days to come. Then
+he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man two
+days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he knew
+full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of Absalam
+receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of
+famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his
+short journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was
+highest, hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to
+escape observation.
+
+His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came
+to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and
+deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+at which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a
+strange procession. It was a procession of penance and petition, asking
+God to wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and
+eating up the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white
+beard, walked side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in
+the folds of his snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews
+and the Imam of the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors
+walked abreast in the burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were
+Berbers were bareheaded also.
+
+“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!” the Imam cried,
+and the Muslims echoed him.
+
+“By the God of Jacob!” the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words
+after him.
+
+“Spare us! Spare the land!” they all cried together. “Send rain to
+destroy the eggs of the locust!” cried the Rabbi. “Else will they
+rise on the ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor; and
+neither fire nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we
+ourselves will die, and our children with us!”
+
+And the Jews cried, “God of Jacob, be our refuge.”
+
+And the Muslims shouted, “Allah, save us!”
+
+It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance--the
+haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of
+sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike,
+walking and praying in the public streets together.
+
+Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved. And being come
+into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the
+motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that,
+if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself
+for what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no
+merit could he make of his poverty.
+
+“Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her,” he thought. Naomi was his hope
+and his salvation. His faith in God was his love of the child. He
+was only bribing God to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he
+journeyed towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for
+them that lay there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their
+miseries, the mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to
+himself. So the nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his
+breast, as if the sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head
+had eyes to peer into his deceiving soul.
+
+The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half
+of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set
+when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of
+the mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and
+vineyards that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners
+and pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from
+Tetuan and his heavy taxings.
+
+“It's Israel ben Oliel,” whispered one.
+
+“God of Jacob, save us!” whispered another.
+
+“He has followed us for the arrears of taxes.”
+
+“We must fly.”
+
+“Let us go home first.”
+
+“No time for that.”
+
+“There is Rachel--”
+
+“She's a woman.”
+
+“But I must warn my son--he has children.”
+
+“Then you are lost. Come on.”
+
+Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress
+and was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within,
+had heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild
+disorder of all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his
+visit, as if they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women
+and young children, gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some
+with faces that were hard and stony, some with faces that were weak and
+simple, some with eyes that were red as blood, all weary with waiting
+and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom of the
+foul place where they were immured together. Shedding tears, beating
+their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour, these unhappy creatures
+of God, who had been great of soul when they sang their death-song with
+the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front, now quaked for
+the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger and cherished in
+bitterness.
+
+By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found
+his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been
+gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one
+impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to
+their knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women
+in front, and mothers holding out their babes before their breasts so
+that he might see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart
+made for pity.
+
+Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head
+was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in
+wonder.
+
+“Arise,” he said; “I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and
+God bless you!”
+
+So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the
+muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.
+
+And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had
+looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged
+within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat.
+For a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained
+their wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his
+new poverty such as his riches had never brought him--no, not once in
+all the days of his old prosperity.
+
+At length an old man--he was a Muslim--looked steadily into Israel's
+face and said, “May the God of Jacob bless thee also, brother!”
+
+After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of
+their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet
+with hearts so different.
+
+“May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!”
+
+“May the child of thy wife be blessed!”
+
+“Stop,” he cried; “stop! you don't know what you are saying.”
+
+He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had
+stung him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips;
+they pushed their children under his hands for his blessing.
+
+“No, no,” he cried; “no, no, no!”
+
+Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town
+like one who was ashamed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+
+
+Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would
+have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered
+into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen
+years in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the
+father, still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since
+her mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears,
+touching her hand for assent, patting her head for approval, and guiding
+her fingers to teach them signs.
+
+Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter,
+more to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her
+sole gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit
+gazed upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and
+without him neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out
+to the world. Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on
+one side of all language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a
+mother with her first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery
+as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with
+her, then only did Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of
+wonder at the strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was
+gone from her, she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's
+close abode, waiting to be born anew.
+
+When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder
+him, as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and
+connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence; or
+as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the
+world, what was to befall him before he returned. He put her from him
+with many tender words, and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead,
+as though to chide her while he blessed her for so much love. But her
+dread increased, and she held to him like a child to its mother's robe.
+And at last, when he unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in
+anger, and after that laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her
+meaning yet had no fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a
+fit of weeping.
+
+“Tut! tut! what is this?” he said. “I will be back to-morrow. Do you
+hear, my child?--tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow.”
+
+When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed
+to increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered,
+and her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood
+she walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside,
+sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to
+herself in noises such as none had heard from her lips before.
+
+The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of
+her heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and
+with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the
+black woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its
+master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her
+fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which
+God Himself might have revealed to her.
+
+“Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?” cried Fatimah.
+
+“Alack! girl,” said Habeebah, “the maid is sickening again.”
+
+And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless
+agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic
+slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she
+awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the
+evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along
+in them like one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter,
+as if she were living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour
+followed long hour, but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her
+bosom heaved, her throat throbbed, her excitement became hysterical.
+Sometimes she broke into wild, inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the
+black women could have believed, in spite of knowledge and reason, that
+she was muttering and speaking words, though with a wild disorder of
+utterance.
+
+At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when
+this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh
+intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened,
+her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear
+nothing save the common sounds of the streets--the shouts of children
+at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and
+again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of
+the Moors--only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct
+murmur of multitudinous life coming and going on every side.
+
+Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears? Was her spiritual power, which
+was unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of
+some terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no
+more than recollection of her father's promise to be back at sunset, and
+mere anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw
+nothing. All that they could do was to wring their hands.
+
+Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would
+serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the
+black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her
+fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went
+out together.
+
+“Where are we going?” said Habeebah.
+
+“Nay, how should I know?” said Fatimah.
+
+“We are fools,” said Habeebah.
+
+It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic
+was sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to
+custom, had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of
+Jews stood under it in earnest and passionate talk. There was a strange
+and bodeful silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond
+the gate was already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was
+empty. No snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their
+circles of squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These
+professors of science and magic and jocularity had never before been
+absent. Even the blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were
+silent. But out of the mosques there came a deep low chant as of many
+voices, from great numbers gathered within.
+
+“The girl was right,” said Fatimah; “something has happened.”
+
+“What is it?” said Habeebah.
+
+“Nay, how should I know that either?” said Fatimah.
+
+“I tell you we are a pair of fools,” said Habeebah.
+
+Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she
+led. Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble
+frame as by an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed,
+and perhaps foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these
+helpless children of God, going whither they knew not and wherefore they
+knew not, save that a fear that was like to madness drew them on.
+
+“Listen! I hear something,” said Fatimah.
+
+“Where?” said Habeebah.
+
+“The way we are going,” said Fatimah.
+
+On and on Naomi passed from street to street. They were the same streets
+whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her
+goat was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither
+altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight
+forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the
+goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar.
+Then she could go no farther.
+
+“Holy saints, what is this?” cried Habeebah.
+
+“Didn't I tell you--the girl heard something?” said Fatimah.
+
+“God's face shine on us,” said Habeebah. “What is all this crowd?”
+
+An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and
+overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It
+was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered
+on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving mass of
+haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare
+shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd of dark figures
+in black gowns and skull-caps. The assemblage was of Jews only--Jews of
+every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher
+in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold
+braid on his new kaftan.
+
+They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
+to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them
+to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the
+Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a
+vacant space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in
+their open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their
+reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country
+Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted
+on the vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently
+impassively, at the vast company of Jews.
+
+And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
+commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
+tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
+their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
+entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
+loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every
+side. It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were
+breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of
+man, and predicting fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which
+had befallen him early or late but they were remembering it, and
+reckoning it up and rejoicing in it. And there was no evil which had
+befallen themselves but they were laying it to his charge.
+
+Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
+penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
+that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
+expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain
+fall instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the
+thick hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in
+the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched
+and scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while
+the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and
+muttering to themselves, “It is written,” they had returned to their
+synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like
+the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know
+for whose cause the evil was upon them.
+
+They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they
+were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance
+of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a
+Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden.
+But they were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had
+been adopted, and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers.
+So three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or
+slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.
+
+The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had
+been unanimous. The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel. He had sold
+himself to their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and
+interest of his own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race
+and nation into exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the
+Kasbah, and yet others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God,
+and God had given him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was
+cursed with devils, a daughter who had been born blind and dumb and
+deaf, and was still without sight and speech.
+
+Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire
+upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this
+devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as
+He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
+Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them,
+never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a
+feast. Not until their judgment went out against him would God's anger
+be appeased. Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the
+blessed rain would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink
+it, and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed. But let them put
+off any longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the
+people, and their evil time would soon come. Within eight-and-twenty
+days the eggs would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other
+days the young locust would have wings. Before the end of those
+seventy-and-six days the harvest of wheat and barley would be yellow to
+the scythe and ripe for the granary, but the locust would cover the face
+of the earth, and there would be no grain to gather. The scythe would be
+idle, the granaries would be empty, the tillers of the ground would come
+hungry into the markets, and they themselves that were town-dwellers
+and tradesmen would be perishing for bread, both they and their children
+with them.
+
+Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
+three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had--contrary to
+Jewish custom--tried and convicted him. God would not let them perish
+for this man's life, and neither would He charge them with his blood.
+
+Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They
+could only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That
+the Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel's sin?
+Ben Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, “It is written.”
+ That to appease God's wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die?
+Convince the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land
+of the Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the
+whole community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.
+
+The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
+Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
+for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
+their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
+Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding
+on to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him--though
+sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful.
+But the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for
+them, upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them;
+but visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.
+
+The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow
+lane of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of
+the oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other
+ground of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find
+it. At length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the
+trial of an Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset.
+Also they had been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a
+capital case must not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So
+they had broken up and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they
+had told the crowds that waited there that judgment had fallen upon
+Israel ben Oliel, but that his doom could not be made known until sunset
+on the following day.
+
+That time was now come. In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood and
+anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday. The
+Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning. They had
+not broken bread since yesterday, for the day that condemned a son of
+Israel to death must be a fast-day to his judges.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open.
+The sentence was not ready yet, but the judges in council were near
+to their decision. At the open door the reader of the synagogue had
+stationed himself, holding a flag in his hand. Under the gate of the
+Mellah a second messenger was standing, so placed that he could see the
+movement of the flag. If the flag fell, the sentence would be “death,”
+ and the man under the gate would carry the tidings to the people
+gathered in the market-place. Then the three-and-twenty judges would
+come in procession and tell what steps had been taken that the doom
+pronounced might be carried into effect.
+
+Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger which
+seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals of a few minutes
+to glance back towards the Mellah gate.
+
+If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight--these
+children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs and
+vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking and
+acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years
+before; again judging it expedient that one man should die rather than
+the whole people be brought to destruction; again probing their crafty
+heads, if not their hearts, for an artifice whereby their scapegoat
+might be killed by the hand of their enemy; children indeed, for all
+that some of their heads were bald, and some of their beards were
+grizzled, and some of their faces were wrinkled and hard and fierce;
+little children of God writhing in the grip of their great trouble.
+
+Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings
+of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led
+her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching
+ears had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness,
+filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought,
+of great and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher
+leading? Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always,
+and that when the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were
+following the blind maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn
+was following God?
+
+When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,
+though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,
+and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had
+infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and
+they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from
+danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a
+reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon
+him found a way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again and going
+back to the house.
+
+“Come,” said Habeebah; “let us go--we are not safe.”
+
+“Yes,” said Fatimah; “let us take the poor child back.”
+
+“Come along, then,” said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.
+
+“Naomi, Naomi,” whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, “we are going home.
+Come, dearest, come.”
+
+But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her.
+She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,
+motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent
+save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet
+listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
+
+And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her
+dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been
+terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness
+and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been
+learning speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in
+that crowd she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others
+saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the
+darkness outside her eyes that were blind.
+
+First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse,
+jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it
+was--it was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.
+
+“Brothers of Tetuan,” the old man cried, “what are we waiting for? For
+the verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one
+thing to do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a
+humane master. If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been
+driven to do that which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say:
+'Lord Basha, through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has
+stood over us to oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been
+silent. In that time we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the
+houses of their fathers where they have lived since their birth. We have
+seen them buffeted and smitten, without a resting-place for the soles
+of their feet, and perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and
+the want of all things. Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your
+profit?'”
+
+The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once
+more silent, the thick voice went on: “And not the seed of Israel
+only, but the sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of
+misery. Under a Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice,
+in a land that breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God,
+our brethren the Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no
+standing. Every day brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At
+this moment a plague is upon us. The country is bare; the town is
+overflowing; every man stumbles over his fellow our lives hang in doubt;
+in the morning we say 'Would it were evening'; in the evening we say,
+'Would it were morning'; stretch out your hand and help us!”
+
+Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice
+continued: “Let us say to him 'Lord Basha, there is no way of help but
+one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race
+and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor,
+any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own
+people, and your servants will bless you.'”
+
+The old man's voice was drowned in great shouts of “Ben Aboo!” “To Ben
+Aboo!” “Why wait for the judges?” “To the Kasbah!” “The Kasbah!”
+
+But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those
+waves of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen.
+Naomi knew this voice also--it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo,
+the elder of the synagogue, who would have been sitting among the
+three-and-twenty-judges but that he was a usurer also.
+
+“Why go to the Kaid?” said the voice like a peahen. “Does the Basha
+love this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such
+affection? Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo
+be glad to have done with this servant who has been so long his master?
+Then why trouble him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the
+Kaid will thank you! And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord
+and worship Him, that He has not put it into the hearts of His people
+to play the game of breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the
+races around them, the Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more
+warm by nature, must long ago have done, and that not unjustly either,
+or altogether to the displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and
+merciful, and has never loved that his poor people should be oppressed.”
+
+At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the
+crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. “Away with the man!”
+ “Away with him!” rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and
+clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called
+for mercy or for patience.
+
+While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice
+came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice
+of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.
+
+“And does God,” said Reuben, “any more than Ben Aboo--blessings on his
+life!--love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt with
+this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has His
+hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty
+years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife,
+how she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben
+Ohana, how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the
+day whereon his daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this
+offspring of sin, this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and
+speechless!”
+
+Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh of a
+breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering.
+“Come! Let us away!” But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.
+
+The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. “Do you say that
+the Lord gave him riches? Behold him!--he swallowed them down, but has
+he not vomited them up? Examine him!--that which he took by extortions
+has he not been made to restore? Does God's anger smoke against him?
+Answer me, yes or no!”
+
+Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of “Yes!” And
+instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice,
+a peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it--it
+was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and
+still deaf as a stone.
+
+“Tut! What is all this talking about?” she snapped and grunted. “Reuben
+Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don't give them too much of
+it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
+am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
+for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
+Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll
+laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is
+to ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her
+a miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
+children!”
+
+The people laughed--it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets the
+teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of the
+crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the counter-currents
+of an angry sea. “She's right,” said a shrill voice. “He deserves it,”
+ snuffled a nasal one. “At least let us drive him out of the town,” said
+a third gruff voice. “To his house!” cried a fourth voice, that pealed
+over all. “To his house!” came then from countless hungry throats.
+
+“Come, let us go,” whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold
+of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
+strange sounds to herself.
+
+“To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!” the people howled in a
+hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
+mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
+
+It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
+people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
+Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.
+
+Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait
+for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means
+whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry
+the sentence into effect. The procession was even then forming. It
+was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the
+Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front
+of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were
+the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his
+pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez.
+By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.
+
+But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and
+turning like worms on an upturned turf. “Why sack his house?” cried
+some. “Why drive him out?” cried others. “A poor revenge!” “Kill him!”
+ “Kill him!”
+
+At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had
+waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly
+in the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of “He is
+there!” and then there was a great silence.
+
+It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town
+walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from
+Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one
+mule and leading another.
+
+He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers
+of Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out
+of their dry throats, saying, “May the God of Jacob bless you also,
+brother!” and “May the child of your wife be blessed!” Ah! those
+blessings, he could hear them still! They followed him as he walked.
+He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang in his ears and were
+like music in his melted soul. Once before he had heard such music.
+It was in England. The organ swelled and the voices rose, and he was a
+lonely boy, for his mother lay in her grave at his feet. His mother! How
+strangely his heart was softened towards himself and-all the world And
+Ruth! He could think of nothing without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the
+sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be waiting for him at home,
+for she was as one that had no life without his presence. What would
+befall if he were taken from her? That thought was like the sweeping of
+a dead hand across his face. So his body stooped as he walked with his
+staff, and his head was held down, and his step was heavy.
+
+Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were
+gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing
+and hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first
+surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.
+
+Naomi heard them.
+
+Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the
+air, crying, “God has given him into our hands!” After that all sounds
+seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled
+by the distance.
+
+But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great
+throat, the crowd encompassed Israel crying, “Kill him!” Israel stopped,
+and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out
+nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their
+midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their
+fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his
+face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on
+to his knees.
+
+No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight
+girl that stood there--blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly
+beautiful--a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the
+thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and
+terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
+
+Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash
+of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust
+herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she
+was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God
+loosed her tongue, for she was crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”
+
+Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man
+dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against
+him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the
+midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow
+like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from
+their deed of blood as with the voice of God--she, the blind, the frail,
+the helpless.
+
+Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the
+procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how
+it was that in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come
+upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over
+his enemies and say, “You thought God's arm was against me, but behold
+how God has saved me out of your hands.”
+
+But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
+seemed to have dropped upon him.
+
+At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, “Father!”
+
+Then the cup of Israel's heart was full. His throat choked him. So he
+took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they
+passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes
+were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted
+up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+
+
+Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her
+gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different
+tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself,
+and to put out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than
+a child untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and
+broke down, and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must
+do, only quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because
+she was a girl and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and
+thinking shame of it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her
+father when she halted in her talk with him, and still more humbled by
+Ali's impetuous help when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back
+again on silence.
+
+Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
+when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the
+Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond “Yes” and “No,” notwithstanding
+Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings, and Habeebah's
+breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst
+of the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the
+voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw
+bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he
+had possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.
+
+“Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,” Israel
+would say.
+
+His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and
+lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
+
+But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was
+returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor
+quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money
+which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife's jewels. The
+night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were
+almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was
+late, very late, and far and near the town was still.
+
+With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm,
+Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed
+to cross it after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through
+the sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of
+the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.
+
+All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift of
+speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past.
+He had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill
+him. Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing
+had not come to pass. Man's extremity had indeed been God's opportunity
+and Ruth's vision was all but realised.
+
+Ah, Ruth! Ruth! It had escaped Israel's notice until then that he had
+been thinking of his dead wife the whole night through. When he put it
+to himself so, he saw the reason of it at once. It was because there
+was a sort of secret charm in the certainty that where she was she
+must surely know that her dream was come true. There was also a kind
+of bitter pathos in the regret that she was only an angel now and not a
+woman; therefore she could not be with him to share his human joy.
+
+As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again: how she
+had sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear. Sung? Yes, he
+could almost fancy that he heard her singing yet. That voice so soft,
+so clear even in its whispers--there had been nothing like it in all
+the world. And her songs! Israel could also fancy that he heard her
+favourite one. It was a song of love, a pure but passionate melody
+wherein his own delicious happiness in the earlier days, before the
+death of the old Grand Rabbi, had seemed to speak and sing.
+
+Israel began to laugh at himself as he walked. To think that the warmth
+and softness of the night, the sweet caressing night, the light and
+beauty of the moon and the stillness and slumber of the town, could
+betray an old fellow into forgotten dreams like these!
+
+He had taken out of his pocket the big key of the clamped door to his
+house, and was crossing the shadowed lane in front of it, when suddenly
+he thought he heard music coating in the air above him. He stopped and
+listened. Then he had no longer any doubt. It was music, it was singing;
+he knew the song, and he knew the voice. The song was the song he had
+been thinking of, and the voice was the voice of Ruth.
+
+     O where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+
+Israel felt himself rooted to the spot, and he stood some time without
+stirring. He looked around. All else was still. The night was as silent
+as death. He listened attentively. The singing seemed to come from his
+own house. Then he thought he must be dreaming still, and he took a step
+forward. But he stopped again and covered both his ears. That was of no
+avail, for when he removed his hands the voice was there as before.
+
+A shiver ran over his limbs, yet he could not believe what his soul was
+saying. The key dropped out of his hand and rang on the stone. When the
+clangour was done the voice continued. Israel bethought him then that
+his household must be asleep, and it flashed on his mind that if this
+were a human voice the singing ought to awaken them. Just at that moment
+the night guard went by and saluted him. “God bless your morning!” the
+guard cried; and Israel answered, “Your morning be blessed!” That was
+all. The guard seemed to have heard nothing. His footsteps were dying
+away, but the voice went on.
+
+Then a strange emotion filled Israel's heart, and he reflected that even
+if it were Ruth she could have come on no evil errand. That thought gave
+him courage, and he pushed forward to the door. As he fumbled the key
+into the lock he saw that a beggar was crouching by the doorway in the
+shadow cast by the moonlight. The man was asleep. Israel could hear his
+breathing, and smell his rags. Also he could hear the thud of his own
+temples like the beating of a drum in his brain.
+
+At length, as he was groping feebly through the crooked passage, a new
+thought came to him. “Naomi,” he told himself in a whisper of awe. It
+was she. By the full flood of the moonlight in the patio he saw her. She
+was on the balcony. Her beautiful white-robed figure was half sitting on
+the rail, half leaning against the pillar. The whole lustre of the moon
+was upon her. A look of joy beamed on her face. She was singing her
+mother's song with her mother's voice, and all the air, and the sky, and
+the quiet white town seemed to listen:--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice
+     Sings--“Love, great Love
+     O come and claim shine own,
+     O come and take thy throne
+     Reign ever and alone,
+     Reign, glorious golden Love.”
+
+Then Israel's fear was turned to rapture. Why had he not thought of this
+before? Yet how could he have thought of it? He had never once heard
+Naomi's voice save in the utterance of single words. But again, why had
+he not remembered that before the tongues of children can speak words of
+their own they sing the words of others?
+
+The singing ended, and then Israel, struggling with his dry throat,
+stepped a pace forward--his foot grated on the pavement--and he called
+to the singer--
+
+“Naomi!”
+
+The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below, but
+Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind.
+
+“My father!” she whispered.
+
+“Where did you learn it?” said Israel.
+
+“Fatimah, she taught me,” Naomi answered; and then she added quickly,
+as if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean, “Oh
+yes, it was I! Was I not beautiful?”
+
+After that night Naomi's shyness of speech dropped away from her, and
+what was left was only a sweet maidenly unconsciousness of all faults
+and failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran in and out among the
+simple words that fell from her red lips like a young squirrel among the
+fallen leaves of autumn. It would be a long task to tell how her lisping
+tongue turned everything then to favour and to prettiness. On the coming
+of the gift of hearing, the world had first spoken to her; and now, on
+the coming of the gift of speech, she herself was first speaking to the
+world. What did she tell it at that first sweet greeting? She told it
+what she had been thinking of it in those mute days that were gone, when
+she had neither hearing nor speech, but was in the land of silence as
+well as in the land of night.
+
+The fancies of the blind maid so long shut up within the beautiful
+casket of her body were strange and touching ones. Israel took delight
+in them at the beginning. He loved to probe the dark places of the mind
+they came from, thinking God Himself must surely have illumined it
+at some time with a light that no man knew, so startling were some of
+Naomi's replies, so tender and so beautiful.
+
+One evening, not long after she had first spoken, he was sitting with
+her on the roof of their house as the sun was going down over the
+palpitating plains towards Arzila and Laraiche and the great sea beyond.
+Twilight was gathering in the Feddan under the Mosque, and the last
+light of day, which had parleyed longest with the snowy heights of the
+Reef Mountains, was glowing only on the sky above them.
+
+“Sweetheart,” said Israel, “what is the sun?”
+
+“The sun is a fire in the sky,” Naomi answered; “my Father lights it
+every morning.”
+
+“Truly, little one, thy Father lights it,” said Israel; “thy Father
+which is in heaven.”
+
+“Sweetheart,” he said again, “what is darkness?”
+
+“Oh, darkness is cold,” said Naomi promptly, and she seemed to shiver.
+
+“Then the light must be warmth, little one?” said Israel.
+
+“Yes, and noise,” she answered; and then she added quickly, “Light is
+alive.”
+
+Saying this, she crept closer to his side, and knelt there, and by her
+old trick of love she took his hand in both of hers, and pressed it
+against her cheek, and then, lifting her sweet face with its motionless
+eyes she began to tell him in her broken words and pretty lisp what she
+thought of night. In the night the world, and everything in it, was cold
+and quiet. That was death. The angels of God came to the world in the
+day. But God Himself came in the night, because He loved silence,
+and because all the world was dead. Then He kissed things, and in the
+morning all that God had kissed came to life again. If you were to get
+up early you would feel God's kiss on the flowers and on the grass. And
+that was why the birds were singing then. God had kissed them in the
+night, and they were glad.
+
+One day Israel took Naomi to the mearrah of the Jews, the little
+cemetery outside the town walls where he had buried Ruth. And there he
+told her of her mother once more; that she was in the grave, but also
+with God; that she was dead, but still alive; that Naomi must not expect
+to find her in that place, but, nevertheless, that she would see her yet
+again.
+
+“Do you remember her, Naomi?” he said. “Do you remember her in the old
+days, the old dark and silent days? Not Fatimah, and not Habeebah, but
+some one who was nearer to you than either, and loved you better than
+both; some one who had soft hands, and smooth cheeks, and long, silken,
+wavy hair--do you remember, little one?”
+
+“Y-es, I think--I _think_ I remember,” said Naomi.
+
+“That was your mother, my darling.”
+
+“My mother?”
+
+“Ah, you don't know what a mother is, sweetheart. How should you? And
+how shall I tell you? Listen. She is the one who loves you first and
+last and always. When you are a babe she suckles you and nourishes you
+and fondles you, and watches for the first light of your smile, and
+listens for the first accent of your tongue. When you are a young child
+she plays with you, and sings to you, and tells you little stories, and
+teaches you to speak. Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine,
+and your childish lisp more sweet than music. If you are sick she is
+beside you constantly, and when you are well she is behind you still.
+Though you sin and fall and all men spurn you, yet she clings to you;
+and if you do well and God prospers you, there is no joy like her joy.
+Her love never changes, for it is a fount which the cold winds of the
+world cannot freeze. . . . And if you are a little helpless girl--blind
+and deaf and dumb maybe--then she loves you best of all. She cannot tell
+you stories, and she cannot sing to you, because you cannot hear; she
+cannot smile into your eyes, because you cannot see; she cannot talk to
+you, because you cannot speak; but she can watch your quiet face, and
+feel the touch of your little fingers and hear the sound of your merry
+laughter.”
+
+“My mother! my mother!” whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.
+
+“Yes,” said Israel, “your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the
+days before your great gifts came to you. But she is gone, she has left
+us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of
+memory can she smile back upon us now.”
+
+Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears,
+and she said abruptly, “People who die are deceitful. They want to go
+out in the night to be with God. That is where they are when they go
+away. They are wandering about the world when it is dead.”
+
+The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no
+search availed to find her. She was not in the Mellah, and therefore
+she must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at
+sunset. Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or
+among the Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before
+their tents. At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there
+he found her. It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent. The
+reflection of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the
+distant hum of voices came over the black town walls. And there, within
+the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones that
+lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the
+darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro, and
+crying, “Mother! Mother!”
+
+Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea
+might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat
+and fumes of the town. The day was soft and beautiful, the water was
+quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it. But Naomi listened
+to every sound with eager intentness--the light plash of the blue
+wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when
+the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the
+boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the
+fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to
+unload the cargoes.
+
+And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees,
+with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him
+another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing in the world
+that did not die at night, and it was water. That was because water was
+the way from heaven to earth. It went up into the mountains and over
+them into the air until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His
+angels came and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why
+it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.
+And the angels were always singing. That was why the waters were always
+making a noise, and were never silent like the grass. Sometimes their
+song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil
+spirits were struggling with the angels, and that was when the waters
+were terrible. Every time the sea made a little noise on the shore, an
+angel had stepped on to the earth. The angel was glad.
+
+Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart.
+Where had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out these beautiful
+dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come upon the joy of
+hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was and what life
+was, and death and heaven? The question was soon decided for him.
+
+Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
+Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her. Alone,
+without help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on
+to the water. It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made
+of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark. In this
+frail craft she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing,
+but sitting quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind
+was rising, and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with
+breakers. Israel put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes
+began to fill when she heard his voice.
+
+“My darling, my darling!” cried Israel; “where did you think you were
+going?”
+
+“To heaven,” she answered.
+
+And truly she had all but gone there.
+
+Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart of this
+creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril. Naomi was
+no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone, but in more
+danger from herself than any child before her, because deprived of two
+of her senses until she had grown to be a maid, and no control could be
+imposed upon her.
+
+At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening
+while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting, and
+there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people shuffling
+back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind. The word made no
+impression upon her mind at first. She had heard it before, and it had
+passed her by like a sound that she did not know. She had been born
+blind, and therefore could not realise what it was to see. To open a way
+for the awful truth was difficult, and Israel's heart smote him while
+he persisted. Naomi laughed as he put his fingers over her eyes that
+he might show her. She laughed again when he asked if she could see the
+people whom she could only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun
+had gone down, and the mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque in the
+Metamar, and he asked if she could see the old blind man in the minaret,
+where he was crying, “God is great! God is great!”
+
+“Can you see him, little one?” said Israel.
+
+“See him?” said Naomi; “why yes, you dear old father, of course I can
+see him. Listen,” she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger,
+and holding her head aslant, “listen: God is great! God is great!
+There--I saw him then.”
+
+“That is only hearing him, Naomi--hearing him with your ears--with this
+ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?”
+
+Did her father mean to ask her if she could _feel_ the mooddin in his
+minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant. There was a
+pause, and then she cried impulsively--
+
+“Oh, _I_ know. But, you foolish old father, how _can_ I? He is too far
+away.”
+
+Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.
+
+“There,” she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences, “I have
+seen my _father_ anyway.”
+
+It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it. He told
+her, with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like other
+maidens--not like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah; that she
+was a being afflicted of God; that there was something she had not got,
+something she could not do, a world she did not know, and had never yet
+so much as dreamt of. Darkness was more than cold and quiet, and light
+was more than warmth and noise. The one was day--day ruled by the fiery
+sun in the sky--and the other was night, lit by the pale moon and the
+bright stars in heaven. And the face of man and the eyes of woman were
+more than features to feel--they were spirit and soul, to watch and to
+follow and to love without any hand being near them.
+
+“There is a great world about you, little one,” he said, “which you have
+never seen, though you can hear it and feel it and speak to it. Yes, it
+is true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen the mountains and the
+dangerous gullies on their rocky sides. You have never seen the mighty
+deep, and the storms that heave and swell in it. You have never seen man
+or woman or child. Is that very strange, little one? Listen: your mother
+died nine years ago, and you had never seen her. Your father is holding
+your head in his hands at this moment, but you have never seen his face.
+And if the dark curtains were to fall from your eyes, and you were to
+see him now, you would not know him from another man, or from woman, or
+from a tree. You are blind, Naomi, you are blind.”
+
+Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested
+nervously on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn,
+and then filled with tears. Israel's throat swelled. To tell her of all
+this, though he must needs do it for her safety, was like reproaching
+her with her infirmity. But it was only the trouble in her father's
+voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber of Naomi's mind.
+The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later to her
+consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer and lighter hand.
+
+She had always loved little children, and since the coming of her
+hearing she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues, their
+pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts, all
+fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself,
+though grown to be a lovely maid. And of all children those she loved
+best were not the children of the Jews, nor yet the children of the
+Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged, barefoot, black and olive-skinned
+mites who came into Tetuan with the country Arabs and Berbers on market
+mornings. They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest, and
+they were most full of joy and wonder. So she would gather them up in
+twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays, from the mouths of
+their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home by the hand.
+
+And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope, suspended
+from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this Naomi would sport
+with her little ones. She would be swinging in the midst of them, with
+one tiny black maiden on the seat beside her, and one little black man
+with high stomach and shaven poll holding on to the rope behind her, and
+another mighty Moor in a diminutive white jellab pushing at their feet
+in front, and all laughing together, or the children singing as the
+swing rose, and she herself listening with head aslant and all her fair
+hair rip-rip-rippling down her back and over her neck, and her smiling
+white face resting on her shoulder.
+
+It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it came the
+first great shadow of the blind girl's life. For it chanced one day
+that one of the children--a tiny creature with a slice of the woman in
+her--brought a present for Naomi out of her mother's market-basket.
+It was a flower, but of a strange kind, that grew only in the distant
+mountains where lay the little black one's home. Naomi passed her
+fingers over it, and she did not know it.
+
+“What is it?” she asked.
+
+“It's blue,” said the child.
+
+“What is blue?” said Naomi
+
+“Blue--don't you know?--blue!” said the child.
+
+“But what is blue?” Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her
+restless fingers.
+
+“Why, dear me! can't you see?--blue--the flower, you know,” said the
+child, in her artless way.
+
+Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's
+relief. “Blue is a colour,” he said.
+
+“A colour?” said Naomi.
+
+“Yes, like--like the sea,” he added.
+
+“The sea? Blue? How?” Naomi asked.
+
+Ali tried again. “Like the sky,” he said simply.
+
+Naomi's face looked perplexed. “And what is the sky like?” she asked.
+
+At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face, and
+her great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes. The lad was
+pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer that leapt up to his
+tongue. “Like,” he said--“like--”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Like your own eyes, Naomi.”
+
+By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes with her
+hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her what her other senses
+could not tell. But the solemn mystery had dawned on her mind at last:
+that she was unlike others; that she was lacking something that every
+one else possessed; that the little children who played with her knew
+what she could never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off; that
+there was a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying round about
+her, where every one else might sport and find delight, but that her
+spirit could not enter it, because she was shut off from it by the great
+hand of God.
+
+From that time forward everything seemed to remind her of her
+affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times. Even her
+dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices that told of
+them. If a bird sang in the air above her, she lifted her sightless
+eyes. If she walked in the town on market morning and heard the din of
+traffic--the cries of the dealers, the “Balak!” of the camel-men,
+the “Arrah!” of the muleteers, and the twanging ginbri of the
+story-tellers--she sighed and dropped her head into her breast.
+Listening to the wind, she asked if it had eyes or was sightless; and
+hearing of the mountains that their snowy heads rose into the clouds,
+she inquired if they were blind, and if they ever talked together in the
+sky.
+
+But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child,
+and became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more of the
+world than in all the years of her life before. She was no longer
+a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy, but a weak,
+patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity, humbled by it,
+and thinking shame of it.
+
+One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out with the
+children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered far down
+the banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced, the
+little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called to the cattle
+and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets that whistled to
+their young.
+
+Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening, the
+evening into twilight, the twilight into early night. Then the air grew
+empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell upon the children, and they
+crept to Naomi's side in fear, and took her hands and clung to her
+gown. She turned back towards the town, and as they walked in the double
+silence of their own hushed tongues and the songless and voiceless
+world, the fingers of the little ones closed tightly upon her own.
+
+Then the children cried in terror, “See!”
+
+“What is it?” said Naomi.
+
+The little ones could not tell her. It was only the noiseless summer
+lightning, but the children had never seen it before. With broad white
+flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the
+valley to the white peaks of the mountains. At every flash the little
+people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort
+them save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw.
+With helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the
+darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light,
+leading on, yet seeing nothing.
+
+But Israel saw Naomi's shame. The blindness which was a sense of
+humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him. He had asked
+God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied. “Give her
+speech, O Lord,” he had cried, “speech that shall lift her above the
+creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know.” But
+what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind? What was
+all the world to one who had never seen it? Only as Paradise is to Man,
+who can but idly dream of its glories.
+
+Israel took back his prayer. There were things to know that words could
+never tell. Now was Naomi blind for the first time, being no longer
+dumb. “Give her sight, O Lord,” he cried; “open her eyes that she may
+see; let her look on Thy beautiful world and know it! Then shall her
+life be safe, and her heart be happy, and her soul be Thine, and Thy
+servant at last be satisfied!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+
+
+It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok,
+and no rain had yet fallen. The eggs of the locust might be hatched
+at any time. Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the
+earth like snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were
+coming green out of the ground would wither before them. The country
+people were in despair. They were all but stripped of their cattle; they
+had no milk; and they came afoot to the market. Death seemed to look
+them in the face. Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they
+offer petitions to God for rain. They had long ceased their prayers.
+Only in the Feddan at the mouths of their tents did they lift up their
+heavy eyes to the hot haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, “It is
+written!”
+
+Israel was busy with other matters. During these six-and-twenty days he
+had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.
+He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he
+held under the Kaid. No longer could he serve two masters. Too long had
+he held to the one, thinking that by recompense and restitution, by fair
+dealing and even-handed justice, he might atone to the other. Recompense
+was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was
+no longer possible--his own purse being empty--without robbery of the
+treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope
+in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan
+in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a
+human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of
+the man beneath him.
+
+To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible,
+and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina,
+was a waste of shame and spirit. Besides, and above all, Israel
+remembered that God had given him grace in the sacrifices which he had
+made already. Twice had God rewarded him, in the mercy He had shown to
+Naomi, for putting by the pomp and circumstance of the world. Would
+His great hand be idle now--now when he most needed its mighty and
+miraculous power when Naomi, being conscious of her blindness, was
+mourning and crying for sweet sight of the world and he himself was
+about to put under his feet the last of his possessions that separated
+him from other men--his office that he wrought for in the early days
+with sweat of brow and blood, and held on to in the later days through
+evil report and hatred, that he might conquer the fate that had first
+beaten him down!
+
+Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat
+of his desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan. He made his
+preparations, and they were few. His money was gone already, and so were
+his dead wife's jewels. He had determined that he would keep his house,
+if only as a shelter to Naomi (for he owed something to her material
+comfort as well as her spiritual welfare), but that its furniture and
+belongings were more luxurious than their necessity would require or
+altered state allow.
+
+So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and great
+chairs which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets
+from Rabat, the silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies from
+Morocco city. When these were gone, and nothing remained but the simple
+rugs and mattresses which are all that the house of a poor man needs in
+that land where the skies are kind, he called his servants to him as he
+sat in the patio--Ali as well as the two bondwomen--for he had decided
+that he must part with them also, and they must go their ways.
+
+“My good people,” he said, “you have been true and faithful servants to
+me this many a year--you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah, since before
+the days when my wife came to me--and you too, Ali, my lad, since you
+grew to be big and helpful. Little I thought to part with you until my
+good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary is over already,
+and to-morrow I shall be less than the least of all men in Tetuan. So
+this is what I have concluded to do. You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah,
+being given to me as bondwomen by the Kaid in the old days when
+my power, which now is little and of no moment, was great and
+necessary--you belong to me. Well, I give you your liberty. Your papers
+are in the name of Ben Aboo, and I have sealed them with his seal--that
+is the last use but one that I shall put it to. Here they are, both of
+them. Take them to the Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will
+ratify your title. Then you will be free women for ever after.”
+
+The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel's words with
+exclamations of surprise and consternation. “Allah!” “Bismillah!” “Holy
+Saints!” “By the beard of the Prophet!” And when at length he put the
+deeds of emancipation into their hands they fell into loud fits of
+hysterical weeping.
+
+“As for you, Ali, my son,” Israel continued, “I cannot give you your
+freedom, for you are a freeman born. You have been a son to me these
+fourteen years. I have another task for you--a perilous task, a solemn
+duty--and when it is done I shall see you no more. My brave boy, you
+will go far, but I do not fear for you. When you are gone I shall think
+of you; and if you should sometimes think of your old master who could
+not keep you, we may not always be apart.”
+
+The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment. That strange
+disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea that had
+forced itself upon his unwilling mind. But that Israel, the greatest,
+noblest, mightiest man in the world--let the dogs of rasping Jews and
+the scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark as they would--should fall to
+be less than the least in Tetuan, and, having fallen that he should
+send him away--him, Ali, his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi's old
+playfellow--Allah! Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did his
+master mean?
+
+Ali's big eyes began to fill, and great beads rolled down his black
+cheeks. Then, recovering his speech he blurted out that he would not go.
+He would follow his father and serve him until the end of his life. What
+did he want with wages? Who asked for any? No going his ways for him! A
+pretty thing, wasn't it, that he should go off, and never see his father
+again, no, nor Naomi--Naomi--that-that--but God would show! God would
+show!
+
+And, following Ali's lead, Fatimah stepped up to Israel and offered her
+paper back. “Take it,” she said; “I don't want any liberty. I've got
+liberty enough as I am. And here--here,” fumbling in her waistband and
+bringing out a knitted purse; “I would have offered it before, only I
+thought shame. My wages? Yes. You've paid us wages these nine years,
+haven't you; and what right had we to any, being slaves? You will not
+take it, my lord? Well, then, my dear master, if I must go, if I must
+leave you, take my papers and sell me to some one. I shall not care,
+and you have a right to do it. Perhaps I'll get another good master--who
+knows?”
+
+Her brows had been knitted, and she had tried to look stern and angry,
+but suddenly her cheeks were a flood of tears.
+
+“I'm a fool!” she cried. “I'll never get a good master again; but if I
+get a bad one, and he beats me, I'll not mind, for I'll think of
+you, and my precious jewel of gold and silver, my pretty gazelle,
+Naomi--Allah preserve her!--that you took my money, and I'm bearing it
+for both of you, as we might say--working for you--night and day--night
+and day--”
+
+Israel could endure no more. He rose up and fled out of the patio
+into his own room, to bury his swimming face. But his soul was big
+and triumphant. Let the world call him by what names it would--tyrant,
+traitor, outcast pariah--there were simple hearts that loved and
+honoured him--ay, honoured him--and they were the hearts that knew him
+best.
+
+The perilous task reserved for Ali was to go to Shawan and to liberate
+the followers of Absalam, who, less happy than their leader, whose
+strong soul was at rest, were still in prison without abatement of
+the miseries they lay under. He was to do this by power of a warrant
+addressed to the Kaid of Shawan and drawn under the seal of the Kaid of
+Tetuan. Israel had drawn it, and sealed it also, without the knowledge
+or sanction of Ben Aboo; for, knowing what manner of man Ben Aboo was,
+and knowing Katrina also, and the sway she held over him, and thinking
+it useless to attempt to move either to mercy, he had determined to make
+this last use of his office, at all risks and hazards.
+
+Ben Aboo might never hear that the people were at large, for Ali was to
+forbid them to return to Tetuan, and Shawan was sixty weary miles away.
+And if he ever did hear, Israel himself would be there to bear the brunt
+of his displeasure, but Ali the instrument of his design, must be
+far away. For when the gates of the prison had been opened, and the
+prisoners had gone free, Ali was neither to come back to Tetuan nor to
+remain in Morocco, but with the money that Israel gave him out of the
+last wreck of his fortune he was to make haste to Gibraltar by way
+of Ceuta, and not to consider his life safe until he had set foot in
+England.
+
+“England!” cried Ali. “But they are all white men there.”
+
+“White-hearted men, my lad,” said Israel; “and a Jewish man may find
+rest for the sole of his foot among them.”
+
+That same day the black boy bade farewell to Israel and to Naomi. He was
+leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted. Israel was his father,
+Naomi was his sister, and never again should he set his eyes on either.
+But in the pride of his perilous mission he bore himself bravely.
+
+“Well, good-night,” he said, taking Naomi's hand, but not looking into
+her blind face.
+
+“Good-night,” she answered, and then, after a moment, she flung her arms
+about his neck and kissed him. He laughed lightly, and turned to Israel.
+
+“Good-night, father,” he said in a shrill voice.
+
+“A safe journey to you, my son,” said Israel; “and may you do all my
+errands.”
+
+“God burn my great-grandfather if I do not!” said Ali stoutly.
+
+But with that word of his country his brave bearing at length broke
+down, and drawing Israel aside, that Naomi might not hear, he whispered,
+sobbing and stammering, “When--when I am gone, don't, don't tell her
+that I was black.”
+
+Then in an instant he fled away.
+
+“In peace!” cried Israel after him. “In peace! my brave boy, simple,
+noble, loyal heart!”
+
+Next morning Israel, leaving Naomi at home, set off for the Kasbah, that
+he might carry out his great resolve to give up the office he held under
+the Kaid. And as he passed through the streets his head was held up, and
+he walked proudly. A great burden had fallen from him, and his spirit
+was light. The people bent their heads before him as he passed, and
+scowled at him when he was gone by. The beggars lying at the gate of the
+Mosque spat over their fingers behind his back, and muttered “Bismillah!
+In the name of God!” A negro farmer in the Feddan, who was bent double
+over a hoof as he was shoeing a bony and scabby mule, lifted his ugly
+face, bathed in sweat, and grinned at Israel as he went along. A
+group of Reefians, dirty and lean and hollow-eyed, feeding their
+gaunt donkeys, and glancing anxiously at the sky over the heads of the
+mountains, snarled like dogs as he strode through their midst. The sky
+was overcast, and the heads of the mountains were capped with mist.
+“Balak!” sounded in Israel's ears from every side. “Arrah!” came
+constantly at his heels. A sweet-seller with his wooden tray swung in
+front of him, crying, “Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Edrees, sweets,
+all sweets,” changed the name of the patron saint of candies, and cried,
+“Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all sweets!” The girl
+selling clay peered up impudently into Israel's eyes, and the oven-boy,
+answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms thrust out at
+doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with a mocking
+echo of Israel's name.
+
+What matter? Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.
+Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave. This
+morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be one of themselves.
+
+When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air about it that
+brought back recollections of the day--now nearly four years past--of
+the children's gathering at Katrina's festival. The lusty-lunged Arabs
+squatting at the gates among soldiers in white selhams and peaked
+shasheeahs the women in blankets standing in the outer court, the dark
+passages smelling of damp, the gusts of heavy odour coming from the
+inner chambers, and the great patio with the fountain and fig-trees--the
+same voluptuous air was over everything. And as on that day so on this,
+in the alcove under the horseshoe arch sat Ben Aboo and his Spanish
+wife.
+
+Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face of the
+Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey and
+his hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise he was the
+same man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss of some teeth
+of the upper row, was the same woman. And if the children had risen up
+before Israel's eyes as he stood on the threshold of the patio, he could
+not have drawn his breath with more surprise than at the sight of the
+man who stood that morning in their place.
+
+It was Mohammed of Mequinez. He had come to ask for the release of
+the followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan. In defiance
+of courtesy his slippers were on his feet. He was clad in a piece of
+untanned camel-skin, which reached to his knees and was belted about his
+waist. His head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a
+flower, was held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing. He was not
+supplicating for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and
+taxing Ben Aboo as a tyrant to his throat.
+
+“Give me them up, Ben Aboo,” he was saying as Israel came to the
+threshold, “or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you.”
+
+“And pray what is that?” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer.”
+
+Ben Aboo's brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made
+pretence to laugh, and then said, “And pray, my lord, who shall the
+murderer be?”
+
+Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered,
+“Yourself.”
+
+At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in
+his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.
+
+Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed. He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was
+master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of
+this man whom the people called a prophet. And partly out of this fear,
+and partly because he had more regard to Mohammed's courageous behaviour
+in thus bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than
+to the anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised
+him at that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.
+
+But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation
+against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had
+openly denounced her marriage.
+
+“Wait, Sidi,” she said. “Is not this the fellow that has gone up and
+down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the
+law of Mohammed?”
+
+At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he
+made pretence to laugh again, and said, “Allah! so it is! Mohammed the
+Third, eh? Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You
+could never think how long I've waited that I might look face to face
+upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid.”
+
+He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but
+Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant. “Wait no
+longer, O Ben Aboo,” he cried, “but look upon him now, and know that
+what you have done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and
+die!”
+
+Then Ben Aboo's passion mastered him. He rose to his feet in his anger,
+and cried, “Prophet, you have destroyed yourself. Listen to me! The
+turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish
+of hunger and rot of their sores. By the beard of my father, I swear
+it!”
+
+Mohammed did not flinch. Throwing back his head, he answered, “If I am
+a prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy. Before that which you say shall
+come to pass, both you and your father's house will be destroyed. Never
+yet did a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it
+like a dog.”
+
+Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of
+barefooted Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, “Take him! He will
+escape!”
+
+But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and
+Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.
+
+“In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt
+you had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought
+on our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you. And
+within this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest,
+your whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing
+and your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with
+you, for all else had forsaken you--all save one, and that was your
+enemy, and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you
+with his heart, because you were fallen and dead.”
+
+Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again and reeled
+backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward at his feet where
+the eyes of Mohammed had rested. It was almost as if he saw the awful
+thing of which Mohammed had spoken, so strong was the power of the
+vision upon him.
+
+But recovering himself quickly, he cried, “Away! In the name of God,
+away!”
+
+“I will go,” said Mohammed; “and beware what you do while I am gone.”
+
+“Do you threaten me?” cried Ben Aboo. “Will you go to the Sultan? Will
+you appeal to Abd er-Rahman?”
+
+“No, Ben Aboo; but to God.”
+
+So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place, for no man
+hindered him. Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat as one that was
+speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body availed him, or the
+silver on his breast, against that simple man in camel-skin, who owned
+nothing and asked nothing, and feared neither Kaid nor King.
+
+When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing at the
+doorway, and he beckoned to him with the downward motion, which is the
+Moorish manner. And rising on his quaking limbs he took him aside and
+said, “I know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and
+visions he has gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I
+dare not take him! Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas!
+Camel-skin coat? Allah! a fine disguise! Bismillah! Bismillah!”
+
+Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision saw his
+body lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and said,
+“Listen! You have my seal?”
+
+Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband,
+and drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.
+
+“Right! Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God. Do not liberate
+these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them so much as bread to
+eat or water to drink, but let such as own them feed them. And if ever
+the thing of which that fellow has spoken should come to pass--do you
+hear?--in the hour wherein it befalls--Allah preserve me!--in that hour
+draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan and seal it with my seal--are you
+listening?--a warrant to put every man, woman, and child to the sword.
+Ya Allah! Allah! We will deal with these spies of Abd er-Rahman!
+So shall there be mourning at my burial--Holy Saints! Holy
+Saints!--mourning, I say, among them that look for joy at my death.”
+
+Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking into
+loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words into
+Israel's ear.
+
+Israel made no answer. His eyes had become dim--he scarcely saw the
+walls of the place wherein they stood. His ears had become dense--he
+scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo, though the Kaid's hot breath was
+beating upon his cheek. But through the haze he saw the shadow of one
+figure tramping furiously to and fro, and through the thick air the
+voice of another figure came muffled and harsh. For Katrina, having
+chased away with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel
+and was saying--
+
+“What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter--this Naomi of
+yours--that she has recovered her speech and hearing! When did that
+happen, pray? No answer? Ah, I see, you are tired of the deception. You
+kept it up well between you. But is she still blind? So? Dear me! Blind,
+poor child. Think of it!”
+
+Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless on the
+same place, holding the seal in his hand. And Ben Aboo, in his restless
+tramping up and down, came to him again, and said, “Why are you a Jew,
+Israel ben Oliel? The dogs of your people hate you. Witness to the
+Prophet! Resign yourself! Turn Muslim, man--what's to hinder you?”
+
+Still Israel made no reply. But Ben Aboo continued: “Listen! The people
+about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all you are the best
+servant I have ever had. Say the Kelmah, and I'll make you my Khaleefa.
+Do you hear?--my Khaleefa, with power equal to my own. Man, why don't
+you speak? Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+
+
+“Basha,” said Israel--he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced
+calmness--“Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that--this
+hand of mine shall never seal that warrant.”
+
+“Tut, man!” whispered Ben Aboo. “Do your new measles break out
+everywhere? Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?”
+
+Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his
+great resolve.
+
+“Basha,” he said again calmly and quietly, “if you were Sultan and could
+make me your Vizier, I would not do it.”
+
+“Why?” cried Ben Aboo; “why? why?”
+
+“Because,” said Israel, “I am here to deliver up your seal to you.”
+
+“You? Grace of God!” cried Ben Aboo.
+
+“I am here,” continued Israel, as calmly as before, “to resign my
+office.”
+
+“Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?” cried Ben Aboo. “Man, man,
+are you mad?”
+
+“No, Basha, not to-day,” said Israel quietly. “I must have been that
+when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.”
+
+Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his
+anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel
+with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and
+terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers
+under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and
+said, “There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let
+me think!”
+
+Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown
+white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct
+of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, “What
+does it mean? What does it mean?”
+
+In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. “Wait!” he
+cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people
+about him. “Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez?
+The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I
+knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought
+him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread
+should spy and pry on me?”
+
+Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for
+no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and
+protests. “O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.
+Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites--his thieves,
+his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib
+es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want
+to squeeze me of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings
+after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O
+Compassionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of
+my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I'm an old
+soldier--they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I'll
+stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?
+It's because I'm his brother--that's it, that's it! But I've never risen
+against him. Never, never! I've paid him all! All! I tell you I've paid
+everything. I've got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you
+know it.”
+
+Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded
+and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary
+and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up
+at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if
+anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for
+ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful
+spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base
+disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.
+
+But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as
+slowly and calmly as at first, “Basha, have no fear; I have not sold
+myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez--but not to see
+the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing
+of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for
+myself alone.”
+
+Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the
+other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made
+what poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he
+had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's
+steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn
+of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of
+braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a
+humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had
+truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again,
+and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once
+more, without disguise and without shame.
+
+“And pray, sir,” said he, with a ghastly smile, “what riches have you
+gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?”
+
+“None,” said Israel shortly.
+
+Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with
+Katrina.
+
+“And pray, again,” he said, with a curl of the lip, “without office and
+without riches how may you hope to live?”
+
+“As a poor man among poor men,” said Israel, “serving God and trusting
+to His mercy.”
+
+Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel
+stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.
+
+“Serving God is hard bread,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Serving the devil is crust!” said Israel.
+
+At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed
+it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.
+
+“Allah! What do you mean?” he cried. “Who are you that you dare wag your
+insolent tongue at me?”
+
+“I am your scapegoat, Basha,” said Israel, with an awful calm--“your
+scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.
+Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them
+by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and
+have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets
+among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are
+up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and
+the mistaken love of all men.”
+
+While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the
+opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy
+cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose
+and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his
+turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.
+
+But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face
+to face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke
+again and said, “Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your
+business nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is
+your seal. It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these
+five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it.”
+
+In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as
+he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of
+the patio.
+
+“Fool!” he cried. “So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most
+merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A
+prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!”
+
+Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery
+his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and
+lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
+
+“Who said it was the Sultan?” he cried again. “He was a fool. Abd
+er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That's it!
+That's it!”
+
+So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of
+Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side
+to side like a caged and angry beast.
+
+“And if I am a tyrant,” he said in a thick voice, “who made me so? If
+I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain
+devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false
+judgments--what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver
+dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people
+that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head
+did all this? Why, yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the
+Prophet, I swear it!”
+
+Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he
+answered calmly and sadly, “God's ways are not our ways, neither are
+His thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His
+ministers. I thought God's justice had failed, but it has overtaken
+myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to
+oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.”
+
+All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with
+lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan
+restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And
+now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn
+in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said
+lightly, “Ah! I thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its
+teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?”
+
+“About the time that you were, madam,” said Israel, lifting his heavy
+eyes upon her.
+
+At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. “Husband,” she
+cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, “I hope
+you now see that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you
+from the first what would come of him. But no, you would have your own
+foolish way. It was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him. Yet
+you would not believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are,
+you are believing him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I
+tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh,
+trust him, he's got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it!
+He'll be master in Tetuan yet!”
+
+Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes
+laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry
+cry. And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers,
+who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, “Arabs, Berbers,
+Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may,
+you'll lie in the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!”
+
+A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile
+came back into the face of Ben Aboo.
+
+“You must be right,” he said, “you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!
+This is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and
+I gave him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him
+place and rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could
+find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his
+enemies, and imprisoned those he hated. After his wife had died, and
+none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own
+hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them
+I set them free. All these years I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya
+Allah! His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of
+his finger. And all for what? For this! For this! For this! Ingrate!” he
+cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, “if you must
+give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool? Could you not come
+to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I
+have served you long and faithfully; let me rest'--why not? I say, why
+not?”
+
+Israel answered calmly, “Because it would have been a lie, Basha.”
+
+“So it would,” cried Ben Aboo sharply, “so it would: you are right--it
+would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and
+say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have
+sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it.”
+
+“Because it is true, Basha,” said Israel.
+
+At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and
+awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the
+patio, he said, “There is another thing that is true. It is true that on
+the other side of that wall there is a prison,” and, lifting his voice
+to a shriek, he added, “you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel.
+One step more--”
+
+But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and
+the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling
+throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have
+had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn
+countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his
+passion, and a retort upon his words.
+
+And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his
+ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of
+rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin,
+shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was
+the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood.
+But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head
+wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the
+dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan's
+wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind's eye
+Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless, eyeless, hungry,
+gaunt. But no, he was still here--fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And
+good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death,
+lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose
+brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him
+there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back
+by his cubs.
+
+But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should
+he speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither
+read nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the
+Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should
+he do so? Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man's
+house; yet why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully?
+He had said his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage
+had been written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then
+courage! courage!
+
+“Husband,” cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile
+to Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, “you must scour this vermin out of
+Tetuan!”
+
+“You are right,” he answered. “By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I
+will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers.”
+
+Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice
+of mockery, “Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?
+But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well,
+and all that's in it, and leave this town as a beggar.”
+
+Israel stood unmoved. “As you will,” he said quietly.
+
+“Where are the two women--the slaves?” asked Ben Aboo.
+
+“At home,” said Israel.
+
+“They are mine, and I take them back,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+Israel's face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he
+only drew a longer breath, and said again, “As you will, Basha.”
+
+Ben Aboo's voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. “Where
+is your money?” he cried; “the money that you have made out of my
+service--out of me--_my_ money--where is it?”
+
+“Nowhere,” said Israel.
+
+“It's a lie--another lie!” cried Ben Aboo. “Oh yes, I've heard of your
+charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they?
+Were they? Were they, I ask?”
+
+“So you say, Basha,” said Israel.
+
+“So I know!” cried Ben Aboo; “but all you had is not gone that way.
+You're a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys--the keys
+of your house!”
+
+Israel hesitated, and then said, “Let me return for a minute--it is all
+I ask.”
+
+At that the woman laughed hysterically. “Ah! he has something left after
+all!” she cried.
+
+Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, “Yes, madam, I _have_
+something left--after all.”
+
+Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying,
+“El Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure
+there!”
+
+“It is true, madam,” said Israel; “it is true that I have a treasure
+there. My daughter--my little blind Naomi.”
+
+“Is that all?” cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.
+
+“It is all,” said Israel, “but it is enough. Let me fetch her.”
+
+“Don't allow it!” cried Katrina.
+
+Israel's face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. “Make
+me homeless if you will,” he said, “turn me like a beggar out of your
+town, but let me fetch my daughter.”
+
+“She'll not thank you,” cried Katrina.
+
+“She loves me,” said Israel, “I am growing old, I am numbering the steps
+of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.
+Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am
+yours, and no one save her father--”
+
+“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
+
+Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had
+been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. “Trust
+me,” she cried, “I know what daughters are. Girls like better things.
+No, I'll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here
+with me.”
+
+Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, “Madam, I would
+rather see her dead at my feet.”
+
+Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, “Don't wag your tongue at your
+mistress, sir.”
+
+“_Your_ mistress, Basha,” said Israel; “not mine.”
+
+At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down
+upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not
+flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood
+trickled over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.
+
+Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from
+behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.
+
+In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood
+in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered
+the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and
+how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets
+scarce any one--even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered
+thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate--could clearly tell. She
+stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly
+with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open
+iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up,
+her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare
+wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow
+that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father!
+It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking,
+reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and
+sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it
+all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must
+burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!
+
+At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
+has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into
+His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous
+flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which
+had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
+
+They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
+girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips,
+her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair
+before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then
+but a blank. Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time.
+This, only this, was she!
+
+And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been
+newly born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face,
+eye to eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light,
+everything had entered at a blow--the white glare of the sun, the
+blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his
+soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the
+fringe of his eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know
+what vision was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone
+out from its dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. “Oh!
+oh!” she cried, and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The
+picture of the world seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her
+eyes with her hands, that she might abolish it altogether.
+
+Israel saw everything. “Naomi!” he cried in a choking voice, and
+stretched out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked,
+and paused and hesitated.
+
+“Naomi!” he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her
+eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and
+only listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into
+her father's arms. And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her to
+his breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, “Madam, we are
+in the hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His
+servant.”
+
+Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God
+in the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his
+maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done
+before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object
+of his terror. “O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us!
+Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on
+them both! Allah! Allah!”
+
+The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled
+together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.
+
+“Brava!” she cried. “Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long
+ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well
+acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!”
+
+Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of
+his crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.
+
+Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of
+Naomi, a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the
+lowest hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and
+at the next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying--
+
+“Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk
+barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, 'So shall it be
+done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who
+is a play-actor and a cheat!' Thus let them pass through the streets and
+through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then
+cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+THE RAINBOW SIGN
+
+
+While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great
+blessing had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed
+for--the good and blessed rain--had come at last. In gentle drops like
+dew it had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had
+gathered over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of
+such moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring
+down like a flood.
+
+Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!
+The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and
+whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which
+had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome
+river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.
+
+And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the
+falling of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The
+streets and the marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they
+wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought
+of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their
+palms to the rain and drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of
+boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came
+without aim or direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering
+like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers
+cried “Balak” in tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers
+sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs
+stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their
+dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square
+capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long
+guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and
+sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were far
+away.
+
+Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that
+the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from
+the Kasbah. At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and
+gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah and crimson
+selham. Behind him were four black police, and on either side of the
+company were two criers of the street, each carrying a short staff
+festooned with strings of copper coin, which he rattled in the air for a
+bell. Between these came the victims of the Basha's order--Naomi first,
+barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all but the last garment that
+hid her nakedness, her head held down, her face hidden, and her eyes
+closed--and Israel afterwards, mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A
+further guard of black police walked at the back of all. Thus they came
+down the steep arcades into the market-square, where the greater body of
+the townspeople had gathered together.
+
+When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from
+every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent,
+and booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud
+exclamations of surprise.
+
+“Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!” cried the Moors.
+
+“God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!” cried the people of the
+Mellah.
+
+“What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?” they all asked
+together.
+
+“Balak!” cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to
+force a passage through the thronging multitude. “Attention! By your
+leave! Away! Out of the way!”
+
+And as they walked the criers chanted, “So shall it be done to every man
+who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and
+a cheat.”
+
+When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to
+look black into each other's face, to mutter oaths between their teeth,
+and to say in voices of no pity or rush, “He deserved it!” “Ya Allah,
+but he's well served!” “Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!”
+ “Look at him now!” “There he is at last!” “Brave end to all his great
+doings!” “Curse him! Curse him!”
+
+And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
+of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came
+still the cry of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who is an
+enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.”
+
+Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter,
+and after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they
+derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now
+he seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an
+imposture. Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To
+think that they had ever been afraid of him!
+
+As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in
+a blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of
+the Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck
+Israel with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her
+husband and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel
+had succoured both when he went about on his secret excursions after
+nightfall in the disguise of a Moor.
+
+“Balak! Balak!” cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the
+crier rang out over all other noises.
+
+At every step the throng increased. The strong and lusty bore down the
+weak in the struggle to get near to the procession. Blind beggars and
+feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at
+Israel from the back of the crowd.
+
+As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came
+out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to
+the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house; the other was a
+company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and
+Judah ben Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized
+the people. They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal
+progress--the departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan. The soldier
+and police fell into the humour of the multitude. Salaams were made
+to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi.
+Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd, and walked backward, and cried,
+in his harsh, nasal croak--
+
+“Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him! Make way!
+make way!”
+
+Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the
+hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people's heads a
+huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and
+the black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over
+Israel's head.
+
+Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.
+
+“God bless our Lord!”
+
+“Saviour of his people!”
+
+“Benefactor! King of men!”
+
+And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.
+
+All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing
+humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned
+with a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked
+by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the
+Jews, spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed
+with bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and
+at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred. And, thinking that
+it was he who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to
+reach her side and whisper in her ear, and say, “Forgive me, my child,
+forgive me.” But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered
+what God had that day done for her; and taking it for a sign of God's
+pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well, he raised his eyes on
+her with tears of bitter joy, and thought, in the wild fever of his
+soul, “She is sharing the triumph of my humiliation. She is walking
+through the mocking and jeering crowd, but see! God Himself is walking
+beside her!”
+
+The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow and the
+concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a
+stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and
+said, so that all might hear, “Look at the crowds that have come out to
+speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember
+this day!”
+
+“So you shall!” cried Israel. “Until your days of death you shall all
+remember it!”
+
+He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his
+answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts
+of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and
+followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice of a brother. They
+had been insulting calamity itself.
+
+“Balak!” shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the
+procession moved again.
+
+It was the hour of Israel's last temptation. Not a glance in his face
+disclosed passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed to be
+jarring at his ear, “Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you
+have come to this? Were they worth the sacrifice? You might have been
+rich and great, and riding on their heads. They would have honoured you
+then, but now they despise you. Fool! You have sold all and given to the
+poor, and this is the end of it.” But in the throes and last gasp of his
+agony, hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted
+on the stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper,
+“Be strong. Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done,
+servant of God, well done!”
+
+He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted
+his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron
+of faces black and white. “O pity of men!” he thought. “What devil is
+tempting _them_?”
+
+By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near
+to the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no
+longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by
+sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately
+over the arch of the gate.
+
+Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand in the
+heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land
+beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged--God
+Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!
+
+What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life
+seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
+
+First the voice of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who
+is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a
+cheat.”
+
+Then the voice of the soldier, “Balak! Balak!”
+
+After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then
+to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.
+
+When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that
+was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi
+by the hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+
+Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi were
+settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north of the
+town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak which
+lies on the road to Tangier. From the hour wherein the gates had closed
+behind them, everything had gone well with both. The country people who
+lay encamped on the heath outside had gathered around and shown them
+kindness. One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi's shame, had come behind
+without a word and cast a blanket over her head and shoulders. Then
+a girl of the Berber folk had brought slippers and drawn them on to
+Naomi's feet. The woman wore no blanket herself, and the feet of the
+girl were bare. Their own people were haggard and hollow-eyed and
+hungry, but the hearts of all were melted towards the great man in his
+dark hour. “Allah had written it,” they muttered, but they were more
+merciful than they thought their God.
+
+Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer of kind
+words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered on
+through the country from village to village, until in the evening, an
+hour after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made their home.
+It was a poor, mean place--neither a round tent, such as the mountain
+Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone, with its garden in a
+court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears for his homestead, but an
+oblong shed, roofed with rushes and palmetto leaves in the manner of an
+Irish cabin. And, indeed, the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been,
+who, escaping at Gibraltar from the ship that was taking him to Sidney,
+had sailed in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the
+land until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa. Unlike the
+better part of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and
+gloomy temper, and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours,
+and when he died his house had been left alone. That was the chance
+whereby Israel and Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and
+unclaimed.
+
+Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and
+values, yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes
+only from the hand of God. Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses
+grew at the foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had
+first caught the eyes of Israel. For suddenly through the mazes of his
+mind, where every perception was indistinct at that time, there seemed
+to come back to him a vague and confused recollection of the abandoned
+house, as if the thing that his eyes then saw they had surely seen
+before. How this should be Israel could not tell, seeing that never
+before to his knowledge had he passed on his way to Tangier so near to
+Semsa. But when he questioned himself again, it came to him, like light
+beaming into a dark room, that not in any waking hour at all had he seen
+the little place before, but in a dream of the night when he slept on
+the ground in the poor fondak of the Jews at Wazzan.
+
+This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with
+Naomi; this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to
+hear and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which
+when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in
+his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.
+Israel's heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading
+of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without
+more ado than such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with
+Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.
+
+And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer
+until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,
+lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought
+to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.
+
+Israel was poor, but not penniless. Out of the wreck of his fortune,
+after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three
+hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was
+cast out of the town. These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen. He
+hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the
+hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan. The rains continued, the
+eggs of the locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the
+ground, and Israel found bread for both of them. With such simple
+husbandry, and in such a home, giving no thought to the morrow, he
+passed with cheer and comfort from day to day.
+
+And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the
+loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of
+his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always
+present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his
+hope. He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed
+the hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far
+away under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town
+lamps sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.
+
+“They are yonder,” he would think, “wrangling, contending, fighting,
+praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from
+them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet
+odour of God's proper air.”
+
+But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former
+life was the recollection of Naomi. God had given back all her gifts,
+and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing? They
+were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and
+riches of gold and silver had been without it. And higher than the joy
+of Israel's constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now
+see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was
+the solemn thought that all this was but the sign and symbol of God's
+pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had
+been lifted away.
+
+More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man was his
+delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life. She was like a creature
+born afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened into a world of
+strange sights.
+
+But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure. What had
+happened to her was, after all, a simple thing. Born with cataract on
+the pupils of her eyes, the emotion of the moment at the Kasbah, when
+her father's life seemed to be once more in danger, had--like a fall
+or a blow--luxated the lens and left the pupils clear. That was all.
+Throughout the day whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when
+they were cast out of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through
+the country until they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes
+steadfastly closed. The light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate
+lids, and gave her pain. When for a moment she lifted her lashes and saw
+the trees, she put out her hand as if to push them away; and when she
+saw the sky, she raised her arms as if to hold it off. Everything seemed
+to touch her eyes. The bars of sunlight seemed to smite them. Not until
+the falling of darkness did her fears subside and her spirits revive.
+Throughout the day that followed she sat constantly in the gloom of the
+blackest corner of their hut.
+
+But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world of
+darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air had been
+her baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence. Within three
+days afterwards her terror began to give place to joy; and from that
+time forward the world was full of wonder to her opened eyes. Then
+sweet and beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy, were her amazement and
+delight in every little thing that lay about her--the grass, the weeds,
+the poorest flower that blew, even the rude implements of the house and
+the common stones that worked up through the mould--all old and familiar
+to her fingers, but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an
+angel out of heaven had dropped them down to her.
+
+For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise
+everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life in
+the cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her on
+the eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up at him
+as he stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant, being still
+in the mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes again, and
+put out her hand to touch him, did her face brighten with recognition
+and her lips utter his name. “My father,” she murmured, “my father.”
+
+Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back
+to the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower in her
+hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it in her broken,
+lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her that there were flowers
+that could see? Here was one which while she looked upon it had opened
+its beautiful eye and laughed at her. “What is it?” she asked; “what is
+it?”
+
+“A daisy, my child,” Israel answered.
+
+“A daisy!” she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and
+quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed her
+nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and
+then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, “Oh, yes, so it
+is; it is only a daisy.”
+
+But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with
+what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a
+long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside the coast, but
+from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one
+day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly
+at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, “The sky! the sky!
+Look! It has fallen on to the land.”
+
+“That is the sea, my child,” said Israel.
+
+“The sea!” she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and
+then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed
+out and her beautiful face looked aside, “So it is--yes, it is the sea.”
+
+Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her
+mind were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she
+mounted the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she
+walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields
+where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn
+by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun,
+until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast. Still
+the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized
+upon her sight. The gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless
+sea-birds. From high up in the rocks above, and from far down in the
+chasm below, from every cleft on every side, they flew out, with white
+wings and black ones and grey and blue, and sent their voices into the
+air, until the echoing place seemed to shriek and yell with a deafening
+clangour.
+
+It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long
+hour in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father, she
+told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea,
+and fought in the air and killed each other. “And see!” she cried; “look
+at this, and this, and this!”
+
+Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the
+devilish warfare that she had witnessed and “This,” said he, lifting
+one of them, “is a sea-bird's feather; and this,” lifting another, “is
+a sea-bird's egg; and this,” lifting the third, “is a dead sea-bird
+itself.”
+
+Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes
+and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.
+“Ah yes,” she said meekly, looking into her father's eye, with a smile,
+“they are only that after all.” And then she said very quietly, as if
+speaking to herself, “What a long time it is before you learn to see!”
+
+It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of
+Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took
+shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening, when she
+had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came
+back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the
+sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like
+fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes, and went down behind
+the world together, passing out of the earth through the gates of
+heaven.
+
+Israel listened to her and said, “That was the sunset my child. Every
+morning the sun rises and every night it sets.”
+
+Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame at her sweet
+errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and
+Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, “After all, the eyes are
+deceitful.” Vision was life's new language, and she had yet to learn it.
+
+But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world
+to be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part of
+it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself
+alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off
+with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still, the sea was smooth,
+the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky
+was blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little
+island, which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with
+heather and long stalks of seeding grass. Through whispering beds of
+rushes they glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming
+fishes were at play. Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger
+at their invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on
+the pebbles and great stones. It was a morning of God's own making, and,
+for joy of its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi
+rose in the boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it
+played with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and
+embrace it.
+
+At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden
+knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she
+knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of
+the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where
+they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun's reflected disc
+on the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and
+then saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.
+
+“Father,” she cried with alarm, “a face in the water! Look! look!”
+
+“It is your own, my child,” said Israel. “Mine!” she cried.
+
+“The reflection of your face,” said Israel; “the light and the water
+make it.”
+
+The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly in this
+thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at
+her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and
+asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had
+grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was
+like a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child
+in her unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at
+rest she leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.
+
+“How beautiful!” she cried, “how beautiful!”
+
+She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water
+was the wonder of her dancing eyes. “Oh! how very beautiful!” she cried
+without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke
+and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed
+again with a heart of glee.
+
+Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all
+his sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he
+could not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long
+the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny
+himself this choking rapture of her recovery. “Live on like a child
+always, little one,” he thought; “be a child as long as you can, be a
+child for ever, my dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that
+I myself should be a child at all.”
+
+The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly
+some new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the
+earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the
+flowers. Also she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with
+as little shame and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery
+dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and
+when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still.
+Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had
+seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of
+her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden
+no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of
+human sunlight gathering sunshine into her father's house.
+
+It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the
+better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length
+in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but
+voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so
+deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never
+heard before. Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete
+with sparkling life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart.
+All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was
+still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her,
+they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across
+the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their
+hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and
+only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.
+
+Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely
+from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her
+favourite song was still her mother's:--
+
+     Oh, come and claim thine own,
+     Oh, come and take thy throne,
+     Reign ever and alone
+     Reign glorious, golden Love.
+
+Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper
+fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was
+almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a
+maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think
+of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was
+even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she
+were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.
+
+Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like
+the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future
+would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the
+rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating
+joy. He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow.
+And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.
+
+In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and
+look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into
+Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young
+motherhood. Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride and
+joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red fingers
+fastening on her white bosom--oh, what a glimpse was there revealed to
+him!
+
+But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could
+not help but feel pain from them also. They had a perilous fascination
+for him, but he grudged them to Naomi. He thought he could have given
+his immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give. That was
+his poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty
+as a father. He dreaded the coming of that time when another--some other
+yet unseen--should come before him, and he should lose the daughter that
+was now his own.
+
+Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross
+like a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour it
+was gone. The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense
+but wonder. Once she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of
+something which she believed to have happened to her in the night. She
+had been carried away from him--she could not say when--and she knew
+no more until she found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed with
+tiles. Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing
+white kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that
+were of the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of
+bells, a curling silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags
+hung by yellow cords about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman
+of a laughing cruel face; and she herself, Naomi--alone her father being
+nowhere near--stood in the midst with all eyes upon her. What happened
+next she did not know, for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in
+that interval they who had taken her away must have brought her back.
+For when she opened her eyes she was in her own bed, and the things of
+their little home were about her, and her father's eyes were looking
+down at her, and his lips were kissing her, and the sun was shining
+outside, and the birds were singing, and the long grass was whispering
+in the breeze, and it was the same as if she had been asleep during the
+night and was just awakening in the morning.
+
+“It was a dream, my child,” said Israel, thinking only with how vivid
+a sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight the
+picture of that day at the Kasbah.
+
+“A dream!” she cried; “no, no! I _saw_ it!”
+
+Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt of her own
+people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch of their hands
+or the sound of their voices. By one of these she had always known them,
+and sometimes it had been her mother's arms that had been about her, and
+sometimes her father's lips that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes
+Ali's voice that had rung in her ears.
+
+Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both of her
+dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart, “She is a child,
+a child born into life as a maid, and without the strength of a child's
+weakness. Oh! great is the wisdom which orders it so that we come into
+the world as babes.”
+
+Thus realising Naomi's childishness, Israel kept close guard and watch
+upon her afterwards. But if she was a gleam of sunlight in his lonely
+dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found
+her near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a passing
+traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out
+of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was
+gazing full into the man's gross face, answering his evil questions with
+the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between
+them; and in a moment he had torn Naomi away. And that night, while she
+wept out her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown
+her, Israel himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out a new
+petition to God. “O Lord, my God,” he cried, “when she was blind and
+dumb and deaf she was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril from
+herself for Thy hand did guide her, and in none from the world, for no
+man dared outrage her infirmity. But now she is a maid, and her dangers
+are many, for she is beautiful, and the heart of man is evil. Keep me
+with her always, O Lord, to guard and guide her! Let me not leave her,
+for she is without knowledge of good and evil. Spare me a little
+while longer, though I am stricken in years. For her sake spare me, Oh
+Lord--it is the last of my prayers--the last, O Lord, the last--for her
+sake spare me!”
+
+God did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers
+came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The
+release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had
+become known by the blind gratitude of one of them, who, hastening to
+Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before
+it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ISRAEL IN PRISON
+
+
+Short as the time was--some three months and odd days--since the prison
+at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had
+sealed without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied
+by other prisoners. The remoteness of the town in the territory of
+the Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis, had made the
+old fortress a favourite place of banishment to such Kaids of other
+provinces as looked for heavier ransoms from the relatives of victims,
+because the locality of their imprisonment was unknown or the danger
+of approaching it was terrible. And thus it happened that some fifty or
+more men and boys from near and far were already living in the dungeon
+from which Israel and Ali together had set the other prisoners free.
+
+This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from
+Naomi and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa.
+“Ya Allah! Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his
+pups!” said Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel to
+the Kaid of Shawan.
+
+Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning of
+the second day after his arrest. The sun was shining as he approached
+the rude old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down
+to the dungeon. In a little court at the door of the place the Kaid el
+habs, the jailer, was sitting on a mattress, which served him for chair
+by day and bed by night. He was amusing himself with a ginbri, playing
+loud and low according as the tumult was great or little which came from
+the other side of a barred and knotted doorway behind him, some four
+feet high, and having a round peephole in the upper part of it. On the
+wall above hung leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in
+the corner.
+
+At Israel's approach there were some facetious comments between the
+jailer and the guard. Why the ginbri? Was he practising for the fires
+of Jehinnum? Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon? Well, what was a man to do
+while the dogs inside were snarling? Were the thongs for the correction
+of persons lacking understanding? Why, yes; everybody knew their old
+saying, “A hint to the wise, a blow to the fool.”
+
+A bunch of great keys rattled, the low doorway was thrown open, Israel
+stooped and went in, the door closed behind him, the footsteps of the
+guard died away, and the twang of the ginbri began again.
+
+The prison was dark and noisome, some sixty feet long by half as many
+broad, supported by arches resting on rotten pillars, lighted only by
+narrow clefts at either hand, exuding damp from its walls, dropping
+moisture from its roof, its air full of vermin, and its floor reeking of
+filth. And only less horrible than the prison itself was the condition
+of the prisoners. Nearly all wore iron fetters on their legs, and some
+were shackled to the pillars. At one side a little group of them--they
+were Shereefs from Wazzan--were conversing eagerly and gesticulating
+wildly; and at the other side a larger company--they were Jews from
+Fez--were languidly twisting palmetto leaves into the shape of baskets.
+Four Berbers at the farther end were playing cards, and two Arabs that
+were chained to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a
+battered old draughtboard between them. From both groups of players
+came loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation and
+of indignant and sarcastic comment. Down went the cards with triumphant
+bangs, and the moves of the “dogs” were like lightning. First a mocking
+voice: “_You_ call yourself a player! There!--there!--there!” Then a
+meek, piping tone: “So--so--verily, you are my master. Well, let us
+praise Allah for your wisdom.” But soon a wild burst of irony: “You are
+like him who killed the dog and fell into the river. See! thus I teach
+you to boast over your betters! I shave your beard! There!--there!--and
+there!”
+
+In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of
+light from the clefts at the ends might fall on them--a barber-doctor
+was bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. “We're all having it done,”
+ he was saying. “It's good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of
+pilgrims once.” A wild-looking creature sat in a corner--he was a saint,
+a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa--rocking himself to and fro, and
+crying “Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!” Near to this person
+a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his
+prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa,
+brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled through the country with a lion
+by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn to a tune
+that he had heard on the coast.
+
+Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the
+companions that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in
+the clamour of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The
+prisoners knew him, and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every
+mouth was agape. Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind
+him. He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer
+vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down
+helplessly by a pillar on the ground.
+
+A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of
+bread. “Hungry, brother? No?” said the youth. “Cheer up, Sidi! No good
+letting the donkey ride on your head!”
+
+This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless,
+facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing
+for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs
+on every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself--
+
+     El Arby was a black man
+     They called him “'Larby Kosk:”
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+
+Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. “Stay
+here,” he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was
+quelled; “never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will
+come back.” After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither
+insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him.
+He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the
+faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of
+water by the way.
+
+At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by
+their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a
+number of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was
+a wild and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of
+the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild
+shouts as each one found his own. “Blessed be God! She's here! here!”
+ Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come.
+“My Ayesha! Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?”
+ After that the shrieks of despair from such as learned that their
+breadwinners were dying off one by one. “Dead, you say?” “Dead!” “No,
+no!” “Yes, yes!” “No, no, I say!” “I say yes! God forgive me! died
+last week. But don't you die too. Here take this bag of zummetta.” Then
+inquiries after absent children. “Little Selam, where is he?” “Begging
+in Tetuan.” “Poor boy! poor boy! And pretty M'barka, what of her?”
+ “Alas! M'barka's a public woman now in Hoolia's house at Marrakesh. No,
+don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven to it. What were we
+to do with the children crying for bread? And then there was nothing to
+fetch you this journey, Jellali.” “I'll not eat it now it's brought. My
+boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah! May the Kaid that keeps me
+here roast alive in the fires of hell!” Then, apart in one quiet corner,
+a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the lap of his beautiful
+young wife. “You'll not be long coming again, dearest?” he whispers. She
+wipes her eyes and stammers, “No--that is--well--” “What's amiss?” “Ali,
+I must tell you--” “Well?” “Old Aaron Zaggoory says I must marry him, or
+he'll see that both of us starve.” “Allah! And you--_you_?” “Don't look
+at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on me, and whatever happens I--I can
+love nobody else.” “Curses on Aaron Zaggoory! Curses on you! Curses on
+everybody!”
+
+No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this 'Larby the negro
+swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of
+bread--
+
+     Rusks are good and kiks are sweet
+     And kesksoo is both meat and drink;
+     It's this for now, and that for then,
+     But khalia still for married men.
+
+“You're like me, Sidi,” he said, “you want nothing,” and he made an
+upward movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence.
+That was the gay rascal's way of saying that he stole from the bags of
+his comrades while they slept.
+
+“No? Fasting yet?” he said, and went off singing as he came--
+
+     It will make your ladies love you;
+     It will make them coo and kiss--
+
+“What?” he shouted to some one across the prison “eating khalia in the
+bird-cage? Bad, bad, bad!”
+
+All this came to Israel's mind through thick waves of
+half-consciousness, but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air
+of the place must have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he
+had first placed himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow
+eyes he gazed at everything, but nothing did he see. Sometimes he had
+the look of one who listens, but never did he hear. Thus in silence and
+languor he passed from day to day, and from night to night, scarcely
+sleeping, rarely eating, and seeming always to be waiting, waiting,
+waiting.
+
+Fresh prisoners came at short intervals, and then only was Israel's
+interest awakened. One question he asked of all. “Where from?” If they
+answered from Fez, from Wazzan, from Mequinez, or from Marrakesh, Israel
+turned aside and left them without more words. Then to his fellows they
+might pour out their woes in loud wails and curses, but Israel would
+hear no more.
+
+Strangers from Europe travelling through the country were allowed to
+look into the prison through the round peephole of the door kept by the
+Kaid el habs, who played the ginbri. The Jews who made baskets took this
+opportunity to offer their work for sale; and so that he might see the
+visitors and speak with them Israel would snatch up something and hang
+it out. Always his question was the same. “Where from last?” he would
+say in English, or Spanish, or French, or Moorish. Sometimes it chanced
+that the strangers knew him. But he showed no shame. Never did their
+answers satisfy him. He would turn back to his pillar with a sigh.
+
+Thus weeks went on, and Israel's face grew worn and tired. His fellow
+prisoners began to show him deference in their own rude way. When he
+came among them at the first they had grinned and laughed a little.
+To do that was always the impulse of the poor souls, so miserably
+imprisoned, when a new comrade joined him. But the majesty and the
+suffering in Israel's face told on their hearts at last. He was a great
+man fallen, he had nothing left to him; not even bread to eat or water
+to drink. So they gathered about him and hit on a way to make him share
+their food. Bringing their sacks to his pillar, they stacked them about
+it, and asked him to serve out provisions to all, day by day, share and
+share alike. He was honest, he was a master, no one would steal from
+him, it was best, the stuff would last longest. It was a touching sight.
+
+Still the old eagerness betrayed itself in Israel's weary manner as
+often as the door opened and fresh prisoners arrived. Once it happened
+that before he uttered his usual question he saw that the newcomers
+were from Tetuan, and then his restlessness was feverish. “When--were
+you--have you been of late--” he stammered, and seemed unable to go
+farther.
+
+But the Tetawanis knew and understood him. “No,” said one in answer to
+the unspoken question; “Nor I,” said another; “Nor I,” said a third,
+“Nor I neither,” said a fourth, as Israel's rapid eyes passed down the
+line of them.
+
+He turned away without a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked
+vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo
+was a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a
+harlot whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising
+the entire bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child in
+the streets was safe, and no woman, whether wife or daughter, whom God
+had made comely, dare show herself on the roofs. Their own women
+had been carried off to the palace at the Kasbah. That was why they
+themselves were there in prison.
+
+This was about a month after the coming of Israel to Shawan. Then his
+reason began to unsettle. It was pitiful to see that he was conscious of
+the change that was befalling him. He wrestled with madness with all the
+strength of a strong man. If it should fall upon him, where then would
+be his hope and outlook? His day would be done, his night would be
+closed in, he would be no more than a helpless log, rolling in an
+ice-bound sea, and when the thaw came--if it ever came--he would be
+only a broken, rudderless, sailless wreck. Sometimes he would swear at
+nothing and fling out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame
+hang down his head and mutter, “No, no, Israel; no, no, no!”
+
+Other prisoners arrived from Tetuan, and all told the same story. Israel
+listened to them with a stupid look, seeming hardly to hear the tale
+they told him. But one morning, as life began again for the day in that
+slimy eddy of life's ocean, every one became aware that an awful change
+had come to pass. Israel's face had been worn and tired before, but now
+it looked very old and faded. His black hair had been sprinkled with
+grey, and now it was white; and white also was his dark beard, which
+had grown long and ragged. But his eye glistened, and his teeth were
+aglitter in his open mouth. He was laughing at everything, yet not
+wildly, not recklessly, not without meaning or intention, but with the
+cheer of a happy and contented man.
+
+Israel was mad, and his madness was a moving thing to look upon. He
+thought he was back at home and a rich man still, as he had been in
+earlier days, but a generous man also, as he was in later ones. With
+liberal hand he was dispensing his charities.
+
+“Take what you need; eat, drink, do not stint; there is more where this
+has come from; it is not mine; God has lent it me for the good of all.”
+
+With such words, graciously spoken, he served out the provisions
+according to his habit, and only departed from his daily custom in
+piling the measures higher, and in saluting the people by titles--Sid,
+Sidi, Mulai, and the like--in degree as their clothes were poor and
+ragged. It was a mad heart that spoke so, but also it was a big one.
+
+From that time forward he looked upon the prisoners as his guests, and
+when fresh prisoners came to the prison he always welcomed them as if
+he were host there and they were friends who visited him. “Welcome!” he
+would say; “you are very welcome. The place is your own. Take all. What
+you don't see, believe we have not got it. A thousand thousand welcomes
+home!” It was grim and painful irony.
+
+Israel's comrades began to lose sense of their own suffering in
+observing the depth of his, and they laid their heads together to
+discover the cause of his madness. The most part of them concluded
+that he was repining for the loss of his former state. And when one
+day another prisoner came from Tetuan with further tales of the Basha's
+tyranny, and of the people's shame at thought of how they had dealt by
+Israel, the prisoners led the man back to where Israel was standing in
+the accustomed act of dispensing bounty, that he might tell his story
+into the rightful ears.
+
+“They're always crying for you,” said the Tetawani; “'Israel ben Oliel!
+Israel ben Oliel!' that's what you hear in the mosques and the streets
+everywhere.' Shame on us for casting him out, shame on us! He was our
+father!' Jews and Muslimeen, they're all saying so.”
+
+It was useless. The glad tidings could not find their way. That black
+page of Israel's life which told of the people's ingratitude was sealed
+in the book of memory. Israel laughed. What could his good friend mean?
+Behold! was he not rich? Had he not troops of comrades and guests about
+him?
+
+The prisoners turned aside, baffled and done. At length one man--it was
+no other than 'Larby the wastrel--drew some of them apart and said, “You
+are all wrong. It's not his former state that he's thinking of. _I_ know
+what it is--who knows so well as I? Listen! you hear his laughter! Well,
+he must weep, or he will be mad for ever. He must be _made_ to weep.
+Yes, by Allah! and I must do it.”
+
+That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the
+prisoners tied up their cotton headkerchiefs and lay down to sleep,
+'Larby sat beside Israel's place with sighs and moans and other symptoms
+of a dejected air.
+
+“Sidi, master,” he faltered, “I had a little brother once, and he was
+blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother's son. But you wouldn't think how
+happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi he never missed anything, and
+so his little face was like laughing water! By Allah! I loved that boy
+better than all the world! Women? Why--well, never mind! He was six and
+I was eighteen, and he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over,
+Sidi, and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn't see.
+Well a bleeder came from Soos--curse his great-grandfather! Looked at
+little Hosain--'Scales!' said he--burn his father! Bleed him and he'll
+see! So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for a minute--half
+a minute! 'Oh, 'Larby,' he cried--I was holding him; then he--he--'
+'Larby,' he cried faint, like a lamb that's lost in the mountains--and
+then--and then--'Oh, oh, 'Larby,' he moaned Sidi, Sidi, I _paid_ that
+bleeder--there and then--_this_ way! That's why I'm here!”
+
+It was a lie, but 'Larby acted it so well that his voice broke in his
+throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel's hand.
+
+The effect on Israel himself was strange and even startling. While
+'Larby was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling: “Where?
+When? Naomi!” as if grappling for lost treasures in an ebbing sea.
+And when 'Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. “And you are
+weeping for that?” he cried. “You think it much that the sweet child is
+dead--God rest him! So it is to the like of you, but look at me!”
+
+His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries. “Look at me! Am
+I weeping? No; I would scorn to weep. But I have more cause a
+thousandfold. Listen! Once I was rich; but what were riches without
+children? Hard bread with no water for sop. I asked God for a child. He
+gave me a daughter; but she was born blind and dumb and deaf. I asked
+God to take my riches and give her hearing. He gave her hearing; but
+what was hearing without speech? I asked God to take all I had and give
+her speech. He gave her speech, but what was speech without sight?
+I asked God to take my place from me and give her sight. He gave her
+sight, and I was cast out of the town like a beggar. What matter? She
+had all, and I was forgiven. But when I was happy, when I was content,
+when she filled my heart with sunshine, God snatched me away from her.
+And where is she now? Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born into
+the world at the mercy of liars and libertines. And where am I? Here,
+like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless, stupid,
+powerless, mad. No, no, not mad, either! Tell me, boy, I am not mad!”
+
+In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling like a drowning
+man. “Yet I do not weep,” he cried in a thick voice. “God has a right to
+do as He will. He gave her to me for seventeen years. If she dies she'll
+be mine again soon. Only if she lives--only if she falls into evil
+hands--Tell me, _have_ I been mad?”
+
+He gave no time for an answer. “Naomi!” he cried, and the name broke
+in his throat. “Where are you now? What has--who have--your father
+is thinking of you--he is--No, I will not weep. You see I have a good
+cause, but I tell you I will never weep. God has a right--Naomi!--Na--”
+
+The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly he rose
+and cried in an awful voice, “Oh, I'm a fool! God has done nothing for
+me. Why should I do anything for God? He has taken all I had. He has
+taken my child. I have nothing more to give Him but my life. Let Him
+take that too. Take it, I beseech Thee!” he cried--the vault of the
+prison rang--“Take it, and set me free!”
+
+But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place, and was sobbing
+like a little child. The other prisoners had risen in their amazement,
+and 'Larby, who was shedding hot tears over his cold ones, was capering
+down the floor, and singing, “El Arby was a black man.”
+
+Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot
+into the dark place. The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier, who
+carried an order for Israel's release. Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, was to
+keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo, to celebrate the
+visit, had pardoned Israel.
+
+It was coals of fire on Israel's head. “God is good,” he muttered. “I
+shall see her again. Yes, God has a right to do as He will. I shall see
+her soon. God is wise beyond all wisdom. I must lose no time. Jailer
+can I leave the town to-night? I wish to start on my journey.
+To-night?--yes, to-night! Are the gates open? No? You will open them?
+You are very good. Everybody is very good. God is good. God is mighty.”
+
+Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late intemperate
+outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, “A man's
+a fool when he loses his only child. I don't mean by death. Time heals
+that. But the living child--oh, it's an unending pain! You would never
+think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her
+voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was
+very fond of the little one--I was quite miserable if I lost sight
+of her for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must
+hasten back. The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well
+she'll be looking out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in
+the morning. It's always the way of these tender creatures, is it not?
+So we must humour them. Yes, yes, that's so that's so.”
+
+His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief
+knotted under his chin--gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light of
+the jailer's lantern.
+
+“Farewell, brothers!” he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and
+brought it to their breasts.
+
+“Farewell, master!” “Peace, Sidi!” “Farewell!” “Peace!” “Farewell!”
+
+The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps
+dying away outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then
+silence--empty and ghostly.
+
+In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a
+croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing--
+
+     El Arby was a black man,
+     They called him “'Larby Kosk;”
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+
+
+What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel
+lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which
+she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them,
+she sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil
+which had befallen her, but with her father's warning voice and his last
+words in her ear: “Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say,
+stay here. I will come back.”
+
+When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and
+fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she
+knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of
+this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she
+was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look
+to her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink beside
+her, but no skill to make and take them.
+
+Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother has been
+swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom. It was
+not so much love as loss. What to do, where to look, which way to turn
+first, she knew no longer, and could not think, for lack of the hand
+that had been wont to guide her.
+
+The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi, and some
+of the women among them came to see her. They were poor farming people,
+oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things they saw were
+the cattle and sheep, and the next thing was the simple girl with the
+child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways wherein a lonely woman must
+fend for herself.
+
+“You cannot live here alone, my daughter,” they said; “you would perish.
+Then think of the danger--a child like you, with a face like a flower!
+No, no, you must come to us. We will look to you like one of our own,
+and protect you from evil men. And as for the creatures--”
+
+“But he said I was never to leave this place,” said Naomi. “'Stay here,'
+he said; 'whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.'”
+
+The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and
+murdered. It was in vain. Naomi's answer was always the same: “He told
+me to stay here, and surely I must do so.”
+
+Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger. “Tut!” they
+thought, “what should we want with the Jew child? Allah! Was there ever
+such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too! And as for her
+father, he'll never come back--never. Trust the Basha for that!”
+
+But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness,
+they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple
+offices--milking and churning, and baking and delving--in pity of the
+sweet girl with the great eyes who had been left to live alone. And
+Naomi, seeing her helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy
+it, so that in a little while she was able to do for herself nearly
+everything that her neighbours at first did for her. Then they would say
+among themselves, “Allah! she's not such a baby after all; and if
+she wasn't quite so beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn't so
+wicked--but then, God is great! God is great!”
+
+Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her
+father had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp
+alight by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under
+the dropping eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the
+radiance of the sun she had whispered to herself and said, “He will come
+back, Naomi; only wait, only wait; maybe it will be tonight, maybe it
+will be to-day; you will see, you will see.”
+
+But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon
+her as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been
+there, her old content in her father's command that she should never
+leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.
+
+“Who's to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing. If the Kaid finds
+him in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom. That
+will come to the same thing in the end, or he'll die in prison.”
+
+Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought
+she did not listen. And though it was little she understood of Kaids and
+ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father's peril, and at
+length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she
+should and must. With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind
+of a child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman,
+and her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and
+love were born in it. “He must be starving in prison,” she thought, “and
+I will take him food.”
+
+When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in
+consternation and horror. “God be gracious to my father!” they cried.
+“Shawan? You? Alone? Child, you'll be lost, lost--worse, a thousand
+times worse! Shoof! you're only a baby still.”
+
+But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as
+their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it. “He must
+be starving in prison,” she said, “and I will take him food.”
+
+Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.
+
+“Allah!” they said, “who would have believed it, that the little
+pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!”
+
+Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey. She
+saved up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the
+country; also she churned some butter in the simple way which the women
+had taught her, and put the milk that was left in a goat's-skin. In
+three days she was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf
+panniers of a mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got
+up before them on the front of the burda, after the manner of the wives
+whom she had seen going past to market.
+
+When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild
+errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. “Keep to the
+track as far as Tetuan,” they said to her, “and then ask for the road
+to Shawan.” One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a
+way that it might cover her face. “Faces like yours are not for the
+daylight,” the old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her
+journey. The women watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up
+to the fondak, and then sinks out of sight beyond it. “Poor mad little
+fool,” they whimpered; “that's the end of her! She'll never come back.
+Too many men about for that. And now,” they said, facing each other with
+looks of suspicion and envy, “what of the creatures?”
+
+While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was
+awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had
+thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do
+so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her,
+and she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing
+pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women
+trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the
+herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing
+barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this
+cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear
+which had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her
+neighbour had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as
+they passed her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood
+to tingle. They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning
+of shame.
+
+Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward.
+“He is starving in prison,” she told herself; “I must lose no time.” It
+was a weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything
+was terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she
+travelled she came upon men and women and children. It was so strange
+that all the world was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more
+people everywhere. That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no
+house in sight and never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener
+she wished that the people were not so many; and that was when the
+children mocked at her mule, or the women jeered at her as if she must
+needs be a base person because she was alone, or the men laughed and
+leered into her uncovered face.
+
+Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail. Everything was
+unlike what she expected. She had thought the world so good that she had
+but to say to any that asked her of her errand, “My father is in prison,
+they say that he is starving; I am taking him food,” and every one would
+help her forward. Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had
+reckoned in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours. But no
+one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill, and
+fewer still with pity and cheer.
+
+The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast, had
+flattened the panniers that hung by its side, and made the round cakes
+of bread to protrude from the open mouth of one of them. Seeing this,
+a line of market-women going by, with bags of charcoal on their backs,
+snatched a cake each as they passed and munched them and laughed. Naomi
+tried to protest. “The bread is for my father,” she faltered; “he is
+in prison; they say he--” But the expostulation that began thus timidly
+broke down of itself, for the women laughed again out of their mouths
+choked with the bread, and in another moment they were gone.
+
+Naomi's spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front
+still. To speak of her father again would be to shame him. The poor
+little illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which, in
+spite of vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled, since the
+coming of her sight, to build up in her fresh young soul, were now
+tumbling to pieces. After all, the world was very cruel. It was the same
+as if an angel out of the clouds had fallen on to the earth and found
+her feet mired with clay.
+
+Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a
+fondak which stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan on the
+south-western side. The darkness had closed in by this time, and she
+must needs rest there for the night, but never until then had she
+reflected that for such accommodation she would need money. Only a few
+coppers were necessary, only twenty moozoonahs, that she might lie in
+the shelter and safety of one of the pens that were built for the sleep
+of human creatures, and that her mule might be tethered and fed on
+the manure heap that constituted the square space within. At last she
+bethought her of her eggs, and, though it went to her heart to use for
+herself what was meant for her father, she parted with twelve of them,
+and some cakes of the bread besides, that she might be allowed to pass
+the gate, telling herself repeatedly, with big throbs of remorse between
+her protestations, that unless she did so her father might never get
+anything at all.
+
+The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go
+on to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden, and
+of countless dogs. It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal, and
+between the twilight and the coming of night certain of the men watched
+for the new moon, and when its thin bow appeared in the sky they
+signalled its advent after their usual manner by firing their flintlocks
+into the air, while their women, who were squatting around, kept up a
+cooing chorus. Then came eating and drinking, and laughing and singing,
+and playing the ginbri, and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and
+quarrelling and fighting, and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel
+wielded by the keeper of the fondak. With such exercises the night
+passed into morning.
+
+Naomi was sick. Her head ached. The smell of rotten fish, the stench of
+the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs,
+the grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her
+light-headed. She could neither eat nor sleep. Almost as soon as it
+was light she was up and out and on her way. “I must lose no time,” she
+thought, trying not to realise that the blue sky was spinning round her,
+that noises were ringing in her head, and that her poor little heart,
+which had been so stout only yesterday, was sinking very low.
+
+“He must be starving,” she told herself again, and that helped her to
+forget her own troubles and to struggle on. But oh, if the world were
+only not so cruel, oh, if there were anyone to give her a word of cheer,
+nay, a glance of pity! But nobody had looked at her except the women who
+stole her bread and the men who shamed her with their wicked eyes.
+
+That one day's experience did more than all her life before it to fill
+her with the bitter fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
+evil. Her illusions fell away from her, and her sweet childish faith was
+broken down. She saw herself as she was: a simple girl, a child ignorant
+of the ways of the world, going alone on a long journey unknown to her,
+thinking to succour her father in prison, and carrying a handful of eggs
+and a few poor cakes of bread. When at length the scales fell from the
+eyes of her mind, and as she trudged along on her bony mule, afraid to
+ask her way, she saw herself, with all her fine purposes shrivelled up,
+do what she would to be brave, she could not help but cry. It was all
+so vain, so foolish; she was such a weak little thing. Her father knew
+this, and that was why he told her to stay where he left her. What if he
+came home while she was absent! Should she go back?
+
+She had almost resolved to return, struggle as she might to push
+forward, when going close under the town walls, near to the very gate,
+the Bab Toot whereat she had been cast out with her father remembering
+this scene of their abasement with a new sense of its cruelty and shame
+born of her own simple troubles, she lit upon a woman who was coming
+out.
+
+It was Habeebah. She was now the slave of Ben Aboo, and was just then
+stealing away from the Kasbah in the early morning that she might go in
+search of Naomi, whose whereabouts and condition she had lately learned.
+
+The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled, but that
+Naomi had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In another moment the
+poor frightened girl, with all her brave bearing gone, was weeping on
+the black woman's breast.
+
+“Whither are you going?” said Habeebah.
+
+“To my father,” Naomi began. “He is in prison; they say he is starving;
+I was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don't know my way; and
+besides--”
+
+“The very thing!” cried Habeebah.
+
+Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win emancipation at
+the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died. Naomi,
+who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima. That was all. Then her troubles
+would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her, and her father
+who was in prison would be set free.
+
+Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant.
+The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father was
+everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah's bold promises like a
+drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.
+
+“My father will be let out of prison? You are sure--quite sure?” she
+asked.
+
+“Quite sure,” answered Habeebah stoutly.
+
+Naomi's hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and her
+poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born
+worldliness.
+
+“Very well,” she said. “I will turn Muslima.”
+
+A few minutes afterwards she was riding by Habeebah's side into the
+town, through the Bab Toot across the Feddan, and up to the courtyard
+of the Kasbah, which had witnessed the beginning of her own and her
+father's degradation. Then, tethering the beast in the open stables
+there, Habeebah took Naomi into her own little room and left her alone
+for some minutes, while she hastened to Ben Aboo in secret with her
+wondrous news.
+
+“Lord Basha,” she said, “the beautiful Jewess Naomi, the daughter of
+Israel ben Oliel, will turn Muslima.”
+
+“Where is she?” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“Sidi,” said Habeebah, “I have promised that you will liberate her
+father.”
+
+“Fetch her,” said Ben Aboo, “and it shall be done.”
+
+But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah's room and found Naomi there,
+and heard of the vain hope which had brought her.
+
+“My sweet jewel of gold and silver,” the black woman cried, “you don't
+know what you are doing. Turn Muslima, and you will be parted from your
+father for ever. He is a Jew, and will have no right to you any more.
+You will never, never see him again. He will be lost to you--lost--I
+say--lost!”
+
+Habeebah, with two of the guard, came back to take Naomi to Ben Aboo.
+The poor girl was bewildered. She had seen nothing but her father
+in Fatimah's protest, just as she had seen nothing but her father in
+Habeebah's promises. She did not know what to do, she was such a poor
+weak little thing, and there was no strong hand to guide her.
+
+They led her through dark passages to an open place which she thought
+she had seen before. It was a great patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white
+kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that were of
+the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells,
+a silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags, hung by yellow
+cords, about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing
+cruel face, and she herself, Naomi, stood in the midst, with every eye
+upon her. Where had she seen all this before?
+
+Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he
+committed her father to prison. He cherished schemes concerning her
+which he did not share with his wife Katrina. But he had hitherto been
+withheld by two considerations: the first being that he was beset with
+difficulties arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money
+than he could find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity that
+might perchance arise of recalling Israel to his post. Out of these
+grave bedevilments he had extricated himself at length by imposing
+dues on certain tribes of Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the
+Sultan's authority, and by calling on the Sultan's army to enforce them.
+The Sultan had come in answer to his summons, the Reefians had been
+routed, their villages burnt, and that morning at daybreak he had
+received a message saying that Abd er-Rahman intended to keep the feast
+of the Moolood at Tetuan. So this capture of Naomi was the luckiest
+chance that could have befallen him at such a moment. She should witness
+to the Prophet; her father, the Jew, would thereby lose his rights
+in her; and he himself, as her sole guardian, would present her as a
+peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing the boundary of his bashalic.
+
+Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing
+the news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to
+Katrina. But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid,
+so tired, yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the
+light of the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet
+mouth of a child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back
+to his former scheme.
+
+“So you wish to turn Muslima?” he said.
+
+Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear “No,
+no, no!”
+
+Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with
+protests and remonstrances. “She said so,” Habeebah cried. “'I will turn
+Muslima,' she said. Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!”
+
+“Did you say so?” asked Ben Aboo.
+
+“Yes,” said Naomi faintly.
+
+“Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now,” said Ben Aboo; and he
+told her what was the penalty of apostasy. It was death. She must choose
+between them.
+
+Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead
+with her. Still she saw one thing only. “But what of my father?” she
+said.
+
+“He shall be liberated,” said Ben Aboo.
+
+“But shall I see him again? Shall I go back to him?” said Naomi.
+
+“The girl is a simpleton!” said Katrina.
+
+“She is only a child,” said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more at her
+flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments of
+his women.
+
+These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds,
+with a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room that was
+stifling from many perfumes, and certain smaller chambers. The garden
+was inhabited by a gazelle, whose great startled eyes looked out through
+the long grass; and the oblong room by a number of women of varying
+ages, among whom were a matronly Mooress, called Tarha, in a scarlet
+head-dress, and with a string of great keys swung from shoulder to
+waist; a Circassian, called Hoolia, in a gorgeous rida of red silk and
+gold brocade; a Frenchwoman, called Josephine, with embroidered red
+slippers and black stockings; and a Jewess, called Sol, with a band of
+silk handkerchiefs tied round her forehead above her coal-black curls,
+with her fingers pricked out with henna and her eyes darkened with kohl.
+
+Such were Ben Aboo's wives and concubines and captives, whom he had not
+divorced according to his promise; and when Naomi came among them they
+did their duty by their master faithfully. Being trapped themselves,
+they tried to entrap Naomi also. They overwhelmed her with caresses,
+they went into ecstasies over her beauty, and caused the future which
+awaited her to shine before her eyes. She would have a noble husband,
+magnificent dresses, a brilliant palace, and the world would be at her
+feet. “And what's the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?” said Sol;
+“look at me!” “Tut!” said Josephine, “there's nothing to choose between
+them.” “For my part,” said Tarha, “I don't see what it matters to us;
+they say Paradise is for the men!” “And think of the jewels, and the
+earrings as big as a bracelet,” said Hoolia, “instead of this,” and she
+drew away between her thumb and first finger the blanket which Naomi's
+neighbour had given her.
+
+It was all to no purpose. “But what of my father?” Naomi asked again and
+again.
+
+The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations,
+ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs. “Tut!” they
+said, “why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan? She would
+only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan.”
+
+Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their
+tales, their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon
+Naomi at last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child.
+In this hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no
+occupation but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education
+but devising new means of pleasing the lust of their husband's eye, no
+delight than that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but
+jealousy, no diversion but sporting on the roofs, no end but death and
+the Kabar.
+
+Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi to the
+prison, and set Habeebah to guard her. The black woman was in terror at
+the turn that events had taken. There was nothing to do now but to
+go on, so she importuned Naomi with prayers. How could she be so
+hard-hearted? Could she keep her father famishing in prison when one
+word out of her lips would liberate him? Naomi had no answer but her
+tears. She remembered the hareem, and cried.
+
+Then Ben Aboo thought of a daring plan. He called the Grand Rabbi, and
+commanded him to go to Naomi and convert her to Islam. The Rabbi
+obeyed with trembling. After all, it was the same God that both peoples
+worshipped, only the Moors called Him Allah and the Jews Jehovah. Naomi
+knew little of either. It was not of God that she was thinking: it was
+only of her father. She was too innocent to see the trick, but the Rabbi
+failed. He kissed her, and went away wiping his eyes.
+
+Rumour of Naomi's plight had passed through the town, and one night a
+number of Moors came secretly to a lane at the back of the Kasbah, where
+a narrow window opened into her cell. They told her in whispers that
+what she held as tragical was a very simple matter. “Turn Muslima,” they
+pleaded, “and save yourself. You are too young to die. Resign yourself,
+for God's sake.” But no answer came back to them where they were
+gathered in the darkness, save low sobs from inside the wall.
+
+At last Ben Aboo made two announcements. The first, a public one, was
+that Abd er-Rahman would reach Tetuan within two days, on the opening
+of the feast of the Moolood, and the other, a private one, that if
+Naomi had not said the Kelmah by first prayers the following morning she
+should die and her father be cut off as the penalty of her apostasy.
+
+That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was
+occupied by a group of Jews. “Sister,” they whispered, “sister of our
+people, listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has robbed us of
+all we had that he may pay for the Sultan's visit. Listen! We have heard
+something. We want Israel ben Oliel back among us. He was our father,
+he was our brother. Save his life for the sake of our children, for the
+Basha has taken their bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we
+pray.”
+
+Naomi broke down at last. Next morning at dawn, kneeling among men in
+the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, she repeated the Word after the Iman:
+“I testify that there is no God but God, and that our Lord Mohammed is
+the messenger of God; I am truly resigned.”
+
+Then she was taken back to the women's apartments, and clad gorgeously.
+Her child face was wet with tears. She was only a poor weak little
+thing, she knew nothing of religion, she loved her father better than
+God, and all the world was against her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+
+
+Such was the method of Israel's release. But, knowing nothing of the
+price which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy.
+Nay, his happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness
+which hung over his life been lifted away. Any one who had seen him in
+prison would have been puzzled by the change as he came away from it.
+He laughed with the courier who walked with him to the town gate, and
+jested with the gate porter as with an old acquaintance. His voice was
+merry, his eye gleamed in the rays of the lantern, his face was flushed,
+and his step was light. “Afraid to travel in the night? No, no, I'll
+meet nothing worse than myself. Others _may_ who meet me? Ha, ha!
+Perhaps so, perhaps so!” “No evil with you, brother?” “No evil, praise
+be God.” “Well, peace be to you!” “On you be peace!” “May your morning
+be blessed! Good-night!” “Good-night!” Then with a wave of the hand he
+was gone into the darkness.
+
+It was a wonderful night. The moon, which was in its first quarter,
+was still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead, making a
+silvery dome that almost obliterated the blue. Rivers were rumbling on
+the hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance, kine that could not be
+seen were chewing audibly near at hand, and sheep like patches of white
+in the gloom were scuttling through the grass before Israel's footsteps.
+Israel walked quickly, tracing his course between the two arms of the
+Jebel Sheshawan, whose summits were visible against the sky. The air was
+cool and moist, and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Oh! the
+joy of it to him who had lain long months in prison! Israel drank in the
+night air as a young colt drinks in the wind.
+
+And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel's heart.
+“I am going to be happy,” he told himself, “yes, very happy, very
+happy.” He raised his eyes to heaven, and a star, bigger and brighter
+than the rest, hung over the path before him. “It is leading me to
+Naomi,” he thought. He knew that was folly, but he could not restrain
+his mind from foolishness. And at least she had the same moon and stars
+above her sleep, for she would be sleeping now. “I am coming,” he cried.
+He fixed his eye on the bright star in front and pushed forward, never
+resting, never pausing.
+
+The morning dawned. Long rippling waves of morning air came down the
+mountains, cool, chill, and moist. The grey light became tinged with
+red. Then the sun rose somewhere. It had not yet appeared, but the peak
+of the western hill was flushed and a raven flew out and perched on the
+point of light. Israel's breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer
+step. “She will be waking soon,” he told himself.
+
+The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing--the wheatear
+in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the
+rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth
+below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like
+vast spiders' webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat, dogs to bark,
+kine to low, horses to cross each other's necks, and over the freshness
+of the air came the smell of peat and of green boughs burning. Israel
+did not stop, but pushed on with new eagerness. “She will have risen
+now,” he told himself. He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door
+and looking out for him in the sunlight.
+
+“Poor little thing,” he thought, “how she misses me! But I am coming, I
+am coming!”
+
+The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed since he saw
+it last. Then it had been like a dead man's face; now it was like a face
+that was always smiling. And though the year was so old it seemed to
+be quite young. No tired look of autumn, no warning of winter; only the
+freshness and vigour of spring. “I am going to see my child, and I shall
+be happy yet,” thought Israel. The dust of life seemed to hang on him no
+longer.
+
+He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer--“the house of the poor
+one.” The place did not even justify its name, for it was a cinereous
+wreck. Not a living creature was to be seen anywhere. The village had
+been sacked by the Sultan's army, and its inhabitants had fled to the
+mountains. Israel paused a moment, and looked into one of the ruined
+houses. He knew it must have been the house of a Jew, for he could
+recognise it by its smell. The floor was strewn over with rubbish--cans,
+kettles, water-bottles, a woman's handkerchief, and a dainty red
+slipper. On the ragged grass in the court within there were some little
+stones built up into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the
+ground in lines. A young girl had lived in that house; children had
+played there; the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits
+still. “Poor souls!” thought Israel, but the troubles of others could
+not really touch him. At that very moment his heart was joyful.
+
+The day was warm, but not too hot for walking. Israel did not feel
+weary, and so he went on without resting. He reckoned how far it was
+from Shawan to his home near Semsa. It was nearly seventy miles. That
+distance would take two days and two nights to cover on foot. He had
+left the prison on Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset
+before he reached Naomi. It was now Thursday morning. He must lose
+no time. “You see, the poor little thing will be waiting, waiting,
+waiting,” he told himself. “These sweet creatures are all so impatient;
+yes, yes, so foolishly impatient. God bless them!”
+
+He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They
+answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their
+trouble. Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred
+dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he
+had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his
+twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel
+hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their
+story. He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi
+he was to leave Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty,
+noble, beautiful England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little
+white island of the sea! His mother's home! England! Yes, he would go
+back to it. True, he had no friends there now; but what matter of that?
+Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful
+gaps. His mother! Ruth! But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name
+aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on
+her hair. Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be
+so childish.
+
+Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.
+It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were
+picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the
+voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning
+under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel
+that he had not eaten since the previous day. “I must have food,” he
+thought, “though I do not feel hungry.” So he stopped, and the wandering
+Arabs hailed him. “Markababikum!” they cried from where they sat within.
+
+“You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!” Their land was the
+world.
+
+Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled
+beans and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a
+woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while
+she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles.
+Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young
+girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and
+baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three
+stones. All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.
+
+“On a long journey, brother?” said the man.
+
+“No, oh no, no,” said Israel. “Only to Semsa, no farther.”
+
+“Well, you must sleep here to-night,” said the Arab.
+
+“Ah, I cannot do that,” said Israel.
+
+“No?”
+
+“You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor
+child, and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of
+a man to stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient,
+you know. And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I
+suppose we must humour them--that's what I always say.”
+
+“But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!” said the woman.
+
+“Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister,” said Israel. “Well, peace!
+Farewell all, farewell!”
+
+Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the
+darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense
+black cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness
+ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on
+every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort.
+The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses.
+He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke
+out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from
+somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no
+choice but to stop. “After all, it is better,” he thought. “Strange, how
+things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I
+will get no sleep at all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and
+to ask and to hear.”
+
+Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept
+upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense
+night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in
+a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart. “Yes, I must
+sleep--sleep--to-morrow _she_ must sleep and I must watch by her--watch
+by her as I used to do--used to do--how soft and beautiful--how
+beautiful--sleeping--sleep--Ah!”
+
+When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance,
+the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the
+borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river,
+which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was
+now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his
+home near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white
+walls, and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with
+the snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange
+orchards.
+
+But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
+Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown
+dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could
+see now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi's
+eyes! Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world
+was new to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far
+sweeter youth.
+
+Naomi--Naomi--always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as she had
+appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.
+But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two
+months and a half--it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown from
+a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big,
+slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.
+Nevertheless, he was her father still--her old, tired, dim-eyed father;
+and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He could
+see and hear it all. First Naomi's voice: “A bow in the sky--red, blue,
+crimson--oh!” Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness: “A
+rainbow, child!” Ah! the dreams were beautiful!
+
+He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice--the voice of his
+poor dead Ruth--and to remember the song that she used to sing--the song
+she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he
+was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the
+street--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice.
+
+He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he
+sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was
+making was Naomi's voice and not his own.
+
+Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the
+Sultan's gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping
+sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation
+that had come out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his
+face they were shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true,
+but strong and firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had
+passed, and he was coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering,
+infirm old man of eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but
+after a pause one of them--Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name
+was Solomon Laredo--stepped up and said, “Israel ben Oliel, our poor
+Tetuan is in trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God
+has punished us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of
+you; for we have heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!”
+
+Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of
+Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also
+something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel,
+who was to bombard Marteel. But Israel heard very little. “I think my
+hearing must be failing me,” he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if
+that did not greatly matter. “And to tell you the truth, though I pity
+my poor brethren, I can no longer help them. God will raise up a better
+minister.”
+
+“Never!” cried the Jews in many voices.
+
+“Anyhow,” said Israel, “my life among you is ended. I set no store by
+place and power. What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand of
+God I stand.' Shakespeare--oh, a mighty creature--one who knew where
+the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you've not lived in England. Do
+you know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You
+remember her--Naomi--a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and
+speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am
+going to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one
+will be waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!”
+
+Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was
+on every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation
+stood and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.
+
+And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him
+of some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began
+to think of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His
+absence had been so long, and so many things might have happened since
+he went away. In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain
+shamble. At nearly every step the body lurched for poise and balance.
+
+At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the
+little rush-covered house ought to be seen. “It's yonder,” he cried, and
+pointed it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and
+its strong rays were in his face. “She's there, I see her!” he shouted.
+A few minutes later he was near the door. “No, my eyes deceived me,”
+ he said in a damp voice. “Or perhaps she has gone in--perhaps she's
+hiding--the sweet rogue!”
+
+The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. “Naomi!” he
+called in a voice like a caress. “Naomi!” His voice trembled now. “Come
+to me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!” He listened.
+There was not a sound, not a movement. “Naomi!” The name was like a
+gurgle in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly
+and simply, “She's not here.”
+
+He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a
+slipper covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his
+face. Dead? Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before--for himself,
+for others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him.
+Death! Oh, oh!
+
+With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the
+floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He
+flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi--it must be she!
+
+It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had
+been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too
+suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. “Where is she laid?” he
+said in a voice of awe.
+
+Fatimah saw his error instantly. “Naomi is alive,” she said, and, seeing
+how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, “and well, very
+well.”
+
+That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a
+cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what
+she had done.
+
+“Where is she?” he cried. “Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she
+not here? Lead me to her, lead me!”
+
+Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. “Alas!” she said, weeping, “that
+cannot be.”
+
+Israel steadied himself and waited. “She cannot come to you, and neither
+can you go to her.” said Fatimah. “But she is well, oh! very well.
+Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--oh no, she
+is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed, she is at the
+palace--the women's palace--but set your mind easy--she--”
+
+With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
+and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
+lived a lifetime in that moment.
+
+“The palace!” he said in a bewildered way. “The women's palace--the
+women's--” and then broke off shortly. “Fatimah, I want to go to Naomi,”
+ he said.
+
+And Fatimah stammered, “Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--”
+
+“Fatimah,” said Israel, with an awful calm. “Can't you see, woman,
+I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not
+understand?--I want to go to my daughter.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Fatimah; “but you can never go to her any more. She is
+in the women's apartments--”
+
+Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.
+
+“Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen,” said Fatimah; “only listen.”
+
+But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
+everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. “Silence!”
+ he cried. “What need is there for words? She is in the palace!--that's
+enough. The women's palace--the hareem--what more is there to say?”
+
+Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in
+all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. “O
+God!” he cried, “my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
+starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home
+to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy.
+Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not
+that, whatever happens! But the palace--the women's palace. Naomi! My
+little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn
+that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to
+see that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell, and Ben Aboo--that
+libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled
+with God for it--”
+
+He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
+his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven,
+and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, “Kill her, O God!
+Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!”
+
+At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of
+tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned
+the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way
+while sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look.
+Sometimes he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own
+condition: “I am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed
+my heart in vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh
+slipped. . . . I am as one whom his mother comforteth.”
+
+Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple
+foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly
+and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared
+to think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer--always
+the same--that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he
+seemed to hear a voice that cried, “Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!”
+ “Here! Israel is here!” he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling
+him. The Kaid was the King. “Yes, I will go back to the King,” he said.
+Then he looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt,
+and tried to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged
+threads of it. At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he
+were a master still, “Bring me robes--clean robes--white robes; I am
+going back to the King!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+
+
+Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,
+the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away,
+encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment
+of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed
+for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were
+everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and
+nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of
+the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.
+
+Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,
+and crying in a hoarse voice, “Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord!
+Awake! Awake!”
+
+In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.
+The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel
+of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange
+orchards lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red
+rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above
+them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself the small red
+flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets
+of various colours swung on many walls.
+
+The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It
+was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment
+of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their
+heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They
+poured into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and
+squeezed their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the
+air, and shouting as they went, “Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is
+coming! Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!”
+
+Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
+perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
+through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
+that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
+himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
+there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
+spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file,
+not hand to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a
+hundred miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,
+or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping
+blood; the faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines
+of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight
+of God's own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the
+many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah beyond the market-place.
+They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had just stripped, whose
+villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children he had just driven
+into the mountains. And they were going to die in his dungeons.
+
+It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's
+train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
+human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
+Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the
+streets were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban
+within range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the
+principal thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their
+haiks, had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next,
+a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the
+walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was
+coming. Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from
+their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish
+people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and
+children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at
+tambourines and crying in wild discords, “God bless our Lord!” “God give
+victory to our Lord the Sultan!”
+
+The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the
+Caliphs of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them
+with exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar
+crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.
+
+“Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your
+slippers--Abd er-Rahman is coming!”
+
+Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed,
+jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners
+were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their
+voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back into their Mellah
+and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan
+even from their roofs.
+
+And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
+having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
+themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
+and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the
+Sultan's train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls,
+donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified
+old camel. It was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces
+thrust into white ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and
+clenched fists uplifted. Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like
+hyenas, shrill and guttural, piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings,
+quarrellings, cursings.
+
+“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!”
+
+“O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!”
+
+“Curses on your grandfather!”
+
+“Allah! Allah! Allah!”
+
+“Balak! Balak! Balak!”
+
+But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of
+the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by
+the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were
+thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the
+street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western
+gate.
+
+By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen
+who had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused
+and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they
+came up to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs
+could see them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river,
+none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.
+
+When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
+camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
+himself was at hand.
+
+First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
+their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
+four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
+outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And
+then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him,
+came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks,
+his rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father
+of Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in
+gorgeous trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold.
+Solomon's seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar--a
+safeguard against the evil eye--was suspended from its neck. Its saddle
+was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were
+of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of
+his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
+girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
+transparent.
+
+As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the
+Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his
+stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.
+
+“God bless our Lord!”
+
+“Sultan Abd er-Rahman!”
+
+“God prolong the life of our Lord!”
+
+He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
+Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to
+the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless
+the people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening
+acclamations.
+
+“All's well, all's well,” they told each other, and pointed to the white
+horse--the sign of peace--which the Sultan rode, and to the riderless
+black horse--the sign of strife--that pranced behind him.
+
+The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
+Sultan with a shrill ululation: “Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!”
+
+Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some
+of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
+coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
+articulate cries.
+
+He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
+Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
+cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
+State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
+head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
+greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem.
+The ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.
+
+Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their
+heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they
+knew that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their
+taxes. Not a man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he
+saved from dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his
+messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed
+only for himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues.
+And yet his people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.
+
+Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,
+whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind
+beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he
+dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.
+
+But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet
+streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses
+tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk
+unheard and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold
+significance passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And
+this was the way and the word of it:
+
+“She is back in the Kasbah!”
+
+“The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?”
+
+“She has fallen sick.”
+
+“And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?”
+
+“He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest.”
+
+“Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is
+saved from the Sultan.”
+
+“For the present, only for the-present.”
+
+“For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
+news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him.”
+
+“Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?”
+
+“Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes
+the--”
+
+“Ya Allah! well?”
+
+“Hark! A footstep on the street--some one is near--”
+
+“But quick. Behind the Mahdi--what?”
+
+“God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!”
+
+“In peace!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+
+
+The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
+before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
+state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
+bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
+him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all
+his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had
+entered Tetuan that day.
+
+He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like
+a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
+come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under
+the walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the
+rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load
+of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each
+man. Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of
+the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades.
+Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and
+story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous
+ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and
+their women. But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of
+them.
+
+“Away!” he had cried. “Away with your uncleanness and deception.”
+
+And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the
+indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk
+off like a pariah dog.
+
+As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan
+were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of
+excited spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in
+line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some
+standing. Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at
+full gallop, firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length,
+throwing their barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping
+back, amid deafening shouts of “Allah! Allah! Allah!”
+
+“Allah indeed!” cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without
+fear. “That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and
+bloodshed. Away, away!”
+
+The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he
+approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for
+the mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out
+in all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked
+men, and one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the
+Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark
+flowing robes and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive
+and eaten raw; while women and children; crouching in the gathering
+darkness overhead looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the
+frenzy increased among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each
+fanatic turned upon himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head
+against the stones until blood ran like water.
+
+“Fools and blind guides!” cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like
+sheep. “Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the
+abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but
+forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away!
+Away!”
+
+At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after
+various parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding
+ways of the gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha's presence.
+The Basha received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his
+face. Ben Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog
+with his muzzle on his forepaws.
+
+“Welcome,” he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious
+posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.
+
+The Mahdi did not sit. “Ben Aboo,” he said in a voice that was half
+choked with anger, “I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to
+you if you send me away unsatisfied.”
+
+Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,
+“What is it now?”
+
+“Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?” said the Mahdi.
+
+With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which
+his dusky muzzle had rested.
+
+“Ah, do not lie to me,” cried the Mahdi. “I know where she is--she is in
+prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime
+but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the
+other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free.”
+
+The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some
+half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled
+about in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and
+said with an air of mock inquiry, “Ya Allah! who is this infidel?”
+
+Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, “Sir, I know who you are!
+You come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your
+purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you
+were a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here--my guest and protector.
+You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin
+our religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by
+Allah you shall die!”
+
+Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his
+superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half
+deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi
+took a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said--
+
+“Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to
+death. You dare not and you cannot do it.”
+
+“Why not?” cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a
+swagger. “What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man
+need know.”
+
+“Basha,” said the Mahdi, “do you think you are talking to a child? Do
+you think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than
+ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for
+my return? And do you think, too,” he cried, lifting one hand and his
+voice together, “that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on
+an errand of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I
+say; you are a fool.”
+
+The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage. But he was
+cowed. He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of
+braggadocio--
+
+“And what if I do not liberate the girl?”
+
+“Then,” said the Mahdi, “if any evil befalls her the consequences shall
+be on your head.”
+
+“What consequences?” said the Basha.
+
+“Worse consequences than you expect or dream,” said the Mahdi.
+
+“What consequences?” said the Basha again.
+
+“No matter,” said the Mahdi. “You are walking in darkness, and do not
+know where you are going.”
+
+“What consequences?” the Basha cried once more.
+
+“That is God's secret,” said the Mahdi.
+
+Ben Aboo began to laugh. “Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,” he
+shouted to his people.
+
+“Enough!” cried the Mahdi. “I have delivered my message. Now woe to you,
+Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come
+no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison.
+Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward
+awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword
+will reach to your soul.”
+
+Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where
+he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, “This is the last
+word that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben
+Aboo--I to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt,
+and death and hell.”
+
+Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place
+where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks
+under a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.
+
+But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed
+through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the
+stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, “Abd
+er-Rahman! Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the
+sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me
+for my country, but the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd
+er-Rahman! You have filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you,
+slave of the Compassionate!”
+
+The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of
+the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But
+his voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly
+thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.
+
+“The Mahdi,” they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.
+
+The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers
+of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms,
+were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from
+these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos
+and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.
+
+The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the
+M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret.
+It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had
+visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also
+of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as
+well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in
+gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he
+listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before
+him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of
+night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was
+imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father,
+who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy
+while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.
+These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of
+Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled. Let come what would, the
+man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.
+
+The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
+and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet,
+the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's
+following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a
+wonderful night. The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter,
+but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the
+town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf.
+Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white
+walls and minarets. Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as
+in an Eastern city. Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white
+roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing
+through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of
+quarried chalk. Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself
+homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin
+darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone. Sometimes a
+clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place,
+and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.
+
+“O Tetuan,” thought the Mahdi, “how soon will your streets be uprooted
+and your sanctuaries destroyed!”
+
+The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
+gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the
+dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the
+bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to
+be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the
+circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled
+and still saddled, were up and feeding.
+
+The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
+had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
+were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
+which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
+right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected
+air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was
+one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare.
+But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not
+until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on
+him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man
+who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled
+with God.
+
+With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside
+Israel at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way,
+telling him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came,
+and whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a
+brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen
+clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves
+of his fingers were also frozen.
+
+Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the
+head. He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to
+prison, and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he
+described the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how
+she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face
+that the affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully.
+At last he recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had
+yielded at length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child,
+seeing her father in everything and thinking to save his life, though
+she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from
+Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers
+trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his
+cheeks.
+
+“My poor darling!” he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he
+asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.
+
+The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against
+the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine of the
+Sultan.
+
+“My brave girl!” he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
+that was both pride and pain.
+
+He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she
+could hear: “Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old
+father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!”
+
+This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
+and said in almost a childish tone, “I suppose there is no help for
+it now, sir. I meant to take her to England--to my poor mother's home,
+but--”
+
+“And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives,” said the Mahdi, rising to
+his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he
+had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
+clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
+impulse, should at length be carried into effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+
+
+The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali's, for the black
+lad was back in Tetuan. After he had fulfilled his errand of mercy at
+Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there, with a spirit afire for the
+wrongs of his master, from whom he was so cruelly parted, he had set
+himself with shrewdness and daring to incite the Spanish powers to
+vengeance upon his master's enemies. This had been a task very easy of
+execution, for just at that time intelligence had come from the Reef, of
+barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo upon mountain tribes that had hitherto
+offered allegiance to the Spanish crown. A mission had gone up to Fez,
+and returned unsatisfied. War was to be declared, Marteel was to be
+bombarded, the army of Marshal O'Donnel was to come up the valley of the
+river, and Tetuan was to be taken.
+
+Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely
+revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was
+the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the
+eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to
+give a “gathering of delight,” to the Sultan, his Ministers, his Kaids,
+his Kadis, his Khaleefas, his Umana, and great rascals generally. Ali's
+stout heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the Spaniards brought up
+to the gates of the town, on the very night when the whole majesty and
+iniquity of Barbary would be gathered in one room; then, locking the
+entire kennel of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and
+burning it to the ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like
+rats in a trap.
+
+One danger attended his bold adventure, for Naomi's person was within
+the Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to find his way
+into the dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate, and deliver up to
+another the key that should serve as a signal for the beginning of the
+great night's work.
+
+Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah
+there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment for
+the siege--no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely not to
+lead them blindfold into a trap. To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in
+search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help
+in the downfall of his master's enemies by leading the Spaniards at the
+right moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.
+
+Hearing Ali's story, the Mahdi had been aflame with tender thoughts
+of Naomi's trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo's tyrannies, and pity of
+Israel's miseries. But at first his humanity had withheld him from
+sympathy with Ali's dark purpose, so full, as it seemed, of barbarity
+and treachery.
+
+“Ali,” he had said, “is it not all you wish for to get Naomi out of
+prison and take her back to her father?”
+
+“Yes, Sidi,” Ali had answered promptly.
+
+“And you don't want to torture these tyrants if you can do what you
+desire without it?”
+
+“No-o, Sidi,” Ali had said doubtfully.
+
+“Then,” the Mahdi had said, “let us try.”
+
+But when the Mahdi was gone to Tetuan on his errand of warning that
+proved so vain, Ali had crept back behind him, so that secretly and
+independently he might carry out his fell design. The towns-people were
+ready to receive him, for the air was full of rebellion, and many had
+waited long for the opportunity of revenge. To certain of the Jews, his
+master's people, who were also in effect his own, he went first with his
+mission, and they listened with eagerness to what he had come to say.
+When their own time came to speak they spoke cautiously, after the
+manner of their race, and nervously, like men who knew too well what
+it was to be crushed and kept under; but they gave their help
+notwithstanding, and Ali's scheme progressed.
+
+In less than three days the entire town, Moorish and Jewish, was
+honeycombed with subterranean revolt. Even the civil guard, the soldiers
+of the Kasbah, the black police that kept the gates, and the slaves that
+stood before the Basha's table were waiting for the downfall to come.
+
+The Mahdi had gone again by this time, and the people had resumed their
+mock rejoicings over the Sultan's visit. These were the last kindlings
+of their burnt-out loyalty, a poor smouldering pretence of fire. Every
+morning the town was awakened by the deafening crackle of flintlocks,
+which the mountaineers discharged in the Feddan by way of signal that
+the Sultan was going to say his prayers at the door of some saint's
+house. Beside the firing of long guns and the twanging of the ginbri the
+chief business of the day seemed to be begging. One bow-legged rascal
+in a ragged jellab went about constantly with a little loaf of bread,
+crying, “An ounce of butter for God's sake!” and when some one gave him
+the alms he asked he stuck the white sprawling mess on the top of the
+loaf and changed his cry to “An ounce of cheese for God's sake!” A pert
+little vagabond--street Arab in a double sense--promenaded the town
+barefoot, carrying an odd slipper in his hand, and calling on all men
+by the love of God and the face of God and the sake of God to give him a
+moozoonah towards the cost of its fellow. Every morning the Sultan went
+to mosque under his red umbrella, and every evening he sat in the hall
+of the court of justice, pretending to hear the petitions of the poor,
+but actually dispensing charms in return for presents. First an old
+wrinkled reprobate with no life left in him but the life of lust: “A
+charm to make my young wife love me!” Then an ill-favoured hag behind
+a blanket: “A charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has
+taken instead of me!” Again, a young wife with a tearful voice: “A charm
+to make me bear children!” A greasy smile from the fat Sultan, a scrap
+of writing to every supplicant, chinking coins dropped into the bag of
+the attendant from the treasury, and then up and away. It was a nauseous
+draught from the bitterest waters of Islam.
+
+But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived by the outward
+marks of devotion. At the corners of the streets, on the Feddan, by the
+fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard, there they stood
+in little groups, crossing their forefingers, the sign of strife,
+or rubbing them side by side, the sign of amity. It was clear that,
+notwithstanding the hubbub of their loyalty to the sultan, they knew
+that the Spaniard was coming and were glad of it.
+
+Meantime Ali waited with impatience for the day that was to see the end
+of his enterprise. To beguile himself of his nervousness in the night,
+during the dark hours that trailed on to morning, he would venture out
+of the lodging where he lay in hiding throughout the day, and pick
+his steps in the silence up the winding streets, until he came under a
+narrow opening in an alley which was the only window to Naomi's prison.
+And there he would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought
+that besides the comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi, the
+tramp, tramp, tramp of his footsteps, which once or twice provoked the
+challenge of the night-guard on his lonely round, would be company to
+her in her solitude. And sometimes, watching his opportunity that he
+might be unseen and unheard, he would creep in the darkness under the
+window and cry up the wall in an underbreath, “Naomi! Naomi! It is I,
+Ali! I have come back! All will be well yet!”
+
+Then if he heard nothing from within he would torture himself with
+a hundred fears lest Naomi should be no longer there, but in a worse
+place; and if he heard a sob he would slink away like a dog with his
+muzzle to the dust, and if he heard his own name echoed in the softer
+voice he knew so well he would go off with head erect, feeling like a
+man who walked on the stars rather than the stones of the street. But,
+whatever befell, before the day dawned he went back to his lodging less
+sore at heart for his lonely vigil, but not less wrathful or resolute.
+
+The day of the feast came at length, and then Ali's impatience rose
+to fever. All day he longed for the night, that the thing he had to do
+could be done. At last the sunset came and the darkness fell, and from
+his place of concealment Ali saw the soldiers of the assaseen going
+through the streets with lanterns to lead honoured guests to the
+banquet. Then he set out on his errand. His foresight and wit had
+arranged everything. The negro at the gate of the Kasbah pretended to
+recognise him as a messenger of the Vizier's, and passed him through. He
+pushed his way as one with authority along the winding passages to the
+garden where the Mahdi had called on Abd er-Rahman and foretold his
+fate. The garden opened upon the great hall, and a number of guests were
+standing there, cooling themselves in the night air while they waited
+for the arrival of the Sultan. His Shereefian Majesty came at length,
+and then, amid salaams and peace-blessings, the company passed in to
+the banquet. “Peace on you!” “And on you the peace!” “God make your
+evening!” “May your evening be blessed!”
+
+Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment? No, a thousand times no!
+While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen and
+scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup and to laugh
+and to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel broken and alone
+in the poor hut which had been described to him, and Naomi lying in her
+damp cell beyond the wall.
+
+Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests
+entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop
+in after them with great dishes under huge covers. Then he held a short
+parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him, and in
+another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi's prison.
+
+Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down
+to the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he
+had never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of
+all--the fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by
+the gift of sight, and would now first look upon _him_. That he would
+be the same as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was;
+that she would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to
+belie the evidence of the newborn sense--this was the least of Ali's
+trouble. By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had
+haunted him in the days before he left her with her father on his errand
+to Shawan. He was black, and she would see him.
+
+With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,
+flashed upon his mind. His shame was abject. It cut him to the quick.
+On the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him
+since times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood. She had
+played with him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face.
+And she was fair as the morning, and he was black as the night! He had
+come to deliver her. Would she recoil from him?
+
+Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything.
+But his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose. “What
+matter?” he thought. “What matter about me?” he asked himself aloud in
+a shrill voice and with a brave roll of his round head. Then he found
+himself inside the cell.
+
+The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief. Naomi must
+have been lying at the farther end of it. She spoke when the door was
+opened. As though by habit, she framed the name of her jailer Habeebah,
+and then stopped with a little nervous cry and seemed to rise to her
+feet. In his confusion Ali said simply, “It is I,” as though that meant
+everything. Recovering himself in a moment he spoke again, and then she
+knew his voice: “Naomi!”
+
+“It's Ali,” she whispered to herself. After that she cried in a
+trembling undertone “Ali! Ali! Ali!” and came straight in the accustomed
+darkness to the spot where he stood.
+
+Then, gathering courage and voice together, Ali told her hurriedly why
+he was there. When he said that her father was no longer in prison, but
+at their home near Semsa and waiting to receive her, she seemed almost
+overcome by her joy. Half laughing, half weeping, clutching at her
+breast as if to ease the wild heaving of her bosom she was transformed
+by his story.
+
+“Hush!” said Ali; “not a sound until we are outside the town,” and Naomi
+knitted her fingers in his palm, and they passed out of the place.
+
+The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors
+where they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by, and coming
+into the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle of laughter from the
+great hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals feasted together. They
+reached the quiet alley outside the Kasbah (for the negro was gone from
+his post), and drew a lone breath, and thanked Heaven that this much was
+over. There had been no group of beggars at the gate, and the streets
+around it were deserted; but in the distance, far across the town in the
+direction of the Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel, they
+heard a low hum as of vast droves of sheep. The Spaniard was coming, and
+the townsmen were going out to meet him. Casual passers-by challenged
+them, and though Ali knew that even if recognised they had nothing to
+fear from the people, yet more than once his voice trembled when he
+answered, and sometimes with a feeling of dread he turned to see that no
+one was following.
+
+As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame
+of that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door of
+Naomi's prison. By the light of the lamps in the hands of the passers-by
+Naomi was looking at him. Again and again, as the glare fell for an
+instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face. At such moments he
+thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them
+seemed wider. But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head
+aside, and hastened on.
+
+“What matter about me?” he whispered again. But the brave word brought
+him no comfort. “Now she's looking at my hand,” he told himself, but
+he could not draw it away. “She is doubting if I am Ali after all,” he
+thought. “Naomi!” he tried to say with averted head, so that once again
+the sound of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and
+he could not speak. Still he pushed on.
+
+The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has
+been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a
+loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to
+move and pass.
+
+Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of
+Israel's humiliation and Naomi's shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,
+came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people. It was
+the Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the
+town on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the
+gates were coming in on the east. The Mahdi himself was locking the
+synagogues and the sanctuaries.
+
+“Lock them up,” he was saying. “It is enough that the foreigner must
+burn down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our
+God.”
+
+Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.
+
+“I have brought her,” he said breathlessly; “Naomi, Israel's daughter,
+this is she.” And then there was a moment of surprise and joy, and pain
+and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look of the
+eyes of the three.
+
+The Mahdi looked at Naomi, and his face lightened. Naomi looked at Ali,
+and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair
+across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break from
+her mouth. Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted and her
+eyes shone. Ali looked at both, and his face twitched and fell.
+
+This was only the work of an instant, but it was enough. Enough for
+the Mahdi, for it told him a secret that the wisdom of life had not yet
+revealed; enough for Naomi, for a new sense, a sixth sense, had surely
+come to her; enough for Ali also, for his big little heart was broken.
+
+“What matter about me?” thought Ali again. “Take her, Mahdi,” he said
+aloud in a shrill voice. “Her father is waiting for her--take her to
+him.”
+
+“Lady,” said the Mahdi, “can you trust me?”
+
+And then without a word she went to him; like the needle to the magnet
+she went to the Mahdi--a stranger to her, when all strangers were as
+enemies--and laid her hand in his.
+
+Ali began to laugh, “I'm a fool,” he cried. “Who could have believed
+it? Why, I've forgotten to lock the Kasbah! The villains will escape. No
+matter, I'll go back.”
+
+“Stop!” cried the Mahdi.
+
+But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear. “I'll see to it yet,” he
+cried, turning on his heel. “Good night, Sidi! God bless you! My love to
+my father! Farewell!”
+
+And in another moment he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+
+
+The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the
+doom that was impending. Squatting on the floor in little circles,
+around little tables covered with steaming dishes, wherein each plunged
+his fingers, they began the feast with ceremonious wishes, pious
+exclamations, cant phrases, and downcast eyes. First, “God lengthen your
+age,” “God cover you,” and “God give you strength.” Then a dish of dates,
+served with abject apologies from Ben Aboo: “You would treat us better
+in Fez, but Tetuan is poor; the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!”
+ Then fish in garlic, eaten with loud “Bismillah's.” Then kesksoo covered
+with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned
+fowls, and fowls and olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters, each
+eaten in its turn amid a chorus of “La Ilah illa Allah's.” Finally three
+cups of green tea, as thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many “Do me
+the favour's,” and countless “Good luck's.” Last of all, the washing
+of hands, and the fumigating of garments and beard and hair by the
+live embers of scented wood burning in a brass censer, with incessant
+exchanges of “The Prophet--God rest him--loved sweet odours almost as
+much as sweet women.”
+
+But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed
+down to a warm and flowing brotherhood. Lolling at ease on their rugs,
+trifling with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries for
+idleness more than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling on the
+pavement the carved ends of their silver knife-shields, they laughed and
+jested, and told dubious stories, and held doubtful discourse generally.
+The talk turned on the distinction between great sins and little ones.
+In the circle of the Sultan it was agreed that the great sins were two:
+unbelief in the Prophet, whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking
+keef and tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and
+unquestionable Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five
+prayers a day, thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the
+Koran, and as many inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and
+as for murder and adultery, and bearing false witness--well, God was
+Merciful, God was Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak children.
+
+This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors of the great
+sins. These were terrible. Putting on a profound air, the Vizier, a fat
+man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco and denied the Prophet
+had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned in his grave with
+his face from Mecca. Then the Kaid of Fez, head of the Mosque and
+general Grand Mufti, led away with stories of the little sins. These
+were delightful. They pictured the shifts of pretty wives, married
+to worn out old men, to get at their youthful lovers in the dark by
+clambering in their dainty slippers from roof to roof. Also of the
+discomfiture of pious old husbands and the wicked triumph of rompish
+little ladies, under pretences of outraged innocence.
+
+Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told, was the
+conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah. At every
+fresh story the laughter became louder, and soon the reserve and dignity
+of the Moor were left behind him and forgotten. At length Ben Aboo,
+encouraged by the Sultan's good fellowship, broke into loud praises of
+Naomi, and yet louder wails over the doom that must be the penalty of
+her apostasy; and thereupon Abd er-Rahman, protesting that for his
+part he wanted nothing with such a vixen, called on him to uncover her
+boasted charms to them. “Bring her here, Basha,” he said; “let us see
+her,” and this command was received with tumultuous acclamations.
+
+It was the beginning of the end. In less than a minute more, while the
+rascals lolled over the floor in half a hundred different postures, with
+the hazy lights from the brass lamps and the glass candelabras on their
+dusky faces, their gleaming teeth, and dancing eyes, the messenger who
+had been sent for Naomi came back with the news that she was gone. Then
+Ben Aboo rose in silent consternation, but his guests only laughed the
+louder, until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running
+with more startling news. Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards;
+the army of Marshall O'Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan, and their
+own people were opening the gates to him.
+
+The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not
+need to be detailed. Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to
+the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of
+horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark
+corridors of men carrying torches and flares. There was no attempt at
+resistance. That was seen to be useless. Both the civil guard and the
+soldiery had deserted. The Kasbah was betrayed. Terror spread like fire.
+In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and
+eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of
+their disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on
+the southern side of it.
+
+Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman. He remembered that he had
+treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it. There
+were fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people.
+No one knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he
+had killed the mason who built it. In the dark he found the place, and
+taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his
+selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen.
+
+It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and
+Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground,
+near the wall of the Kasbah gate. From that dark cell, crouching on the
+grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds
+of the night. First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead;
+then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of
+the crowd. “Damn it--they've given us the slip.” “Yes; they've crawled
+off like rats from a sinking ship.” “Curse it all, it's only a bungle.”
+ This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country
+Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people: “Sidi, try the
+palace.” “Try the apartments of his women, Sidi.” “Abd er-Rahman's gone,
+but Ben Aboo's hiding.” “Death to the tyrant!” “Down with the Basha!”
+ “Ben Aboo! Ben Aboo!” Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence.
+“Silence, you shrieking hell-babies, silence!”
+
+Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to
+hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.
+So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked
+the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for
+the women's apartments, and rattled at their door. It was folly, it was
+lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone. He could
+hear the sounds of voices within--wailing and weeping of the women--but
+no one answered his knocking. Again and again he knocked with his elbows
+(still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw
+through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood. Still the door
+remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for
+company, fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that
+led to the alley behind the Kasbah.
+
+Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers who were
+helping her flight. “We are safe,” she whispered--“they've gone back into
+the Feddan--come;” and by the light of a lamp which she carried she made
+for the winding corridor that led past the bath and the sanctuary to the
+Kasbah gate. But Ben Aboo only cursed her, and fumbled at the low
+door of the passage that went out from the alcove to the alley. He was
+lumbering through with his armless roll, intending to clash the door
+back in Katrina's face, when there was a fierce shout behind him, and
+for some minutes Ben Aboo knew no more.
+
+The shout was Ali's. After leaving the Mahdi on the heath outside the
+Bab Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha. When the Spanish
+soldiers abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search. Up and down he
+had traversed the place in the darkness; and finding Ben Aboo at last,
+on the spot where he had first seen him, he rushed in upon him and
+brought him to the ground. Seeing Ben Aboo down, the black soldiers
+fell upon Ali. The brave lad died with a shout of triumph. “Israel ben
+Oliel,” he cried, as if he thought that name enough to save his soul and
+damn the soul of Ben Aboo.
+
+But Ben Aboo was not yet done with his own. The blow that had been aimed
+at his heart had no more than grazed his shoulder. “Get up,” whispered
+Katrina, half in wrath; and while she stooped to look for his wounds,
+her face and hands as seen in the dim light of the lantern were bedaubed
+with his blood. At that moment the guards were crying that the Kasbah
+was afire, and at the next they were gone, leaving Katrina alone with
+the unconscious man. “Get up,” she cried again, and tugging at Ben
+Aboo's unconscious body she struck it in her terror and frenzy. It was
+every one for himself in that bad hour. Katrina followed the guards, and
+was never afterwards heard of.
+
+When Ben Aboo came to himself the patio was aglow with flames. He
+staggered to his feet, still grappling to his breast the money-bags
+hidden under his selham. Then, bleeding from his shoulder and with
+blood upon his beard, he made afresh for the passage leading to the back
+alley. The passage was narrow and dark. There were three winding steps
+at the end of it. Ben Aboo was dizzy and he stumbled.
+
+But the passage was silent, it was safe, and out in the alley a sea of
+voices burst upon him. He could hear the tramp of countless footsteps,
+the cries of multitudes of voices, and the rattle of flintlocks.
+Lanterns, torches, flares and flashes of gunpowder came and went at both
+ends of the long dark tunnel. In the light of these he saw a struggling
+current of angry faces. The living sea encircled him. He knew what had
+happened. At the first certainty that his power was gone and that there
+was nothing to fear from his vengeance, his own people had gathered
+together to destroy him.
+
+There were two small mean houses on the opposite side of the alley, and
+Ben Aboo tried to take refuge in the first of them. But the woman who
+came with uncovered face to the door was the widow of the mason who had
+built his strong-room. “Murderer and dog!” she cried, and shut the door
+against him. He tried the other house. It was the house of the mason's
+son. “Forgive me,” he cried. “I am corrected by Allah! Yes, yes, it is
+true I did wrong by your father, but forgive me and save me.” Thus he
+pleaded, throwing himself on the ground and crawling there. “Dog and
+coward,” the young man shouted, and beat him back into the street.
+
+Ben Aboo's terror was now appalling to look upon. His face was that of
+a snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick
+breath, he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where
+he thought he might find a friend. “Alee, don't you know me?” “Mohammed,
+it is I, Ben Aboo.” “See, El Arby, here's money, money; it's yours,
+only save me, save me!” With such frantic cries he raced about in
+the darkness like a hunted wolf. But not a house would shelter him.
+Everywhere he met relatives of men who had died through his means, and
+he was driven away with curses.
+
+Meantime, a rumour that Ben Aboo was in the streets had been bruited
+abroad among the people, and their lust of blood was thereby raised to
+madness. Screaming and spitting and raving, and firing their flintlocks,
+they poured from street into street, watching for their victim and
+seeing him in every shadow. “He's here!” “He's there!” “No, he's
+yonder!” “He's scaling the high wall like a cat!”
+
+Ben Aboo heard them. Their inarticulate cries came to him laden with
+one message only--death. He could see their faces, their snarling teeth.
+Sometimes he would rave and blaspheme. Then he would make another effort
+for his life. But the whirlpool was closing in upon him; and at last,
+like one who flings himself over a precipice from dizziness, fears,
+and irresistible fascination, he flung himself into the middle of the
+infuriated throng as they scurried across the open Feddan.
+
+From that moment Ben Aboo's doom was sealed. The people received him
+with a long furious roar, a cry of triumphant execration, as if their
+own astuteness at length had entrapped him. He stood with his back to
+the high wall; the bellowing crowd was before him on either side. By the
+torches that many carried all could see him. Turban and shasheeah had
+fallen off, and the bald crown of his head was bare. His face retained
+no human expression but fear. He was seen to draw his arms from beneath
+his selham, to hold both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a
+hand into the necks of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people.
+“Silver,” he cried; “silver, silver for everybody.”
+
+The despairing appeal was useless. Nobody touched the money. It flashed
+white through the air, and fell unheard. “Death to the Kaid!” was
+shouted on every side. Nevertheless, though half the men carried guns,
+no man fired. By unspoken consent it seemed to be understood that the
+death of Ben Aboo was not to be the act of one, but of all. “Stones,”
+ cried somebody out of the crowd, and in another moment everybody was
+picking stones, and piling them at his feet or gathering them in the
+skirt of his jellab.
+
+Ben Aboo knew his awful fate. Gesticulating wildly, having flung the
+money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was
+seen to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips
+working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant
+the stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he
+reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself
+like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that
+came from his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and
+fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue
+lolling out. Faster and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered
+upon him, darting out of the darkness like swallows of the night. His
+clothes were rent, his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast
+staggers in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up, and
+he fell in a round heap like a ball.
+
+The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of
+Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower
+upon his body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it.
+Then they left it with curses of content and went their ways. When the
+Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside while the work was done, came up
+with their lanterns to look at this monument of Eastern justice, the
+heap of stones was still moving with the terrific convulsions of death.
+
+Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+“ALLAH-U-KABAR”
+
+
+Travelling through the night,--Naomi laughing and singing snatches in
+her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals at the huge
+outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,--they came to the
+hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day. But they had come too
+late. Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England. He
+was going on a longer journey. His lonely hour had come to him, his dark
+hour wherein none could bear him company. On a mattress by the wall he
+lay outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end. Two neighbours
+from the village were with him, and but for these he must have been
+alone--the mighty man in his downfall deserted by all save the great
+Judge and God.
+
+What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her,
+what she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task to
+tell. Oh, the irony of fate! Ay, the irony of God! That scene, and what
+followed it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest--none the less cruel
+because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.
+
+It was useless to go out in search of a doctor. The country was as
+innocent of leechcraft as the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham. All
+they could do was to submit, absolutely and unconditionally. They were
+in God's hands.
+
+The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves
+as Israel awoke to consciousness. He opened his eyes as if from sleep,
+and saw Naomi beside him. No surprise did he show at this, and neither
+did he at first betray pleasure. Dimly and softly he looked upon her,
+and then something that might have been a smile but for lack of strength
+passed like sunshine out of a cloud across his wasted face. Naomi
+pressed a pillow-under his loins, and another under his head,
+thinking to ease the one and raise the other. But the iron hand of
+unconsciousness fell upon him again, and through many hours thereafter
+Naomi and the Mahdi sat together in silence with the multitudinous
+company of invisible things.
+
+During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of
+Tetuan. The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of
+his Ministers had escaped. Ben Aboo had tried to follow them, but he
+had been killed in the alcove of the patio. Ali had killed him. He had
+rushed in upon him through a line of his guards. One of the guards had
+killed Ali. The brave black lad had fallen with the name of Israel on
+his lips and with a dauntless shout of triumph. The Kasbah was afire; it
+had been burning since the banquet of the night before.
+
+Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that
+the end was very near. Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and
+the Mahdi was standing at his left. Israel looked at the girl with a
+world of tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening
+his noble face. More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he
+wished to say something, and yet could not do so, because the power of
+life was low; but at last his voice found strength.
+
+“I have left it too late,” he said. “I cannot go to England.”
+
+Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words, and it
+was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.
+
+“Think no more of that,” he said, and then he stopped, as if the word
+that he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.
+
+“It is hard to leave her,” said Israel, “for she is alone; and who will
+protect her when I am gone?”
+
+“God lives,” said the Mahdi, “and He is Father to the fatherless.”
+
+“But what Jew,” said Israel, “would not repeat for her her father's
+troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?”
+
+“Who that trusts in God,” said the Mahdi, “need fear the Kaid?”
+
+“But what man can save her?” cried Israel again.
+
+And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi's tears as well as her father's
+importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said--
+
+“Peace, peace! If there is no one else to take her, from this day
+forward she shall go with me.”
+
+Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes
+as he has often since, but had never before seen there, and Israel ben
+Oliel who had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly at his wrist.
+
+“God bless you!” he said, as well as he could for the two angels, the
+angel of love and the angel of death, were struggling at his throat.
+
+Israel looked steadily at the Mahdi for a moment more, and then said
+very softly--
+
+“Death may come to me now; I am ready. Farewell, my father! I tried to
+do your bidding. Do you remember your watchword? But God _has_ given me
+rewards for repentance--see,” and he turned his eyes towards the eyes of
+Naomi with a wasting yet sunny smile.
+
+“God is good,” said the Mahdi; “lie still, lie still,” and he laid his
+cool hand on Israel's forehead.
+
+“I am leaving her to you,” said Israel; “and you alone can protect her
+of all men living in this land accursed of God, for God's right arm is
+round you. Yes, God is good. As long as you live you will cherish her.
+Never was she so dear to me as now, so sweet, so lovable, so gentle. But
+you will be good to her. God is very good to me. Guard her as the apple
+of your eye. It will reward you. And let her think of me sometimes--only
+sometimes. Ah! how nearly I shipwrecked all this! Remember! Remember!”
+
+“Hush, hush! Do not increase your pains,” said the Mahdi. “Are you
+feeling better now?”
+
+“I am feeling well,” said Israel, “and happy--so happy.”
+
+The sun had set, and the swift twilight was passing into night, when
+another messenger arrived from Tetuan. It was Ali's old Taleb, shedding
+tears for his boy, but boasting loudly of his brave death. He had
+heard of it from the black guards themselves. After Ali fell he lived
+a moment, though only in unconsciousness. The boy must have thought
+himself back at Israel's side, “I've done it, father,” he said; “he'll
+never hurt you again. You won't drive me away from you any more; will
+you, father?”
+
+They could see that Israel had heard the story. The eyes of the dying
+are dry, but well they knew that the heart of the man was weeping.
+
+The Taleb came with the idea that Israel also was gone, for a rumour to
+that effect had passed through the town. “El hamdu l'Illah!” he
+cried, when he saw that Israel was still alive. But then he remembered
+something, and whispered in the Mahdi's farther ear that a vast
+concourse of Moors and Jews including his own vast fellowship was even
+then coming out to bury Israel, thinking he was dead.
+
+Israel overheard him and smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little
+also. “It will soon be true,” he muttered under his breath, that came
+so quick. And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the
+distance. It was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.
+
+Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear. First a mighty
+bass voice: “Allah Akbar!” Again another and another voice:
+“Allah Akbar!” and then the long roar of a vast multitude:
+“Al--l--lah-u-kabar!” Finally a slow melancholy wail, rising and falling
+on the darkening air: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the
+Prophet of God.”
+
+It was a solemn sound--nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive to
+hear it.
+
+O gratitude that is only a death-song! O fame that is only a funeral!
+
+Israel listened and smiled again. “Ah, God is great!” he whispered; “God
+is great!”
+
+To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to
+the door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession
+approaching--a moving black shadow against the sky. Also over their
+billowy heads he could see a red glow far away in the clouds. It was the
+last smouldering of the fire of the modern Sodom.
+
+While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice
+behind him. It was Israel's voice. He was speaking to Naomi. “Yes,” he
+was saying, “it is hard to part. We were going to be very happy. . . .
+But you must not cry. Listen! When I am there--eh? you know, _there_--I
+will want to say, 'Father, you did well to hear my prayer. My little
+daughter--she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.'
+So you must not weep. Never, never, never! Remember! . . . . Ah! that's
+right, that's right. My simple-hearted darling! My sunny, merry, happy
+girl!”
+
+Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father's will. She
+was combing his white beard with her fingers--it was knotted and
+tangled--and he was labouring hard to speak again.
+
+“Naomi, do you remember?” he said; and then he tried to sing, and even
+to lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done. “Do
+you remember--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
+     Sings 'Love'--”
+
+But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.
+
+“Sing it,” he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure.
+And then the brave girl--all courage and strength, a quivering bow of
+steel--took up the song where he had left it, though her voice trembled
+and the tears started to her eyes.
+
+As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her,
+though once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast. When
+she had done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her, and
+smiled, as if he and she and the song were one to him.
+
+But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again, now
+nearer than before, and louder. Israel heard it. “Hark! They are coming.
+Keep close,” he muttered.
+
+He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan. The
+Mahdi thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct of
+help that a woman has in scenes like these, understood him better. In
+the disarray of his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself
+that he might listen the easier to the song outside. The girl slid her
+arm under his neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest. “Ah! closer.
+'God is great'!” he murmured again. “'God--is--great'!” With that word
+on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back. It was now quite dark.
+
+When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel's feet the dying man
+seemed to have been feeling for his hand. Taking it now, he brought it
+to his breast, where Naomi's hand lay under his own trembling one. With
+that last effort, and a look into the girl's face that must have pursued
+him home, his grand eyes closed for ever.
+
+In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell
+of the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air: “Allah Akbar!
+Al-lah-u-kabar!”
+
+In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had
+come out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.
+
+“He has gone,” said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes
+towards heaven, he added, “TO THE KING!”
+
+
+
+
+Notes: 1. Italic text starts and ends with an underscore. 2. Where
+spelling inconsistencies in the printed text appear to be unintentional,
+they have been made consistent in this Etext version, either by adopting
+the dictionary spelling or the spelling most frequently used in the
+printed text. 3. In the printed text, many representations of Arabic
+words use accented characters; in this Etext version, the accents have
+been removed to allow transmission by email using the 7-bit character
+set.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine
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+      The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Scapegoat
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2006 [EBook #1303]
+Last Updated: March 9, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCAPEGOAT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alan Cleary and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE SCAPEGOAT
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Hall Caine
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0002">
+        CHAPTER II </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0006">
+        CHAPTER VI </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0010">
+        CHAPTER X </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0014">
+        CHAPTER XIV </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0018">
+        CHAPTER XVIII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0022">
+        CHAPTER XXII </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0026">
+        CHAPTER XXVI </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER XXVII </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER XXVIII&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>Within sight of an English port, and within hail of English ships as
+      they pass on to our empire in the East, there is a land where the ways of
+      life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago; a land wherein
+      government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny, wherein justice is
+      bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich and a danger to be
+      poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man, and women is no more than
+      a creature of lust&mdash;a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to the century,
+      an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion! That land is Morocco!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>This is a story of Morocco in the last years of the Sultan Abd
+      er-Rahman. The ashes of that tyrant are cold, and his grandson sits in his
+      place; but men who earned his displeasure linger yet in his noisome
+      dungeons, and women who won his embraces are starving at this hour in the
+      prison-palaces in which he immured them. His reign is a story of
+      yesterday; he is gone, he is forgotten; no man so meek and none so mean
+      but he might spit upon his tomb. Yet the evil work which he did in his
+      evil time is done to-day, if not by his grandson, then in his grandson's
+      name&mdash;the degradation of man's honour, the cruel wrong of woman's,
+      the shame of base usury, and the iniquity of justice that may be bought!
+      Of such corruption this story will tell, for it is a tale of tyranny that
+      is every day repeated, a voice of suffering going up hourly to the powers
+      of the world, calling on them to forget the secret hopes and petty
+      jealousies whereof Morocco is a cause, to think no more of any scramble
+      for territory when the fated day of that doomed land has come, and only to
+      look to it and see that he who fills the throne of Abd er-Rahman shall be
+      the last to sit there.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Yet it is the grandeur of human nature that when it is trodden down it
+      waits for no decree of nations, but finds its own solace amid the baffled
+      struggle against inimical power in the hopes of an exalted faith. That cry
+      of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the narrow circle of life,
+      which carries up to God the protest and yearning of suffering man, never
+      finds a more sublime expression than where humanity is oppressed and
+      religion is corrupt. On the one hand, the hard experience of daily
+      existence; on the other hand, the soul crying out that the things of this
+      world are not the true realities. Savage vices make savage virtues. God
+      and man are brought face to face.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>In the heart of Morocco there is one man who lives a life that is like
+      a hymn, appealing to God against tyranny and corruption and shame. This
+      great soul is the leader of a vast following which has come to him from
+      every scoured and beaten corner of the land. His voice sounds throughout
+      Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him, and wheresoever
+      women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy and the shelter of his
+      face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but
+      that is the best thing of all&mdash;it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope
+      in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him. Man that
+      veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter, and science that
+      reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God, have no place
+      with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty; the miracle is all in all to
+      him; he throngs the air with marvels; God speaks to him in dreams when he
+      sleeps, and warns and directs him by signs when he is awake.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the
+      joyous child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with a
+      beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond the
+      wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged fellowship
+      of the poor behind them, having no homes and no possessions, pass from
+      place to place, unharmed and unhindered, through that land of intolerance
+      and iniquity, being protected and reverenced by virtue of the superstition
+      which accepts them for Saints. Who are they? What have they been?</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was the
+      daughter of a banker in London. The father's name was Oliel; the mother's
+      was Sara. Oliel had held business connections with the house of Sara's
+      father, and he came over to England that he might have a personal meeting
+      with his correspondent. The English banker lived over his office, near
+      Holborn Bars, and Oliel met with his family. It consisted of one daughter
+      by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a second wife, still living.
+      They were not altogether a happy household, and the chief apparent cause
+      of discord was the child of the first wife in the home of the second.
+      Oliel was a man of quick perception, and he saw the difficulty. That was
+      how it came about that he was married to Sara. When he returned to Morocco
+      he was some thousand pounds richer than when he left it, and he had a
+      capable and personable wife into his bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and spending,
+      always taking care to have much of the one, and no more than he could help
+      of the other. Sara was a nervous and sensitive little woman, hungering for
+      communion and for sympathy. She got little of either from her husband, and
+      grew to be as silent as he. With the people of the country of her
+      adoption, whether Jews or Moors, she made no headway. She never even
+      learnt their language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years passed, and then a child was born to her. This was Israel, and
+      for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely woman. His
+      coming made no apparent difference to his father. He grew to be a tall and
+      comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be of a sweet and cheerful
+      disposition. But the school of his upbringing was a hard one. A Jewish
+      child in Morocco might know from his cradle that he was not born a Moor
+      and a Mohammedan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife, his
+      first wife being still alive. This was lawful, though unusual in Tangier.
+      The new marriage, which was only another business transaction to Oliel,
+      was a shock and a terror to Sara. Nevertheless, she supported its
+      penalties through three weary years, sinking visibly under them day after
+      day. By that time a second family had begun to share her husband's house,
+      the rivalry of the mothers had threatened to extend to the children, the
+      domesticity of home was destroyed and its harmony was no longer possible.
+      Then she left Oliel, and fled back to England, taking Israel with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers was not
+      warm. They had no sympathy with her rebellion against her husband's second
+      marriage. If she had married into a foreign country, she should abide by
+      the ways of it. Sara was heartbroken. Her health had long been poor, and
+      now it failed her utterly. In less than a month she died. On her deathbed
+      she committed her boy to the care of her brothers, and implored them not
+      to send him back to Morocco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For years thereafter Israel's life in London was a stern one. If he had no
+      longer to submit to the open contempt of the Moors, the kicks and insults
+      of the streets, he had to learn how bitter is the bread that one is forced
+      to eat at another's table. When he should have been still at school he was
+      set to some menial occupation in the bank at Holborn Bars, and when he
+      ought to have risen at his desk he was required to teach the sons of
+      prosperous men the way to go above him. Life was playing an evil game with
+      him, and, though he won, it must be at a bitter price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus twelve years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty, was a tall,
+      silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects, and a master
+      of figures. Never once during that time had his father written to him, or
+      otherwise recognised his existence, though knowing of his whereabouts from
+      the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles. Then one day a
+      letter came written in distant tone and formal manner, announcing that the
+      writer had been some time confined to his bed, and did not expect to leave
+      it; that the children of his second wife had died in infancy; that he was
+      alone, and had no one of his own flesh and blood to look to his business,
+      which was therefore in the hands of strangers, who robbed him; and
+      finally, that if Israel felt any duty towards his father, or, failing
+      that, if he had any wish to consult his own interest, he would lose no
+      time in leaving England for Morocco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
+      nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
+      landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
+      before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
+      thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
+      lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the ruins
+      of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the little Jewish
+      cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and cousins' cousins,
+      to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of sentiment, were
+      busily dividing his inheritance among them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
+      restitution of his father's substance. But his cousins made the Kadi, the
+      judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
+      impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father's
+      letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi to
+      the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed cases;
+      but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan law to
+      offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the British
+      Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention, being a
+      subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage. Meantime, his dispute
+      with his cousins was set at rest for ever by the Governor of the town,
+      who, concluding that his father had left neither will nor heirs,
+      confiscated everything he had possessed to the public treasury&mdash;that
+      is to say, to the Kaid's own uses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco, whether as a
+      Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger in his father's country, and
+      openly branded as a cheat. That he did not return to England promptly was
+      because he was already a man of indomitable spirit. Besides that, the
+      treatment he was having now was but of a piece with what he had received
+      at all times. Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing ever does
+      avail to crush a man of character. But the obstacles and torments which
+      make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make a very sensible
+      impression on his heart; the mind triumphs, it is the heart that suffers;
+      the mind strengthens and expands after every besetting plague of life, but
+      the heart withers and wears away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together to beat him
+      down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means of settling
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His opportunity came early. The Governor, either by qualm of conscience or
+      further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the Oomana, the
+      three Administrators of Customs at Tangier. He held the post six months
+      only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid, but amid the muttered
+      discontent of the merchants and tradesmen. Then the Governor of Tetuan, a
+      bigger town lying a long day's journey to the east, hearing of Israel that
+      as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled the custom revenues in half a year,
+      invited him to fill an informal, unofficial, and irregular position as
+      assessor of tributes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did in his
+      new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and appointed a Mut'hasseb,
+      a clerk of the market, to collect them&mdash;so many moozoonahs for every
+      camel sold, so many for every horse, mule, and ass, so many floos for
+      every fowl, and so many metkals for the purchase and sale of every slave;
+      how he numbered the houses and made lists of the trades, assessing their
+      tribute by the value of their businesses&mdash;so much for gun-making, so
+      much for weaving, so much for tanning, and so on through the line of them,
+      great and small, good and bad, even from the trades of the Jewish
+      silversmiths and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the callings of the
+      Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran, which entitled
+      the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever; but it would not wrong
+      the truth to say that he did it also by the impulse of a sour and saddened
+      heart. The world had shown no mercy to him, and he need show no mercy to
+      the world. Why talk of pity? It was only a name, an idea a mocking
+      thought. In the actual reckoning of life there was no such name as pity.
+      Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings, whatever their
+      severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ya Allah! Allah!&rdquo; the Moors would cry. &ldquo;Who is this Jew&mdash;this son of
+      the English&mdash;that he should be made our master?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him, and at length
+      they insulted him openly. Since his return from England he had resumed the
+      dress of his race in his country&mdash;the long dark gabardine or kaftan,
+      with a scarf for girdle, the black slippers, and the black skull-cap. And,
+      going one day by the Grand Mosque, a group of the beggars; who lay always
+      by the gate, called on him to uncover his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jew! Dog!&rdquo; they cried, &ldquo;there is no god but God! Curses on your
+      relations! Off with your slippers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paid no heed to their commands, but made straight onward. Then one
+      blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and struck off his cap with
+      a crutch. He picked it up again without a look or a word, and strode away.
+      But next morning, at early prayers, there was a place empty at the door of
+      the mosque. Its accustomed occupant lay in the prison at the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if the Muslimeen hated Israel for what he was doing for their
+      Governor, the Jews hated him yet more because it was being done for a
+      Moor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has sold himself to our enemy,&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;against the welfare of his
+      own nation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the synagogue they ignored him, and in taking the votes of their people
+      they counted others and passed him by. He showed no malice. Only his
+      strong face twitched at each fresh insult and his head was held higher.
+      Only this, and one other sign of suffering in that secret place of his
+      withering heart, which God's eye alone could see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus far he had done no more to Moor and Jew than exact that tenth part of
+      their substance which the faiths of both required that they should pay.
+      But now his work went further. A little group of old Jews, all held in
+      honour among their people&mdash;Abraham Ohana, nicknamed Pigman, son of a
+      former rabbi; Judah ben Lolo, an elder of his synagogue; and Reuben
+      Maliki, keeper of the poor-box&mdash;were seized and cast into the Kasbah
+      for gross and base usury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this the Jewish quarter was thrown into wild hubbub. The hand that was
+      on their people was a daring and terrible one. None doubted whose hand it
+      was&mdash;it was the hand of young Israel the Jew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the three old usurers had bought themselves out of the Kasbah, they
+      put their heads together and said, &ldquo;Let us drive this fellow out of the
+      Mellah, and so shall he be driven out of the town.&rdquo; Then the owner of the
+      house which Israel rented for his lodging evicted him by a poor excuse,
+      and all other Jewish owners refused him as tenant. But the conspiracy
+      failed. By command of the Governor, or by his influence, Israel was lodged
+      by the Nadir, the administrator of mosque property, in one of the houses
+      belonging to the mosque on the Moorish side of the Mellah walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said, &ldquo;Let us
+      see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life be a
+      burden.&rdquo; Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him, and
+      when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not obey the
+      unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes out of the Soudan he
+      was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave. But the conspiracy failed
+      again. Two black female slaves from Soos, named Fatimah and Habeebah, were
+      bought in the name of the Governor and assigned to Israel's service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel's
+      material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
+      again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they said,
+      &ldquo;He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named the
+      prophetess put her curse upon him.&rdquo; Then she who was so called, one
+      Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
+      of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki kept,
+      crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
+      predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo with
+      the groans of God's elect, so should his own spirit be broken within them
+      and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he heard her out,
+      and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only smiled coldly, and
+      passed on in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The clouds are not hurt,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;by the bark of dogs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture him;
+      yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter of
+      their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was young, and
+      God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many young Jewish men,
+      of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he favour. Of Israel's duty
+      she knew little, save what report had said of it, that it was evil; and of
+      the act which had made him an outcast among his own people, and an Ishmael
+      among the sons of Ishmael she could form no judgment. But what a woman's
+      eyes might see in him, without help of other knowledge, that she saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
+      manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been cheated
+      of his youth and had missed his early manhood, the when he was ignored he
+      ignored his insult, and when he was reviled he answered not again; in a
+      word, the he was silent and strong and alone, and, above all that he was
+      sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were credentials enough to the true girl's favour, and Israel soon
+      learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him. There the lonely man
+      first found himself. The cold eyes of his little world had seen him as his
+      father's son, but the light and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw him as the
+      son of his mother also. The Rabbi himself was old, very old&mdash;ninety
+      years of age&mdash;and length of days had taught him charity. And so it
+      was that when, in due time, Israel came with many excuses and asked for
+      Ruth in marriage, the Rabbi gave her to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses stood
+      beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief; and, when the
+      marriage came in its course, few stood beside the Chief Rabbi.
+      Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan were
+      alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a great
+      company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them, gathered
+      in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss and jeer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio, and
+      when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him above the
+      tumult, crying, &ldquo;Woe to her that has married the enemy of her nation, and
+      woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people! They shall taste
+      death. He shall see them fall from his side and die,&rdquo; then the old man
+      listened and trembled visibly. In confusion and fierce anger he rose up
+      and stumbled through the crooked passage to the door, and flinging it
+      wide, he stood in the doorway facing them that stood without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace! Peace!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;and shame! shame! Remember the doom of him that
+      shall curse the high priest of the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath. Then suddenly, his voice
+      failing him, he said in a broken whisper, &ldquo;My good people, what is this?
+      Your servant is grown old in your service. Sixty and odd years he has
+      shared your sorrows and your burdens. What has he done this day that your
+      women should lift up their voices against him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in
+      the darkness were silent and made no answer. Then he staggered back, and
+      Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to compose
+      him. But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Rabbi's death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered,
+      &ldquo;It is the first-fruits!&rdquo; and the Moors touched their foreheads and
+      murmured &ldquo;It is written!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the
+      building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in
+      comfort many years together. In the south-east corner of the Mellah he
+      placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the English
+      fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a marble
+      staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but also
+      with windows and with doors. And when his house was raised he put no
+      haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for
+      tables and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in
+      this wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and
+      Jews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out of
+      the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly it
+      occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had built was
+      a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a prison for
+      his wife. In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his intimates by
+      one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had reduced even her
+      friends to that number. Her father was dead; if she was the daughter of a
+      Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast, the companion of a
+      pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone. Even their bondwomen
+      still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with them was mainly by signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on Israel's
+      mind, one hope on his heart&mdash;that Ruth might soon bear a child. Then
+      would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman might
+      know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would make amends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel thought of this again and again. The delicious hope pursued him. It
+      was his secret, and he never gave it speech. But time passed, and no child
+      was born. And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she began to cast
+      down her head before her husband. Israel's hope was of longer life, but
+      the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he perceived that his wife
+      was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him. He had been thinking of
+      her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she had thought
+      only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he never went
+      abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the cemetery over
+      the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss of their sons,
+      and of how they were best treated of God who were given no children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
+      half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the woman
+      Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and she
+      lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel, the
+      judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise up
+      children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out upon you, woman!&rdquo; cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
+      his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions had
+      passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut himself
+      in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
+      angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What was
+      the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had first
+      beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his feet?
+      Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was the father
+      of a child might look down on him with contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and his
+      spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
+      offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might persuade
+      himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the ordinances and
+      commandments of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
+      since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of their
+      race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might straightway
+      be divorced by her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
+      would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
+      still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
+      his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send me away from you!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Send me away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for the place of the Kaid,&rdquo; he answered stoutly; &ldquo;no, nor the throne
+      of the Sultan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their tears
+      together. But he comforted her at length, and said, &ldquo;Look up, my dearest!
+      look up! I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord may deal
+      with me. And which of us shall murmur against God?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full of
+      a sudden thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us ask of the Lord,&rdquo; she whispered hotly, &ldquo;and surely He will
+      hear our prayer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the voice of the Lord Himself!&rdquo; cried Israel; &ldquo;and this day it
+      shall be done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand
+      together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki. And Ruth
+      knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and the
+      candles that hung above it, and she prayed: &ldquo;O Lord, have pity on this Thy
+      servant, and take away her reproach among women. Give her grace in Thine
+      eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed. Grant her a child of Thy
+      mercy, that his eye may smile upon her. Yet not as she willeth, but as
+      Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be satisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart and his eyes
+      to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not be appeased,
+      saying: &ldquo;How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? My enemies triumph over me
+      and foretell Thy doom upon me. They sit in the lurking-places of the
+      streets to deride me. Confound my enemies, O Lord, and rebuke their
+      counsels. Remember Ruth, I beseech Thee, that she is patient and her heart
+      is humbled. Give her children of Thy servant, and her first-born shall be
+      sanctified unto Thee. Give her one child, and it shall be Thine&mdash;if
+      it is a son, to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues. Hear me, O Lord, and give
+      heed to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee. One child, but one,
+      only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is before Thee. How long wilt
+      Thou forget me, O Lord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble
+      was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come without delay
+      to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues. This request
+      the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef was a prince
+      of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces the believers paid him
+      tribute. So in three days' time Israel was ready to set out on his
+      journey, with men and mules at his door, and camels packed with tents. He
+      was likely to be some months absent from Tetuan, and it was impossible
+      that Ruth should go with him. They had never been separated before, and
+      Ruth's concern was that they should be so long parted, but Israel's was a
+      deeper matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruth,&rdquo; he said when his time came, &ldquo;I am going away from you, but my
+      enemies remain. They see evil in all my doings, and in this act also they
+      will find offence. Promise me that if they make a mock at you for your
+      husband's sake you will not see them; if they taunt you that you will not
+      hear them; and if they ask anything concerning me that you will answer
+      them not at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her she should be
+      as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that was deaf, and if
+      they questioned her concerning her husband as one that was dumb. Then they
+      parted with many tears and embraces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,
+      having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan
+      loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers and
+      attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him to the door
+      of his own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with tears
+      of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great news on
+      her tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; she whispered; &ldquo;I have something to tell you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I know it,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;I know it already. I see it in your eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only listen,&rdquo; she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck of his
+      kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child they had asked
+      for was to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was like a man beside himself with joy. He burst in upon the
+      message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again, and
+      kissed her. Long they stood together so, while he told her of the chances
+      which had befallen him during his absence from her, and she told him of
+      her solitude of six long months, unbroken save for the poor company of
+      Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind and deaf and dumb to all
+      the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the months thereafter until Ruth's time was full Israel sat with
+      her constantly. He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company. He
+      covered her chamber with fruits and flowers. There was no desire of her
+      heart but he fulfilled it. And they talked together lovingly of how they
+      would name the child when the time came to name it. Israel concluded that
+      if it was a son it should be called David, and Ruth decided that if it was
+      a daughter it should be called Naomi. And Ruth delighted to tell of how
+      when it was weaned she should take it up to the synagogue and say, &ldquo;O
+      Lord: I am the woman that knelt before Thee praying. For this child I
+      prayed, and Thou hast heard my prayer.&rdquo; And Israel told of how his son
+      should grow up to be a Rabbi to minister before God, and how in those days
+      it should come to pass that the children of his father's enemies should
+      crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread. Thus they built
+      themselves castles in the air for the future of the child that was to
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth's time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast of the
+      Passover, being in the month of Nisan. This was a cause of joy to Israel,
+      for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face, and he could
+      not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So he set a
+      supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg of an ox,
+      the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three Mitzvoth, and
+      the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife had been
+      summoned, and it was the day of the night of the Seder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests. Only
+      his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers, and
+      among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman, Judah ben Lolo,
+      and Reuben Maliki. &ldquo;They cursed me,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;and I shall look on
+      their confusion.&rdquo; His heart thirsted to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also, but
+      well he knew that her dainty masters would not sit at meat with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves and
+      refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man should sit
+      save in his own house and at his own table. But Israel was not to be
+      gainsaid. He went out to them himself, and said, &ldquo;Come, let bygones be
+      bygones. It is the feast of our nation. Let us eat and drink together.&rdquo;
+       So, partly by his importunity, but mainly in their bewilderment, yet
+      against all rule and custom, they suffered themselves to go with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table in
+      the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine and blessed it,
+      and passed it to all, and they had drunk together, he could not keep back
+      his tongue from taunting them. Then when he had washed again and dipped
+      the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk of the wine once more, he
+      taunted them afresh and laughed. But nothing yet had they understood of
+      his meaning, and they looked into each other's faces and asked, &ldquo;What is
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait! Only wait!&rdquo; Israel answered. &ldquo;You shall see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a sorrowful woman,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Some evil is about to befall&mdash;I
+      know it, I feel it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy on the
+      morrow. Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes had been
+      broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat and drink as
+      much as their hearts desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight of
+      Israel's frenzy. The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben, rose
+      to go, but Israel cried, &ldquo;Stay! Stay, and see what is come!&rdquo; and under the
+      very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them. In the wild torrent of
+      his madness he called them by names they knew and by names they did not
+      know&mdash;Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu&mdash;and at every new name he
+      laughed again. And while he carried himself so in the outer court the
+      slave woman Fatimah came from the inner room with word that the child was
+      born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Israel was like a man distraught. He leapt up from the table and
+      faced full upon his guests, and cried, &ldquo;Now you know what it is; and now
+      you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice with
+      me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!&rdquo; And he lifted
+      a winecup and drank himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into the
+      street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not drink?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Then listen to me.&rdquo; He dashed the winecup
+      out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor. His laughter
+      was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill cry. &ldquo;You
+      foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made me ashamed:
+      but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women to prophesy
+      that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and a
+      curse among my people; but God has this day given me a son like the best
+      of you. More than that&mdash;more than that&mdash;my son shall yet see&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The slave woman was touching his arm. &ldquo;It is a girl,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;a girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, &ldquo;No matter! She
+      shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them mercy!
+      She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against them! She
+      shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate places! And now
+      you can go! Go! go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was
+      driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded and with their
+      eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in to
+      her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct, followed
+      him and listened from the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came from
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel said, &ldquo;How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and pride
+      of my pride?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said &ldquo;The Lord has counted my
+      prayer to me as sin&mdash;look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered out of his
+      dry throat, &ldquo;No, no, never believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, true, it is true,&rdquo; she moaned; &ldquo;the child has not uttered a cry,
+      and its eyelids have not blinked at the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never believe it, I say!&rdquo; Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his
+      arms to try it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon
+      the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the eyes
+      of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then his
+      limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his arms
+      and laid it again on its mother's bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ruth wept over it, saying, &ldquo;Even if it were a son never could it serve
+      in the synagogue! Never! Never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed
+      themselves into the chamber, and they cried, &ldquo;Peace! Peace!&rdquo; And old Judah
+      ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, &ldquo;Is it not
+      written that no one afflicted of God shall minister in His temples?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into the
+      face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he had
+      bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, &ldquo;What matter? Every
+      monkey is a gazelle to its mother!&rdquo; But after that he staggered, his knees
+      gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a falling horse,
+      and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with water;
+      but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves, &ldquo;The Lord
+      killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and into the pit
+      that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to slip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object of
+      contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low, God
+      Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him mercy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult him.
+      And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the rabble
+      to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus, they
+      would call their dogs and their asses by his name, and the dogs would be
+      the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses the laziest in the market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at the
+      gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of pack-mules
+      to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily, &ldquo;Accursed
+      old Israel! Get on home to your mother!&rdquo; Then, turning quickly round, he
+      would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent countenance
+      was cudgelling his donkey by that title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound
+      of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white
+      walls crying &ldquo;Allah! Allah! Allah!&rdquo; would suddenly change their cry to
+      &ldquo;Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Go on! Go on! Go on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of
+      laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his
+      direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his
+      voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God's
+      displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight
+      of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber&mdash;they all despised him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed
+      him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his
+      soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with God
+      had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form of
+      warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other, the
+      better for his person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known as
+      Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other than the
+      late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman, though by
+      another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan's brother in Morocco is not
+      to be a Sultan's favourite, but a possible aspirant to his throne.
+      Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the Sultan's army,
+      and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry. In that capacity he
+      had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni Hasan, the Beni Idar,
+      and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit the country near to
+      Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been first directed to that
+      town. When he had returned from his expedition he offered the Sultan
+      fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha or Governor, and
+      promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute. The Sultan took
+      his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha at Tetuan already,
+      but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man was summoned to the
+      Sultan's presence, accused of appropriating the Shereefian tributes,
+      stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of how
+      Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no less
+      curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious
+      transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He was
+      a valiant soldier&mdash;the black blood of his slave-mother had counted
+      for so much; but he was a bad administrator&mdash;he could neither read
+      nor write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would
+      have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this man
+      had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him. He
+      had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and his
+      Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters of his
+      name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel, his scribe the notary, Hosain ben
+      Hashem, styled Haj, because he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but he
+      was also the Imam, or head of the Mosque, and the wily Ben Aboo foresaw
+      the danger of some day coming into collision with the religious sentiment
+      of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed ben Arby, but the
+      judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he wanted a man who
+      should be under his hand. That was the combination of circumstances
+      whereby Israel came to Tetuan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master
+      entirely. He had carried the Basha's seal and acted for him in all affairs
+      of money. The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars, so that the
+      Basha had twenty thousand to the good. Then Ben Aboo's ambition began to
+      override itself. He started an oil-mill, and wanted Israel to select a
+      hundred houses owned by rich men, that he might compel each house to take
+      ten kollahs of oil&mdash;an extravagant quantity, at seven dollars for
+      each kollah&mdash;an exorbitant price. Israel had refused. &ldquo;It is not
+      just,&rdquo; he had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but
+      Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor had
+      pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a gross
+      and wicked tax, but Israel's answer had been the same. &ldquo;There is no evil
+      in the world but injustice,&rdquo; he had said. &ldquo;Do justice, and you do all that
+      God can ask or man expect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have
+      been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by day.
+      Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn of that
+      day whereon he should need him no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But since the disaster which had befallen Israel's house everything had
+      undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious means
+      of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning the very air
+      itself into money&mdash;ransoms, promissory notes, and false judgments&mdash;but
+      Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to send his small
+      currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver dollars at the rate
+      of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was worth ten in currency. And
+      after certain of the shopkeepers, having changed fifty thousand dollars at
+      that rate, fled to the Sultan to complain, Israel advised that their
+      debtors should be called together, their debts purchased, and bonds drawn
+      up and certified for ten times the amounts of them. Thus a few were
+      banished from their homes in fear of imprisonment, many were sorely
+      harassed, and some were entirely ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public
+      streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and
+      their asses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty must
+      answer to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching at his
+      indignities nor glorying in his power. He beheld the wreck of families
+      without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry of children
+      without a qualm. Neither did he delight in the sufferings of them that had
+      derided him. His evil impulse was a higher matter&mdash;his faith in
+      justice had been broken up. He had been wrong. There was no such thing as
+      justice in the world, and there could, therefore, be no such thing as
+      injustice. There was no thing but the blind swirl of chance, and the wild
+      scramble for life. The man had quarrelled with God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel's heart was not yet dead. There was one place, where he who
+      bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great
+      tenderness. That place was his own home. What he saw there was enough to
+      stir the fountains of his being&mdash;nay, to exhaust them, and to send
+      him abroad as a river-bed that is dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before
+      the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of
+      himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only of the
+      babe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child was born blind and dumb and deaf. At the feast of life there was
+      no place left for it. So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall, and
+      called on God to take it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take it!&rdquo; she cried&mdash;&ldquo;take it! Make haste, O God, make haste and
+      take it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself suckled
+      it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over it, and
+      she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little by little,
+      her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived her, and hour
+      by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side and whisper
+      &ldquo;Take heart of hope, O Ruth! God does not afflict willingly. Perhaps the
+      child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is not dumb. Who
+      shall ye say? Wait and see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no difference
+      in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she would kneel
+      by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an the eye was blue
+      and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the little cup was
+      broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she would look at the
+      pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and full as a shell on the
+      shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the sea was not heard in it,
+      and that all within was silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
+      &ldquo;It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and
+      see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue will
+      yet speak to me, and make me very glad.&rdquo; And then an ineffable serenity
+      would spread over her face and transfigure it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar with
+      the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its little
+      fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful perplexity
+      at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child did not open in seeing, but
+      lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that a child's ears should
+      hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a mother's love, and its tongue
+      begin to give back the words in lisping sounds, the ear of Ruth's child
+      heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ruth's spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to come
+      to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, &ldquo;Wait, Ruth; only wait,
+      only a little longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched
+      for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the
+      prattle of its little lips. But never a sound as of speech seemed to break
+      the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue, and never
+      once across her baby's face passed the light of her tearful smile. It was
+      a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful of all for the
+      pains she was at to conceal them. Thus, every day at midday she would
+      carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its eyes should blink in
+      the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon her then, she would drop
+      her head and say, &ldquo;How sweet the air is to-day, and how pleasant to sit in
+      the sun!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it is,&rdquo; he would answer, &ldquo;so it is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the
+      court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if its
+      ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh&mdash;a little
+      shrill laugh like a cry&mdash;and cover her face in confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How merry you are, sweetheart,&rdquo; he would say, and then pass into the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw, and
+      pretending not to hear what he heard. But every day his heart bled at
+      sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very soul
+      had sickened, and he cried, &ldquo;Have done, Ruth!&mdash;for mercy's sake, have
+      done! The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison. Her eyes are
+      darkness, like the tomb's, and her ears are silence, like the grave's.
+      Never will she smile to her mother's smile, or answer to her father's
+      speech. The first sound she will hear will be the last trump, and the
+      first face she will see will be the face of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears. The hope
+      that she had cherished was dead. Israel could comfort her no longer. The
+      fountain of his own heart was dry. He drew a long breath, and went away to
+      his bad work at the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child lived and thrived. They had called her Naomi, as they had agreed
+      to do before she was born, though no name she knew of herself, and a
+      mockery it seemed to name her. At four years of age she was a creature of
+      the most delicate beauty. Notwithstanding her Jewish parentage, she was
+      fair as the day and fresh as the dawn. And if her eyes were darkness,
+      there was light within her soul; and if her ears were silence, there was
+      music within her heart. She was brighter than the sun which she could not
+      see, and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear. She was joyous
+      as a bird in its narrow cage, and never did she fret at the bars which
+      bound her. And, like the bird that sings at midnight, her cheery soul sang
+      in its darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was the
+      sound of laughter. With this she lay down to sleep at night, and rose
+      again in the morning. She laughed as she combed her hair, and laughed
+      again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the
+      sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day from the
+      night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark. She knew
+      her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by the
+      brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew in the fields
+      outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap, as
+      other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands. She seemed
+      almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she would twine
+      in her hair were red, and the white were those which she would lay on her
+      bosom. And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto the wind alone could
+      whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them
+      that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she knew
+      no delight like to that of playing with other children. But her father's
+      house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was allowed to
+      cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met in the fields
+      when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did she ever meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of the
+      isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel. She
+      herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi
+      was doubly and trebly alone&mdash;first, alone as a child that is the only
+      child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off
+      from the parents of other children; and yet again, once more, alone as a
+      child that is blind and dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him from the
+      Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and big innocent white
+      eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel. The boy's name was Ali,
+      and he was four years old. His father had killed his mother for infidelity
+      and neglect of their child, and, having no one to buy him out of prison,
+      he had that day been executed. Then little Ali had been left alone in the
+      world, and so Israel had taken him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him. He had been born a Mohammedan, but
+      secretly she brought him up as a Jew. And for some years thereafter no
+      difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes
+      could see. They ate together, they walked abroad together, they played
+      together, they slept together, and the little black head of the boy lay
+      with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles of
+      humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them. First, on Ali's
+      part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi, &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; she did not
+      hear, when he asked &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; she did not answer; and when he said &ldquo;Look!&rdquo;
+       she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed to gaze full into his face.
+      Then, a sort of amused bewilderment that her little nervous fingers were
+      always touching his arms and his hands, and his neck and his throat. But
+      long before he had come to know that Naomi was not as he was, that Nature
+      had not given her eyes to see as he saw, and ears to hear as he heard, and
+      a tongue to speak as he spoke, Nature herself had overstepped the barriers
+      that divided her from him. He found that Naomi had come to understand him,
+      whatever in his little way he did, and almost whatever in his little way
+      he said. So he played with her as he would have played with any other
+      playmate, laughing with her, calling to her, and going through his foolish
+      little boyish antics before her. Nevertheless, by some mysterious
+      knowledge of Nature's own teaching, he seemed to realise that it was his
+      duty to take care of her. And when the spirit and the mischief in his
+      little manly heart would prompt him to steal out of the house, and
+      adventure into the streets with Naomi by his side, he would be found in
+      the thick of the throng perhaps at the heels of the mules and asses, with
+      Naomi's hand locked in his hand, trying to push the great creatures of the
+      crowd from before her, and crying in his brave little treble, &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Ar-rah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ar-r-rah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As for Naomi, the coming of little black Ali was a wild delight to her.
+      Whatever Ali did, that would she do also. If he ran she would run; if he
+      sat she would sit; and meanwhile she would laugh with a heart of glee,
+      though she heard not what he said, and saw not what he did, and knew not
+      what he meant. At the time of the harvest, when Ruth took them out into
+      the fields, she would ride on Ali's back, and snatch at the ears of barley
+      and leap in her seat and laugh, yet nothing would she see of the yellow
+      corn, and nothing would she hear of the song of the reapers, and nothing
+      would she know of the cries of Ali, who shouted to her while he ran,
+      forgetting in his playing that she heard him not. And at night, when Ruth
+      put them to bed in their little chamber, and Ali knelt with his face
+      towards Jerusalem, Naomi would kneel beside him with a reverent air, and
+      all her laughter would be gone. Then, as he prayed his prayer, her little
+      lips would move as if she were praying too, and her little hands would be
+      clasped together, and her little eyes would be upraised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless father, and mother, and Naomi, and everybody,&rdquo; the black boy
+      would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the little maid would touch his hands and hi throat, and pass her
+      fingers over his face from his eyelids to his lips, and then do as he did,
+      and in her silence seem to echo him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pretty and piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One thing
+      at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison, nevertheless
+      it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it could not die, but
+      was immortal and unmaimed and waited only for the hour when it should be
+      linked to other souls, soul to soul in the chains of speech. But the years
+      went on, and Naomi grew in beauty and increased in sweetness, but no angel
+      came down to open the darkened windows of her eyes, and draw aside the
+      heavy curtains of her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE DEATH OF RUTH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      For all her joy and all her prettiness, Naomi was a burden which only love
+      could bear. To think of the girl by day, and to dream of her by night,
+      never to sit by her without pity of her helplessness, and never to leave
+      her without dread of the mischances that might so easily befall, to see
+      for her, to hear for her, to speak for her, truly the tyranny of the
+      burden was terrible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth sank under it. Through seven years she was eyes of the child's eyes,
+      and ears of her ears, and tongue of her tongue. After that her own sight
+      became dim, and her hearing faint. It was almost as if she had spent them
+      on Naomi in the yearning of dove and pity. Soon afterwards her bodily
+      strength failed her also, and then she knew that her time had come, and
+      that she was to lay down her burden for ever. But her burden had become
+      dear, and she clung to it. She could not look upon the child and think it,
+      that she, who had spent her strength for her from the first, must leave
+      her now to other love and tending. So she betook herself to an upper room,
+      and gave strict orders to Fatimah and Habeebah that Naomi was to be kept
+      from her altogether, that sight of the child's helpless happy face might
+      tempt her soul no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there in her death-chamber Israel sat with her constantly, settling
+      his countenance steadfastly, and coming and going softly. He was more
+      constant than a slave, and more tender than a woman. His love was great,
+      but also he was eating out his big heart with remorse. The root of his
+      trouble was the child. He never talked of her, and neither did Ruth dwell
+      upon her name. Yet they thought of little else while they sat together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even if they had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to
+      say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings, no
+      simple broken speech, no pretty lisp&mdash;they had nothing to bring back
+      out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that lies
+      stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That way
+      everything was a waste. Always, as Israel entered her room, Ruth would
+      say, &ldquo;How is the child?&rdquo; And always Israel would answer, &ldquo;She is well.&rdquo;
+       But, if at that moment Naomi's laughter came up to them from the patio,
+      where she played with Ali, they would cover their faces and be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a melancholy parting. No one came near them&mdash;neither Moor nor
+      Jew, neither Rabbi nor elder. The idle women of the Mellah would sometimes
+      stand outside in the street and look up at their house, knowing that the
+      black camel of death was kneeling at their gate. Other company they had
+      none. In such solitude they passed four weeks, and when the time of the
+      end seemed near, Israel himself read aloud the prayer for the dying, the
+      prayer Shema' Yisrael, and Ruth repeated the words of it after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, while Ruth lay in the upper chamber little Naomi sported and
+      played in the patio with Ali, but she missed her mother constantly. This
+      she made plain by many silent acts of helpless love that knew no way to
+      speak aloud. Thus she would lay flowers on the seats where her mother had
+      used to sit, and, if at night she found them untouched where she had left
+      them, her little face would fall, and her laughter die off her lips; but
+      if they had withered and some one had cast them into the oven, she would
+      laugh again and fetch other flowers from the fields, until the house would
+      be full of the odour of the meadow and the scent of the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And well they knew, who looked upon her then, whom she missed, and what
+      the question was that halted on her tongue; yet how could they answer her?
+      There was no way to do that until she herself knew how to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this she did on a day near to the end. It was evening, and she was
+      being put to bed by Habeebah, and had just risen from her innocent
+      pantomime of prayer beside Ali, when Israel, coming from Ruth's chamber,
+      entered the children's room. Then, touching with her hand the seat whereon
+      Ruth had used to sit, Naomi laid down her head on the pillow, and then
+      rose and lay down again, and rose yet again and rose yet again lay down,
+      and then came to where Israel was and stood before him. And at that Israel
+      knew that the soul of his helpless child had asked him, as plainly as
+      words of the tongue can speak, how often she should lie to sleep at night
+      and rise to play in the morning before her mother came to her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears gushed into his eyes, and he left the children and returned to
+      his wife's chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ruth,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;call the child to you, I beseech you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; cried Ruth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her come to you and touch you and kiss you, and be with you before it
+      is too late,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;She misses you, and fills the house with
+      flowers for you. It breaks my heart to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will break mine also,&rdquo; said Ruth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she consented that Naomi should be called, and Fatimah was sent to
+      fetch her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was setting, and through the window which looked out to the west,
+      over the river and the orange orchards and the palpitating plains beyond,
+      its dying rays came into the room in a bar of golden light. It fell at
+      that instant on Ruth's face, and she was white and wasted. And through the
+      other window of the room, which looked out over the Mellah into the town,
+      and across the market-place to the mosque and to the battery on the hill,
+      there came up from the darkening streets below the shuffle of the feet of
+      a crowd and the sound of many voices. The Jews of Tetuan were trooping
+      back to their own little quarter, that their Moorish masters might lock
+      them into it for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her nightdress.
+      She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she laughed as Fatimah
+      held her by the hand, and danced as she was led to her mother's chamber.
+      But when she was come to the door of it, suddenly her laughter ceased, and
+      her little face sobered, as if something in the close abode of pain had
+      troubled the senses that were left to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, perhaps, the most touching experience of the deaf and blind that no
+      greeting can ever welcome them. When Naomi stood like a little white
+      vision at the threshold of the room, Israel took her hand in silence, and
+      drew her up to the pillow of the bed where her mother rested, and in
+      silence Ruth brought the child to her bosom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Naomi seemed to be perplexed. She touched her mother's
+      fingers, and they were changed, for they had grown thin and long. Then she
+      felt her face, and that was changed also, for it was become withered and
+      cold. And, missing the grasp of one and the smile of the other, she first
+      turned her little head aside as one that listens closely, and then gently
+      withdrew herself from the arms that held her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth had watched her with eyes that overflowed, and now she burst into
+      sobs outright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child does not know me!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Did I not tell you it would
+      break my heart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try her again,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;try her again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back to
+      her side. Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck, she
+      bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were on her
+      wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child. This she
+      did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind to her always.
+      But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only to know, by the
+      quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely, and giving no
+      thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp of recognition and
+      the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again from her mother's arms, and
+      bounded into the middle of the room, and suddenly began to laugh and to
+      dance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun's dying light, which had rested on Ruth's wasted face, now
+      glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed on her blind
+      eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened her white nightdress,
+      while she danced and laughed to her mother's death. Nothing did the child
+      know of death, any more than Adam himself before Abel was slain, and it
+      was almost as if a devil out of hell had entered into her innocent heart
+      and possessed it, that she might make a mock of the dying of the dearest
+      friend she had known on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child's
+      uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down at
+      speech, but wildly and deliriously. The room was darkening fast, but still
+      across the nether end, by the foot of the bed, streamed the dull red bar
+      of sunlight with the little red figure leaping and prancing and laughing
+      in the midst of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to the
+      wall. The black woman dropped her head that she might not see. And Israel
+      covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, &ldquo;O Lord God, long hast
+      Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with scorpions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth recovered herself quickly. &ldquo;Bring her to me again!&rdquo; she faltered; and
+      once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside. Then, embracing and
+      kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her trouble
+      that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, &ldquo;It's your mother, Naomi! your
+      mother, darling, though so sick and changed! Don't you know her, Naomi?
+      Your mother, your own mother, sweet one, your dear mother who loves you
+      so, and must leave you now and see you no more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness of the
+      child at last, only God Himself can say. But first Naomi's cheeks grew
+      pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they reddened, and
+      then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth's hands again, and then
+      her little lips trembled, and then, at length, she flung herself along
+      Ruth's bosom and nestled close in her embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman stood
+      and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any longer
+      was melted and unmanned. The sun had gone down, and the room was darkening
+      rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short; the streets were quiet,
+      and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret was chanting in the silence,
+      &ldquo;God is great, God is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother's bosom, and, seeing
+      this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back to her own
+      bed; but Ruth said, &ldquo;No; leave her, let me have her with me while I may.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one shall take her from you,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she gazed down at the child's face and said, &ldquo;It is hard to leave her
+      and never once to have heard her voice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the bitterest cup of all,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not return to her,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;but she shall come to me, and
+      then, perhaps&mdash;who knows?&mdash;perhaps in the resurrection I shall
+      hear it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, &ldquo;My helpless darling! Who
+      will care for you when I am gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rest, rest, and sleep!&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, I know,&rdquo; said Ruth. &ldquo;How foolish of me! You are her father, and
+      you love her also. Yet promise me&mdash;promise&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For love and tending she shall never lack,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;And now lie you
+      still, my dearest; lie still and sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stretched out her hand to him. &ldquo;Yes, that was what I meant,&rdquo; she said,
+      and smiled. Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom. &ldquo;But when I am
+      gone,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;will Naomi ever know that her mother who is dead had
+      wronged her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have never wronged her,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Have done, oh, have done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God punished us for our prayer, my husband,&rdquo; said Ruth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace, peace!&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But God is good,&rdquo; said Ruth, &ldquo;and surely He will not afflict our child
+      much longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! Hush! You will awaken her,&rdquo; said Israel, not thinking what he said.
+      &ldquo;Now lie still and sleep, dearest. You are tired also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She lay quiet for a time, gazing, while the light remained, into the face
+      of the sleeping child, and listening, when the light failed, to her gentle
+      breathing. Then she babbled and crooned over her with a childish joy.
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, father is right, and mother must lie quiet&mdash;very quiet,
+      and so her little Naomi will sleep long&mdash;very long, and wake happy
+      and well in the morning. How bonny she will look! How fresh and rosy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused a moment. Her laboured breathing came quick and fast. &ldquo;But
+      shall I be here to see her? shall I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She paused again, and then, as though to banish thought, she began to sing
+      in a low voice that was like a moan. Presently her singing ceased, and she
+      spoke again, but this time in broken whispers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How soft and glossy her hair is! I wonder if Fatimah will remember to
+      wash it every day. She should twist it around her fingers to keep it in
+      pretty curls. . . . Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . .
+      Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves, it's a chance
+      if Habeebah has seen to it. Then there's her underclothing. . . . Will she
+      be deaf and blind and dumb always? I wonder if I shall see her when I. . .
+      . They say that angels are sent. . . . Yes, yes, that's it, when I am
+      there&mdash;there&mdash;I will go to God and say, 'O Lord! my little girl
+      whom I have left behind, she is. . . . You would never think, O Lord, how
+      many things may happen to one like her. Let me go&mdash;only let me watch
+      over her&mdash;O Lord, let me be her guar&mdash;'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her weakness had conquered her, and she was quiet at last. Israel sat in
+      silence by the post of the bed. His heart was surging itself out of his
+      choking breast. The black woman stood somewhere by the wall. After a time
+      Ruth seemed to awake as from sleep. She was in great excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Israel, Israel!&rdquo; she cried in a voice of joy, &ldquo;I have seen a vision. It
+      was Naomi. She was no longer deaf and blind and dumb. She was grown to be
+      a woman, but I knew her instantly. Not a woman either, but a young maiden,
+      and so beautiful, so beautiful! Yes, and she could see and hear and
+      speak.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel thought Ruth had become delirious, and he tried to soothe her, but
+      her agitation was not to be overcome. &ldquo;The Lord hath seen our tears at
+      last,&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;He has put our sin beneath His feet. We are forgiven.
+      It will be well with the child yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not try to gainsay her, and at sight and sound of her joy,
+      seeing it so beautiful, yet thinking it so vain, he could not help at last
+      but weep. Presently she became quiet again, and then again, after a little
+      while, she woke as from a sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am ready now,&rdquo; she said in a whisper, &ldquo;quite ready, sweet Heaven,
+      quite, quite ready now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then with her one free hand she felt in the darkness for Israel, where he
+      sat beside her, and touching his forehead she smoothed it, and said very
+      softly, &ldquo;Farewell, my husband!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel answered her, &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel drew down her hand from his forehead to his lips and sobbed,
+      and said, &ldquo;Good-night, beloved!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she put her white lips to the child's blind eyes, and at that moment
+      the spirit of the Lord came to her, and the Lord took her, and she died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw that the end
+      had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth's bosom, but the child
+      awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers about the
+      dead mother's neck and covered the mouth with kisses. And when she felt
+      that the lips did not answer to her lips, and that the arms which had held
+      her did not hold her any longer, but fell away useless, she clung the
+      closer, and tears started to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      RUTH'S BURIAL
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth of his
+      sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him. By noon of the day
+      following the night of Ruth's death, Israel knew that he was to be left
+      alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death
+      in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the
+      first service thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra
+      Kadisha of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make
+      arrangements for burial. Early prayers had been held in the synagogue at
+      eight o'clock that morning, and no one had yet come near to Israel's
+      house. The men of the Hebra were going about their ordinary occupations.
+      They knew nothing of Ruth's death by official announcement. The clerk had
+      not published it. Israel remembered with bitterness that notice of it had
+      not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout Tetuan. There
+      was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken it to each house
+      he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little groups of idle
+      Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the streets outside,
+      talking of it in whispers and looking up at the darkened windows with awe.
+      But the synagogue knew nothing of it. Israel had omitted the customary
+      ceremony, and in that omission lay the advantage of his enemies. He must
+      humble himself and send to them. Until he did so they would leave him
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not send. Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed
+      the threshold of the synagogue. He would not cross it now, whether in body
+      or in spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he had lost
+      the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews that a body
+      should be buried within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from the time of
+      death. He must do something immediately. Some help must be summoned. What
+      help could it be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless to think of the Muslimeen. No believer would lend a hand to
+      dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead. It was
+      just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of this
+      burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that he would have
+      need to know more. And of Christians of any sort or condition there were
+      none in all Tetuan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gall of Israel's heart rose to his throat. Was he to be left alone
+      with his dead wife? Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave
+      with his own hands? Or did they expect him to come to them with bowed
+      forehead and bended knee? Either way their reckoning was a mistake. They
+      might leave him terribly and awfully alone&mdash;alone in his hour of
+      mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when he
+      had married the dear soul who was dead. But his strength and energy they
+      should not crush: his vital and intellectual force they should not wither
+      away. Only one thing they could do to touch him&mdash;they could shrivel
+      up his last impulse of sweet human sympathy. They were doing it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message to the
+      Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six State prisoners,
+      fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed by
+      Jewish custom. It was twilight when the body was brought down from the
+      upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that had been
+      raised for it on chairs standing back to back. And there, too, sat Israel,
+      with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock, and his
+      dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.
+      Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself, down to the
+      least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in the larger
+      sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his riches except
+      to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down and to abash the enemies
+      who still menaced him. Nothing was lacking that money could buy in Tetuan
+      to make this burial an imposing ceremony. Only one thing it wanted&mdash;it
+      wanted mourners, and it had but one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited. She ran to and fro,
+      clutched at Israel's clothes and seemed to look into his face, clasped the
+      hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear. Whether she knew what
+      work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or sense she
+      learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the presence of many
+      strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah brought the roll of
+      white linen down the stairway, with the two black women clinging to it,
+      kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke away from Israel and
+      rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her little white arms
+      upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need to check her. The
+      moment she had touched her mother she crept back in dread to her father's
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be gracious to my father, look at that,&rdquo; whispered Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My child, my poor child,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;is there but one thing in life
+      that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of
+      the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs
+      according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger had
+      wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had sunken
+      their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them, and
+      concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep, rich,
+      velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two remaining
+      prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand&mdash;the right
+      arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a
+      soldier, carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the
+      twilight, and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone. Thus
+      they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated at the
+      door, through the streets of the Mellah and out into the marketplace, and
+      up the narrow lane that leads to the chief town gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage, and
+      the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel. As the procession went
+      through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent until it
+      had gone. Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing fowls and
+      taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work and fell back
+      as the procession approached. A blind beggar crouching at the other side
+      of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close at his
+      elbow were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were playing by
+      the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the procession
+      passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler was performing
+      before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller was shrieking to
+      the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the juggler broke up as the
+      procession appeared, and the ginbri of the storyteller was no more heard.
+      The hammering in the shops of the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling
+      of the bells of the water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from
+      the country were dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their
+      panniers full of street-filth, were drawn up by the wall. From the
+      market-place and out of the shops, out of the houses and out of the mosque
+      itself, the people came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close
+      line on either side of the course which the procession must take. And
+      through this avenue of onlookers the strange company made its way&mdash;the
+      two prisoners bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the
+      two soldiers carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported
+      and alone. Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of
+      the feet of the six men, and the clank of their chains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every one
+      knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet he
+      did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither to
+      the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the procession
+      came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white tombstones, all
+      pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock of sheep asleep
+      among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence, and no fence but a
+      hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi her
+      father. He had asked no man's permission to do so, but if no one had
+      helped at that day's business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
+      when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
+      forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch in
+      his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white
+      earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a
+      padlock and flung away the key. Last of all, when the body had been taken
+      out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in after it,
+      and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern. And then,
+      kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both his hands,
+      and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down at her where
+      she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the synagogue, and
+      speaking to her as though she heard: &ldquo;Ruth, my wife, my dearest, for the
+      cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered you to marry me,
+      being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people, forgive me now, my
+      beloved, and ask God to forgive me also.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two
+      soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted man
+      kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the
+      custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet
+      no more until the resurrection itself reunited them! The traffic of the
+      streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel
+      had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for each
+      carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day following.
+      But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened mind. As he had
+      plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over his shoulder,
+      saying, &ldquo;They shall spring in the cities as the grass in the earth,&rdquo; he
+      had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the world were
+      peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was dead. God
+      had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert. Only one glimpse of
+      human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken from him for
+      ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again. She was a
+      helpless exile among men, a creature banished from all human intercourse,
+      a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a good God who had
+      taken the mother from such a child&mdash;the child from such a mother?
+      Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not God but the
+      devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that governed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's loss
+      and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to be
+      saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
+      fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
+      strange and beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE SPIRIT-MAID
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should not
+      lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time forward
+      he became as father and mother both to the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
+      it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of the
+      tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and blind,
+      but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied. It implied
+      that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest of the
+      family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart as if
+      she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could reach her in
+      joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In the midst of a
+      world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was in a world of
+      silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a living and
+      buried soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had memory,
+      for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had love, for she
+      had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love and memory
+      without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet locked in a
+      casket&mdash;idle and useless to any purposes of man or the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
+      affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
+      but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
+      twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not merely
+      to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
+      father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows he must have
+      soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
+      beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
+      must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
+      though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
+      might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if she
+      felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he must have
+      known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the world and what
+      the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book for her to read.
+      But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of being deaf, being
+      dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation of her state, the
+      blank void of her isolation&mdash;cut off, apart, aloof, shut in,
+      imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other souls: alive,
+      and yet dead?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
+      Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and silent
+      soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to her, that
+      he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his own great
+      comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but the one
+      gift only whereof he had known from the beginning&mdash;the gift of touch
+      and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light should
+      always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or silence
+      should be her speech for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
+      stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not hear,
+      and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent to England
+      for many books written on the treatment of these children of affliction,
+      and when they were come he pondered them closely and was thrilled by the
+      marvellous works they described. But when he came to practise the precepts
+      they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the impediments were great.
+      Time after time he tried, and failed always, to touch by so much as one
+      shaft of light the hidden soul of the child through its tenement of flesh
+      and blood. Neither the simplest thought nor the poorest element of an idea
+      found any way to her mind, so dense were the walls of the prison that
+      encompassed it. &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; was a mystery that could not at first be revealed to
+      her, and &ldquo;No&rdquo; was a problem beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and
+      frowns were useless to teach her. No discipline could be addressed to her
+      mind or heart. Except mere bodily restraint, no control could be imposed
+      upon her. She was swayed by her impulses alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not despair. If he was broken down today he strengthened his
+      hands for tomorrow. At length he had got so far, after a world of toil and
+      thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was for approval,
+      and when he touched her hand it was for assent. Then he stopped very
+      suddenly. His hope had not drooped, and neither had his energy failed, but
+      the conviction had fastened upon him that such effort in his case must be
+      an offence against Heaven. Naomi was not merely an infirm creature from
+      the left hand of Nature; she was an afflicted being from the right hand of
+      God. She was a living monument of sin that was not her own. It was useless
+      to go farther. The child must be left where God had placed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human kind,
+      she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they possessed.
+      It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her, and from
+      that source alone could she have imbibed her power. To tell of all she
+      could do to guide her steps, and to minister to her pleasures, and to
+      cherish her affections, would be to go beyond the limit of belief. Truly
+      it seemed as if Naomi, being blind with her bodily eyes, could yet look
+      upon a light that no one else could see, and, being deaf with her bodily
+      ears, could yet listen to voices that no one else could hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew
+      when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.
+      Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears had
+      taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her hands to
+      take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it against her
+      cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms to encircle
+      his neck; and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to her bosom; and
+      always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by. Did she go with Ali into
+      the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of the town, and the
+      narrow lanes from the open Sok. Did she pass the lofty mosque in the
+      market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled under and behind
+      and around. Did a troop of mules and camels come near her, she knew them
+      from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two streets crossed, she
+      would stand and face both ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around
+      Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah and
+      the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river under
+      the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and even some
+      of their rocky gorges. She could find her way among them all without help
+      or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her to keep her out
+      of the way of harm. While Ali was a little fellow he was her constant
+      companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet heart
+      suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school every day
+      early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny white goat
+      which her father had bought to be another playfellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the crown
+      of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her feet felt
+      the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded whether the sun
+      was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from the rising of the
+      morning until the coming of the stars. So, casting off her slippers and
+      the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and clad in her white
+      woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of airy grace, and with
+      the little goat going before her, though she could neither see nor hear
+      it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery, and stand on the summit,
+      like a spirit poised in air. She could see nothing of the green valley
+      then stretched before her, or of the white town lying below, with its
+      domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult in her lofty place, and to
+      drink new life from the rush of mighty winds about her. Then coming back
+      to the dale, she would seem, to those who looked up at her, with fear and
+      with awe, to leap as the goat leapt in the rocky places; and as a bird
+      sweeps over the grass with wings outstretched, so with her arms spread
+      out, and her long fair hair flying loose, she would sweep down the hill,
+      as though her very tiptoes did not touch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were the
+      power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind, which
+      loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child into a
+      maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring, when the
+      rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were abroad, or
+      in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder thundered, her
+      restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic tumults, and if she
+      could escape the eyes that watched her she would run and race in the
+      tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter would be on her
+      lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and, having found her
+      in the pelting storm without covering on her head or shoes on her feet, he
+      would fetch her home by the hand, and as they passed through the streets
+      together his forehead would be bowed and his eyes bent down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
+      joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature of
+      joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
+      darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
+      though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did not
+      become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with a
+      child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
+      maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
+      seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant flowers
+      in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars of the
+      patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars that stood in
+      it. And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress increased as
+      well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things; it was a wild
+      passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled in native grace
+      about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness. She was happy as a
+      day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring. The ripple of her
+      laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed to follow in the
+      air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her father, she was as
+      a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel in
+      his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that the
+      little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling could
+      only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and many throbs
+      of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially at seasons when
+      no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful silence haunted the
+      air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick longing from causes that
+      were beyond Israel's power to fathom. Then her sweet face would sadden,
+      and her beautiful blind eyes would fill, and her pretty laughter would
+      echo no more through the house. And sometimes, in the dead of the night,
+      she would rise from her bed and go through the dark corridors, for
+      darkness and light were as one to her, until she came to Israel's room,
+      and he would awake from his sleep to find her, like a little white vision,
+      standing by his bedside. What she wanted there he could never know, for
+      neither had he power to ask nor she to answer, whether she were sick or in
+      pain, or whether in her sleep she had seen a face from the invisible
+      world, and heard a voice that called her away, or whether her mother's
+      arms had seemed to be about her once again and then to be torn from her
+      afresh, and she had come to him on awakening in her trouble, not knowing
+      what it is to dream, but thinking all evil dreams to be true fact and new
+      sorrow. So, with a sigh, he would arise and light his lamp and lead her
+      back to her bed, and more scalding than the tears that would be standing
+      in Naomi's eyes would be the hot drops that would gush into his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor darling,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;can you not tell me your trouble, that I
+      may comfort you? No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot comfort her. My
+      darling, my darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle out
+      of heaven to find a way to the little maiden's mind that she might ask and
+      answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it, for still greater than
+      his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath of God. And out of this
+      fear there came to him at length an awful and terrible thought: though so
+      severed on earth, his child and he, yet before the bar of judgment they
+      would one day be brought together, and then how should it stand with her
+      soul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man. Would God
+      condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever? No, no, no! God would not
+      ask her for good works in the land of silence, and for labour in the land
+      of night. She had no eyes to see God's beautiful world, and no ears to
+      hear His holy word. God had created her so, and He would not destroy what
+      He had made. Far rather would He look with love and pity on His little
+      one, so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to be a
+      blessed saint in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain. He was a Jew
+      to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself out of his own
+      mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God's will, that had sent
+      Naomi into the world as she was. Then, on the day of the great account,
+      how should he answer to her for her soul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul that knew
+      not God. These were the most awful terrors of his sleepless nights, but at
+      length peace came to him, for he saw his path of duty. It was his duty to
+      Naomi that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the Lord to
+      her! What matter if she could not hear? Though she had senses as the sands
+      of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could lead her.
+      What matter though she could not see? The soul was the eye that saw God,
+      and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and led
+      her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and, fetching from
+      a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her of the
+      commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets, and of the Kings.
+      And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet, with his one free hand
+      in both of her hands, clasped close against her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom, what mystery
+      it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks into darkness could
+      see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun had set&mdash;for she
+      knew when the sun was gone&mdash;Naomi herself would take her father by
+      the hand, and lead him to the upper room, and fetch the book to his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,
+      and make a mock at him, and say, &ldquo;The child is deaf and hears not&mdash;go
+      read your book in the tombs!&rdquo; But he only hardened his neck and laughed
+      proudly. And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say, &ldquo;Why waste
+      yourself in this misspent desire? The child is buried while she is still
+      alive, and who shall roll away the stone?&rdquo; But Israel only answered, &ldquo;It
+      is for the Lord to do miracles, and the Lord is mighty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night, and when
+      his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice would be hoarse,
+      and he would read the law which says, &ldquo;<i>Thou shalt not curse the deaf,
+      nor put a stumbling-block before the blind.</i>&rdquo; But when his heart was at
+      peace his voice would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel
+      sanctified to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he
+      answered&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
+      and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp of
+      God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was, and
+      Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel, and he
+      answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou
+      calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and
+      lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and went
+      to Eli and said, Here am I for thou didst call me. And he answered, I
+      called not my son; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord,
+      neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book, and sing
+      out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says, &ldquo;It is good for me that I
+      have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read of
+      the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter, who was both blind
+      and deaf. And though Naomi heard not, and neither did she see, yet in
+      their silent hour together there was another in their chamber always with
+      them&mdash;there was a third, for there was God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then
+      fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife. The
+      woman's name was Katrina. She was a Spaniard by birth, and had first come
+      to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy, which travelled through
+      Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez. What her belongings were, and what
+      her antecedents had been, no one appeared to know, nor did Ben Aboo
+      himself seem to care. She answered all his present needs in her own
+      person, which was ample in its proportions and abundant in its charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions. The first
+      was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement of four
+      Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as the many concubines
+      that he had annexed in his way through life, and now kept lodged in one
+      unquiet nest in the women's hidden quarter of the Palace. The second
+      condition was, that she herself should never be banished to such
+      seclusion, but, like the wife of any European governor, should openly
+      share the state of her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan, and
+      he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to abide by,
+      but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a prelude to that
+      public life which she intended to live by his side, she insisted on a
+      public marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church by a
+      Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival lasted six
+      days. Great was the display, and lavish the outlay. Every morning the
+      cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill, every evening the
+      tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats of powder-play in
+      the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa from Mequinez yelled
+      and shrieked in the enclosure called the M'salla, near the Bab er-Remoosh.
+      Feasts were spread in the Kasbah, and relays of guests from among the
+      chief men of the town were invited daily to partake of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute of a
+      present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light of
+      their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though it galled
+      the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage of a Christian and a
+      Muslim&mdash;no man except Israel, and he excused himself with what grace
+      he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick with sorrow of the
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid. She had taken her measure of the
+      man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel should pay her
+      court and tribute before all. Therefore she caused him to be invited
+      again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman, and with some lack
+      of courtesy he excused himself afresh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Katrina was not yet done. She was a creature of resource, and having heard
+      of Naomi with strange stories concerning her, she devised a children's
+      feast for the last day of the marriage festival, and caused Ben Aboo to
+      write to Israel a formal letter, beginning &ldquo;To our well-beloved the
+      excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise to the one God,&rdquo; and setting forth that
+      on the morrow, when the &ldquo;Sun of the world&rdquo; should &ldquo;place his foot in the
+      stirrup of speed,&rdquo; and gallop &ldquo;from the kingdom of shades,&rdquo; the Governor
+      would &ldquo;hold a gathering of delight&rdquo; for all the children of Tetuan and he,
+      Israel, was besought to &ldquo;lighten it with the rays of his face, rivalled
+      only by the sun,&rdquo; and to bring with him his little daughter Naomi, whose
+      arrival &ldquo;similar to a spring breeze,&rdquo; should &ldquo;dissipate the dark night of
+      solitude and isolation.&rdquo; This despatch written in the common cant of the
+      people, concluded with quotations from the Prophet on brotherly love and a
+      significant and more sincere assurance that the Basha would not admit of
+      excuses &ldquo;of the thickness of a hair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious. He leapt
+      to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi, the Spanish
+      woman, who must know of the child's condition desired only to make a show
+      of it. But, after a fume, he put that thought from him as uncharitable and
+      unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi's
+      own eagerness must have driven it away. The little maid seemed to know
+      that something unusual was going on. Troops of poor villagers from every
+      miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating
+      drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them&mdash;bullocks,
+      cows, and sheep&mdash;and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and
+      were glad. Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in the
+      marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle
+      everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement. The
+      children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had been
+      summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be dancing and
+      singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself, who had lately
+      practised the kanoon&mdash;the lute, the harp&mdash;under his teacher, was
+      to show his skill before the Governor. Therefore, great was the little
+      black man's excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would talk to every
+      one of the event forthcoming&mdash;to Fatima, to Habeebah, and often to
+      Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to him, or
+      perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him, and then,
+      thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them like a
+      fury, and they would scamper away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and
+      Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs. Every child
+      carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then a girl
+      with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling them
+      close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly happy in
+      their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree of the
+      knowledge of good and evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and
+      followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the
+      lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through the
+      iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women stood
+      together closely covered in their blankets&mdash;the mothers and sisters
+      of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into the Kasbah,
+      but allowed to go no farther&mdash;then down the crooked passage, past the
+      tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and finally into
+      the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a great
+      company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors, Arabs,
+      Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white and blue and
+      black and red&mdash;they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and, perhaps, a
+      beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every eye
+      was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made for them, he
+      heard the whispered exclamations of the people. &ldquo;Shoof!&rdquo; muttered a Moor.
+      &ldquo;See!&rdquo; &ldquo;It's himself,&rdquo; said a Jew. &ldquo;And the child,&rdquo; said another Jew.
+      &ldquo;Allah has smitten her,&rdquo; said an Arab &ldquo;Blind and dumb and deaf,&rdquo; said
+      another Moor &ldquo;God be gracious to my father!&rdquo; said another Arab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and from
+      the flat roof above it the women of the Governor's hareem, not yet
+      dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were
+      gazing furtively down from behind their haiks. There was a fountain in the
+      middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an alcove that
+      opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with stalactites,
+      against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat rugs of many
+      colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at the
+      instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome woman,
+      but plainly a heartless one&mdash;selfish, vain, and vulgar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina drew
+      Naomi to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?&rdquo; said
+      Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman's
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The darling is as fair as an angel,&rdquo; said Katrina, and she kissed Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a pretty
+      and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the black shadows
+      of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people massed around the
+      patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going in the middle of it.
+      First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered hazzams dancing after
+      their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting and turning, but
+      keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then, a line of Jewish
+      girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish manner tripping on
+      their slippered toes, whirling and turning around with rapid motions, and
+      playing timbrels and tambourines held high above their heads by their
+      shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the Koran chanted by a group of
+      Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and chocolate and white, peaked
+      above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in
+      their black skull-caps&mdash;a brave old song of Zion sung by silvery
+      young voices in an alien land. Finally, little black Ali, led out by his
+      teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in his hands, showing no fear at
+      all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of pleasure&mdash;his head aside,
+      his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting, and his face aglow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been agitated
+      and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes playing with
+      her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers. It was as though
+      she was conscious of the fine show which was going forward, and knew that
+      they were children who were making it. Perhaps the breath of the little
+      ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or perhaps the light air made by
+      the sweep of their garments was wafted to her sensitive body. Whatsoever
+      the sense whereby the knowledge came to her, clearly it was there in her
+      flushed and twitching face, which was full of that old hunger for
+      child-company which Israel knew too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
+      his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement. The girl leaped
+      up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost rapidity of
+      motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to the boy's
+      side. And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it, and then a
+      low cry came from her lips. Again she touched it, and her eyes, though
+      blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire. Then, with both her hands
+      she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she kissed it, while her
+      whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with wild
+      thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope. As well as he could
+      in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the little
+      maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Leave her!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Let us see what the child will do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Ali's playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp pass
+      to Naomi's clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling on the
+      ground beside it, the girl took it to herself. She caressed it, she patted
+      it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then a faint smile crossed
+      her rosy lips. She laid her cheek against it and touched its strings
+      again, and then she laughed aloud. She flung off her slippers and the
+      garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid her pure flesh against
+      the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and touched its strings once
+      more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh with delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious
+      saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds
+      so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet
+      heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes of
+      a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds such as
+      no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion
+      to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found
+      to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them some
+      of the sensations of sound&mdash;the trembling of the air after thunder,
+      the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls
+      after the ringing of mighty bells&mdash;so Naomi, who was blind as well
+      and had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up
+      the force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this
+      instrument of music the movement of things that moved about her&mdash;the
+      patter of the leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl
+      of the great winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the
+      rippling of the levanter in her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion
+      in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the
+      music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings of the
+      harp. But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of
+      sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it. She lifted her
+      head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she played,
+      she laughed again and again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the
+      beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through the
+      robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white fingers
+      flying across the strings. There was something gruesome and awful, as
+      well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard nothing of
+      the sounds that her fingers were making.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was agape.
+      And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from their first
+      surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words they passed
+      between them. &ldquo;Where has she learnt it?&rdquo; asked a Moor. &ldquo;From her master
+      himself,&rdquo; muttered a Jew. &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; asked the Moor. &ldquo;Beelzebub,&rdquo;
+       growled the Jew. &ldquo;God pity me, the evil eye is on her,&rdquo; said an Arab. &ldquo;God
+      will show,&rdquo; said a Shereef from Wazzan. &ldquo;They say her mother was a
+      childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah's blessing at the tomb
+      of Rabbi Amran.&rdquo; &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the Arab; &ldquo;she sent her girdle.&rdquo; &ldquo;Anyhow, the
+      child is a saint,&rdquo; whispered the Shereef. &ldquo;No, but a devil,&rdquo; snorted the
+      Jew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brava, brava, brava!&rdquo; cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered and
+      laughed as the girl played. &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; she said, looking
+      toward her husband. &ldquo;The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either. Oh, it's
+      a brave imposture! Brava, brave!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded, her head
+      dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp and
+      sighed audibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good again!&rdquo; cried the woman. &ldquo;Very good!&rdquo; and she clapped her hands,
+      whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread, felt
+      constrained to follow her example, and they cheered in their wilder way,
+      but the Jews continued to mutter, &ldquo;Beelzebub, Beelzebub!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind and the
+      confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight of what Naomi did. Had
+      God opened a gateway to her soul? Were the poor wings of her spirit to
+      spread themselves out at last? Was this, then, the way of speech that
+      Heaven had given her? But hardly had Israel overflowed with the tenderness
+      of such thoughts when the bleating and barking of the faces about him
+      awakened his anger. Then, like blows on his brain, came the cries of the
+      wife of the Governor, who cheered this awakening of the girl's soul as it
+      were no better than a vulgar show; and at that Israel's wrath rose to his
+      throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brava, brava!&rdquo; cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel, she said,
+      &ldquo;You shall leave the child with me. I must have her with me always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's throat seemed to choke him at that word. He looked at Katrina,
+      and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and vain of heart, who had
+      married Ben Aboo because he was rich. Then he looked at Naomi, and
+      remembered that her heart was clear as the water, and sweet as the
+      morning, and pure as the snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the
+      people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to take
+      up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the spell
+      had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp, her head had
+      dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to her
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take her in!&rdquo; said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped up
+      to where the little maiden lay. But before they had touched her Israel
+      strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as you are bidden&mdash;take her in!&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.
+      Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up the
+      unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor, but
+      my child belongs to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms, and
+      in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed to know
+      what he had done until he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event he
+      found courage in his heart to begin his task again. Let his enemies bleat
+      and bark &ldquo;Beelzebub,&rdquo; yet the child was an angel, though suffering for his
+      sin, and her soul was with God. She was a spirit, and the songs she had
+      played were the airs of paradise. But, comforting himself so, Israel
+      remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered her powers. He
+      had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death, but would the Lord
+      yet bring it to pass? Would God in His mercy some day take the angel out
+      of his house, though so strangely gifted, so radiant and beautiful and
+      joyful, and give him instead for the hunger of his heart as a man this
+      sweet human child, his little, fair-haired Naomi, though helpless and
+      simple and weak?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Israel's instinct had been sure: the coming of Katrina proved to be the
+      beginning of his end. He kept his office, but he lost his power. No longer
+      did he work his own will in Tetuan; he was required to work the will of
+      the woman. Katrina's will was an evil one, and Israel got the blame of it,
+      for still he seemed to stand in all matters of tribute and taxation
+      between the people and the Governor. It galled him to take the woman's
+      wages, but it vexed him yet more to do her work. Her work was to burden
+      the people with taxes beyond all their power of paying; her wages was to
+      be hated as the bane of the bashalic, to be clamoured against as the
+      tyrant of Tetuan, and to be ridiculed by the very offal of the streets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day a gang of dirty Arabs in the market-place dressed up a blind
+      beggar in clothes such as Israel wore, and sent him abroad through the
+      town to beg as one that was destitute and in a miserable condition. But
+      nothing seemed to move Israel to pity. Men were cast into prison for no
+      reason save that they were rich, and the relations of such as were there
+      already were allowed to redeem them for money, so that no felon suffered
+      punishment except such as could pay nothing. People took fright and fled
+      to other cities. Israel's name became a curse and a reproach throughout
+      Barbary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all this time the man's soul was yearning with pity for the people.
+      Since the death of Ruth his heart had grown merciful. The care of the
+      child had softened him. It had brought him to look on other children with
+      tenderness, and looking tenderly on other children had led him to think of
+      other fathers with compassion. Young or old, powerful or weak, mighty or
+      mean, they were all as little children&mdash;helpless children who would
+      sleep together in the same bed soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thinking so, Israel would have undone the evil work of earlier years; but
+      that was impossible now. Many of them that had suffered were dead; some
+      that had been cast into prison had got their last and long discharge. At
+      least Israel would have relaxed the rigour whereby his master ruled, but
+      that was impossible also. Katrina had come, and she was a vain woman and a
+      lover of all luxury, and she commanded Israel to tax the people afresh. He
+      obeyed her through three bad years; but many a time his heart reproached
+      him that he dealt corruptly by the poor people, and when he saw them
+      borrowing money for the Governor's tributes on their lands and houses, and
+      when he stood by while they and their sons were cast into prison for the
+      bonds which they could not pay to the usurers Abraham or Judah or Reuben,
+      then his soul cried out against him that he ate the bread of such a
+      mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
+      sweetness, and out of this coming of the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo came
+      deliverance for Israel from the torment of his false position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an aged and pious Moor in Tetuan, called Abd Allah, who was
+      rumoured to have made savings from his business as a gunsmith. Going to
+      mosque one evening, with fifteen dollars in his waistband, he unstrapped
+      his belt and laid it on the edge of the fountain while he washed his feet
+      before entering, for his back was no longer supple. Then a younger Moor,
+      coming to pray at the same time, saw the dollars, and snatched them up and
+      ran. Abd Allah could not follow the thief, so he went to the Kasbah and
+      told his story to the Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just at that time Ben Aboo had the Kaid of Fez on a visit to him. &ldquo;Ask him
+      how much more he has got,&rdquo; whispered the brother Kaid to Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abd Allah answered that he did not know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you two hundred dollars for the chance of all he has,&rdquo; the Kaid
+      whispered again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five bees are better than a pannier of flies&mdash;done!&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Abd Allah was sold like a sheep and carried to Fez, and there cast into
+      prison on a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars imposed upon him on
+      the pretence of a false accusation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel sat by the Governor that day at the gate of the hall of justice,
+      and many poor people of the town stood huddled together in the court
+      outside while the evil work was done. No one heard the Kaid of Fez when he
+      whispered to Ben Aboo, but every one saw when Israel drew the warrant that
+      consigned the gunsmith to prison, and when he sealed it with the
+      Governor's seal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abd Allah had made no savings, and, being too old for work, he had lived
+      on the earnings of his son. The son's name was Absalam (Abd es-Salem), and
+      he had a wife whom he loved very tenderly, and one child, a boy of six
+      years of age. Absalam followed his father to Fez, and visited him in
+      prison. The old man had been ordered a hundred lashes, and the flesh was
+      hanging from his limbs. Absalam was great of heart, and, in pity of his
+      father's miserable condition he went to the Governor and begged that the
+      old man might be liberated, and that he might be imprisoned instead. His
+      petition was heard. Abd Allah was set free, Absalam was cast into prison,
+      and the penalty was raised from two hundred and fifty dollars to three
+      hundred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel heard of what had happened, and he hastened to Ben Aboo, in great
+      agitation, intending to say &ldquo;Pay back this man's ransom, in God's name,
+      and his children and his children's children will live to bless you.&rdquo; But
+      when he got to the Kasbah, Katrina was sitting with her husband, and at
+      sight of the woman's face Israel's tongue was frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Absalam had been the favourite of his neighbours among all the gunsmiths
+      of the market-place, and after he had been three months at Fez they made
+      common cause of his calamities, sold their goods at a sacrifice, collected
+      the three hundred dollars of his fine, bought him out of prison, and went
+      in a body through the gate to meet him upon his return to Tetuan. But his
+      wife had died in the meantime of fear and privation, and only his aged
+      father and his little son were there to welcome him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friends,&rdquo; he said to his neighbours standing outside the walls, &ldquo;what is
+      the use of sowing if you know not who will reap?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No use, no use!&rdquo; answered several voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If God gives you anything, this man Israel takes it away,&rdquo; said Absalam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, true! Curse him! Curse his relations!&rdquo; cried the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why go back into Tetuan?&rdquo; said Absalam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tangier is no better,&rdquo; said one. &ldquo;Fez is worse,&rdquo; said another. &ldquo;Where is
+      there to go?&rdquo; said a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into the plains,&rdquo; said Absalam&mdash;&ldquo;into the plains and into the
+      mountains, for they belong to God alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That word was like the flint to the tinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They who have least are richest, and they that have nothing are best off
+      of all,&rdquo; said Absalam, and his neighbours shouted that it was so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will clothe us as He clothes the fields,&rdquo; said Absalam, &ldquo;and feed our
+      children as He feeds the birds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In three days' time ten shops in the market-place, on the side of the
+      Mosque, were sold up and closed, and the men who had kept them were gone
+      away with their wives and children to live in tents with Absalam on the
+      barren plains beyond the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel heard of what had been done he secretly rejoiced; but Ben Aboo
+      was in a commotion of fear, and Katrina was fierce with anger, for the
+      doctrine which Absalam had preached to his neighbours outside the walls
+      was not his own doctrine merely, but that of a great man lately risen
+      among the people, called Mohammed of Mequinez, nicknamed by his enemies
+      Mohammed the Third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This madness is spreading,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Katrina; &ldquo;and if all men follow where these men lead, who will
+      supply the tables of Kaids and Sultans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do with them?&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eat them up,&rdquo; said Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo proceeded to put a literal interpretation upon his wife's
+      counsel. With a company of cavalry he prepared to follow Absalam and his
+      little fellowship, taking Israel along with him to reckon their taxes,
+      that he might compel them to return to Tetuan, and be town-dwellers and
+      house-dwellers and buy and sell and pay tribute as before, or else deliver
+      themselves to prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Absalam and his people had secret word that the Governor was coming
+      after them, and Israel with him. So they rolled their tents, and fled to
+      the mountains that are midway between Tetuan and the Reef country, and
+      took refuge in the gullies of that rugged land, living in caves of the
+      rock, with only the table-land of mountain behind them, and nothing but a
+      rugged precipice in front. This place they selected for its safety,
+      intending to push forward, as occasion offered, to the sanctuaries of
+      Shawan, trusting rather to the humanity of the wild people, called the
+      Shawanis, than to the mercy of their late cruel masters. But the valley
+      wherein they had hidden is thick with trees, and Ben Aboo tracked them and
+      came up with them before they were aware. Then, sending soldiers to the
+      mountain at the back of the caves, with instructions that they should come
+      down to the precipice steadily, and kill none that they could take alive,
+      Ben Aboo himself drew up at the foot of it, and Israel with him, and there
+      called on the people to come out and deliver themselves to his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the poor people came from their hiding-places and saw that they were
+      surrounded, and that escape was not left to them on any side, they thought
+      their death was sure. But without a shout or a cry they knelt, as with one
+      accord, at the mouth of the precipice, with their backs to it, men and
+      women and children, knee to knee in a line, and joined hands, and looked
+      towards the soldiers, who were coming steadily down on them. On and on the
+      soldiers came, eye to eye with the people, and their swords were drawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel gasped for his breath, and waited to see the people cut in pieces
+      at the next instant, when suddenly they began to sing where they knelt at
+      the edge of the precipice, &ldquo;God is our refuge and our strength, a very
+      present help in trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment the soldiers had drawn up as if swords from heaven had
+      fallen on them, and Israel was crying out of his dry throat, &ldquo;Fear
+      nothing! Only deliver your bodies to the Governor, and none shall harm
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Absalam rose up from his knees and called to his father and his son. And
+      standing between them to be seen by all, and first looking upon both with
+      eyes of pity, he drew from the folds of his selham a long knife such as
+      the Reefians wear, and taking his father by his white hair he slew him and
+      cast his body down the rocks. After that he turned towards his son, and
+      the boy was golden-haired and his face was like the morning, and Israel's
+      heart bled to see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Absalam!&rdquo; he cried in a moving voice; &ldquo;Absalam, wait, wait!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Absalam killed his son also, and cast him down after his father. Then,
+      looking around on his people with eyes of compassion, as seeming to pity
+      them that they must fall again into the hands of Israel and his master, he
+      stretched out his knife and sheathed it in his own breast, and fell
+      towards the precipice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel covered his face and groaned in his heart, and said, &ldquo;It is the
+      end, O Lord God, it is the end&mdash;polluted wretch that I am, with the
+      blood of these people upon me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The companions of Absalam delivered themselves to the soldiers, who
+      committed them to the prison at Shawan, and Ben Aboo went home in content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rumour of what had come to pass was not long in reaching Tetuan, and
+      Israel was charged with the guilt of it. In passing through the streets
+      the next day on his way to his house the people hissed him openly. &ldquo;Allah
+      had not written it!&rdquo; a Moor shouted as he passed. &ldquo;Take care!&rdquo; cried an
+      Arab, &ldquo;Mohammed of Mequinez is coming!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It chanced that night, after sundown, when Naomi, according to her wont,
+      led her father to the upper room, and fetched the Book of the Law from the
+      cupboard of the wall and laid it upon his knees, that he read the passage
+      whereon the page opened of itself, scarce knowing what he read when he
+      began to read it, for his spirit was heavy with the bad doings of those
+      days. And the passage whereon the book opened was this&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and
+      the other lot for the scapegoat. . . . Then shall he kill the goat of the
+      sin-offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the vail.
+      And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the
+      uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions
+      in all their sins. . . . And when he hath, made an end of reconciling the
+      holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he
+      shall bring the live goat: and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the
+      head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the
+      children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins,
+      putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the
+      hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him
+      all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited.</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same night Israel dreamt a dream. He had been asleep, and had
+      awakened in a place which he did not know. It was a great arid wilderness.
+      Ashen sand lay on every side; a scorching sun beat down on it, and nowhere
+      was there a glint of water. Israel gazed, and slowly through the blazing
+      sunlight he discerned white roofless walls like the ruins of little
+      sheepfolds. &ldquo;They are tombs,&rdquo; he told himself, &ldquo;and this is a Mukabar&mdash;an
+      Arab graveyard&mdash;the most desolate place in the world of God.&rdquo; But,
+      looking again, he saw that the roofless walls covered the ground as far as
+      the eye could see, and the thought came to him that this ashen desert was
+      the earth itself, and that all the world of life and man was dead. Then,
+      suddenly, in the motionless wilderness, a solitary creature moved. It was
+      a goat, and it toiled over the hot sand with its head hung down and its
+      tongue lolled out. &ldquo;Water!&rdquo; it seemed to cry, though it made no voice, and
+      its eyes traversed the plain as if they would pierce the ground for a
+      spring. Fever and delirium fell upon Israel. The goat came near to him and
+      lifted up its eyes, and he saw its face. Then he shrieked and awoke. The
+      face of the goat had been the face of Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Israel knew that this was no more than a dream, coming of the passage
+      which he had read out of the book at sundown, but so vivid was the sense
+      of it that he could not rest in his bed until he had first seen Naomi with
+      his waking eyes, that he might laugh in his heart to think how the eye of
+      his sleep had fooled him. So he lit his lamp, and walked through the
+      silent house to where Naomi's room was on the lower floor of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There she lay, sleeping so peacefully, with her sunny hair flowing over
+      the pillow on either side of her beautiful face, and rippling in little
+      curls about her neck. How sweet she looked! How like a dear bud of
+      womanhood just opening to the eye!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel sat down beside her for a moment. Many a time before, at such
+      hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways, and she had
+      known nothing of it. She was like any other maiden now. Her eyes were
+      closed, and who should see that they were blind? Her breath came gently,
+      and who should say that it gave forth no speech? Her face was quiet, and
+      who should think that it was not the face of a homely-hearted girl? Israel
+      loved these moments when he was alone with Naomi while she slept, for then
+      only did she seem to be entirely his own, and he was not so lonely while
+      he was sitting there. Though men thought he was strong, yet he was very
+      weak. He had no one in the world to talk to save Naomi, and she was dumb
+      in the daytime, but in the night he could hold little conversations with
+      her. His love! his dove! his darling! How easily he could trick and
+      deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and speak to me! Yes;
+      her eyes will open and see me here again, and I shall hear her voice, for
+      I love it! &ldquo;Father!&rdquo; she will say. &ldquo;Father&mdash;father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her. As he went back to his bed,
+      through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him that
+      made his hair to rise. It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream to be a
+      vision. It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream would be
+      to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything. The vision as he
+      thought he saw it was this, and these were the words of it as he thought
+      he heard them&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room, when a
+      dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed, and a voice
+      that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it, crying &ldquo;Israel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, &ldquo;Speak, Lord, Thy servant
+      heareth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Lord said, &ldquo;Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest
+      cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel answered trembling, &ldquo;I have read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Lord said to Israel, &ldquo;Look now upon Naomi, thy child, for she is
+      as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement for thy
+      transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore she is dumb
+      to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight, a soul in chains
+      and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot that is cast for
+      justice and for the Lord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, &ldquo;Would that the lot had fallen
+      upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and
+      be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before Thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then said the Lord to Israel, &ldquo;On thee, also, hath the lot fallen, even
+      the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said,
+      &ldquo;Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people, so
+      cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo, and of his wife,
+      Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins of the people into the
+      wilderness, so, in the resurrection, shalt thou bear the sins of this man
+      and of this woman into a land that no man knoweth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were drops
+      of blood, and cried, &ldquo;What shall I do, O Lord?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Lord said, &ldquo;Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee to the
+      country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard tidings,
+      and he shall show thee what thou shalt do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, &ldquo;Shall my soul live?
+      Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed, and all
+      around was darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath on
+      the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice, not in
+      his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight of all
+      common things about him&mdash;his room and his bed; and the canopy that
+      covered it. And on rising in the morning, at daydawn, so actual was the
+      sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful the impression of it,
+      that he straightway set himself to carry out the injunction it had made,
+      without question of its reality or doubt of its authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now grown
+      to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate, Israel
+      first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent from
+      Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide, and to the
+      market-place for mules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan was
+      waiting at the door. Then Israel remembered Naomi. Where was the girl,
+      that he had not seen her that morning? They answered him that she had not
+      yet left her room, and he sent the black woman Fatimah to fetch her. And
+      when she came and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in silence, his
+      heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his foot to the
+      stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio with the two
+      bondwomen beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is she well?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes, well&mdash;very well,&rdquo; said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.
+      Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language of
+      her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face,
+      which had used to be cheerful, was now sad. At that he almost repented of
+      his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone no
+      farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick, nothing
+      could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must let him go
+      his ways without warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last, with many
+      words of tender protest which she did not hear, he had to break away from
+      the beautiful arms that held him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier and guide and
+      muleteers and tentmen were already mounted, amid a chattering throng of
+      idle people looking on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali, my lad,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;if anything should befall Naomi while I am
+      away, will you watch over her and guard her with all your strength?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With all my life,&rdquo; said Ali stoutly. He was Naomi's playfellow no longer,
+      but her devoted slave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel set off on his journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a
+      Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died,
+      and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's brothers, both men of
+      yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at
+      Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a
+      land where there is one noble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and
+      descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are mired
+      with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest nobility.
+      Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth that went along
+      with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out into the
+      plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the
+      shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed him.
+      He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and lovers of
+      poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They were never
+      to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give what he had to
+      him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet whatever they said
+      was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be ministers of peace, and if
+      any man did them violence they were never to resist him. Nevertheless they
+      were not to lack for courage, but to laugh to scorn the enemies that
+      tormented them, and smile in their pains and shed no tear. And as for
+      death, if it was for their glory they were to esteem it more than life,
+      because their bodies only were corruptible, but their souls were immortal,
+      and would mount upwards when released from the bondage of the flesh. Not
+      dissenters from the Koran, but stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes
+      and not Jews, yet followers of Jesus in their customs and of Moses in
+      their doctrines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the
+      cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets,
+      from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service of
+      hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds and
+      trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty, and no
+      voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought nothing
+      with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs save the
+      stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which they drove
+      before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their fellows; and a
+      few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for their food and the
+      hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and desiring nothing,
+      having neither houses nor lands, and only considering themselves secure
+      from their rulers in having no money, this company of battered human
+      wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded, passed with their
+      leader from place to place of the waste country about Mequinez. And he,
+      being as poor as they were, though he might have been so rich, cheered
+      them always, even when they murmured against him, as Absalam had cheered
+      his little fellowship at Tetuan: &ldquo;God will feed us as He feeds the birds
+      of the air, and clothe our little ones as He clothes the fields.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his people
+      too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties were enough
+      already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a palpitating haze
+      floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom had the dusty and
+      tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the fast of Ramadhan, and
+      Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the double vexation of
+      oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his famished people, Israel
+      found it necessary at length to travel in the night. In this way his
+      journey was the shorter for the absence of some obstacles, but his time
+      was long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan, so
+      he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed through, and
+      many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes very pitiful were
+      the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was passing through his
+      own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people think but that he had
+      come to make a new assessment of their lands and holdings, their cattle
+      and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and more fully. So, to buy
+      his mercy in advance, many of them came out of their houses as he drew
+      near, and knelt on the ground before his horse, and kissed the skirts of
+      his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot in his stirrup, and called
+      him <i>Sidi</i> (master, my lord), a title never before given to a Jew,
+      and offered him presents out of their meagre substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A gift for my lord,&rdquo; they would say, &ldquo;of the little that God has given
+      us, praise His merciful name for ever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
+      by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
+      trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
+      in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep them,&rdquo; he would answer; &ldquo;keep them until I come again,&rdquo; intending to
+      tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic of
+      El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos hastened
+      before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks and
+      palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his
+      errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in the
+      early morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace be with you!&rdquo; said the Kaid. &ldquo;So my lord is going again to the
+      Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of crooked
+      lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near the
+      market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the presents
+      of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars who looked
+      on with feverish eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of
+      Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the
+      foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand
+      Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood waiting
+      to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention of his
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Welcome! welcome!&rdquo; said the Shereef; &ldquo;all you see is yours until Allah
+      shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our lord
+      the Sultan at Fez&mdash;may God prolong his life and bless him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God make you happy!&rdquo; said Israel, but he offered no answer to the
+      question that was implied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is twenty and odd years, my lord,&rdquo; the Shereef continued, &ldquo;since my
+      father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that
+      time has wrought since then, under Allah's will; but none in the past have
+      been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in the
+      future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (God keep our lord
+      Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will show,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef
+      alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel's horse
+      instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past the old
+      Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque of the
+      Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live like cattle.
+      A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy rags, a group
+      of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled renegades leaning
+      against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from their dishevelled
+      heads and bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the
+      ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company of Muslimeen&mdash;guests
+      in the house of the descendants of the Prophet&mdash;were, by special
+      Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at their
+      pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and his men
+      started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with the Shereef's
+      black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of honour, through
+      the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock that is warning to
+      strike) a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with fierce and dirty
+      faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid clouds of hot
+      dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should proclaim the
+      end of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains stood ready to
+      fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on the ground with
+      dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain rolled in their
+      fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef, and flint and
+      tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the minaret stood looking
+      abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun was lazily sinking
+      under the plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were
+      the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of
+      their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought
+      the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage,
+      and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of his
+      mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this
+      lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like
+      ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over
+      the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town,
+      through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious barks
+      of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they came in the
+      grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the Father of
+      Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept it were
+      snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Selam! M'barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!&rdquo; shouted the Shereef's black
+      guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in Israel's
+      honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him housed
+      within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came
+      yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. &ldquo;Burn your father!
+      Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Selam!&rdquo; shouted one of the black guard. &ldquo;You dog of dogs! Your father was
+      bewitched by a hyena! I'll teach you to curse your betters. Quick! get up,&mdash;or
+      I'll shave your beard. Open! or I'll ride the donkey on your head! There!&mdash;and
+      there!&mdash;and there again!&rdquo; and at every word the butt of his long gun
+      rang on the old oaken gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hamed el Wazzani!&rdquo; muttered several voices within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; shouted the Shereef's man. &ldquo;And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his way
+      to the Sultan, God grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi Israel
+      el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and snoring
+      in your dirt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys, and
+      then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two of the
+      four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse, asking
+      forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime, the other
+      two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had ridden far into the
+      town, the Kaid&mdash;against all usage of his class and country&mdash;ran
+      and met him&mdash;afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham and
+      tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you were coming,&rdquo; he panted&mdash;&ldquo;sent for by the Sultan&mdash;Allah
+      preserve him!&mdash;but had I known you were to be here so soon&mdash;I&mdash;that
+      is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace be with you!&rdquo; interrupted Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God grant you peace. The Sultan&mdash;praise the merciful Allah!&rdquo; the
+      Kaid continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup&mdash;&ldquo;he reached Fez
+      from Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will show,&rdquo; said Israel, and he pushed forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, true&mdash;yes&mdash;certainly&mdash;my lord is tired,&rdquo; puffed the
+      Kaid, bowing again most profoundly. &ldquo;Well, your lodging is ready&mdash;the
+      best in Mequinez&mdash;and your mona is cooking&mdash;all the dainties of
+      Barbary&mdash;and when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand
+      Vizier&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until
+      they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until
+      sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same&mdash;the Sultan,
+      the Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel could bear no more. &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; he said &ldquo;it is a mistake; the Sultan
+      has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not going to him?&rdquo; the Kaid echoed vacantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but to another,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and you of all men can best tell me
+      where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen&mdash;yet a poor
+      man&mdash;the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was a long silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after
+      sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and no
+      man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had gone
+      off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind him
+      his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen, who,
+      like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in dudgeon.
+      The Kaid had turned them out of the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within their
+      tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the tent-village
+      called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there passed them in the
+      fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of the soldier, riding at
+      a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and shouting to all they came
+      upon to fly from the path they had to pass over. They were messengers of
+      the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid of Mequinez, commanding him to
+      present himself at the palace without delay, that he might give good
+      account of his stewardship, or else deliver up his substance and be cast
+      into prison for the defalcations with which rumour had charged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people, who
+      toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at Fez; and
+      great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they remembered with
+      bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last in his false
+      loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly touched by a
+      sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of its whim, though
+      the victim of it had so lately turned him from his door. Miserable was the
+      man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and built his happiness on the
+      favour of princes! When the one was taken from him and the other failed
+      him, where then was the hope of that man's salvation, whether in this
+      world or the next? The dungeon, the chain, the lash, the wooden jellab&mdash;what
+      else was left to him? Only the wail of the poor whom he has made poorer,
+      the curse of the orphan whom he has made fatherless, and the execration of
+      the down-trodden whom he has oppressed. These followed him into his
+      prison, and mingled their cries with the clank of his irons, for they were
+      voices which had never yet deserted the man that made them, but clamoured
+      loud at the last when his end had come, above the death-rattle in his
+      throat. One dim hour waited for all men always, whether in the prison or
+      in the palace&mdash;one lonely hour wherein none could bear him company&mdash;and
+      what was wealth and treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on
+      earth? Was it glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth&mdash;what
+      could it be but a will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night!
+      Oh! riches of gold and silver&mdash;what had they ever been but marsh-fire
+      gathered in the dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the
+      service of the prince of it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure&mdash;so far away. Though
+      all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by
+      God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from his
+      child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling! His
+      sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose anything,
+      everything, all that the world and all that the devil had given him; but
+      let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what was gold without
+      gladness, and what was plenty without peace?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the
+      musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of
+      unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped
+      like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were a
+      vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included
+      multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil
+      moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago
+      they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from
+      Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from
+      Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous
+      Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but their
+      substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them.
+      Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
+      privations patiently&mdash;the weary journeys, the exposure, the long
+      rains of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of
+      the Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of
+      both in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
+      that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or sheep
+      or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild bear, and
+      their children were crying to them for bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
+      in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
+      starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What of
+      the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them as
+      He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was seeing
+      them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour, He was
+      seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to plough
+      his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it. &ldquo;The
+      hunger is on us!&rdquo; &ldquo;Our children are perishing!&rdquo; &ldquo;Find us food!&rdquo; &ldquo;Food!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Food!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
+      madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
+      came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
+      their leader when he answered them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
+      quivering nostrils. &ldquo;Do you think I am Moses,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;that I should
+      smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full? If
+      you are naked, am I clothed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
+      was saying in a very moving voice, &ldquo;My good people, who have followed me
+      through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than you
+      can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that death
+      itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that Allah sees
+      a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that, unknown to us
+      all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass! Patience, I beg
+      of you; patience, my poor people&mdash;patience and trust!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered the
+      presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan had
+      burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes worn
+      unlawfully by vain men in that country&mdash;silver signet rings and
+      earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang on the breast as
+      safeguard against the evil eye&mdash;as well as much gold filagree of the
+      kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box and
+      laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further thought
+      to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of them, he said,
+      &ldquo;Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, 'A present to the man
+      of God and to his people in their trouble.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
+      open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him, it
+      was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had opened
+      and rained manna on their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an answer to your prayer,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;an angel from heaven has sent
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened to
+      them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched
+      throats&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of
+      men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together,
+      and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great
+      broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them succour, that they might
+      not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every man
+      looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, &ldquo;I could have
+      borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I was a
+      fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of the
+      new prophet for his guide and motto: &ldquo;Exact no more than is just; do
+      violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give to
+      the poor.&rdquo; That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if any
+      man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been an
+      idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after
+      Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom. &ldquo;I'll
+      do it,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;at all risks and all costs, I'll do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant to
+      bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his pockets
+      of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to return to
+      his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in amazement,
+      and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their ways by
+      themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan at Fez had
+      stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming behind them
+      penniless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his homeward
+      journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in his
+      waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out from
+      Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five long
+      days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the daytime.
+      Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done so much to
+      wipe out God's displeasure as he was now doing and yet would do. He had
+      said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of his vision;
+      but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the sin-offering
+      must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would meet her
+      without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance, then must her
+      debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child been so smitten
+      of God, and never had any father of an afflicted child bought God's mercy
+      at so dear a price!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared not
+      to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing God out of his love of
+      the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home, it
+      was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity and
+      pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through the
+      gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three sights
+      which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence in that
+      town and province.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east of the new
+      town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the
+      high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room for a thousand
+      women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco and
+      rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders selling
+      twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all black, and
+      of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They had lately
+      arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and the Wargha, and
+      some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others were fresh and
+      cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were adorned, after their
+      doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters, with love-charms of
+      silver worn about their necks, with their fingers pricked out with hennah,
+      and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they were drawn up in a line
+      for public auction; but before the sale of them could begin among the
+      buyers that had gathered about them in the street, the overseers of the
+      Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection for their master. This
+      the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them nicknamed Areefahs&mdash;gaunt
+      and hairless men, with the faces of evil old women and the hoarse voices
+      of ravens&mdash;had picked out three fat black maidens, the business of
+      the auction began by the sale of a negro girl of seventeen who was brought
+      out from the rest and passed around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, brothers,&rdquo; said the slave-master, &ldquo;look see; sound of wind and limb&mdash;how
+      much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighty dollars,&rdquo; said a voice from the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her&mdash;rosy lips, fit for
+      the kisses of a king, eh? How much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It's giving the girl away.
+      Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her
+      round the crowd again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now's the chance for true believers.
+      How much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred and ten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred and ten&mdash;thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel of
+      a girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles. Look at her flesh. Not
+      a flaw anywhere. Pass her round, test her, try her, talk to her&mdash;she
+      speaks good Arabic. Isn't she fit for a Sultan? She's the best thing I'll
+      offer to-day, and by the Prophet, if you are not quick I'll keep her for
+      myself. Now, for the third and last time&mdash;seventeen years of age,
+      sound, strong, plump, sweet, and intact&mdash;how much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl, and to
+      hear what shameless questions they asked of her, and with a long sigh he
+      was turning away from the crowd, when another man came up to it. The man
+      was black and old and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white
+      selham. But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him, he
+      made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people, pushed his way to
+      the girl's side, and opened his arms to her, and she fell into them with a
+      cry of joy and pain together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before, had
+      been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben Hashem,
+      having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and from his only
+      child, who thus strangely rejoined him. This story he told, in broken
+      Arabic; to those that stood around, and, hard as were the faces of the
+      bidders, and brutal as was their trade; there was not an eye among them
+      all but was melted at his story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, &ldquo;I will give twenty
+      dollars to buy him the girl's liberty,&rdquo; and straightway another and
+      another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount of the
+      last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it, and the girl was
+      free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand, came to
+      Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks, and said in his
+      broken way: &ldquo;The blessing of Allah upon you, white brother, and if you
+      have a child of your own may you never lose her, but may Allah favour her
+      and let you keep her with you always!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear, and,
+      facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned down the dark arcade
+      that descends into the old town as into a vault, and having crossed the
+      markets, he came upon the second of the three sights that were to smite
+      out of his heart his pride towards God. A man in a blue tunic girded with
+      a red sash, and with a red cotton handkerchief tied about his head, was
+      driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees cut into short lengths
+      to lie over its panniers. He was clearly a Spanish woodseller and he had
+      the weary, averted, and downcast look of a race that is despised and kept
+      under. His donkey was a bony creature, with raw places on its flank and
+      shoulders where its hide had been worn by the friction of its burdens. He
+      drove it slowly; crying &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; to it in the tongue of its own country,
+      and not beating it cruelly. At the bottom of the arcade there was an open
+      place where a foul ditch was crossed by a rickety bridge. Coming to this
+      the man hesitated a moment, as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey
+      over it or to make the beast trudge through the water. Concluding to cross
+      the bridge, he cried &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; again, and drove the donkey forward with one
+      blow of his stick. But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten
+      thing gave way, and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch. The
+      donkey's legs were broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the
+      Spaniard's cry, had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water
+      on to the paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a
+      moment it was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
+      called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone. And
+      while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so&mdash;for none seemed to pity
+      him&mdash;a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
+      arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
+      dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the man
+      with bitter reproaches. &ldquo;Allah blot out your name, you thief!&rdquo; she cried.
+      &ldquo;You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself, you dog
+      of a Nazarene!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl to
+      hold her peace. &ldquo;Silence, you young wanton!&rdquo; he cried, in a voice of
+      indignation. &ldquo;Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
+      trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a renegade
+      from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his father and
+      his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's face, and
+      said, &ldquo;You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not be a good
+      man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard when your own
+      children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in their cradles,
+      before they can speak to you to curse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
+      about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
+      sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
+      be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice to
+      part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell, and that
+      was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost everything.
+      And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved Naomi, and she
+      clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him walk humbly before
+      God, for God was great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased his
+      cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet lighter
+      spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow of the town
+      walls. It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted by a white flag;
+      and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out to the entrance. He
+      was a poor, miserable creature&mdash;ragged, dirty, and with dishevelled
+      hair&mdash;and, seeing Israel's eyes upon him, he began to talk in some
+      wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only a fierce jabber of
+      sounds that had no words in them, and of words that had no meaning. The
+      poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught he was counted a holy man
+      among his people, and put to live in this place, which was the tomb of a
+      dead saint&mdash;though not more dead to the ways of life was he who lay
+      under the floor than he who lived above it. The man continued his wild
+      jabber as long as Israel's eyes were on him, and Israel dropped two coins
+      into his hand and passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God's creatures.
+      And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type and
+      sign of how her soul was smitten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company of his
+      people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey. And then,
+      while they walked some paces together before parting, and the prophet
+      talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying in the prison at Shawan (for
+      he had heard of them from Israel), Israel himself mentioned Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;there is something that I have not told you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell it now, my son,&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.
+      You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,
+      for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone, and so she is
+      very near and dear to me. But she is in the land of silence and in the
+      land of night. Nothing can she see, and nothing hear, and never has her
+      voice opened the curtains of the air, for she is blind and dumb and deaf.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merciful Allah!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! is her state so terrible? I thought you would think it so. Yes, for
+      all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature of the fields that
+      knows not God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah preserve her!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me in the
+      vision, and my soul trembles for her soul. But if God has washed me with
+      water should not she also be clean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God knows,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;He gives no rewards for repentance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But listen!&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;In a vision of death her mother saw her, and
+      she was afflicted no more. No, for she could see, and hear, and speak. Man
+      of God, will it come to pass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God is good,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;He needs that no man should teach Him
+      pity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I love her,&rdquo; cried Israel, &ldquo;and I vowed to her mother to guard her.
+      She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has no
+      freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will have
+      mercy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, &ldquo;The Lord sees all. Go your
+      way in trust. Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      ISRAEL'S return home was an experience at all points the reverse of his
+      going abroad. He had seven dollars in the pocket of his waistband on
+      setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred and more with which he had
+      started from Tetuan. His men had gone on before him and told their story.
+      So the people whom he came upon by the way either ignored him or jeered at
+      him, and not one that on his coming had run to do him honour now stepped
+      aside that he might pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after leaving Fez he came again to Wazzan. Women were going home
+      from market by the side of their camels, and charcoal-burners were riding
+      back to the country on the empty burdas of their mules. It was nigh upon
+      sunset when Israel entered the town, and so exactly was everything the
+      same that he could almost have tricked himself and believed that scarce
+      two minutes had passed since he had left it. There at the fountains were
+      the water-carriers waiting with their water-skins, and there in the
+      market-place sat the women and children with their dishes of soup; there
+      were the men by the booths with their pipes ready charged with keef, and
+      there was the mooddin in the minaret, looking out over the plain.
+      Everything was the same save one thing, and that concerned Israel himself.
+      No Grand Shereef stood waiting to exchange horses with him, and no black
+      guard led him through the town. Footsore and dirty, covered with dust, and
+      tired, he walked through the streets alone. And when presently the voice
+      rang out overhead, and the breathless town broke instantly into bubbles of
+      sounds&mdash;the tinkling of the bells of the water-carriers, the shouts
+      of the children, and the calls of the men&mdash;only one man seemed to see
+      him and know him. This was an Arab, wearing scarcely enough rags to cover
+      his nakedness, who was bathing his hot cheeks in water which a
+      water-carrier was pouring into his hands, and he lifted his glistening
+      face as Israel passed, and called him &ldquo;Dog!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Jew!&rdquo; and commanded him
+      to uncover his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel slept that night in one of the three squalid fondaks of Wazzan
+      inhabited by the Jews. His room was a sort of narrow box, in a square
+      court of many such boxes, with a handful of straw shaken over the earth
+      floor for a bed. On the doorpost the figure of a hand was painted in red,
+      and over the lintel there was a rude drawing of a scorpion, with an
+      imprecation written under it that purported to be from the mouth of the
+      Prophet Joshua, son of Nun. If the charm kept evil spirits from the place
+      of Israel's rest, it did not banish good ones. Israel slept in that poor
+      bed as he had never slept under the purple canopy of his own chamber, and
+      all night long one angel form seemed to hover over him. It was Naomi. He
+      could see her clearly. They were together in a little cottage somewhere.
+      The house was a mean one, but jasmine and marjoram and pinks and roses
+      grew outside of it, and love grew inside. And Naomi! How bright were her
+      eyes, for they could see! Yes, and her ears could hear, and her tongue
+      could speak!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after Israel left Wazzan he was back in the bashalic of Tetuan.
+      Each night he had dreamt the same dream, and though he knew each morning
+      when he awoke with a sigh that his dream was only a reflection of his dead
+      wife's vision, yet he could not help but think of it the long day through.
+      He tried to remember if he had ever seen the cottage with his waking eyes,
+      and where he had seen it, and to recall the voice of Naomi as he had heard
+      it in his dream, that he might know if it was the same as he used to think
+      he heard when he sat by her in his stolen watches of the night while she
+      lay asleep. Sometimes when he reflected he thought he must be growing
+      childish, so foolish was his joy in looking forward to the night&mdash;for
+      he had almost grown in love with it&mdash;that he might dream his dream
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was a dear, delicious folly, for it helped him to bear the troubles
+      of his journey, and they were neither light nor few. After passing through
+      El Kasar he had been robbed and stripped both of his small remaining
+      moneys and the better part of his clothes by a gang of ruffians who had
+      followed him out of the town. Then a good woman&mdash;the old wife, turned
+      into the servant of a Moor who had married a young one&mdash;had taken
+      pity on his condition and given him a disused Moorish jellab. His
+      misfortune had not been without its advantage. Being forced to travel the
+      rest of his way home in the disguise of a Moor, he had heard himself
+      discussed by his own people when they knew nothing of his presence. Every
+      evil that had befallen them had been attributed to him. Ben Aboo, their
+      Basha, was a good, humane man, who was often driven to do that which his
+      soul abhorred. It was Israel ben Oliel who was their cruel taxmaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel was within a day's journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge fell
+      upon the country. A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud from the
+      direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade of grass that the
+      scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it had passed
+      was as black and barren as a lava stream. The farmers were impoverished,
+      and the poorer people made beggars. Even this last disaster they charged
+      in their despair to Israel, for Allah was now cursing them for Israel's
+      sake. They were the same people that had thrust their presents upon him
+      when he was setting out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl of
+      buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water. She gave him a
+      dish of zummetta&mdash;barley roasted like coffee&mdash;and inquired if he
+      was going on to Tetuan. He told her yes, and she asked if his home was
+      there. And when he answered that it was, she looked at him again, and said
+      in a moving way, &ldquo;Then Allah help you, brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why me more than another, sister?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man,&rdquo; said the old woman.
+      &ldquo;And that is the sort he is hardest upon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel faltered and said, &ldquo;He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who else but Israel the Jew?&rdquo; said she, and then added, as by a sudden
+      afterthought, &ldquo;But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has
+      stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this
+      poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been&mdash;so
+      wise and powerful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame, he
+      could not help but play with the fire that scorched him. &ldquo;They tell me,&rdquo;
+       he said, &ldquo;that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has devils.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blind and dumb, poor soul,&rdquo; said the old woman; &ldquo;but Allah has pity for
+      the afflicted&mdash;he is taking her away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel rose. &ldquo;Away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is ill since her father went to Fez.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I heard so yesterday&mdash;dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered, and
+      fled out of the hut. Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying with
+      dreams&mdash;billing and cooing with his own fancies&mdash;fondling and
+      nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and damned
+      for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them that poor men's souls
+      might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale face of
+      Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had used to
+      laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running at his utmost
+      velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting his
+      imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist against the
+      sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering to himself in awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would God not hear his prayer? God knew the child was very near and dear
+      to him, and also that he was a lonely man. &ldquo;Have pity on a lonely man, O
+      God!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Let me keep my child; take all else that I have,
+      everything, no matter what! Only let me keep her&mdash;yes, just as she
+      is, let me have her still! Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I
+      am humble, and ask that alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down on his
+      uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust, he prayed
+      this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening under the setting sun.
+      Then he thought of his Moorish jellab, and looked at himself, and saw that
+      he was returning home like a beggar; and he remembered with what splendour
+      he had started out. Should he wait for the darkness, and creep into his
+      house under the cover of it? If the thought had occurred an hour before he
+      must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of every face in Tetuan
+      than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now that he was so near he
+      was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon to learn the truth he
+      dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro on the heath outside the town,
+      paltering with himself, struggling with himself, eating out his heart with
+      eagerness, trying to believe that he was waiting for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening with
+      thick stars, Israel passed unknown through the Moorish gate, which was
+      still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square. At the gate of
+      the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked, and demanded entrance in the
+      name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards who kept it fell back at sight of him
+      with looks of consternation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Israel!&rdquo; cried one, and dropped his lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel whispered, &ldquo;Keep your tongue between your teeth!&rdquo; and hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again, but
+      more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and, seeing
+      his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Habeebah!&rdquo; he cried, and he knocked once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ali came to the door. &ldquo;What Moorish man are you?&rdquo; cried Ali, pushing
+      him back as he pressed forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali! Hush! It is I&mdash;Israel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ali knew him and cried, &ldquo;God save us! What has happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened here?&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Naomi,&rdquo; he faltered, &ldquo;what of
+      her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you have heard?&rdquo; said Ali. &ldquo;Thank God, she is now well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel laughed&mdash;his laugh was like a scream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than that&mdash;a strange thing has befallen her since you went
+      away,&rdquo; said Ali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can hear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a lie!&rdquo; cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to the
+      floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and
+      saying, &ldquo;Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know what
+      I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true, there is
+      no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no fiend in
+      hell need envy me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Ali answered through his tears, &ldquo;It is true, my father&mdash;come and
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story
+      that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered from
+      room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in the
+      evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her
+      father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and
+      the book was in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at her, poor child,&rdquo; said Fatimah. &ldquo;See, she thinks he will come as
+      usual. God bless her sweet innocent face!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made her
+      way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife of the
+      Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly through the
+      courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from there to the
+      gate of the prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither did
+      she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly, and
+      seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and silent; she did
+      not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of submission that was
+      very touching to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel,&rdquo; said Fatimah. &ldquo;How
+      long will she wait, poor darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to
+      restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands
+      were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel's fears on setting
+      out from home had been right after all. And making his own reckoning with
+      Naomi's condition, Ali went off for the only doctor living in Tetuan&mdash;a
+      Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading to the western gate.
+      This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her pulse, touched her throbbing
+      forehead, with difficulty examined her tongue, and pronounced her illness
+      to be fever. He gave some homely directions as to her treatment&mdash;for
+      he despaired of administering drugs to such a one as she was&mdash;and
+      promised to return the next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood
+      constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water;
+      Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner
+      outside the door of her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but there was
+      nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very solemnly, and
+      said, &ldquo;I will come again after two days more, when the fever must be near
+      to its height, and bring a famous leech out of Tangier along with me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Naomi's delirium continued. It was gentle as her own spirit tent
+      there was this that was strange and eerie about her unconsciousness&mdash;that
+      whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its dark cell must have been
+      mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke without ceasing throughout
+      the time of her reason's vanquishment. Not that her poor tongue in its
+      trouble uttered speech such as those that heard could follow and
+      understand, but only a restless babble of empty sounds, yet with tones of
+      varying feeling, sometimes of gladness, sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of
+      remonstrance, and sometimes of entreaty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat together
+      by her bedside, holding each other's hands like little children in great
+      fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness outside the door,
+      listening in terror to the silvery young voice that had never echoed in
+      that house before. This was the night when Israel, sleeping at the squalid
+      inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi's voice in his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone, and
+      away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the fondak,
+      which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his wet eyes in
+      the pitiless sunlight for Israel's caravan that should soon come. On the
+      first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he came upon
+      Israel's men returning without him, and telling their lying story that he
+      had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and was coming
+      behind them penniless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.
+      That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had
+      fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad
+      faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. &ldquo;Liars and thieves!&rdquo; he
+      cried; &ldquo;tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go straight
+      to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all whipped
+      through the streets for plundering my master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a
+      mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no more,
+      and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them concerning
+      their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by right of
+      nature on the tongues of Moors&mdash;they said and knew nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of
+      Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the wise leech
+      shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was sinking&mdash;in
+      plain words, she was dying&mdash;and if her father did not come before the
+      morrow he would come too late to find her alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to
+      spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly
+      become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was,
+      therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a
+      Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. &ldquo;The Imam is good, the Imam is
+      holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?&rdquo; &ldquo;Nay, but our Sidi holds not with
+      the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our lord is
+      our sultan, our lord is our king.&rdquo; &ldquo;Shoof! What is Sidi against paradise?
+      And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a follower of
+      Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her lips, and we are
+      all three blest for ever&mdash;otherwise we will burn everlastingly in the
+      fires of Jehinnum.&rdquo; &ldquo;But, alack! how can the poor girl say the Kelmah,
+      being as dumb as the grave?&rdquo; &ldquo;Then how can she say the Shemang either?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and
+      silenced both the bondwomen: &ldquo;The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is a
+      thief.&rdquo; There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his own
+      Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp in the days
+      of the Governor's marriage. This person was an old negro, bewrinkled by
+      years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still partially so, half
+      blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated slave from the
+      Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and willing to teach
+      either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he was neither a Jew
+      nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say, and not too much of
+      either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance there must have been no
+      place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that this good nondescript was
+      a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark cellar, down an alley by the
+      side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, he had sat from early morning
+      until sunset, year in year out, through thirty years on his rush-covered
+      floor, among successive generations of his boys; and as often as night
+      fell he had gone hither and thither among the sick and dying, carrying
+      comfort of kind words, and often meat and drink of his meagre substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his own
+      great trouble, he tried away for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; cried the lad, &ldquo;does it not say in the good book that the prayer
+      of a righteous man availeth much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It does, my son,&rdquo; said the Taleb &ldquo;You have truth. What then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover,&rdquo; said Ali.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sweet instance of simple faith. The old black Taleb dismissed his
+      scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled to
+      Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her through
+      the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and then,
+      while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and a great
+      lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and prayed, and
+      Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negro's prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything; it
+      recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away and
+      might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three days
+      and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was blind
+      and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her. She was
+      his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man. He was
+      away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were gone and
+      lost&mdash;if she were dead and buried&mdash;his strong heart would be
+      broken and his very soul in peril.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it&mdash;the dumb
+      angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole of
+      her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager and
+      hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down mercy out
+      of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
+      tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by the
+      bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and Naomi
+      lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
+      features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
+      restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
+      &ldquo;El hamdu l'Illah!&rdquo; (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
+      the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete the
+      miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and
+      wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
+      Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
+      were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
+      breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept softly
+      through the night and has just awakened in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment of
+      surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was a laugh&mdash;a
+      faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And then
+      instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while the
+      notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle hand and
+      covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of dread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and they
+      were shouting &ldquo;Hallelujah!&rdquo; with one voice, thinking only that she who had
+      been dead to them was alive again. But the old Taleb cried eagerly, &ldquo;Hush!
+      my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing! I know what it is&mdash;who
+      knows so well as I? Once I was deaf, my children, but now I hear. Listen!
+      The maiden has had fever&mdash;fever of the brain. Listen! A watery humour
+      had gathered in her head. It has gone, it has flowed away. Now she will
+      hear. Listen, for it is I that know it&mdash;who knows it so well as I?
+      Yes; she will be no longer deaf. Her ears will be opened. She will hear.
+      Once she was living in a land of silence; now she is coming into the land
+      of sound. Blessed be God, for He has wrought this wondrous work. God is
+      great! God is mighty! Praise the merciful God for ever! El hamdu l'Illah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb's story seemed to be,
+      it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning in a
+      slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath, Naomi turned her
+      face full upon him; and when the black women in their ready faith, joined
+      in his shouts of praise, she turned her face towards them also; and
+      wherever a voice sounded in the room she inclined her head towards it as
+      one who knew the direction of the sounds, and also as one who was in fear
+      of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one thing
+      only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had been
+      deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now heard
+      their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
+      laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
+      black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
+      around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in answer
+      to his old Taleb's prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb's cries of
+      warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen see the old
+      man's uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes, so overpowered
+      were they with their delight, so startled and so joy drunken. But over
+      their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing shrieks. They were the
+      cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror at the first sounds that had
+      reached her of human voices. Her face was blanched, her eyelids were
+      trembling, her lips were restless, her nostrils quivered, her whole being
+      seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of dread, and, in the horrible disarray
+      of all her sensations her brain, on its wakening from its dolorous sleep
+      of three delirious days, was tottering and reeling at its welcome in this
+      world of noise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their peace
+      in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the clamour of
+      tongues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in the
+      jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
+      entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
+      remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
+      was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance was
+      changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No longer
+      was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither was it as
+      the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot and
+      perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and as
+      Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no cheer
+      did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away from her
+      when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears with
+      terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then his sight
+      grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick mist seemed to
+      cover everything, and through the dense waves of semi-consciousness he
+      heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice coming to him as from far
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver! It
+      is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear father
+      has come back to her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
+      Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
+      head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
+      Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
+      hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
+      dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
+      more than he had asked or deserved!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob, yet
+      uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only holding
+      Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face. And the
+      black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb in that
+      great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose house had
+      come the wonderful work that God had wrought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face, in joy
+      over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had known
+      him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she continued
+      to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father and she
+      loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it was also
+      because he alone was silent of all that were about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears, that,
+      coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man was never
+      heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and darkling as the
+      air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit trembled in a new
+      world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a little dark chamber, a
+      vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul was ever passing to and
+      fro, asking for news of the world without? Through seventeen dark and
+      silent years the soul of Naomi had been passing and repassing within its
+      beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying daily and hourly, &ldquo;Watchman, what of
+      the world?&rdquo; At length it had found an answer, and it was terrified. The
+      world had spoken to her soul and its voice was like the reverberations of
+      a subterranean cavern, strange and deep and awful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the room,
+      all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali was saying, &ldquo;Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
+      returned yesterday, and said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the bondwomen were crying, &ldquo;Sidi, you were right when you went away!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Yes, the dear child was ill!&rdquo; &ldquo;Oh, how she missed you when you were
+      gone.&rdquo; &ldquo;She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of Tetuan&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the old Taleb was muttering, &ldquo;Master, it is all by God's mercy. We
+      prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway to
+      her spirit as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi's
+      ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned them
+      out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of Naomi's
+      fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her by the
+      solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment of a soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the door
+      of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women were
+      calling to their children without, and the children were still shouting in
+      their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested her head
+      against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put her arms
+      about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart yearned to
+      speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear. Let it be but
+      one word, only one, that she might know her father's voice&mdash;for she
+      had never once heard it&mdash;and answer it with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daughter! My dearest! My darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
+      tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
+      years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not speak
+      lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that would
+      break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation. It was
+      terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence, hardly
+      moving, scarcely breathing&mdash;a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
+      holding Naomi in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
+      In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
+      through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
+      Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
+      little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
+      hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
+      Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
+      Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and women
+      and children&mdash;country Arabs and Barbers&mdash;were squatting around
+      the charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while
+      the ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently
+      the wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of
+      the streets came to an end; the &ldquo;Balak&rdquo; of the ass-driver was no more
+      heard, the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the
+      fires on the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts
+      of the shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew
+      the air until all was still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
+      released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh she
+      dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she would
+      have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in thankfulness
+      to God, that He was making the way of her great journey easy out of the
+      land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke over the town.
+      Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in the air, which
+      had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and long and terrible.
+      First from the direction of Marteel, over the four miles which divide
+      Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea sends before trouble
+      comes to the land&mdash;a deep moan as of waters falling from the sky.
+      Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens on the gate
+      called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to the port. Then
+      came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down the gorges of the
+      Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches far away to Kitan. Last
+      of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied themselves over the town, and
+      the rain fell in floods on the roof of the house and on the pavement of
+      the patio, and leapt up again in great loud drops, making a noise to the
+      ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a hidden multitude. Thus sound
+      after sound broke over the darkness of the night in a thousand awful
+      voices, now near, now far, now loud, now low, now long, now short, now
+      rising, now falling, now rushing, now running&mdash;a mighty tumult and a
+      fearsome anarchy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Naomi's terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her body
+      as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of touch, and
+      though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued to refer all
+      sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out her arms before
+      her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in her palms; and at the
+      sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to protect her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom. He
+      yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
+      words of love, gentle words of hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain; it
+      is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They shall
+      not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There, there, my
+      little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you. Fear not,
+      my child, fear not!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears, but,
+      alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which moaned
+      about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again and
+      again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the solace
+      of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of the
+      storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its fulness
+      the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise it, so
+      sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with the
+      mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed&mdash;the blessing of a
+      pathway to his daughter's soul&mdash;a misfortune had come as well. What
+      was it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
+      And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
+      silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but a
+      circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
+      shrieked and moved around her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror, and
+      smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at length,
+      in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens seemed
+      rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell into a long
+      unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer, but wept above
+      her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing! nothing!
+      Listen! It is gone! Gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
+      soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
+      not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
+      Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in ashes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
+      grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
+      could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
+      she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the bars
+      which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came dancing
+      out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down at her
+      knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his voice
+      through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of Jacob, and
+      rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
+      foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
+      God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
+      God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
+      wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
+      she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
+      knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
+      was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
+      than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
+      he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought this
+      evil upon him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
+      manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
+      breathless quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed to
+      look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing could she
+      hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay over her hand,
+      and sighed and sank down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was back
+      in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices which had
+      startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been nothing but
+      an evil dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
+      with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her, and
+      said within himself, &ldquo;It was her baptism. Now she will walk the world with
+      confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the Lord our God is
+      king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of the
+      room on tiptoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
+      had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she had
+      been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
+      disrobed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her new
+      sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though she
+      could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached. They
+      led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to the
+      great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no more as
+      of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see them
+      through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on her
+      lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took her
+      to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod the
+      familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did she
+      exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty winds
+      about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the world
+      unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and heard the
+      breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her ears. They gave
+      Ali's harp into her hands, the same that she had played so strangely at
+      the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again as on that day did
+      she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound such as none had heard
+      before and none could follow, but only touched and fumbled them with
+      deftless fingers that knew no music.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
+      pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
+      communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
+      kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
+      beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
+      of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years had
+      bleated and barked &ldquo;Beelzebub!&rdquo; And if God in His mercy had taken the
+      angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful, He had
+      given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet human
+      daughter, however helpless and frail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content. But day
+      by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange sinkings
+      of the heart. Naomi's frailty appeared to be not only of the body but also
+      of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly fallen asleep. She
+      betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her lips; no thought for
+      herself or for others seemed to animate her. She neither laughed nor wept.
+      When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not stretch out her arms as she
+      had done before to draw down his head to her lips. Calmly, silently,
+      sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day, without feeling and without
+      thought&mdash;a beautiful statue of flesh and blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself knows;
+      but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first delight in
+      the new gift with which God had gifted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
+      walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
+      childhood&mdash;the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink,
+      the thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered
+      flowers in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for
+      it was the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle,
+      and under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
+      Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
+      direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths of the
+      oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the sprawling
+      limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a tributary of the
+      Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the Akhmas, over the
+      light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there&mdash;but by what impulse or
+      what chance Israel never knew&mdash;Naomi had withdrawn her hand from his
+      hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it took him to
+      stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had sunk into the
+      earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from his sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side, but
+      she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would answer
+      with the only language of her lips, the old language of her laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no sound came back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a voice
+      of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor the
+      rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
+      left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
+      and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly, until
+      the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and deadened the
+      sound of his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
+      length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
+      brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom. She
+      was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had sat
+      herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were still
+      wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old olive-tree
+      over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues; the little
+      family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny creature of
+      the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging itself on the
+      low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a sheep of solemn face&mdash;gaunt
+      and grim and ancient&mdash;was standing and palpitating before her. Bees
+      were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing, the light wind was whispering,
+      and cattle were lowing in the distance. The air of that sweet spot in that
+      sweet hour was musical with every sweet sound of the earth and sky, and
+      fragrant with all the wild odours of the wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling,&rdquo; cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
+      he paused and looked at her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the light
+      that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her head was
+      held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were flushed. She had
+      pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair had fallen over her
+      neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear, and the other strayed
+      among the plants that grew on the bank beside her. She seemed to be
+      listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and radiant joy, a pure
+      and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her beautiful face. It was
+      almost as though she believed that everything she heard with the great new
+      gift which God had given her was speaking to her, and bidding her welcome
+      and offering her love; as if the garrulous old olive over her head were
+      stretching down his arms to sport with her hair, and pattering; &ldquo;Kiss me,
+      little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss me! kiss me!&rdquo;&mdash;as if the
+      rippling river at her feet were laughing and crying, &ldquo;Catch me, naked
+      feet! catch me, catch me!&rdquo; as if the thrush on the bough were singing,
+      &ldquo;Where from, sunny locks? where from? where from?&rdquo;&mdash;as if the young
+      squirrel were chirping, &ldquo;I'm not afraid, not afraid, not afraid!&rdquo; and as
+      if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly, &ldquo;Pat me, little maiden! you
+      may, you may!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless her beautiful face!&rdquo; cried Israel. &ldquo;She listens with every
+      feature and every line of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
+      forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever&mdash;in
+      the voices of children at play&mdash;in the bleat of the goat&mdash;in the
+      footsteps of them she loved&mdash;in the hiss and whirr of her mother's
+      old spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work&mdash;and in Ali's harp,
+      when he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the ground
+      first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what change
+      was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of sound,
+      the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself nor any
+      one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a beautiful
+      and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to give herself
+      up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music she took most
+      pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened to with a simple
+      and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her joy, and the
+      joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air wheresoever she
+      went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
+      beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah's homely ditties were
+      all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times when
+      she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the caravan,
+      telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing cypress, and
+      liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales which the good
+      soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties whose silence was
+      the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love tore the veil of
+      their chastity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be the
+      yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call down love
+      out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a favourite
+      song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had learned it
+      in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she sang it over
+      the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not hear. Naomi
+      knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother's song at last, though
+      silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her chief and dear
+      delight.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O, where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song, when
+      Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it, and the simple
+      silent arts she used, being mute and blind, to show her pleasure while it
+      lasted, and to ask for it again when it was done, were very sweet and
+      touching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves that
+      child most among many children that most is helpless, so the earth-mother
+      of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes were blind. Thus she
+      seemed to hear many things that are unheard by the rest of the human
+      family. It is only a dim echo of the outer world that the ears of men are
+      allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow of the outer world that
+      the eyes of men are allowed to see; but the ears of Naomi seemed to hear
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts, and a
+      third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another in keenness even
+      as one sight differs from another in strength. And all the earth is full
+      of voices, and everything that moves upon the face of it has its sound;
+      but the bird hears that which is unheard of the beast, and the beast hears
+      that which is unheard of men. But Naomi appeared to hear all that is heard
+      of each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only, with nothing
+      that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground but she dropped
+      her face, and nothing flew in the sky but she lifted her eyes. And whereas
+      before the coming of her great gift her face had been all feeling, and she
+      seemed to feel the sunset, and to feel the sky, and to feel the thunder
+      and the light, now her face was all hearing, and her whole body seemed to
+      hear, for she was like a living soul floating always in a sea of sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,
+      building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with which God
+      had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was to her then, what the
+      sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was with its roar, and what the
+      face of man was, and the eyes of woman, none could know, and neither could
+      she tell, for her soul was not linked to other souls&mdash;soul to soul,
+      in the chains of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,
+      beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words, and that
+      words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill, made their mark on
+      the soul that listened to them. So he continued to read to her out of the
+      Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
+      custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to say,
+      &ldquo;Fool! she hears, but does she understand?&rdquo; he remembered how he had read
+      to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself, &ldquo;Shall I have
+      less faith now that she can hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's soul
+      at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to her it
+      seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern and gets
+      back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her of the sky,
+      that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the great deeps to
+      measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was green as the
+      fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour? And sometimes
+      as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words themselves which
+      he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the notes which Ali
+      struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, &ldquo;Let the Lord
+      find His own way to her spirit.&rdquo; So he continued to speak with her as
+      often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that concerned
+      their household, as well as of the greater things it was good for her soul
+      to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a touching sight&mdash;the lonely man, the outcast among his
+      people, talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling
+      her of God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that
+      his words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
+      to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
+      judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on her
+      ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was she
+      putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering them,
+      imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace for her
+      spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would, he could
+      never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He clung to
+      all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor and his
+      pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also&mdash;the
+      false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before the
+      eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some three weeks after his return from his journey, and the fierce
+      blaze of the sun continued. The storm that had broken over the town had
+      left no results of coolness or moisture, for the ground had been baked
+      hard, and the rain had been too short and swift to penetrate it. And what
+      the withering heat had spared of green leaf and shrub a deadlier blight
+      had swept away. The locusts had lately come up from the south and the
+      east, in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on millions, making the
+      air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue sky. They had swept the
+      country of its verdure, and left a trail of desolation behind them. The
+      grass was gone, the bark of the olives and almonds was stripped away, and
+      the bare trees had the look of winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.
+      Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds. A
+      Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls of the
+      town. It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town's
+      six gates. The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on
+      the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind. It
+      was a horrible place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The skinny dogs of the town soon found it. And after these scavengers of
+      the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of bones,
+      they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in search of
+      water. By this time there was none that they could come at nearer than the
+      sea, and that was salt. Nevertheless, they lapped it, so burning was their
+      thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town. Then the people hunted
+      them and killed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to death
+      on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult of the
+      streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat, that
+      went before her. The goat was grown old, but it was still her constant
+      companion and also it was now her guide and guardian, for the little dumb
+      creature seemed to know that she was frail and helpless. And so it was
+      that she was crossing the Sok el Foki, a market of the town, and
+      hearkening only to the patter of the feet of the goat going in front, when
+      suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps hurrying towards her, with shouts
+      and curses that were loud and deep. She stood in fear on the spot where
+      she was, and no eyes had she to see what happened next, and she had none
+      save the goat to tell her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward from the
+      hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude of men and boys. And
+      flying in its despair, it bit out wildly at whatever lay in its way, and
+      Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight in front of it. Then she must have
+      fallen before it, but instantly the goat flung itself across the dog's
+      open jaws, and butted at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill cries of
+      terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if the
+      madness of the monster shrank before it. But the people came down with
+      their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat and felled
+      it, and fled away. The people followed it, and then Naomi was alone in the
+      market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father's house in the
+      Mellah, and her dying champion with her. And out of this hard chance, and
+      not out of Israel's teaching, Naomi was first to learn what life is and
+      what is death. She felt the goat with her hands, and as she did so her
+      fingers shook. Then she lifted it to its feet, and when they slipped from
+      under it she raised her white face in wonder. Again she lifted it, and
+      made strange noises at its ear; but when it did not answer with its bleat
+      her lips began to tremble. Then she listened for its breathing, and felt
+      for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor the other to
+      her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast. At length she fondled it in
+      her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave back no sign of
+      motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose at her heart. At
+      last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat opened its heavy eyes
+      upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her hand. With that last
+      farewell the brave heart of the little creature broke, and it stretched
+      itself and died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw it all. His heart bled to see the parting in silence between
+      those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead than the human
+      soul that was left alive. He tried to put the goat from Naomi's arms,
+      saying, &ldquo;It was only a goat, my child; think of it no more,&rdquo; though it
+      smote him with pain to say it, for had not the creature given its life for
+      her life? And where, O God, was the difference between them? But Naomi
+      clung to the goat, and her throat swelled and her bosom fluttered, and her
+      whole body panted, and it was almost as if her soul were struggling to
+      burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might speak and ask and
+      know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
+      thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, &ldquo;It is dead, my
+      child&mdash;the goat is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in a
+      dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that hour
+      had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken of death
+      had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that he had spoken
+      of life, and of the little things which concerned their household? And if
+      Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these&mdash;if she had not
+      pondered and interpreted them&mdash;if they had fallen on her ear only as
+      voices in a dark cavern&mdash;only as dead birds on a dead sea&mdash;what
+      of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
+      and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
+      great gift a mockery?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself of
+      God's mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand? Only
+      a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi had
+      heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked and
+      cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer deaf.
+      Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication and why
+      had He received his prayer?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi's new
+      gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give her speech, O Lord!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;speech that shall lift her above the
+      creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know! Give
+      her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts of the
+      young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his
+      hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will of
+      Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled the
+      land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had unjustly
+      extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had returned
+      double&mdash;once for the tax and once for the excess; and if any man,
+      having been unjustly taxed for the Kaid's tribute, had given bond on his
+      lands for his debt and been cast into the Kasbah and died, without
+      ransoming them, then to his children he had returned fourfold&mdash;double
+      for the lands and double for the death. Israel had done this continually,
+      and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out of his own purse,
+      so that from being a rich man he had fallen within a month to the
+      condition of a poor one, for what was one man's wealth among so many? Yet
+      no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity and contempt, for the people
+      that had taken his money had thanked the Kaid for it, who, according to
+      their supposals, had called on him to correct what he had done amiss. And
+      with Ben Aboo himself he had fared no better, for the Basha was provoked
+      to anger with him when he heard from Katrina of the good money that he had
+      been casting away in pity for the poor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have I told you a score of times?&rdquo; said the woman. &ldquo;That man has
+      mints of money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My money, burn his grandfather,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world's reckoning. When he
+      lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done the devil's
+      work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before he had made more
+      powerful. People who had showed him lip-service when he was thought to be
+      rich did not conceal the joy they had that he was brought down so near to
+      be a beggar. Upstarts, who owed their promotion to his intercession, found
+      in his charities an easy handle given them to be insolent, for, by
+      carrying to Katrina their secret messages of his mercy to the people, they
+      brought things at length to such a pass between him and the Kaid that Ben
+      Aboo openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not once or twice but many
+      times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?&rdquo; said
+      Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough to
+      twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones to the
+      dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity you've got
+      too much of it, I say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are poor, Lord Basha,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;they are famishing, and
+      they have no refuge save with God and with us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;A famine in my bashalic! Let no man dare to say
+      so. The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness, mistress Israel.
+      You poor old grandmother! I always suspected,&rdquo; he added, facing about upon
+      his attendants, &ldquo;I always suspected that I was served by a woman. Now I am
+      sure of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel felt the indignity. He had given good proof of his manhood in the
+      past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo between him
+      and his people, making him rich by his extortions, keeping him safe in his
+      seat, and thereby saving him from the wooden jellab which Abd er-Rahman,
+      the Sultan, kept for Kaids that could not pay. But Israel mastered his
+      anger and held his peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour of the
+      Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him in the
+      streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor, thinking
+      himself accountable to God for their sufferings. He could have crushed the
+      better part of his insulters to death in his brawny arms, but he was slow
+      to anger and long-suffering. All the heed he paid to their insults was to
+      do his good work with more secrecy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised him
+      on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this difficulty.
+      When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well down over his
+      black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his face. In this
+      innocent disguise he went out night after night for many nights among the
+      poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters of the grain markets near
+      the Bab Ramooz. How he bore himself being there, with what harmless
+      deceptions he unburdened his soul by stealth, what guileless pretences he
+      made that he might restore to the poor the money that had been stolen from
+      them, would be a long story to tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; he was asked a hundred times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend,&rdquo; he answered
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you of our trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah has angels,&rdquo; he would reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw the very
+      children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention of his
+      name. And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people whisper together
+      and say, &ldquo;He is a saint. He comes from the Kabar at nightfall. Allah sends
+      him to help poor men who have been in the clutches of Israel the Jew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for
+      good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask
+      nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it
+      was the breath of angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, about a month after his return from his journey, when he was near
+      to the end of his substance, a message came to him that the followers of
+      Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison at Shawan. Their
+      relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now, but the plague of
+      the locust had fallen on the bread-winners, and they had no more bread to
+      send. Israel concluded that it was his duty to succour them. From a just
+      view of his responsibilities he had gone on to a morbid one. If in the
+      Judgment the blood of the people of Absalam cried to God against him, he
+      himself, and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began to take a
+      view of his condition. Then he saw, to his dismay, that little as he had
+      thought he possessed, even less remained to him out of the wreck of his
+      riches. Only one thing he had still, but that was a thing so dear to his
+      heart that he had never looked to part with it. It was the casket of his
+      dead wife's jewels. Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to sell it
+      now, and, taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept it&mdash;a
+      closet that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart for ever,
+      but in his house no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the doorpost,
+      and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour came out to
+      them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried air itself
+      had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay on everything.
+      But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate shawls and gauzy
+      haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red slippers, and many
+      dainty things such as women love. And to him that came again after ten
+      heavy years they were as a dream of her that had worn them when she was
+      young that now was dead when she was beautiful that now was in the grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah me, ah me! Ruth! My Ruth!&rdquo; he murmured. &ldquo;This was her shawl. I brought
+      it from Wazzan. . . . And these slippers&mdash;they came from Rabat. Poor
+      girl, poor girl! . . . . This sash, too, it used to be yellow and white.
+      How well I remember the first time she wore it! She had put it over her
+      head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman. But her brown curls
+      fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them. And then she
+      laughed. My poor dear girl. How happy we were once in spite of everything!
+      It is all like yesterday. When I think Ah no, I must think no more, I must
+      think no more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket of
+      the jewels where it stood by the wall. With trembling hands he took it and
+      opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets, and rings and
+      earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering of dust. He
+      lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers, and looked at them while
+      his eyes grew wet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for myself,&rdquo; he murmured, &ldquo;not for myself would I have sold them, not
+      for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of worlds!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood by his
+      side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks and looked
+      serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed, and now at the jingling of
+      the jewels she stretched out her hand and took one of them from her
+      father's fingers, and feeling it, and finding it to be a necklace, she
+      clasped it about her neck and laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed. It brought back the
+      memory of the day when she danced to her mother's death, decked in that
+      same necklace and those same ornaments. More on this head Israel could not
+      think and hold to his purpose, so he took the jewels from Naomi's neck and
+      returned them to the casket, and hastened away with it to a man to whom he
+      designed to sell it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the Jews;
+      for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop in the Sok
+      el Foki. Israel was moved to go to this person by the remembrance of two
+      things, of which either seemed enough for his preference&mdash;first, that
+      he had bought the jewels of Reuben in the beginning, and next, the Reuben
+      had never since ceased to speak of them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the
+      gems of Ethiopia and the gold of Ophir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy, he eyed
+      both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear to his covetous
+      and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself in his need, and
+      bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction that could come to
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is this that you bring me?&rdquo; said Reuben languidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A case of jewels,&rdquo; said Israel, with a downward look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jewels? umph! what jewels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor wife's. You know them, Reuben See!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel opened the casket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, your wife's. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have seen them here, Reuben.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here?&mdash;do you say here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sold them to you? Never. I don't remember it. Surely you must be
+      mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in
+      expressions of contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel watched him closely. &ldquo;Give them back to me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I can go
+      elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reuben's lip straightened instantly. &ldquo;Wrangling? Who is wrangling,
+      brother? You are too impatient, Sidi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am in haste,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said, &ldquo;The
+      things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To buy them,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Buy</i> them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't want them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they worth your money?&mdash;you don't want that either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Umph!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded to examine
+      the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems&mdash;the rich onyx, the
+      sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the topaz, and
+      first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back again. And
+      seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers, the precious jewels
+      which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist and her white neck, Israel could
+      scarcely hold back his hand from snatching them away. But how can he that
+      is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his twitching hands behind
+      him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of Absalam, and when at length
+      Reuben tendered him for the casket one half what he had paid for it, he
+      took the money in silence and went his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five hundred dollars&mdash;I can give no more,&rdquo; Reuben had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you say five hundred&mdash;five?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five&mdash;take it or leave it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through was
+      a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow wooden
+      boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a shelter
+      from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay raisins
+      and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers crouched
+      in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous straw hats,
+      with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats at their feet.
+      Under arcades of dried leaves&mdash;made, like desert graves, of upright
+      poles and dry branches thrown across&mdash;the butchers lay at their ease,
+      flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. &ldquo;Buy! buy! buy!&rdquo; they all
+      shouted together. A dense throng of the poor passed between them in torn
+      jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought. Asses and mules
+      crushed through amid shouts of &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ba-lak!&rdquo; It
+      was a lively scene, with more than enough of bustle and swearing and
+      vociferation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised with
+      subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of sugar in
+      loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers for
+      penance. &ldquo;God forgive me,&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;<i>God forgive me, God forgive
+      me,</i>&rdquo; and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer approached,
+      touched a sugar loaf and asked, &ldquo;How much?&rdquo; The merchant continued his
+      prayers and did his business at a breath. &ldquo;(<i>God forgive me</i>) How
+      much? (<i>God forgive me</i>) Four pesetas (<i>God forgive me</i>),&rdquo; and
+      round went the restless rosary. &ldquo;Too much,&rdquo; said the buyer; &ldquo;I'll give
+      three.&rdquo; The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, &ldquo;(<i>God
+      forgive me</i>) Couldn't take it for as much as you might put in your
+      tooth (<i>God forgive me</i>); gave four myself (<i>God forgive me</i>).&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Then I'll leave it, old sweet-tooth,&rdquo; said the buyer, as he moved away.
+      &ldquo;Here! take it for nothing (<i>God forgive me</i>),&rdquo; cried the merchant
+      after the retreating figure. &ldquo;(<i>God forgive me</i>) I'm giving it away (<i>God
+      forgive me</i>); I'll starve, but no matter (<i>God forgive me</i>), you
+      are my brother (<i>God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me</i>).&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the
+      prisoners needed&mdash;enough for the present and for many days to come.
+      Then he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man
+      two days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he
+      knew full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of
+      Absalam receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of
+      famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his short
+      journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was highest,
+      hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to escape
+      observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came
+      to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and
+      deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate at
+      which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a strange
+      procession. It was a procession of penance and petition, asking God to
+      wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and eating up
+      the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white beard, walked
+      side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in the folds of his
+      snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews and the Imam of
+      the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors walked abreast in the
+      burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were Berbers were bareheaded
+      also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!&rdquo; the Imam cried,
+      and the Muslims echoed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the God of Jacob!&rdquo; the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words
+      after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spare us! Spare the land!&rdquo; they all cried together. &ldquo;Send rain to destroy
+      the eggs of the locust!&rdquo; cried the Rabbi. &ldquo;Else will they rise on the
+      ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor; and neither fire
+      nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we ourselves will
+      die, and our children with us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Jews cried, &ldquo;God of Jacob, be our refuge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Muslims shouted, &ldquo;Allah, save us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance&mdash;the
+      haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of
+      sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike,
+      walking and praying in the public streets together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved. And being come
+      into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the
+      motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that,
+      if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself for
+      what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no merit
+      could he make of his poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her,&rdquo; he thought. Naomi was his hope
+      and his salvation. His faith in God was his love of the child. He was only
+      bribing God to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he journeyed
+      towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for them that lay
+      there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their miseries, the
+      mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to himself. So the
+      nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his breast, as if the
+      sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head had eyes to peer into
+      his deceiving soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half
+      of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set
+      when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of the
+      mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and vineyards
+      that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners and
+      pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from Tetuan
+      and his heavy taxings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Israel ben Oliel,&rdquo; whispered one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God of Jacob, save us!&rdquo; whispered another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has followed us for the arrears of taxes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must fly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go home first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No time for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is Rachel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must warn my son&mdash;he has children.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are lost. Come on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress and
+      was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within, had
+      heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild disorder of
+      all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his visit, as if
+      they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women and young children,
+      gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some with faces that were hard
+      and stony, some with faces that were weak and simple, some with eyes that
+      were red as blood, all weary with waiting and wasted with long pain, ran
+      hither and thither in the gloom of the foul place where they were immured
+      together. Shedding tears, beating their flesh, and crying out with woeful
+      clamour, these unhappy creatures of God, who had been great of soul when
+      they sang their death-song with the precipice behind them and the soldiers
+      in front, now quaked for the miserable lives which they preserved in
+      hunger and cherished in bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found
+      his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been
+      gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one
+      impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to their
+      knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women in front,
+      and mothers holding out their babes before their breasts so that he might
+      see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart made for pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head
+      was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in
+      wonder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arise,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and
+      God bless you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the
+      muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had
+      looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged
+      within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat. For
+      a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained their
+      wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his new
+      poverty such as his riches had never brought him&mdash;no, not once in all
+      the days of his old prosperity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length an old man&mdash;he was a Muslim&mdash;looked steadily into
+      Israel's face and said, &ldquo;May the God of Jacob bless thee also, brother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of
+      their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet
+      with hearts so different.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May the child of thy wife be blessed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;stop! you don't know what you are saying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had stung
+      him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips; they pushed
+      their children under his hands for his blessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;no, no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town
+      like one who was ashamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would
+      have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered
+      into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen years
+      in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the father,
+      still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since her
+      mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears,
+      touching her hand for assent, patting her head for approval, and guiding
+      her fingers to teach them signs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter, more
+      to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her sole
+      gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit gazed
+      upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and without him
+      neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out to the world.
+      Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on one side of all
+      language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a mother with her
+      first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery as pure from taint,
+      and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with her, then only did
+      Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of wonder at the
+      strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was gone from her,
+      she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's close abode,
+      waiting to be born anew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder him,
+      as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and connecting it
+      with the illness that came to her in his absence; or as seeming to see,
+      with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the world, what was to
+      befall him before he returned. He put her from him with many tender words,
+      and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead, as though to chide her
+      while he blessed her for so much love. But her dread increased, and she
+      held to him like a child to its mother's robe. And at last, when he
+      unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in anger, and after that
+      laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her meaning yet had no
+      fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a fit of weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut! tut! what is this?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I will be back to-morrow. Do you hear,
+      my child?&mdash;tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed to
+      increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered, and
+      her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood she
+      walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside, sometimes
+      moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to herself in
+      noises such as none had heard from her lips before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of her
+      heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and with
+      her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the black
+      woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its master that
+      is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her fears, and
+      partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which God Himself
+      might have revealed to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?&rdquo; cried Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alack! girl,&rdquo; said Habeebah, &ldquo;the maid is sickening again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless agitation.
+      She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic slumber,
+      apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she awoke in the
+      morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the evil dreams
+      seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along in them like
+      one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter, as if she were
+      living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour followed long hour,
+      but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her bosom heaved, her throat
+      throbbed, her excitement became hysterical. Sometimes she broke into wild,
+      inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the black women could have believed, in
+      spite of knowledge and reason, that she was muttering and speaking words,
+      though with a wild disorder of utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when
+      this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh
+      intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened,
+      her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear
+      nothing save the common sounds of the streets&mdash;the shouts of children
+      at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and
+      again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of the
+      Moors&mdash;only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct
+      murmur of multitudinous life coming and going on every side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears? Was her spiritual power, which was
+      unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of some
+      terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no more
+      than recollection of her father's promise to be back at sunset, and mere
+      anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw nothing.
+      All that they could do was to wring their hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would
+      serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the
+      black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her
+      fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went out
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are we going?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, how should I know?&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are fools,&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic was
+      sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to custom,
+      had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of Jews stood
+      under it in earnest and passionate talk. There was a strange and bodeful
+      silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond the gate was
+      already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was empty. No
+      snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their circles of
+      squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These professors of
+      science and magic and jocularity had never before been absent. Even the
+      blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were silent. But out of the
+      mosques there came a deep low chant as of many voices, from great numbers
+      gathered within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl was right,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;something has happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nay, how should I know that either?&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you we are a pair of fools,&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she led.
+      Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble frame as by
+      an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed, and perhaps
+      foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these helpless children
+      of God, going whither they knew not and wherefore they knew not, save that
+      a fear that was like to madness drew them on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen! I hear something,&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The way we are going,&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On and on Naomi passed from street to street. They were the same streets
+      whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her goat
+      was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither altered
+      not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight forward,
+      until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the goat had
+      fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar. Then she could
+      go no farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Holy saints, what is this?&rdquo; cried Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't I tell you&mdash;the girl heard something?&rdquo; said Fatimah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God's face shine on us,&rdquo; said Habeebah. &ldquo;What is all this crowd?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and
+      overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It
+      was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered on
+      that spot on market morning&mdash;a seething, steaming, moving mass of
+      haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare shaven
+      head and plaited crown-lock&mdash;but a great crowd of dark figures in
+      black gowns and skull-caps. The assemblage was of Jews only&mdash;Jews of
+      every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher in
+      his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold braid
+      on his new kaftan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
+      to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them to
+      remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the Moors
+      themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a vacant
+      space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in their
+      open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their reed
+      pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country Berbers,
+      crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted on the
+      vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently impassively,
+      at the vast company of Jews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
+      commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
+      tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
+      their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
+      entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
+      loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every side.
+      It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were breathing out
+      threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of man, and predicting
+      fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which had befallen him early
+      or late but they were remembering it, and reckoning it up and rejoicing in
+      it. And there was no evil which had befallen themselves but they were
+      laying it to his charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
+      penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
+      that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
+      expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain fall
+      instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the thick
+      hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in the
+      sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched and
+      scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while the Muslims
+      went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and muttering to
+      themselves, &ldquo;It is written,&rdquo; they had returned to their synagogues,
+      convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like the sailors
+      of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know for whose
+      cause the evil was upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they
+      were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance of
+      ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a Synhedrin
+      and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden. But they
+      were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had been adopted,
+      and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers. So
+      three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or
+      slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had been
+      unanimous. The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel. He had sold himself to
+      their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and interest of his
+      own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race and nation into
+      exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the Kasbah, and yet
+      others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God, and God had given
+      him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was cursed with devils, a
+      daughter who had been born blind and dumb and deaf, and was still without
+      sight and speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire
+      upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this
+      devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as He
+      had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
+      Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them,
+      never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a
+      feast. Not until their judgment went out against him would God's anger be
+      appeased. Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the
+      blessed rain would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink it,
+      and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed. But let them put off any
+      longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the people, and
+      their evil time would soon come. Within eight-and-twenty days the eggs
+      would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other days the young locust
+      would have wings. Before the end of those seventy-and-six days the harvest
+      of wheat and barley would be yellow to the scythe and ripe for the
+      granary, but the locust would cover the face of the earth, and there would
+      be no grain to gather. The scythe would be idle, the granaries would be
+      empty, the tillers of the ground would come hungry into the markets, and
+      they themselves that were town-dwellers and tradesmen would be perishing
+      for bread, both they and their children with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
+      three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had&mdash;contrary
+      to Jewish custom&mdash;tried and convicted him. God would not let them
+      perish for this man's life, and neither would He charge them with his
+      blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They could
+      only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That the
+      Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel's sin? Ben
+      Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, &ldquo;It is written.&rdquo; That to
+      appease God's wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die? Convince
+      the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land of the
+      Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the whole
+      community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
+      Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
+      for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
+      their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
+      Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding on
+      to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him&mdash;though
+      sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful. But
+      the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for them,
+      upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them; but
+      visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow lane
+      of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of the
+      oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other ground
+      of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find it. At
+      length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the trial of an
+      Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset. Also they had
+      been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a capital case must
+      not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So they had broken up
+      and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they had told the crowds
+      that waited there that judgment had fallen upon Israel ben Oliel, but that
+      his doom could not be made known until sunset on the following day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That time was now come. In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood and
+      anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday. The
+      Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning. They had not
+      broken bread since yesterday, for the day that condemned a son of Israel
+      to death must be a fast-day to his judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open. The
+      sentence was not ready yet, but the judges in council were near to their
+      decision. At the open door the reader of the synagogue had stationed
+      himself, holding a flag in his hand. Under the gate of the Mellah a second
+      messenger was standing, so placed that he could see the movement of the
+      flag. If the flag fell, the sentence would be &ldquo;death,&rdquo; and the man under
+      the gate would carry the tidings to the people gathered in the
+      market-place. Then the three-and-twenty judges would come in procession
+      and tell what steps had been taken that the doom pronounced might be
+      carried into effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger which
+      seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals of a few minutes to
+      glance back towards the Mellah gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight&mdash;these
+      children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs and
+      vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking and
+      acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years before;
+      again judging it expedient that one man should die rather than the whole
+      people be brought to destruction; again probing their crafty heads, if not
+      their hearts, for an artifice whereby their scapegoat might be killed by
+      the hand of their enemy; children indeed, for all that some of their heads
+      were bald, and some of their beards were grizzled, and some of their faces
+      were wrinkled and hard and fierce; little children of God writhing in the
+      grip of their great trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings
+      of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led
+      her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching ears
+      had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness, filled
+      her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought, of great
+      and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher leading?
+      Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always, and that when
+      the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were following the blind
+      maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn was following God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,
+      though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,
+      and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had
+      infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and
+      they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from danger
+      if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a reproach,
+      nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon him found a
+      way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again and going back to the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Habeebah; &ldquo;let us go&mdash;we are not safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;let us take the poor child back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, then,&rdquo; said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, Naomi,&rdquo; whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, &ldquo;we are going home.
+      Come, dearest, come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her. She
+      stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,
+      motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent save
+      for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet
+      listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her dumb
+      and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been
+      terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness
+      and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been learning
+      speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in that crowd
+      she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others saw she
+      felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the darkness
+      outside her eyes that were blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse,
+      jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it was&mdash;it
+      was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brothers of Tetuan,&rdquo; the old man cried, &ldquo;what are we waiting for? For the
+      verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one thing to
+      do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a humane master.
+      If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been driven to do that
+      which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say: 'Lord Basha,
+      through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has stood over us to
+      oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been silent. In that time
+      we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the houses of their fathers
+      where they have lived since their birth. We have seen them buffeted and
+      smitten, without a resting-place for the soles of their feet, and
+      perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and the want of all things.
+      Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your profit?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once more
+      silent, the thick voice went on: &ldquo;And not the seed of Israel only, but the
+      sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of misery. Under a
+      Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice, in a land that
+      breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God, our brethren the
+      Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no standing. Every day
+      brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At this moment a plague is upon
+      us. The country is bare; the town is overflowing; every man stumbles over
+      his fellow our lives hang in doubt; in the morning we say 'Would it were
+      evening'; in the evening we say, 'Would it were morning'; stretch out your
+      hand and help us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice
+      continued: &ldquo;Let us say to him 'Lord Basha, there is no way of help but
+      one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race
+      and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor,
+      any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own
+      people, and your servants will bless you.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man's voice was drowned in great shouts of &ldquo;Ben Aboo!&rdquo; &ldquo;To Ben
+      Aboo!&rdquo; &ldquo;Why wait for the judges?&rdquo; &ldquo;To the Kasbah!&rdquo; &ldquo;The Kasbah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those waves
+      of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen. Naomi knew
+      this voice also&mdash;it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the
+      synagogue, who would have been sitting among the three-and-twenty-judges
+      but that he was a usurer also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why go to the Kaid?&rdquo; said the voice like a peahen. &ldquo;Does the Basha love
+      this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such affection?
+      Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo be glad to have
+      done with this servant who has been so long his master? Then why trouble
+      him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the Kaid will thank you!
+      And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord and worship Him, that
+      He has not put it into the hearts of His people to play the game of
+      breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the races around them, the
+      Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more warm by nature, must long
+      ago have done, and that not unjustly either, or altogether to the
+      displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and merciful, and has never
+      loved that his poor people should be oppressed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the
+      crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. &ldquo;Away with the man!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Away with him!&rdquo; rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and
+      clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called
+      for mercy or for patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice
+      came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice of
+      Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does God,&rdquo; said Reuben, &ldquo;any more than Ben Aboo&mdash;blessings on
+      his life!&mdash;love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt
+      with this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has
+      His hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty
+      years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife, how
+      she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana,
+      how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the day whereon his
+      daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this offspring of sin,
+      this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and speechless!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh of a
+      breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering.
+      &ldquo;Come! Let us away!&rdquo; But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. &ldquo;Do you say that
+      the Lord gave him riches? Behold him!&mdash;he swallowed them down, but
+      has he not vomited them up? Examine him!&mdash;that which he took by
+      extortions has he not been made to restore? Does God's anger smoke against
+      him? Answer me, yes or no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; And
+      instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice, a
+      peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it&mdash;it
+      was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and still
+      deaf as a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut! What is all this talking about?&rdquo; she snapped and grunted. &ldquo;Reuben
+      Maliki, save your wind for your widows&mdash;you don't give them too much
+      of it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
+      am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
+      for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
+      Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll
+      laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is to
+      ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her a
+      miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
+      children!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people laughed&mdash;it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets
+      the teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of
+      the crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the
+      counter-currents of an angry sea. &ldquo;She's right,&rdquo; said a shrill voice. &ldquo;He
+      deserves it,&rdquo; snuffled a nasal one. &ldquo;At least let us drive him out of the
+      town,&rdquo; said a third gruff voice. &ldquo;To his house!&rdquo; cried a fourth voice,
+      that pealed over all. &ldquo;To his house!&rdquo; came then from countless hungry
+      throats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, let us go,&rdquo; whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold of
+      her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
+      strange sounds to herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!&rdquo; the people howled in a
+      hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
+      mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
+      people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
+      Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait for
+      the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means whereby
+      they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry the sentence
+      into effect. The procession was even then forming. It was coming out of
+      the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the Mellah; it was
+      approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front of it. At its tail
+      came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were the soldiers and
+      muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his pilgrimage to that
+      enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez. By-and-by they were
+      to betray him to Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and
+      turning like worms on an upturned turf. &ldquo;Why sack his house?&rdquo; cried some.
+      &ldquo;Why drive him out?&rdquo; cried others. &ldquo;A poor revenge!&rdquo; &ldquo;Kill him!&rdquo; &ldquo;Kill
+      him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had
+      waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly in
+      the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of &ldquo;He is
+      there!&rdquo; and then there was a great silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town
+      walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from
+      Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one mule
+      and leading another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers of
+      Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out of their
+      dry throats, saying, &ldquo;May the God of Jacob bless you also, brother!&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;May the child of your wife be blessed!&rdquo; Ah! those blessings, he could
+      hear them still! They followed him as he walked. He did not fly from them
+      any longer, for they sang in his ears and were like music in his melted
+      soul. Once before he had heard such music. It was in England. The organ
+      swelled and the voices rose, and he was a lonely boy, for his mother lay
+      in her grave at his feet. His mother! How strangely his heart was softened
+      towards himself and-all the world And Ruth! He could think of nothing
+      without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the sun was nigh two hours down, and
+      Naomi would be waiting for him at home, for she was as one that had no
+      life without his presence. What would befall if he were taken from her?
+      That thought was like the sweeping of a dead hand across his face. So his
+      body stooped as he walked with his staff, and his head was held down, and
+      his step was heavy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were
+      gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing and
+      hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first
+      surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi heard them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the
+      air, crying, &ldquo;God has given him into our hands!&rdquo; After that all sounds
+      seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled
+      by the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great throat,
+      the crowd encompassed Israel crying, &ldquo;Kill him!&rdquo; Israel stopped, and
+      lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out nor make
+      any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their midst, and
+      massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their fury. They fell
+      upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his face, another tore
+      at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on to his knees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl
+      that stood there&mdash;blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly
+      beautiful&mdash;a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the
+      thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and
+      terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash
+      of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust
+      herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she was
+      standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God loosed
+      her tongue, for she was crying, &ldquo;Mercy! Mercy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man dared
+      to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against him
+      dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the midst of
+      it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow like a spirit.
+      And like a spirit she had driven back the people from their deed of blood
+      as with the voice of God&mdash;she, the blind, the frail, the helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the procession
+      of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how it was that
+      in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come upon Naomi, his
+      heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over his enemies and
+      say, &ldquo;You thought God's arm was against me, but behold how God has saved
+      me out of your hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
+      seemed to have dropped upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, &ldquo;Father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the cup of Israel's heart was full. His throat choked him. So he took
+      her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they passed
+      through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes were to the
+      earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted up, and his
+      tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her gift
+      of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different tongues of
+      men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself, and to put
+      out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than a child
+      untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and broke down,
+      and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must do, only
+      quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because she was a girl
+      and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and thinking shame of
+      it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her father when she halted
+      in her talk with him, and still more humbled by Ali's impetuous help when
+      she miscalled her syllables, she fell back again on silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
+      when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the
+      Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond &ldquo;Yes&rdquo; and &ldquo;No,&rdquo; notwithstanding
+      Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings, and Habeebah's
+      breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst of
+      the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the
+      voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw bed
+      of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he had
+      possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,&rdquo; Israel
+      would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and
+      lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was
+      returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor
+      quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money
+      which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife's jewels. The
+      night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were
+      almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was
+      late, very late, and far and near the town was still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm, Israel
+      had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed to cross it
+      after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through the sleeping
+      streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of the summer
+      night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift of
+      speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past. He
+      had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill him.
+      Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing had
+      not come to pass. Man's extremity had indeed been God's opportunity and
+      Ruth's vision was all but realised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, Ruth! Ruth! It had escaped Israel's notice until then that he had been
+      thinking of his dead wife the whole night through. When he put it to
+      himself so, he saw the reason of it at once. It was because there was a
+      sort of secret charm in the certainty that where she was she must surely
+      know that her dream was come true. There was also a kind of bitter pathos
+      in the regret that she was only an angel now and not a woman; therefore
+      she could not be with him to share his human joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again: how she had
+      sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear. Sung? Yes, he could
+      almost fancy that he heard her singing yet. That voice so soft, so clear
+      even in its whispers&mdash;there had been nothing like it in all the
+      world. And her songs! Israel could also fancy that he heard her favourite
+      one. It was a song of love, a pure but passionate melody wherein his own
+      delicious happiness in the earlier days, before the death of the old Grand
+      Rabbi, had seemed to speak and sing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel began to laugh at himself as he walked. To think that the warmth
+      and softness of the night, the sweet caressing night, the light and beauty
+      of the moon and the stillness and slumber of the town, could betray an old
+      fellow into forgotten dreams like these!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had taken out of his pocket the big key of the clamped door to his
+      house, and was crossing the shadowed lane in front of it, when suddenly he
+      thought he heard music coating in the air above him. He stopped and
+      listened. Then he had no longer any doubt. It was music, it was singing;
+      he knew the song, and he knew the voice. The song was the song he had been
+      thinking of, and the voice was the voice of Ruth.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Israel felt himself rooted to the spot, and he stood some time without
+      stirring. He looked around. All else was still. The night was as silent as
+      death. He listened attentively. The singing seemed to come from his own
+      house. Then he thought he must be dreaming still, and he took a step
+      forward. But he stopped again and covered both his ears. That was of no
+      avail, for when he removed his hands the voice was there as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shiver ran over his limbs, yet he could not believe what his soul was
+      saying. The key dropped out of his hand and rang on the stone. When the
+      clangour was done the voice continued. Israel bethought him then that his
+      household must be asleep, and it flashed on his mind that if this were a
+      human voice the singing ought to awaken them. Just at that moment the
+      night guard went by and saluted him. &ldquo;God bless your morning!&rdquo; the guard
+      cried; and Israel answered, &ldquo;Your morning be blessed!&rdquo; That was all. The
+      guard seemed to have heard nothing. His footsteps were dying away, but the
+      voice went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a strange emotion filled Israel's heart, and he reflected that even
+      if it were Ruth she could have come on no evil errand. That thought gave
+      him courage, and he pushed forward to the door. As he fumbled the key into
+      the lock he saw that a beggar was crouching by the doorway in the shadow
+      cast by the moonlight. The man was asleep. Israel could hear his
+      breathing, and smell his rags. Also he could hear the thud of his own
+      temples like the beating of a drum in his brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, as he was groping feebly through the crooked passage, a new
+      thought came to him. &ldquo;Naomi,&rdquo; he told himself in a whisper of awe. It was
+      she. By the full flood of the moonlight in the patio he saw her. She was
+      on the balcony. Her beautiful white-robed figure was half sitting on the
+      rail, half leaning against the pillar. The whole lustre of the moon was
+      upon her. A look of joy beamed on her face. She was singing her mother's
+      song with her mother's voice, and all the air, and the sky, and the quiet
+      white town seemed to listen:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice
+     Sings&mdash;&ldquo;Love, great Love
+     O come and claim shine own,
+     O come and take thy throne
+     Reign ever and alone,
+     Reign, glorious golden Love.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel's fear was turned to rapture. Why had he not thought of this
+      before? Yet how could he have thought of it? He had never once heard
+      Naomi's voice save in the utterance of single words. But again, why had he
+      not remembered that before the tongues of children can speak words of
+      their own they sing the words of others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The singing ended, and then Israel, struggling with his dry throat,
+      stepped a pace forward&mdash;his foot grated on the pavement&mdash;and he
+      called to the singer&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below, but
+      Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father!&rdquo; she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you learn it?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fatimah, she taught me,&rdquo; Naomi answered; and then she added quickly, as
+      if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean, &ldquo;Oh yes,
+      it was I! Was I not beautiful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that night Naomi's shyness of speech dropped away from her, and what
+      was left was only a sweet maidenly unconsciousness of all faults and
+      failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran in and out among the
+      simple words that fell from her red lips like a young squirrel among the
+      fallen leaves of autumn. It would be a long task to tell how her lisping
+      tongue turned everything then to favour and to prettiness. On the coming
+      of the gift of hearing, the world had first spoken to her; and now, on the
+      coming of the gift of speech, she herself was first speaking to the world.
+      What did she tell it at that first sweet greeting? She told it what she
+      had been thinking of it in those mute days that were gone, when she had
+      neither hearing nor speech, but was in the land of silence as well as in
+      the land of night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fancies of the blind maid so long shut up within the beautiful casket
+      of her body were strange and touching ones. Israel took delight in them at
+      the beginning. He loved to probe the dark places of the mind they came
+      from, thinking God Himself must surely have illumined it at some time with
+      a light that no man knew, so startling were some of Naomi's replies, so
+      tender and so beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, not long after she had first spoken, he was sitting with her
+      on the roof of their house as the sun was going down over the palpitating
+      plains towards Arzila and Laraiche and the great sea beyond. Twilight was
+      gathering in the Feddan under the Mosque, and the last light of day, which
+      had parleyed longest with the snowy heights of the Reef Mountains, was
+      glowing only on the sky above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sweetheart,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;what is the sun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sun is a fire in the sky,&rdquo; Naomi answered; &ldquo;my Father lights it every
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly, little one, thy Father lights it,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;thy Father which
+      is in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sweetheart,&rdquo; he said again, &ldquo;what is darkness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, darkness is cold,&rdquo; said Naomi promptly, and she seemed to shiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then the light must be warmth, little one?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and noise,&rdquo; she answered; and then she added quickly, &ldquo;Light is
+      alive.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, she crept closer to his side, and knelt there, and by her old
+      trick of love she took his hand in both of hers, and pressed it against
+      her cheek, and then, lifting her sweet face with its motionless eyes she
+      began to tell him in her broken words and pretty lisp what she thought of
+      night. In the night the world, and everything in it, was cold and quiet.
+      That was death. The angels of God came to the world in the day. But God
+      Himself came in the night, because He loved silence, and because all the
+      world was dead. Then He kissed things, and in the morning all that God had
+      kissed came to life again. If you were to get up early you would feel
+      God's kiss on the flowers and on the grass. And that was why the birds
+      were singing then. God had kissed them in the night, and they were glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day Israel took Naomi to the mearrah of the Jews, the little cemetery
+      outside the town walls where he had buried Ruth. And there he told her of
+      her mother once more; that she was in the grave, but also with God; that
+      she was dead, but still alive; that Naomi must not expect to find her in
+      that place, but, nevertheless, that she would see her yet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember her, Naomi?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you remember her in the old
+      days, the old dark and silent days? Not Fatimah, and not Habeebah, but
+      some one who was nearer to you than either, and loved you better than
+      both; some one who had soft hands, and smooth cheeks, and long, silken,
+      wavy hair&mdash;do you remember, little one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Y-es, I think&mdash;I <i>think</i> I remember,&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was your mother, my darling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you don't know what a mother is, sweetheart. How should you? And how
+      shall I tell you? Listen. She is the one who loves you first and last and
+      always. When you are a babe she suckles you and nourishes you and fondles
+      you, and watches for the first light of your smile, and listens for the
+      first accent of your tongue. When you are a young child she plays with
+      you, and sings to you, and tells you little stories, and teaches you to
+      speak. Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine, and your childish
+      lisp more sweet than music. If you are sick she is beside you constantly,
+      and when you are well she is behind you still. Though you sin and fall and
+      all men spurn you, yet she clings to you; and if you do well and God
+      prospers you, there is no joy like her joy. Her love never changes, for it
+      is a fount which the cold winds of the world cannot freeze. . . . And if
+      you are a little helpless girl&mdash;blind and deaf and dumb maybe&mdash;then
+      she loves you best of all. She cannot tell you stories, and she cannot
+      sing to you, because you cannot hear; she cannot smile into your eyes,
+      because you cannot see; she cannot talk to you, because you cannot speak;
+      but she can watch your quiet face, and feel the touch of your little
+      fingers and hear the sound of your merry laughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mother! my mother!&rdquo; whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the
+      days before your great gifts came to you. But she is gone, she has left
+      us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of
+      memory can she smile back upon us now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears, and
+      she said abruptly, &ldquo;People who die are deceitful. They want to go out in
+      the night to be with God. That is where they are when they go away. They
+      are wandering about the world when it is dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no
+      search availed to find her. She was not in the Mellah, and therefore she
+      must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at sunset.
+      Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or among the
+      Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before their tents.
+      At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there he found her. It
+      was dark, and the lonesome place was silent. The reflection of the lights
+      of the town rose into the sky above it, and the distant hum of voices came
+      over the black town walls. And there, within the straggling hedge of
+      prickly pear, among the long white stones that lay like sheep asleep among
+      the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the darkness of the night and of
+      her blindness was running to and fro, and crying, &ldquo;Mother! Mother!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea
+      might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat and
+      fumes of the town. The day was soft and beautiful, the water was quiet,
+      and only a gentle wind came creeping over it. But Naomi listened to every
+      sound with eager intentness&mdash;the light plash of the blue wavelets
+      that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when the Levanter
+      chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the boatman, the
+      rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the fierce
+      vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to unload the
+      cargoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees, with
+      his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him
+      another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing in the world
+      that did not die at night, and it was water. That was because water was
+      the way from heaven to earth. It went up into the mountains and over them
+      into the air until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His angels came
+      and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why it was always
+      moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day. And the angels
+      were always singing. That was why the waters were always making a noise,
+      and were never silent like the grass. Sometimes their song was joyful, and
+      sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil spirits were struggling with
+      the angels, and that was when the waters were terrible. Every time the sea
+      made a little noise on the shore, an angel had stepped on to the earth.
+      The angel was glad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart. Where
+      had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out these beautiful
+      dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come upon the joy of
+      hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was and what life was,
+      and death and heaven? The question was soon decided for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
+      Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her. Alone, without
+      help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on to the
+      water. It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made of ribs of
+      rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark. In this frail craft
+      she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing, but sitting
+      quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind was rising, and
+      the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with breakers. Israel
+      put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes began to fill when
+      she heard his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My darling, my darling!&rdquo; cried Israel; &ldquo;where did you think you were
+      going?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To heaven,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly she had all but gone there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart of this
+      creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril. Naomi was no
+      more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone, but in more danger
+      from herself than any child before her, because deprived of two of her
+      senses until she had grown to be a maid, and no control could be imposed
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening while
+      Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting, and there were
+      noises in the streets below of the Jewish people shuffling back into the
+      Mellah, he told her that she was blind. The word made no impression upon
+      her mind at first. She had heard it before, and it had passed her by like
+      a sound that she did not know. She had been born blind, and therefore
+      could not realise what it was to see. To open a way for the awful truth
+      was difficult, and Israel's heart smote him while he persisted. Naomi
+      laughed as he put his fingers over her eyes that he might show her. She
+      laughed again when he asked if she could see the people whom she could
+      only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun had gone down, and the
+      mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, and he asked if
+      she could see the old blind man in the minaret, where he was crying, &ldquo;God
+      is great! God is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you see him, little one?&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See him?&rdquo; said Naomi; &ldquo;why yes, you dear old father, of course I can see
+      him. Listen,&rdquo; she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger, and
+      holding her head aslant, &ldquo;listen: God is great! God is great! There&mdash;I
+      saw him then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is only hearing him, Naomi&mdash;hearing him with your ears&mdash;with
+      this ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did her father mean to ask her if she could <i>feel</i> the mooddin in his
+      minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant. There was a
+      pause, and then she cried impulsively&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, <i>I</i> know. But, you foolish old father, how <i>can</i> I? He is
+      too far away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences, &ldquo;I have seen
+      my <i>father</i> anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it. He told her,
+      with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like other maidens&mdash;not
+      like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah; that she was a being
+      afflicted of God; that there was something she had not got, something she
+      could not do, a world she did not know, and had never yet so much as
+      dreamt of. Darkness was more than cold and quiet, and light was more than
+      warmth and noise. The one was day&mdash;day ruled by the fiery sun in the
+      sky&mdash;and the other was night, lit by the pale moon and the bright
+      stars in heaven. And the face of man and the eyes of woman were more than
+      features to feel&mdash;they were spirit and soul, to watch and to follow
+      and to love without any hand being near them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a great world about you, little one,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;which you have
+      never seen, though you can hear it and feel it and speak to it. Yes, it is
+      true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen the mountains and the
+      dangerous gullies on their rocky sides. You have never seen the mighty
+      deep, and the storms that heave and swell in it. You have never seen man
+      or woman or child. Is that very strange, little one? Listen: your mother
+      died nine years ago, and you had never seen her. Your father is holding
+      your head in his hands at this moment, but you have never seen his face.
+      And if the dark curtains were to fall from your eyes, and you were to see
+      him now, you would not know him from another man, or from woman, or from a
+      tree. You are blind, Naomi, you are blind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested nervously
+      on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn, and then
+      filled with tears. Israel's throat swelled. To tell her of all this,
+      though he must needs do it for her safety, was like reproaching her with
+      her infirmity. But it was only the trouble in her father's voice that had
+      found its way to the sealed chamber of Naomi's mind. The awful and
+      crushing truth of her blindness came later to her consciousness, probed in
+      and thrust home by a frailer and lighter hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had always loved little children, and since the coming of her hearing
+      she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues, their pretty
+      broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts, all fitted
+      with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself, though grown
+      to be a lovely maid. And of all children those she loved best were not the
+      children of the Jews, nor yet the children of the Moorish townsfolk, but
+      the ragged, barefoot, black and olive-skinned mites who came into Tetuan
+      with the country Arabs and Berbers on market mornings. They were simplest,
+      their little tongues were liveliest, and they were most full of joy and
+      wonder. So she would gather them up in twos and threes and fours, on
+      Wednesdays and Sundays, from the mouths of their tents on the Feddan, and
+      carry them home by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope, suspended
+      from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this Naomi would sport
+      with her little ones. She would be swinging in the midst of them, with one
+      tiny black maiden on the seat beside her, and one little black man with
+      high stomach and shaven poll holding on to the rope behind her, and
+      another mighty Moor in a diminutive white jellab pushing at their feet in
+      front, and all laughing together, or the children singing as the swing
+      rose, and she herself listening with head aslant and all her fair hair
+      rip-rip-rippling down her back and over her neck, and her smiling white
+      face resting on her shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it came the first
+      great shadow of the blind girl's life. For it chanced one day that one of
+      the children&mdash;a tiny creature with a slice of the woman in her&mdash;brought
+      a present for Naomi out of her mother's market-basket. It was a flower,
+      but of a strange kind, that grew only in the distant mountains where lay
+      the little black one's home. Naomi passed her fingers over it, and she did
+      not know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's blue,&rdquo; said the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is blue?&rdquo; said Naomi
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blue&mdash;don't you know?&mdash;blue!&rdquo; said the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is blue?&rdquo; Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her restless
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, dear me! can't you see?&mdash;blue&mdash;the flower, you know,&rdquo; said
+      the child, in her artless way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's relief.
+      &ldquo;Blue is a colour,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A colour?&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, like&mdash;like the sea,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea? Blue? How?&rdquo; Naomi asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali tried again. &ldquo;Like the sky,&rdquo; he said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi's face looked perplexed. &ldquo;And what is the sky like?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face, and her
+      great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes. The lad was
+      pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer that leapt up to his
+      tongue. &ldquo;Like,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;like&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like your own eyes, Naomi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes with her
+      hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her what her other senses
+      could not tell. But the solemn mystery had dawned on her mind at last:
+      that she was unlike others; that she was lacking something that every one
+      else possessed; that the little children who played with her knew what she
+      could never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off; that there was
+      a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying round about her, where
+      every one else might sport and find delight, but that her spirit could not
+      enter it, because she was shut off from it by the great hand of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time forward everything seemed to remind her of her affliction,
+      and she heard its baneful voice at all times. Even her dreams, though they
+      had no visions, were full of voices that told of them. If a bird sang in
+      the air above her, she lifted her sightless eyes. If she walked in the
+      town on market morning and heard the din of traffic&mdash;the cries of the
+      dealers, the &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; of the camel-men, the &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; of the muleteers, and
+      the twanging ginbri of the story-tellers&mdash;she sighed and dropped her
+      head into her breast. Listening to the wind, she asked if it had eyes or
+      was sightless; and hearing of the mountains that their snowy heads rose
+      into the clouds, she inquired if they were blind, and if they ever talked
+      together in the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child, and
+      became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more of the world
+      than in all the years of her life before. She was no longer a restless
+      gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy, but a weak, patient, blind
+      maiden, conscious of her great infirmity, humbled by it, and thinking
+      shame of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out with the
+      children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered far down the
+      banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced, the little
+      black people plucked the wild flowers, and called to the cattle and the
+      sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets that whistled to their
+      young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening, the
+      evening into twilight, the twilight into early night. Then the air grew
+      empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell upon the children, and they
+      crept to Naomi's side in fear, and took her hands and clung to her gown.
+      She turned back towards the town, and as they walked in the double silence
+      of their own hushed tongues and the songless and voiceless world, the
+      fingers of the little ones closed tightly upon her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the children cried in terror, &ldquo;See!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little ones could not tell her. It was only the noiseless summer
+      lightning, but the children had never seen it before. With broad white
+      flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the
+      valley to the white peaks of the mountains. At every flash the little
+      people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort them
+      save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw. With
+      helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the
+      darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light,
+      leading on, yet seeing nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel saw Naomi's shame. The blindness which was a sense of
+      humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him. He had asked
+      God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied. &ldquo;Give her
+      speech, O Lord,&rdquo; he had cried, &ldquo;speech that shall lift her above the
+      creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know.&rdquo; But
+      what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind? What was
+      all the world to one who had never seen it? Only as Paradise is to Man,
+      who can but idly dream of its glories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel took back his prayer. There were things to know that words could
+      never tell. Now was Naomi blind for the first time, being no longer dumb.
+      &ldquo;Give her sight, O Lord,&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;open her eyes that she may see; let
+      her look on Thy beautiful world and know it! Then shall her life be safe,
+      and her heart be happy, and her soul be Thine, and Thy servant at last be
+      satisfied!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok, and
+      no rain had yet fallen. The eggs of the locust might be hatched at any
+      time. Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the earth like
+      snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were coming green
+      out of the ground would wither before them. The country people were in
+      despair. They were all but stripped of their cattle; they had no milk; and
+      they came afoot to the market. Death seemed to look them in the face.
+      Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they offer petitions to
+      God for rain. They had long ceased their prayers. Only in the Feddan at
+      the mouths of their tents did they lift up their heavy eyes to the hot
+      haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, &ldquo;It is written!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was busy with other matters. During these six-and-twenty days he
+      had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.
+      He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he
+      held under the Kaid. No longer could he serve two masters. Too long had he
+      held to the one, thinking that by recompense and restitution, by fair
+      dealing and even-handed justice, he might atone to the other. Recompense
+      was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was no
+      longer possible&mdash;his own purse being empty&mdash;without robbery of
+      the treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope
+      in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan in
+      his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a human
+      torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of the man
+      beneath him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible,
+      and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina,
+      was a waste of shame and spirit. Besides, and above all, Israel remembered
+      that God had given him grace in the sacrifices which he had made already.
+      Twice had God rewarded him, in the mercy He had shown to Naomi, for
+      putting by the pomp and circumstance of the world. Would His great hand be
+      idle now&mdash;now when he most needed its mighty and miraculous power
+      when Naomi, being conscious of her blindness, was mourning and crying for
+      sweet sight of the world and he himself was about to put under his feet
+      the last of his possessions that separated him from other men&mdash;his
+      office that he wrought for in the early days with sweat of brow and blood,
+      and held on to in the later days through evil report and hatred, that he
+      might conquer the fate that had first beaten him down!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat of his
+      desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan. He made his preparations, and
+      they were few. His money was gone already, and so were his dead wife's
+      jewels. He had determined that he would keep his house, if only as a
+      shelter to Naomi (for he owed something to her material comfort as well as
+      her spiritual welfare), but that its furniture and belongings were more
+      luxurious than their necessity would require or altered state allow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and great chairs
+      which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets from Rabat, the
+      silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies from Morocco city. When
+      these were gone, and nothing remained but the simple rugs and mattresses
+      which are all that the house of a poor man needs in that land where the
+      skies are kind, he called his servants to him as he sat in the patio&mdash;Ali
+      as well as the two bondwomen&mdash;for he had decided that he must part
+      with them also, and they must go their ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good people,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you have been true and faithful servants to me
+      this many a year&mdash;you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah, since before
+      the days when my wife came to me&mdash;and you too, Ali, my lad, since you
+      grew to be big and helpful. Little I thought to part with you until my
+      good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary is over already,
+      and to-morrow I shall be less than the least of all men in Tetuan. So this
+      is what I have concluded to do. You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah, being
+      given to me as bondwomen by the Kaid in the old days when my power, which
+      now is little and of no moment, was great and necessary&mdash;you belong
+      to me. Well, I give you your liberty. Your papers are in the name of Ben
+      Aboo, and I have sealed them with his seal&mdash;that is the last use but
+      one that I shall put it to. Here they are, both of them. Take them to the
+      Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will ratify your title. Then you
+      will be free women for ever after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel's words with
+      exclamations of surprise and consternation. &ldquo;Allah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Bismillah!&rdquo; &ldquo;Holy
+      Saints!&rdquo; &ldquo;By the beard of the Prophet!&rdquo; And when at length he put the
+      deeds of emancipation into their hands they fell into loud fits of
+      hysterical weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for you, Ali, my son,&rdquo; Israel continued, &ldquo;I cannot give you your
+      freedom, for you are a freeman born. You have been a son to me these
+      fourteen years. I have another task for you&mdash;a perilous task, a
+      solemn duty&mdash;and when it is done I shall see you no more. My brave
+      boy, you will go far, but I do not fear for you. When you are gone I shall
+      think of you; and if you should sometimes think of your old master who
+      could not keep you, we may not always be apart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment. That strange
+      disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea that had forced
+      itself upon his unwilling mind. But that Israel, the greatest, noblest,
+      mightiest man in the world&mdash;let the dogs of rasping Jews and the
+      scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark as they would&mdash;should fall to be
+      less than the least in Tetuan, and, having fallen that he should send him
+      away&mdash;him, Ali, his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi's old
+      playfellow&mdash;Allah! Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did
+      his master mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali's big eyes began to fill, and great beads rolled down his black
+      cheeks. Then, recovering his speech he blurted out that he would not go.
+      He would follow his father and serve him until the end of his life. What
+      did he want with wages? Who asked for any? No going his ways for him! A
+      pretty thing, wasn't it, that he should go off, and never see his father
+      again, no, nor Naomi&mdash;Naomi&mdash;that-that&mdash;but God would show!
+      God would show!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And, following Ali's lead, Fatimah stepped up to Israel and offered her
+      paper back. &ldquo;Take it,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I don't want any liberty. I've got
+      liberty enough as I am. And here&mdash;here,&rdquo; fumbling in her waistband
+      and bringing out a knitted purse; &ldquo;I would have offered it before, only I
+      thought shame. My wages? Yes. You've paid us wages these nine years,
+      haven't you; and what right had we to any, being slaves? You will not take
+      it, my lord? Well, then, my dear master, if I must go, if I must leave
+      you, take my papers and sell me to some one. I shall not care, and you
+      have a right to do it. Perhaps I'll get another good master&mdash;who
+      knows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brows had been knitted, and she had tried to look stern and angry, but
+      suddenly her cheeks were a flood of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a fool!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I'll never get a good master again; but if I get
+      a bad one, and he beats me, I'll not mind, for I'll think of you, and my
+      precious jewel of gold and silver, my pretty gazelle, Naomi&mdash;Allah
+      preserve her!&mdash;that you took my money, and I'm bearing it for both of
+      you, as we might say&mdash;working for you&mdash;night and day&mdash;night
+      and day&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel could endure no more. He rose up and fled out of the patio into his
+      own room, to bury his swimming face. But his soul was big and triumphant.
+      Let the world call him by what names it would&mdash;tyrant, traitor,
+      outcast pariah&mdash;there were simple hearts that loved and honoured him&mdash;ay,
+      honoured him&mdash;and they were the hearts that knew him best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The perilous task reserved for Ali was to go to Shawan and to liberate the
+      followers of Absalam, who, less happy than their leader, whose strong soul
+      was at rest, were still in prison without abatement of the miseries they
+      lay under. He was to do this by power of a warrant addressed to the Kaid
+      of Shawan and drawn under the seal of the Kaid of Tetuan. Israel had drawn
+      it, and sealed it also, without the knowledge or sanction of Ben Aboo;
+      for, knowing what manner of man Ben Aboo was, and knowing Katrina also,
+      and the sway she held over him, and thinking it useless to attempt to move
+      either to mercy, he had determined to make this last use of his office, at
+      all risks and hazards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo might never hear that the people were at large, for Ali was to
+      forbid them to return to Tetuan, and Shawan was sixty weary miles away.
+      And if he ever did hear, Israel himself would be there to bear the brunt
+      of his displeasure, but Ali the instrument of his design, must be far
+      away. For when the gates of the prison had been opened, and the prisoners
+      had gone free, Ali was neither to come back to Tetuan nor to remain in
+      Morocco, but with the money that Israel gave him out of the last wreck of
+      his fortune he was to make haste to Gibraltar by way of Ceuta, and not to
+      consider his life safe until he had set foot in England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;England!&rdquo; cried Ali. &ldquo;But they are all white men there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White-hearted men, my lad,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and a Jewish man may find rest
+      for the sole of his foot among them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same day the black boy bade farewell to Israel and to Naomi. He was
+      leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted. Israel was his father,
+      Naomi was his sister, and never again should he set his eyes on either.
+      But in the pride of his perilous mission he bore himself bravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, good-night,&rdquo; he said, taking Naomi's hand, but not looking into her
+      blind face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; she answered, and then, after a moment, she flung her arms
+      about his neck and kissed him. He laughed lightly, and turned to Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, father,&rdquo; he said in a shrill voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A safe journey to you, my son,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and may you do all my
+      errands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God burn my great-grandfather if I do not!&rdquo; said Ali stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with that word of his country his brave bearing at length broke down,
+      and drawing Israel aside, that Naomi might not hear, he whispered, sobbing
+      and stammering, &ldquo;When&mdash;when I am gone, don't, don't tell her that I
+      was black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then in an instant he fled away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In peace!&rdquo; cried Israel after him. &ldquo;In peace! my brave boy, simple,
+      noble, loyal heart!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Israel, leaving Naomi at home, set off for the Kasbah, that
+      he might carry out his great resolve to give up the office he held under
+      the Kaid. And as he passed through the streets his head was held up, and
+      he walked proudly. A great burden had fallen from him, and his spirit was
+      light. The people bent their heads before him as he passed, and scowled at
+      him when he was gone by. The beggars lying at the gate of the Mosque spat
+      over their fingers behind his back, and muttered &ldquo;Bismillah! In the name
+      of God!&rdquo; A negro farmer in the Feddan, who was bent double over a hoof as
+      he was shoeing a bony and scabby mule, lifted his ugly face, bathed in
+      sweat, and grinned at Israel as he went along. A group of Reefians, dirty
+      and lean and hollow-eyed, feeding their gaunt donkeys, and glancing
+      anxiously at the sky over the heads of the mountains, snarled like dogs as
+      he strode through their midst. The sky was overcast, and the heads of the
+      mountains were capped with mist. &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; sounded in Israel's ears from
+      every side. &ldquo;Arrah!&rdquo; came constantly at his heels. A sweet-seller with his
+      wooden tray swung in front of him, crying, &ldquo;Sweets, all sweets, O my lord
+      Edrees, sweets, all sweets,&rdquo; changed the name of the patron saint of
+      candies, and cried, &ldquo;Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all
+      sweets!&rdquo; The girl selling clay peered up impudently into Israel's eyes,
+      and the oven-boy, answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms
+      thrust out at doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with
+      a mocking echo of Israel's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What matter? Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.
+      Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave. This
+      morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be one of themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air about it that
+      brought back recollections of the day&mdash;now nearly four years past&mdash;of
+      the children's gathering at Katrina's festival. The lusty-lunged Arabs
+      squatting at the gates among soldiers in white selhams and peaked
+      shasheeahs the women in blankets standing in the outer court, the dark
+      passages smelling of damp, the gusts of heavy odour coming from the inner
+      chambers, and the great patio with the fountain and fig-trees&mdash;the
+      same voluptuous air was over everything. And as on that day so on this, in
+      the alcove under the horseshoe arch sat Ben Aboo and his Spanish wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face of the
+      Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey and his
+      hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise he was the same
+      man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss of some teeth of the
+      upper row, was the same woman. And if the children had risen up before
+      Israel's eyes as he stood on the threshold of the patio, he could not have
+      drawn his breath with more surprise than at the sight of the man who stood
+      that morning in their place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mohammed of Mequinez. He had come to ask for the release of the
+      followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan. In defiance of courtesy
+      his slippers were on his feet. He was clad in a piece of untanned
+      camel-skin, which reached to his knees and was belted about his waist. His
+      head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a flower, was
+      held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing. He was not supplicating
+      for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and taxing Ben Aboo
+      as a tyrant to his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me them up, Ben Aboo,&rdquo; he was saying as Israel came to the
+      threshold, &ldquo;or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray what is that?&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo's brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made
+      pretence to laugh, and then said, &ldquo;And pray, my lord, who shall the
+      murderer be?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered, &ldquo;Yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in his
+      seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed. He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was master
+      of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of this man
+      whom the people called a prophet. And partly out of this fear, and partly
+      because he had more regard to Mohammed's courageous behaviour in thus
+      bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than to the
+      anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised him at
+      that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation
+      against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had
+      openly denounced her marriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait, Sidi,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Is not this the fellow that has gone up and down
+      your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the law of
+      Mohammed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he made
+      pretence to laugh again, and said, &ldquo;Allah! so it is! Mohammed the Third,
+      eh? Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You could never
+      think how long I've waited that I might look face to face upon the prophet
+      that has denounced a Kaid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but
+      Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant. &ldquo;Wait no longer,
+      O Ben Aboo,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;but look upon him now, and know that what you have
+      done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ben Aboo's passion mastered him. He rose to his feet in his anger,
+      and cried, &ldquo;Prophet, you have destroyed yourself. Listen to me! The
+      turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish
+      of hunger and rot of their sores. By the beard of my father, I swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mohammed did not flinch. Throwing back his head, he answered, &ldquo;If I am a
+      prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy. Before that which you say shall come
+      to pass, both you and your father's house will be destroyed. Never yet did
+      a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it like a
+      dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of barefooted
+      Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, &ldquo;Take him! He will escape!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and
+      Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt you
+      had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought on
+      our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you. And within
+      this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest, your
+      whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing and
+      your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with you,
+      for all else had forsaken you&mdash;all save one, and that was your enemy,
+      and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you with his
+      heart, because you were fallen and dead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again and reeled
+      backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward at his feet where
+      the eyes of Mohammed had rested. It was almost as if he saw the awful
+      thing of which Mohammed had spoken, so strong was the power of the vision
+      upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But recovering himself quickly, he cried, &ldquo;Away! In the name of God,
+      away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go,&rdquo; said Mohammed; &ldquo;and beware what you do while I am gone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you threaten me?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Will you go to the Sultan? Will you
+      appeal to Abd er-Rahman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Ben Aboo; but to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place, for no man
+      hindered him. Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat as one that was
+      speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body availed him, or the
+      silver on his breast, against that simple man in camel-skin, who owned
+      nothing and asked nothing, and feared neither Kaid nor King.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing at the doorway,
+      and he beckoned to him with the downward motion, which is the Moorish
+      manner. And rising on his quaking limbs he took him aside and said, &ldquo;I
+      know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and visions he has
+      gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I dare not take him!
+      Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas! Camel-skin coat?
+      Allah! a fine disguise! Bismillah! Bismillah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision saw his body
+      lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and said, &ldquo;Listen!
+      You have my seal?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband, and
+      drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right! Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God. Do not liberate
+      these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them so much as bread to eat
+      or water to drink, but let such as own them feed them. And if ever the
+      thing of which that fellow has spoken should come to pass&mdash;do you
+      hear?&mdash;in the hour wherein it befalls&mdash;Allah preserve me!&mdash;in
+      that hour draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan and seal it with my seal&mdash;are
+      you listening?&mdash;a warrant to put every man, woman, and child to the
+      sword. Ya Allah! Allah! We will deal with these spies of Abd er-Rahman! So
+      shall there be mourning at my burial&mdash;Holy Saints! Holy Saints!&mdash;mourning,
+      I say, among them that look for joy at my death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking into
+      loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words into
+      Israel's ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel made no answer. His eyes had become dim&mdash;he scarcely saw the
+      walls of the place wherein they stood. His ears had become dense&mdash;he
+      scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo, though the Kaid's hot breath was
+      beating upon his cheek. But through the haze he saw the shadow of one
+      figure tramping furiously to and fro, and through the thick air the voice
+      of another figure came muffled and harsh. For Katrina, having chased away
+      with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel and was
+      saying&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter&mdash;this Naomi of yours&mdash;that
+      she has recovered her speech and hearing! When did that happen, pray? No
+      answer? Ah, I see, you are tired of the deception. You kept it up well
+      between you. But is she still blind? So? Dear me! Blind, poor child. Think
+      of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless on the same
+      place, holding the seal in his hand. And Ben Aboo, in his restless
+      tramping up and down, came to him again, and said, &ldquo;Why are you a Jew,
+      Israel ben Oliel? The dogs of your people hate you. Witness to the
+      Prophet! Resign yourself! Turn Muslim, man&mdash;what's to hinder you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Israel made no reply. But Ben Aboo continued: &ldquo;Listen! The people
+      about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all you are the best
+      servant I have ever had. Say the Kelmah, and I'll make you my Khaleefa. Do
+      you hear?&mdash;my Khaleefa, with power equal to my own. Man, why don't
+      you speak? Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; said Israel&mdash;he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced
+      calmness&mdash;&ldquo;Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that&mdash;this
+      hand of mine shall never seal that warrant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut, man!&rdquo; whispered Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Do your new measles break out everywhere?
+      Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his
+      great resolve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; he said again calmly and quietly, &ldquo;if you were Sultan and could
+      make me your Vizier, I would not do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo; &ldquo;why? why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;I am here to deliver up your seal to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You? Grace of God!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am here,&rdquo; continued Israel, as calmly as before, &ldquo;to resign my office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Man, man, are
+      you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Basha, not to-day,&rdquo; said Israel quietly. &ldquo;I must have been that when
+      I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his anger,
+      his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel with
+      torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and terrible
+      thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers under his
+      breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and said, &ldquo;There is
+      something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let me think!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown
+      white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct of
+      a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, &ldquo;What does
+      it mean? What does it mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; he
+      cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people
+      about him. &ldquo;Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez? The
+      Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I knew
+      it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought him.
+      Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread should
+      spy and pry on me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for
+      no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and
+      protests. &ldquo;O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.
+      Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites&mdash;his thieves,
+      his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib
+      es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want
+      to squeeze me of my little wealth&mdash;my just savings&mdash;my hard
+      earnings after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O
+      Merciful! O Compassionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by
+      the beard of my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it.
+      I'm an old soldier&mdash;they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the
+      jellab&mdash;but I'll stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd
+      er-Rahman hate me? It's because I'm his brother&mdash;that's it, that's
+      it! But I've never risen against him. Never, never! I've paid him all!
+      All! I tell you I've paid everything. I've got nothing left. You know it
+      yourself, Israel, you know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded and
+      entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary and
+      tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up at length,
+      with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if anything had
+      been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the
+      service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of
+      the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty, and
+      rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as slowly
+      and calmly as at first, &ldquo;Basha, have no fear; I have not sold myself to
+      Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez&mdash;but not to see the
+      Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing of me. I
+      know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for myself
+      alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the
+      other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made what
+      poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he had just
+      betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's steadfast
+      face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn of his own
+      words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of braggadocio, and
+      to make believe that they had been no more than a humorous pretence, and
+      that no man would be so simple as to think he had truly meant them. But,
+      after this mockery, he turned to Israel again, and, being relieved of his
+      fears, he fell back to his savage mood once more, without disguise and
+      without shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray, sir,&rdquo; said he, with a ghastly smile, &ldquo;what riches have you
+      gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None,&rdquo; said Israel shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with
+      Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And pray, again,&rdquo; he said, with a curl of the lip, &ldquo;without office and
+      without riches how may you hope to live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a poor man among poor men,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;serving God and trusting to
+      His mercy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel stood
+      quiet and silent, and gave no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serving God is hard bread,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serving the devil is crust!&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed it,
+      the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah! What do you mean?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Who are you that you dare wag your
+      insolent tongue at me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am your scapegoat, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel, with an awful calm&mdash;&ldquo;your
+      scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people. Your
+      scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them by
+      bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and have
+      long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets among
+      your people&mdash;hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off&mdash;you
+      are up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth,
+      and the mistaken love of all men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the
+      opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy
+      cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose
+      and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his turban
+      two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face to
+      face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke again and
+      said, &ldquo;Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your business
+      nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is your seal.
+      It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these
+      five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as he
+      offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of the
+      patio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most
+      merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A
+      prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery
+      his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and
+      lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who said it was the Sultan?&rdquo; he cried again. &ldquo;He was a fool. Abd
+      er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That's it!
+      That's it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of Mohammed
+      himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side to side
+      like a caged and angry beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And if I am a tyrant,&rdquo; he said in a thick voice, &ldquo;who made me so? If I
+      oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain
+      devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false
+      judgments&mdash;what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver
+      dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people
+      that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head did
+      all this? Why, yours&mdash;yours&mdash;Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of
+      the Prophet, I swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he
+      answered calmly and sadly, &ldquo;God's ways are not our ways, neither are His
+      thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His
+      ministers. I thought God's justice had failed, but it has overtaken
+      myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to
+      oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with lips
+      whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan restlessly
+      on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And now, at this
+      last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn in its note of
+      suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said lightly, &ldquo;Ah! I
+      thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its teeth, poor
+      thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the time that you were, madam,&rdquo; said Israel, lifting his heavy eyes
+      upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. &ldquo;Husband,&rdquo; she cried,
+      turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, &ldquo;I hope you now see
+      that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you from the first
+      what would come of him. But no, you would have your own foolish way. It
+      was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him. Yet you would not
+      believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are, you are believing
+      him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I tell you again this
+      man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh, trust him, he's got
+      his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it! He'll be master in
+      Tetuan yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes
+      laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry cry.
+      And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers, who
+      stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, &ldquo;Arabs, Berbers, Moors,
+      Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may, you'll lie in
+      the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile
+      came back into the face of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be right,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah! This
+      is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and I gave
+      him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him place and
+      rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could find no one to
+      serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his enemies, and imprisoned
+      those he hated. After his wife had died, and none came near him, and he
+      was left to howk out her grave with his own hands, I gave him prisoners to
+      bury her, and when he was done with them I set them free. All these years
+      I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya Allah! His master! No, but his servant,
+      doing his will at the lifting of his finger. And all for what? For this!
+      For this! For this! Ingrate!&rdquo; he cried in his thick voice, turning hotly
+      upon Israel again, &ldquo;if you must give up your seal, why should you do it
+      like a fool? Could you not come to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary;
+      I am rich, and have enough; I have served you long and faithfully; let me
+      rest'&mdash;why not? I say, why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel answered calmly, &ldquo;Because it would have been a lie, Basha.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it would,&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo sharply, &ldquo;so it would: you are right&mdash;it
+      would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and
+      say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have
+      sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it is true, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and
+      awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the
+      patio, he said, &ldquo;There is another thing that is true. It is true that on
+      the other side of that wall there is a prison,&rdquo; and, lifting his voice to
+      a shriek, he added, &ldquo;you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel. One
+      step more&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and the
+      threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling throat. If
+      only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of
+      him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble
+      in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort
+      upon his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his
+      ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of rage and
+      fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin, shrieking,
+      bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was the master
+      in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood. But for the
+      strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head wherewith he had
+      guarded him, where would the man be now? In the dungeons of Abd er-Rahman,
+      having gone thither by way of the Sultan's wooden jellabs and his houses
+      of fierce torture. By the mind's eye Israel could see him there at that
+      instant&mdash;sightless, eyeless, hungry, gaunt. But no, he was still here&mdash;fat,
+      sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And good men lay perishing in his prisons,
+      and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself, his
+      servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood he had
+      sweated, stood before him there like an old lion, who had been wandering
+      far and was beaten back by his cubs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should he
+      speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither read nor
+      write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the Shereefean
+      Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should he do so?
+      Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man's house; yet
+      why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully? He had said
+      his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage had been
+      written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then courage!
+      courage!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Husband,&rdquo; cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile to
+      Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, &ldquo;you must scour this vermin out of
+      Tetuan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I
+      will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice
+      of mockery, &ldquo;Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?
+      But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well, and
+      all that's in it, and leave this town as a beggar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel stood unmoved. &ldquo;As you will,&rdquo; he said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are the two women&mdash;the slaves?&rdquo; asked Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At home,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are mine, and I take them back,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he only
+      drew a longer breath, and said again, &ldquo;As you will, Basha.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo's voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. &ldquo;Where is
+      your money?&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;the money that you have made out of my service&mdash;out
+      of me&mdash;<i>my</i> money&mdash;where is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowhere,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a lie&mdash;another lie!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo. &ldquo;Oh yes, I've heard of
+      your charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they?
+      Were they? Were they, I ask?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you say, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I know!&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo; &ldquo;but all you had is not gone that way. You're
+      a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys&mdash;the keys of
+      your house!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel hesitated, and then said, &ldquo;Let me return for a minute&mdash;it is
+      all I ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the woman laughed hysterically. &ldquo;Ah! he has something left after
+      all!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, &ldquo;Yes, madam, I <i>have</i>
+      something left&mdash;after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying, &ldquo;El
+      Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true, madam,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;it is true that I have a treasure
+      there. My daughter&mdash;my little blind Naomi.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is all,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;but it is enough. Let me fetch her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't allow it!&rdquo; cried Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. &ldquo;Make me
+      homeless if you will,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;turn me like a beggar out of your town,
+      but let me fetch my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll not thank you,&rdquo; cried Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She loves me,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;I am growing old, I am numbering the steps
+      of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.
+      Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am
+      yours, and no one save her father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Ah! Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had
+      been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. &ldquo;Trust
+      me,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I know what daughters are. Girls like better things. No,
+      I'll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, &ldquo;Madam, I would
+      rather see her dead at my feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, &ldquo;Don't wag your tongue at your mistress,
+      sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Your</i> mistress, Basha,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;not mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down
+      upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not
+      flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood trickled
+      over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from
+      behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood
+      in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered the
+      patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and how she
+      had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets scarce any one&mdash;even
+      when time sufficed to arrange the scattered thoughts of the Makhazni, the
+      guard at the gate&mdash;could clearly tell. She stood under the arch, with
+      one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly with emotion, and the other
+      hand stretched out to touch the open iron-clamped door, as if for help and
+      guidance. Her head was held up, her lips were apart, and her motionless
+      blind eyes seemed to stare wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had
+      heard the sound of the blow that followed them. Her father was smitten!
+      Her father! Her father! It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes
+      turned to her. Quaking, reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down
+      the patio. Soul and sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind
+      face. What did it all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as
+      if they must burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
+      has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into His
+      world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous flash, as
+      if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which had hung for
+      seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
+      girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips, her
+      brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair before, so
+      full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then but a blank.
+      Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time. This, only this,
+      was she!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been newly
+      born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face, eye to
+      eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light, everything
+      had entered at a blow&mdash;the white glare of the sun, the blue sky, the
+      tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his soldiers, and of
+      the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the fringe of his
+      eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know what vision
+      was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone out from its
+      dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. &ldquo;Oh! oh!&rdquo; she cried,
+      and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The picture of the world
+      seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her eyes with her hands,
+      that she might abolish it altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw everything. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he cried in a choking voice, and stretched
+      out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked, and paused
+      and hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her eyes
+      once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and only
+      listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into her
+      father's arms. And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her to his
+      breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, &ldquo;Madam, we are in the
+      hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His servant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God in
+      the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his
+      maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done
+      before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object of
+      his terror. &ldquo;O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us!
+      Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on
+      them both! Allah! Allah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled
+      together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brava!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long
+      ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well
+      acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of his
+      crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of Naomi,
+      a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the lowest
+      hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and at the
+      next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk
+      barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, 'So shall it be done
+      to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a
+      play-actor and a cheat!' Thus let them pass through the streets and
+      through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then
+      cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      THE RAINBOW SIGN
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great blessing
+      had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed for&mdash;the
+      good and blessed rain&mdash;had come at last. In gentle drops like dew it
+      had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had gathered
+      over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of such
+      moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring down
+      like a flood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!
+      The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and
+      whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which had
+      reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome
+      river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the falling
+      of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The streets and the
+      marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they wandered up and down
+      in the drenching flood, without fear or thought of harm, with laughing
+      eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their palms to the rain and
+      drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of boys, jesting and
+      shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came without aim or
+      direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering like jays, and
+      the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers cried &ldquo;Balak&rdquo; in
+      tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers sat idle at their
+      doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs stood in knots, with
+      faces that shone under the closed hoods of their dark jellabs; and the
+      bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square capered about like
+      flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long guns into the air
+      for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and sometimes embraced
+      each other, thinking of their homes that were far away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that the
+      procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from the Kasbah. At
+      the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and gorgeous&mdash;notwithstanding
+      the rain&mdash;in peaked shasheeah and crimson selham. Behind him were
+      four black police, and on either side of the company were two criers of
+      the street, each carrying a short staff festooned with strings of copper
+      coin, which he rattled in the air for a bell. Between these came the
+      victims of the Basha's order&mdash;Naomi first, barefooted, bareheaded,
+      stripped of all but the last garment that hid her nakedness, her head held
+      down, her face hidden, and her eyes closed&mdash;and Israel afterwards,
+      mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A further guard of black police walked
+      at the back of all. Thus they came down the steep arcades into the
+      market-square, where the greater body of the townspeople had gathered
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from
+      every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent, and
+      booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud
+      exclamations of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!&rdquo; cried the Moors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!&rdquo; cried the people of the Mellah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?&rdquo; they all asked
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to
+      force a passage through the thronging multitude. &ldquo;Attention! By your
+      leave! Away! Out of the way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as they walked the criers chanted, &ldquo;So shall it be done to every man
+      who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a
+      cheat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to look
+      black into each other's face, to mutter oaths between their teeth, and to
+      say in voices of no pity or rush, &ldquo;He deserved it!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ya Allah, but he's
+      well served!&rdquo; &ldquo;Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!&rdquo; &ldquo;Look at him
+      now!&rdquo; &ldquo;There he is at last!&rdquo; &ldquo;Brave end to all his great doings!&rdquo; &ldquo;Curse
+      him! Curse him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
+      of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came
+      still the cry of the crier, &ldquo;So shall it be done to every man who is an
+      enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter, and
+      after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they
+      derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now he
+      seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an imposture.
+      Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To think that they
+      had ever been afraid of him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in a
+      blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of the
+      Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck Israel
+      with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her husband
+      and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel had succoured
+      both when he went about on his secret excursions after nightfall in the
+      disguise of a Moor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak! Balak!&rdquo; cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the
+      crier rang out over all other noises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At every step the throng increased. The strong and lusty bore down the
+      weak in the struggle to get near to the procession. Blind beggars and
+      feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at Israel
+      from the back of the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came
+      out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to the
+      Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house; the other was a company
+      of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and Judah ben
+      Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized the people.
+      They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal progress&mdash;the
+      departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan. The soldier and police fell into
+      the humour of the multitude. Salaams were made to Israel; selhams were
+      flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi. Reuben Maliki pushed through
+      the crowd, and walked backward, and cried, in his harsh, nasal croak&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him! Make way!
+      make way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the
+      hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people's heads a
+      huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and the
+      black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over
+      Israel's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless our Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saviour of his people!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Benefactor! King of men!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing
+      humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned with
+      a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked by the
+      soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the Jews,
+      spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed with
+      bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and at that
+      sight his heart bled and his spirit burred. And, thinking that it was he
+      who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to reach her
+      side and whisper in her ear, and say, &ldquo;Forgive me, my child, forgive me.&rdquo;
+       But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered what God had that day
+      done for her; and taking it for a sign of God's pleasure, and a warranty
+      that he had done well, he raised his eyes on her with tears of bitter joy,
+      and thought, in the wild fever of his soul, &ldquo;She is sharing the triumph of
+      my humiliation. She is walking through the mocking and jeering crowd, but
+      see! God Himself is walking beside her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+      going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow and the
+      concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a
+      stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and
+      said, so that all might hear, &ldquo;Look at the crowds that have come out to
+      speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember
+      this day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you shall!&rdquo; cried Israel. &ldquo;Until your days of death you shall all
+      remember it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his
+      answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts
+      of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and
+      followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice of a brother. They had
+      been insulting calamity itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak!&rdquo; shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the
+      procession moved again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the hour of Israel's last temptation. Not a glance in his face
+      disclosed passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed to be jarring
+      at his ear, &ldquo;Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you have come
+      to this? Were they worth the sacrifice? You might have been rich and
+      great, and riding on their heads. They would have honoured you then, but
+      now they despise you. Fool! You have sold all and given to the poor, and
+      this is the end of it.&rdquo; But in the throes and last gasp of his agony,
+      hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted on the
+      stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper, &ldquo;Be strong.
+      Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done, servant of God,
+      well done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted his
+      head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron of faces
+      black and white. &ldquo;O pity of men!&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;What devil is tempting <i>them</i>?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near to
+      the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no longer
+      falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by sight of a
+      rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately over the arch
+      of the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand in the
+      heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land
+      beyond&mdash;the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged&mdash;God
+      Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life
+      seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First the voice of the crier, &ldquo;So shall it be done to every man who is an
+      enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the voice of the soldier, &ldquo;Balak! Balak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then
+      to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that
+      was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi by
+      the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi were
+      settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north of the
+      town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak which lies
+      on the road to Tangier. From the hour wherein the gates had closed behind
+      them, everything had gone well with both. The country people who lay
+      encamped on the heath outside had gathered around and shown them kindness.
+      One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi's shame, had come behind without a word
+      and cast a blanket over her head and shoulders. Then a girl of the Berber
+      folk had brought slippers and drawn them on to Naomi's feet. The woman
+      wore no blanket herself, and the feet of the girl were bare. Their own
+      people were haggard and hollow-eyed and hungry, but the hearts of all were
+      melted towards the great man in his dark hour. &ldquo;Allah had written it,&rdquo;
+       they muttered, but they were more merciful than they thought their God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer of kind
+      words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered on
+      through the country from village to village, until in the evening, an hour
+      after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made their home. It was
+      a poor, mean place&mdash;neither a round tent, such as the mountain
+      Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone, with its garden in a
+      court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears for his homestead, but an
+      oblong shed, roofed with rushes and palmetto leaves in the manner of an
+      Irish cabin. And, indeed, the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been, who,
+      escaping at Gibraltar from the ship that was taking him to Sidney, had
+      sailed in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the land
+      until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa. Unlike the better part
+      of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and gloomy temper,
+      and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours, and when he died
+      his house had been left alone. That was the chance whereby Israel and
+      Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and unclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and values,
+      yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes only from
+      the hand of God. Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses grew at the
+      foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had first caught
+      the eyes of Israel. For suddenly through the mazes of his mind, where
+      every perception was indistinct at that time, there seemed to come back to
+      him a vague and confused recollection of the abandoned house, as if the
+      thing that his eyes then saw they had surely seen before. How this should
+      be Israel could not tell, seeing that never before to his knowledge had he
+      passed on his way to Tangier so near to Semsa. But when he questioned
+      himself again, it came to him, like light beaming into a dark room, that
+      not in any waking hour at all had he seen the little place before, but in
+      a dream of the night when he slept on the ground in the poor fondak of the
+      Jews at Wazzan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with Naomi;
+      this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to hear and a
+      tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which when he awoke
+      on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in his dream; and now
+      it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass. Israel's heart was
+      full, and being at that time ready to see the leading of Heaven in
+      everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without more ado than
+      such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with Naomi in the
+      place they had chanced upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer
+      until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,
+      lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought
+      to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was poor, but not penniless. Out of the wreck of his fortune, after
+      he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three hundred
+      dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was cast out of
+      the town. These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen. He hired land
+      also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the hand of a
+      neighbour to the market at Tetuan. The rains continued, the eggs of the
+      locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the ground, and Israel
+      found bread for both of them. With such simple husbandry, and in such a
+      home, giving no thought to the morrow, he passed with cheer and comfort
+      from day to day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the
+      loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of his
+      new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always
+      present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his
+      hope. He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed the
+      hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far away
+      under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town lamps
+      sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are yonder,&rdquo; he would think, &ldquo;wrangling, contending, fighting,
+      praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from them
+      by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet odour
+      of God's proper air.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former life
+      was the recollection of Naomi. God had given back all her gifts, and what
+      were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing? They were as dust,
+      they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and riches of gold
+      and silver had been without it. And higher than the joy of Israel's
+      constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now see, and deaf
+      and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was the solemn thought
+      that all this was but the sign and symbol of God's pleasure and assurance
+      to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had been lifted away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man was his
+      delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life. She was like a creature born
+      afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened into a world of strange
+      sights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure. What had happened
+      to her was, after all, a simple thing. Born with cataract on the pupils of
+      her eyes, the emotion of the moment at the Kasbah, when her father's life
+      seemed to be once more in danger, had&mdash;like a fall or a blow&mdash;luxated
+      the lens and left the pupils clear. That was all. Throughout the day
+      whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when they were cast out
+      of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through the country until
+      they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes steadfastly closed. The
+      light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate lids, and gave her pain.
+      When for a moment she lifted her lashes and saw the trees, she put out her
+      hand as if to push them away; and when she saw the sky, she raised her
+      arms as if to hold it off. Everything seemed to touch her eyes. The bars
+      of sunlight seemed to smite them. Not until the falling of darkness did
+      her fears subside and her spirits revive. Throughout the day that followed
+      she sat constantly in the gloom of the blackest corner of their hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world of
+      darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air had been her
+      baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence. Within three days
+      afterwards her terror began to give place to joy; and from that time
+      forward the world was full of wonder to her opened eyes. Then sweet and
+      beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy, were her amazement and delight in
+      every little thing that lay about her&mdash;the grass, the weeds, the
+      poorest flower that blew, even the rude implements of the house and the
+      common stones that worked up through the mould&mdash;all old and familiar
+      to her fingers, but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an
+      angel out of heaven had dropped them down to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise
+      everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life in the
+      cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her on the
+      eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up at him as he
+      stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant, being still in the
+      mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes again, and put out
+      her hand to touch him, did her face brighten with recognition and her lips
+      utter his name. &ldquo;My father,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back to
+      the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower in her
+      hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it in her broken,
+      lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her that there were flowers
+      that could see? Here was one which while she looked upon it had opened its
+      beautiful eye and laughed at her. &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; she asked; &ldquo;what is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A daisy, my child,&rdquo; Israel answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A daisy!&rdquo; she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and quick
+      inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed her nervous
+      fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and then said
+      very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, &ldquo;Oh, yes, so it is; it is
+      only a daisy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with
+      what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a
+      long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside the coast, but
+      from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one
+      day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly at
+      his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, &ldquo;The sky! the sky! Look!
+      It has fallen on to the land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the sea, my child,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea!&rdquo; she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and then
+      opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed out and
+      her beautiful face looked aside, &ldquo;So it is&mdash;yes, it is the sea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her mind
+      were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she mounted
+      the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she walked
+      farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields where
+      lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn by the
+      enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun, until at
+      last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast. Still the wonder
+      of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized upon her sight. The
+      gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless sea-birds. From high up
+      in the rocks above, and from far down in the chasm below, from every cleft
+      on every side, they flew out, with white wings and black ones and grey and
+      blue, and sent their voices into the air, until the echoing place seemed
+      to shriek and yell with a deafening clangour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long hour
+      in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father, she told
+      him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea, and
+      fought in the air and killed each other. &ldquo;And see!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;look at
+      this, and this, and this!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the devilish
+      warfare that she had witnessed and &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said he, lifting one of them,
+      &ldquo;is a sea-bird's feather; and this,&rdquo; lifting another, &ldquo;is a sea-bird's
+      egg; and this,&rdquo; lifting the third, &ldquo;is a dead sea-bird itself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes
+      and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her. &ldquo;Ah
+      yes,&rdquo; she said meekly, looking into her father's eye, with a smile, &ldquo;they
+      are only that after all.&rdquo; And then she said very quietly, as if speaking
+      to herself, &ldquo;What a long time it is before you learn to see!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of
+      Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took
+      shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening, when she
+      had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came
+      back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the
+      sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like
+      fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes, and went down behind the
+      world together, passing out of the earth through the gates of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel listened to her and said, &ldquo;That was the sunset my child. Every
+      morning the sun rises and every night it sets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame at her sweet
+      errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and
+      Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, &ldquo;After all, the eyes are
+      deceitful.&rdquo; Vision was life's new language, and she had yet to learn it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world to
+      be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part of it,
+      the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself
+      alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off
+      with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still, the sea was smooth,
+      the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky was
+      blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little island,
+      which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with heather and
+      long stalks of seeding grass. Through whispering beds of rushes they
+      glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming fishes were at
+      play. Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger at their
+      invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on the pebbles
+      and great stones. It was a morning of God's own making, and, for joy of
+      its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi rose in the
+      boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it played with the
+      rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and embrace it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden
+      knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she
+      knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of
+      the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where
+      they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun's reflected disc on
+      the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and then
+      saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she cried with alarm, &ldquo;a face in the water! Look! look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is your own, my child,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Mine!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reflection of your face,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;the light and the water make
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly in this
+      thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at
+      her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and
+      asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had
+      grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was like
+      a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child in her
+      unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at rest she
+      leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How beautiful!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;how beautiful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water was
+      the wonder of her dancing eyes. &ldquo;Oh! how very beautiful!&rdquo; she cried
+      without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke and
+      her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed again
+      with a heart of glee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all his
+      sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he could
+      not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long the pain and
+      shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny himself this
+      choking rapture of her recovery. &ldquo;Live on like a child always, little
+      one,&rdquo; he thought; &ldquo;be a child as long as you can, be a child for ever, my
+      dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that I myself should be a
+      child at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly some
+      new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the earth seemed
+      to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the flowers. Also
+      she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with as little shame
+      and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery dawned that drops
+      on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and when it has covered
+      her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still. Nay, she was a child
+      a second time, for while she had been blind she had seemed for a little
+      while to become a woman in the awful revelation of her infirmity and
+      isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden no longer, but a
+      reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of human sunlight
+      gathering sunshine into her father's house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the better
+      part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length in rare
+      perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but voice was
+      the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so deep, so soft a
+      voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never heard before.
+      Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete with sparkling
+      life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart. All day long Naomi
+      used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was still singing when
+      she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her, they came first upon
+      the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across the fields, and
+      sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their hut. Often she
+      seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and only known to be
+      there by the outbursts of its song.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely from
+      her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her
+      favourite song was still her mother's:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Oh, come and claim thine own,
+     Oh, come and take thy throne,
+     Reign ever and alone
+     Reign glorious, golden Love.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper
+      fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was
+      almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a maid
+      and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think of
+      Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was even
+      as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she were
+      walking in the way of its outstretched wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like the
+      drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future would rise
+      up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the rapture, the
+      blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating joy. He knew it
+      must come some day&mdash;perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow. And when it
+      came it would be like a sixth sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In quieter moments&mdash;generally at night, when he would take a candle
+      and look at her where she lay asleep&mdash;Israel would carry his dreams
+      into Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of
+      young motherhood. Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride
+      and joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red
+      fingers fastening on her white bosom&mdash;oh, what a glimpse was there
+      revealed to him!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could not
+      help but feel pain from them also. They had a perilous fascination for
+      him, but he grudged them to Naomi. He thought he could have given his
+      immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give. That was his
+      poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty as a
+      father. He dreaded the coming of that time when another&mdash;some other
+      yet unseen&mdash;should come before him, and he should lose the daughter
+      that was now his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross like
+      a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour it was gone.
+      The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense but wonder. Once
+      she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of something which she
+      believed to have happened to her in the night. She had been carried away
+      from him&mdash;she could not say when&mdash;and she knew no more until she
+      found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed with tiles. Men were
+      standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white kaftans. And
+      before them all was one old man in garments that were of the colour of the
+      afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells, a curling silver
+      knife at his waistband, and little leather bags hung by yellow cords about
+      his neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing cruel face; and
+      she herself, Naomi&mdash;alone her father being nowhere near&mdash;stood
+      in the midst with all eyes upon her. What happened next she did not know,
+      for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in that interval they who had
+      taken her away must have brought her back. For when she opened her eyes
+      she was in her own bed, and the things of their little home were about
+      her, and her father's eyes were looking down at her, and his lips were
+      kissing her, and the sun was shining outside, and the birds were singing,
+      and the long grass was whispering in the breeze, and it was the same as if
+      she had been asleep during the night and was just awakening in the
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a dream, my child,&rdquo; said Israel, thinking only with how vivid a
+      sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight the picture
+      of that day at the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dream!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;no, no! I <i>saw</i> it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt of her own
+      people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch of their hands or
+      the sound of their voices. By one of these she had always known them, and
+      sometimes it had been her mother's arms that had been about her, and
+      sometimes her father's lips that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes
+      Ali's voice that had rung in her ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both of her
+      dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart, &ldquo;She is a child, a
+      child born into life as a maid, and without the strength of a child's
+      weakness. Oh! great is the wisdom which orders it so that we come into the
+      world as babes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus realising Naomi's childishness, Israel kept close guard and watch
+      upon her afterwards. But if she was a gleam of sunlight in his lonely
+      dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found her
+      near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a passing
+      traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out
+      of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was
+      gazing full into the man's gross face, answering his evil questions with
+      the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between them;
+      and in a moment he had torn Naomi away. And that night, while she wept out
+      her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown her, Israel
+      himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out a new petition to
+      God. &ldquo;O Lord, my God,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;when she was blind and dumb and deaf she
+      was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril from herself for Thy hand
+      did guide her, and in none from the world, for no man dared outrage her
+      infirmity. But now she is a maid, and her dangers are many, for she is
+      beautiful, and the heart of man is evil. Keep me with her always, O Lord,
+      to guard and guide her! Let me not leave her, for she is without knowledge
+      of good and evil. Spare me a little while longer, though I am stricken in
+      years. For her sake spare me, Oh Lord&mdash;it is the last of my prayers&mdash;the
+      last, O Lord, the last&mdash;for her sake spare me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      God did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers
+      came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The
+      release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had
+      become known by the blind gratitude of one of them, who, hastening to
+      Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL IN PRISON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Short as the time was&mdash;some three months and odd days&mdash;since the
+      prison at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had
+      sealed without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied by
+      other prisoners. The remoteness of the town in the territory of the
+      Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis, had made the old fortress
+      a favourite place of banishment to such Kaids of other provinces as looked
+      for heavier ransoms from the relatives of victims, because the locality of
+      their imprisonment was unknown or the danger of approaching it was
+      terrible. And thus it happened that some fifty or more men and boys from
+      near and far were already living in the dungeon from which Israel and Ali
+      together had set the other prisoners free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from Naomi
+      and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa. &ldquo;Ya Allah!
+      Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his pups!&rdquo; said
+      Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel to the Kaid of
+      Shawan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning of the
+      second day after his arrest. The sun was shining as he approached the rude
+      old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down to the dungeon.
+      In a little court at the door of the place the Kaid el habs, the jailer,
+      was sitting on a mattress, which served him for chair by day and bed by
+      night. He was amusing himself with a ginbri, playing loud and low
+      according as the tumult was great or little which came from the other side
+      of a barred and knotted doorway behind him, some four feet high, and
+      having a round peephole in the upper part of it. On the wall above hung
+      leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Israel's approach there were some facetious comments between the jailer
+      and the guard. Why the ginbri? Was he practising for the fires of
+      Jehinnum? Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon? Well, what was a man to do
+      while the dogs inside were snarling? Were the thongs for the correction of
+      persons lacking understanding? Why, yes; everybody knew their old saying,
+      &ldquo;A hint to the wise, a blow to the fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A bunch of great keys rattled, the low doorway was thrown open, Israel
+      stooped and went in, the door closed behind him, the footsteps of the
+      guard died away, and the twang of the ginbri began again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prison was dark and noisome, some sixty feet long by half as many
+      broad, supported by arches resting on rotten pillars, lighted only by
+      narrow clefts at either hand, exuding damp from its walls, dropping
+      moisture from its roof, its air full of vermin, and its floor reeking of
+      filth. And only less horrible than the prison itself was the condition of
+      the prisoners. Nearly all wore iron fetters on their legs, and some were
+      shackled to the pillars. At one side a little group of them&mdash;they
+      were Shereefs from Wazzan&mdash;were conversing eagerly and gesticulating
+      wildly; and at the other side a larger company&mdash;they were Jews from
+      Fez&mdash;were languidly twisting palmetto leaves into the shape of
+      baskets. Four Berbers at the farther end were playing cards, and two Arabs
+      that were chained to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a
+      battered old draughtboard between them. From both groups of players came
+      loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation and of
+      indignant and sarcastic comment. Down went the cards with triumphant
+      bangs, and the moves of the &ldquo;dogs&rdquo; were like lightning. First a mocking
+      voice: &ldquo;<i>You</i> call yourself a player! There!&mdash;there!&mdash;there!&rdquo;
+       Then a meek, piping tone: &ldquo;So&mdash;so&mdash;verily, you are my master.
+      Well, let us praise Allah for your wisdom.&rdquo; But soon a wild burst of
+      irony: &ldquo;You are like him who killed the dog and fell into the river. See!
+      thus I teach you to boast over your betters! I shave your beard! There!&mdash;there!&mdash;and
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of light
+      from the clefts at the ends might fall on them&mdash;a barber-doctor was
+      bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. &ldquo;We're all having it done,&rdquo; he
+      was saying. &ldquo;It's good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of
+      pilgrims once.&rdquo; A wild-looking creature sat in a corner&mdash;he was a
+      saint, a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa&mdash;rocking himself to and
+      fro, and crying &ldquo;Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!&rdquo; Near to this
+      person a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his
+      prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa,
+      brotherhood&mdash;a juggler who had travelled through the country with a
+      lion by a halter&mdash;was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn
+      to a tune that he had heard on the coast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the companions
+      that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in the clamour of
+      their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The prisoners knew him,
+      and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every mouth was agape.
+      Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind him. He looked around,
+      made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer vainly through the darkness
+      for bed or mattress, and then sat down helplessly by a pillar on the
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of
+      bread. &ldquo;Hungry, brother? No?&rdquo; said the youth. &ldquo;Cheer up, Sidi! No good
+      letting the donkey ride on your head!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This person was the Irishman of the company&mdash;a happy, reckless,
+      facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing for
+      his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs on
+      every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     El Arby was a black man
+     They called him &ldquo;'Larby Kosk:&rdquo;
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. &ldquo;Stay here,&rdquo;
+       he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was quelled;
+      &ldquo;never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.&rdquo;
+       After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither insult nor tyranny
+      had availed to force a word or a cry out of him. He had walked on in
+      silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the faces of his guard, and
+      never breaking his fast save with a draught of water by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by their
+      own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a number
+      of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was a wild
+      and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of the
+      prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild shouts as
+      each one found his own. &ldquo;Blessed be God! She's here! here!&rdquo; Then the
+      maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come. &ldquo;My Ayesha!
+      Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?&rdquo; After that the
+      shrieks of despair from such as learned that their breadwinners were dying
+      off one by one. &ldquo;Dead, you say?&rdquo; &ldquo;Dead!&rdquo; &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, yes!&rdquo; &ldquo;No, no, I
+      say!&rdquo; &ldquo;I say yes! God forgive me! died last week. But don't you die too.
+      Here take this bag of zummetta.&rdquo; Then inquiries after absent children.
+      &ldquo;Little Selam, where is he?&rdquo; &ldquo;Begging in Tetuan.&rdquo; &ldquo;Poor boy! poor boy! And
+      pretty M'barka, what of her?&rdquo; &ldquo;Alas! M'barka's a public woman now in
+      Hoolia's house at Marrakesh. No, don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child
+      was driven to it. What were we to do with the children crying for bread?
+      And then there was nothing to fetch you this journey, Jellali.&rdquo; &ldquo;I'll not
+      eat it now it's brought. My boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah!
+      May the Kaid that keeps me here roast alive in the fires of hell!&rdquo; Then,
+      apart in one quiet corner, a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the
+      lap of his beautiful young wife. &ldquo;You'll not be long coming again,
+      dearest?&rdquo; he whispers. She wipes her eyes and stammers, &ldquo;No&mdash;that is&mdash;well&mdash;&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;What's amiss?&rdquo; &ldquo;Ali, I must tell you&mdash;&rdquo; &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; &ldquo;Old Aaron Zaggoory
+      says I must marry him, or he'll see that both of us starve.&rdquo; &ldquo;Allah! And
+      you&mdash;<i>you</i>?&rdquo; &ldquo;Don't look at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on
+      me, and whatever happens I&mdash;I can love nobody else.&rdquo; &ldquo;Curses on Aaron
+      Zaggoory! Curses on you! Curses on everybody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this 'Larby the negro
+      swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of bread&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Rusks are good and kiks are sweet
+     And kesksoo is both meat and drink;
+     It's this for now, and that for then,
+     But khalia still for married men.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're like me, Sidi,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you want nothing,&rdquo; and he made an upward
+      movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence. That was
+      the gay rascal's way of saying that he stole from the bags of his comrades
+      while they slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No? Fasting yet?&rdquo; he said, and went off singing as he came&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     It will make your ladies love you;
+     It will make them coo and kiss&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; he shouted to some one across the prison &ldquo;eating khalia in the
+      bird-cage? Bad, bad, bad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All this came to Israel's mind through thick waves of half-consciousness,
+      but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air of the place must
+      have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he had first placed
+      himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow eyes he gazed at
+      everything, but nothing did he see. Sometimes he had the look of one who
+      listens, but never did he hear. Thus in silence and languor he passed from
+      day to day, and from night to night, scarcely sleeping, rarely eating, and
+      seeming always to be waiting, waiting, waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fresh prisoners came at short intervals, and then only was Israel's
+      interest awakened. One question he asked of all. &ldquo;Where from?&rdquo; If they
+      answered from Fez, from Wazzan, from Mequinez, or from Marrakesh, Israel
+      turned aside and left them without more words. Then to his fellows they
+      might pour out their woes in loud wails and curses, but Israel would hear
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strangers from Europe travelling through the country were allowed to look
+      into the prison through the round peephole of the door kept by the Kaid el
+      habs, who played the ginbri. The Jews who made baskets took this
+      opportunity to offer their work for sale; and so that he might see the
+      visitors and speak with them Israel would snatch up something and hang it
+      out. Always his question was the same. &ldquo;Where from last?&rdquo; he would say in
+      English, or Spanish, or French, or Moorish. Sometimes it chanced that the
+      strangers knew him. But he showed no shame. Never did their answers
+      satisfy him. He would turn back to his pillar with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus weeks went on, and Israel's face grew worn and tired. His fellow
+      prisoners began to show him deference in their own rude way. When he came
+      among them at the first they had grinned and laughed a little. To do that
+      was always the impulse of the poor souls, so miserably imprisoned, when a
+      new comrade joined him. But the majesty and the suffering in Israel's face
+      told on their hearts at last. He was a great man fallen, he had nothing
+      left to him; not even bread to eat or water to drink. So they gathered
+      about him and hit on a way to make him share their food. Bringing their
+      sacks to his pillar, they stacked them about it, and asked him to serve
+      out provisions to all, day by day, share and share alike. He was honest,
+      he was a master, no one would steal from him, it was best, the stuff would
+      last longest. It was a touching sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the old eagerness betrayed itself in Israel's weary manner as often
+      as the door opened and fresh prisoners arrived. Once it happened that
+      before he uttered his usual question he saw that the newcomers were from
+      Tetuan, and then his restlessness was feverish. &ldquo;When&mdash;were you&mdash;have
+      you been of late&mdash;&rdquo; he stammered, and seemed unable to go farther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Tetawanis knew and understood him. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said one in answer to the
+      unspoken question; &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; said another; &ldquo;Nor I,&rdquo; said a third, &ldquo;Nor I
+      neither,&rdquo; said a fourth, as Israel's rapid eyes passed down the line of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away without a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked
+      vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo was
+      a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a harlot
+      whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising the entire
+      bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child in the streets was
+      safe, and no woman, whether wife or daughter, whom God had made comely,
+      dare show herself on the roofs. Their own women had been carried off to
+      the palace at the Kasbah. That was why they themselves were there in
+      prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was about a month after the coming of Israel to Shawan. Then his
+      reason began to unsettle. It was pitiful to see that he was conscious of
+      the change that was befalling him. He wrestled with madness with all the
+      strength of a strong man. If it should fall upon him, where then would be
+      his hope and outlook? His day would be done, his night would be closed in,
+      he would be no more than a helpless log, rolling in an ice-bound sea, and
+      when the thaw came&mdash;if it ever came&mdash;he would be only a broken,
+      rudderless, sailless wreck. Sometimes he would swear at nothing and fling
+      out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame hang down his head and
+      mutter, &ldquo;No, no, Israel; no, no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Other prisoners arrived from Tetuan, and all told the same story. Israel
+      listened to them with a stupid look, seeming hardly to hear the tale they
+      told him. But one morning, as life began again for the day in that slimy
+      eddy of life's ocean, every one became aware that an awful change had come
+      to pass. Israel's face had been worn and tired before, but now it looked
+      very old and faded. His black hair had been sprinkled with grey, and now
+      it was white; and white also was his dark beard, which had grown long and
+      ragged. But his eye glistened, and his teeth were aglitter in his open
+      mouth. He was laughing at everything, yet not wildly, not recklessly, not
+      without meaning or intention, but with the cheer of a happy and contented
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel was mad, and his madness was a moving thing to look upon. He
+      thought he was back at home and a rich man still, as he had been in
+      earlier days, but a generous man also, as he was in later ones. With
+      liberal hand he was dispensing his charities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take what you need; eat, drink, do not stint; there is more where this
+      has come from; it is not mine; God has lent it me for the good of all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such words, graciously spoken, he served out the provisions according
+      to his habit, and only departed from his daily custom in piling the
+      measures higher, and in saluting the people by titles&mdash;Sid, Sidi,
+      Mulai, and the like&mdash;in degree as their clothes were poor and ragged.
+      It was a mad heart that spoke so, but also it was a big one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time forward he looked upon the prisoners as his guests, and
+      when fresh prisoners came to the prison he always welcomed them as if he
+      were host there and they were friends who visited him. &ldquo;Welcome!&rdquo; he would
+      say; &ldquo;you are very welcome. The place is your own. Take all. What you
+      don't see, believe we have not got it. A thousand thousand welcomes home!&rdquo;
+       It was grim and painful irony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel's comrades began to lose sense of their own suffering in observing
+      the depth of his, and they laid their heads together to discover the cause
+      of his madness. The most part of them concluded that he was repining for
+      the loss of his former state. And when one day another prisoner came from
+      Tetuan with further tales of the Basha's tyranny, and of the people's
+      shame at thought of how they had dealt by Israel, the prisoners led the
+      man back to where Israel was standing in the accustomed act of dispensing
+      bounty, that he might tell his story into the rightful ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're always crying for you,&rdquo; said the Tetawani; &ldquo;'Israel ben Oliel!
+      Israel ben Oliel!' that's what you hear in the mosques and the streets
+      everywhere.' Shame on us for casting him out, shame on us! He was our
+      father!' Jews and Muslimeen, they're all saying so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless. The glad tidings could not find their way. That black page
+      of Israel's life which told of the people's ingratitude was sealed in the
+      book of memory. Israel laughed. What could his good friend mean? Behold!
+      was he not rich? Had he not troops of comrades and guests about him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prisoners turned aside, baffled and done. At length one man&mdash;it
+      was no other than 'Larby the wastrel&mdash;drew some of them apart and
+      said, &ldquo;You are all wrong. It's not his former state that he's thinking of.
+      <i>I</i> know what it is&mdash;who knows so well as I? Listen! you hear
+      his laughter! Well, he must weep, or he will be mad for ever. He must be
+      <i>made</i> to weep. Yes, by Allah! and I must do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the prisoners
+      tied up their cotton headkerchiefs and lay down to sleep, 'Larby sat
+      beside Israel's place with sighs and moans and other symptoms of a
+      dejected air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidi, master,&rdquo; he faltered, &ldquo;I had a little brother once, and he was
+      blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother's son. But you wouldn't think how
+      happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi he never missed anything, and so
+      his little face was like laughing water! By Allah! I loved that boy better
+      than all the world! Women? Why&mdash;well, never mind! He was six and I
+      was eighteen, and he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over, Sidi,
+      and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn't see. Well a
+      bleeder came from Soos&mdash;curse his great-grandfather! Looked at little
+      Hosain&mdash;'Scales!' said he&mdash;burn his father! Bleed him and he'll
+      see! So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for a minute&mdash;half
+      a minute! 'Oh, 'Larby,' he cried&mdash;I was holding him; then he&mdash;he&mdash;'
+      'Larby,' he cried faint, like a lamb that's lost in the mountains&mdash;and
+      then&mdash;and then&mdash;'Oh, oh, 'Larby,' he moaned Sidi, Sidi, I <i>paid</i>
+      that bleeder&mdash;there and then&mdash;<i>this</i> way! That's why I'm
+      here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lie, but 'Larby acted it so well that his voice broke in his
+      throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect on Israel himself was strange and even startling. While 'Larby
+      was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling: &ldquo;Where? When?
+      Naomi!&rdquo; as if grappling for lost treasures in an ebbing sea. And when
+      'Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. &ldquo;And you are weeping for
+      that?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;You think it much that the sweet child is dead&mdash;God
+      rest him! So it is to the like of you, but look at me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries. &ldquo;Look at me! Am I
+      weeping? No; I would scorn to weep. But I have more cause a thousandfold.
+      Listen! Once I was rich; but what were riches without children? Hard bread
+      with no water for sop. I asked God for a child. He gave me a daughter; but
+      she was born blind and dumb and deaf. I asked God to take my riches and
+      give her hearing. He gave her hearing; but what was hearing without
+      speech? I asked God to take all I had and give her speech. He gave her
+      speech, but what was speech without sight? I asked God to take my place
+      from me and give her sight. He gave her sight, and I was cast out of the
+      town like a beggar. What matter? She had all, and I was forgiven. But when
+      I was happy, when I was content, when she filled my heart with sunshine,
+      God snatched me away from her. And where is she now? Yonder, alone,
+      friendless, a child new-born into the world at the mercy of liars and
+      libertines. And where am I? Here, like a beast in a trap, uttering
+      abortive groans, toothless, stupid, powerless, mad. No, no, not mad,
+      either! Tell me, boy, I am not mad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling like a drowning
+      man. &ldquo;Yet I do not weep,&rdquo; he cried in a thick voice. &ldquo;God has a right to
+      do as He will. He gave her to me for seventeen years. If she dies she'll
+      be mine again soon. Only if she lives&mdash;only if she falls into evil
+      hands&mdash;Tell me, <i>have</i> I been mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave no time for an answer. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he cried, and the name broke in
+      his throat. &ldquo;Where are you now? What has&mdash;who have&mdash;your father
+      is thinking of you&mdash;he is&mdash;No, I will not weep. You see I have a
+      good cause, but I tell you I will never weep. God has a right&mdash;Naomi!&mdash;Na&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly he rose
+      and cried in an awful voice, &ldquo;Oh, I'm a fool! God has done nothing for me.
+      Why should I do anything for God? He has taken all I had. He has taken my
+      child. I have nothing more to give Him but my life. Let Him take that too.
+      Take it, I beseech Thee!&rdquo; he cried&mdash;the vault of the prison rang&mdash;&ldquo;Take
+      it, and set me free!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place, and was sobbing
+      like a little child. The other prisoners had risen in their amazement, and
+      'Larby, who was shedding hot tears over his cold ones, was capering down
+      the floor, and singing, &ldquo;El Arby was a black man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot into
+      the dark place. The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier, who carried an
+      order for Israel's release. Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, was to keep the
+      feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo, to celebrate the visit, had
+      pardoned Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was coals of fire on Israel's head. &ldquo;God is good,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;I
+      shall see her again. Yes, God has a right to do as He will. I shall see
+      her soon. God is wise beyond all wisdom. I must lose no time. Jailer can I
+      leave the town to-night? I wish to start on my journey. To-night?&mdash;yes,
+      to-night! Are the gates open? No? You will open them? You are very good.
+      Everybody is very good. God is good. God is mighty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late intemperate
+      outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, &ldquo;A man's a
+      fool when he loses his only child. I don't mean by death. Time heals that.
+      But the living child&mdash;oh, it's an unending pain! You would never
+      think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her
+      voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was very
+      fond of the little one&mdash;I was quite miserable if I lost sight of her
+      for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must hasten back.
+      The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well she'll be looking
+      out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in the morning. It's
+      always the way of these tender creatures, is it not? So we must humour
+      them. Yes, yes, that's so that's so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief
+      knotted under his chin&mdash;gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light
+      of the jailer's lantern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, brothers!&rdquo; he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and
+      brought it to their breasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farewell, master!&rdquo; &ldquo;Peace, Sidi!&rdquo; &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo; &ldquo;Peace!&rdquo; &ldquo;Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps dying away
+      outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then silence&mdash;empty
+      and ghostly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a
+      croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     El Arby was a black man,
+     They called him &ldquo;'Larby Kosk;&rdquo;
+      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel
+      lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which
+      she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them, she
+      sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil which
+      had befallen her, but with her father's warning voice and his last words
+      in her ear: &ldquo;Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay
+      here. I will come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and
+      fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she
+      knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of
+      this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she
+      was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look to
+      her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink beside her,
+      but no skill to make and take them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother has been
+      swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom. It was not so
+      much love as loss. What to do, where to look, which way to turn first, she
+      knew no longer, and could not think, for lack of the hand that had been
+      wont to guide her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi, and some of
+      the women among them came to see her. They were poor farming people,
+      oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things they saw were the
+      cattle and sheep, and the next thing was the simple girl with the
+      child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways wherein a lonely woman must
+      fend for herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot live here alone, my daughter,&rdquo; they said; &ldquo;you would perish.
+      Then think of the danger&mdash;a child like you, with a face like a
+      flower! No, no, you must come to us. We will look to you like one of our
+      own, and protect you from evil men. And as for the creatures&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he said I was never to leave this place,&rdquo; said Naomi. &ldquo;'Stay here,'
+      he said; 'whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and
+      murdered. It was in vain. Naomi's answer was always the same: &ldquo;He told me
+      to stay here, and surely I must do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger. &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; they
+      thought, &ldquo;what should we want with the Jew child? Allah! Was there ever
+      such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too! And as for her
+      father, he'll never come back&mdash;never. Trust the Basha for that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness,
+      they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple offices&mdash;milking
+      and churning, and baking and delving&mdash;in pity of the sweet girl with
+      the great eyes who had been left to live alone. And Naomi, seeing her
+      helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy it, so that in a
+      little while she was able to do for herself nearly everything that her
+      neighbours at first did for her. Then they would say among themselves,
+      &ldquo;Allah! she's not such a baby after all; and if she wasn't quite so
+      beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn't so wicked&mdash;but then,
+      God is great! God is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her father
+      had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp alight
+      by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under the dropping
+      eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the radiance of the
+      sun she had whispered to herself and said, &ldquo;He will come back, Naomi; only
+      wait, only wait; maybe it will be tonight, maybe it will be to-day; you
+      will see, you will see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon her
+      as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been
+      there, her old content in her father's command that she should never leave
+      that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing. If the Kaid finds him
+      in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom. That will come
+      to the same thing in the end, or he'll die in prison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought she
+      did not listen. And though it was little she understood of Kaids and
+      ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father's peril, and at
+      length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she
+      should and must. With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind of a
+      child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman, and
+      her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and love
+      were born in it. &ldquo;He must be starving in prison,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;and I will
+      take him food.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in
+      consternation and horror. &ldquo;God be gracious to my father!&rdquo; they cried.
+      &ldquo;Shawan? You? Alone? Child, you'll be lost, lost&mdash;worse, a thousand
+      times worse! Shoof! you're only a baby still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as
+      their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it. &ldquo;He must be
+      starving in prison,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I will take him food.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah!&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;who would have believed it, that the little
+      pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey. She saved
+      up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the country;
+      also she churned some butter in the simple way which the women had taught
+      her, and put the milk that was left in a goat's-skin. In three days she
+      was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf panniers of a
+      mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got up before them
+      on the front of the burda, after the manner of the wives whom she had seen
+      going past to market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild
+      errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. &ldquo;Keep to the track
+      as far as Tetuan,&rdquo; they said to her, &ldquo;and then ask for the road to
+      Shawan.&rdquo; One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a way that
+      it might cover her face. &ldquo;Faces like yours are not for the daylight,&rdquo; the
+      old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her journey. The women
+      watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up to the fondak, and
+      then sinks out of sight beyond it. &ldquo;Poor mad little fool,&rdquo; they whimpered;
+      &ldquo;that's the end of her! She'll never come back. Too many men about for
+      that. And now,&rdquo; they said, facing each other with looks of suspicion and
+      envy, &ldquo;what of the creatures?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was
+      awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had
+      thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do
+      so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her, and
+      she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing
+      pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women
+      trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the
+      herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing
+      barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this
+      cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear which
+      had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her neighbour
+      had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as they passed
+      her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood to tingle.
+      They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning of shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward. &ldquo;He
+      is starving in prison,&rdquo; she told herself; &ldquo;I must lose no time.&rdquo; It was a
+      weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything was
+      terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she travelled she
+      came upon men and women and children. It was so strange that all the world
+      was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more people everywhere.
+      That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no house in sight and
+      never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener she wished that the
+      people were not so many; and that was when the children mocked at her
+      mule, or the women jeered at her as if she must needs be a base person
+      because she was alone, or the men laughed and leered into her uncovered
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail. Everything was
+      unlike what she expected. She had thought the world so good that she had
+      but to say to any that asked her of her errand, &ldquo;My father is in prison,
+      they say that he is starving; I am taking him food,&rdquo; and every one would
+      help her forward. Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had
+      reckoned in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours. But no
+      one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill, and
+      fewer still with pity and cheer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast, had flattened
+      the panniers that hung by its side, and made the round cakes of bread to
+      protrude from the open mouth of one of them. Seeing this, a line of
+      market-women going by, with bags of charcoal on their backs, snatched a
+      cake each as they passed and munched them and laughed. Naomi tried to
+      protest. &ldquo;The bread is for my father,&rdquo; she faltered; &ldquo;he is in prison;
+      they say he&mdash;&rdquo; But the expostulation that began thus timidly broke
+      down of itself, for the women laughed again out of their mouths choked
+      with the bread, and in another moment they were gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi's spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front still.
+      To speak of her father again would be to shame him. The poor little
+      illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which, in spite of
+      vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled, since the coming of her
+      sight, to build up in her fresh young soul, were now tumbling to pieces.
+      After all, the world was very cruel. It was the same as if an angel out of
+      the clouds had fallen on to the earth and found her feet mired with clay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a fondak which
+      stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan on the south-western side.
+      The darkness had closed in by this time, and she must needs rest there for
+      the night, but never until then had she reflected that for such
+      accommodation she would need money. Only a few coppers were necessary,
+      only twenty moozoonahs, that she might lie in the shelter and safety of
+      one of the pens that were built for the sleep of human creatures, and that
+      her mule might be tethered and fed on the manure heap that constituted the
+      square space within. At last she bethought her of her eggs, and, though it
+      went to her heart to use for herself what was meant for her father, she
+      parted with twelve of them, and some cakes of the bread besides, that she
+      might be allowed to pass the gate, telling herself repeatedly, with big
+      throbs of remorse between her protestations, that unless she did so her
+      father might never get anything at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go on
+      to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden, and of
+      countless dogs. It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal, and between
+      the twilight and the coming of night certain of the men watched for the
+      new moon, and when its thin bow appeared in the sky they signalled its
+      advent after their usual manner by firing their flintlocks into the air,
+      while their women, who were squatting around, kept up a cooing chorus.
+      Then came eating and drinking, and laughing and singing, and playing the
+      ginbri, and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and quarrelling and
+      fighting, and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel wielded by the keeper
+      of the fondak. With such exercises the night passed into morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi was sick. Her head ached. The smell of rotten fish, the stench of
+      the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs, the
+      grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her light-headed.
+      She could neither eat nor sleep. Almost as soon as it was light she was up
+      and out and on her way. &ldquo;I must lose no time,&rdquo; she thought, trying not to
+      realise that the blue sky was spinning round her, that noises were ringing
+      in her head, and that her poor little heart, which had been so stout only
+      yesterday, was sinking very low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He must be starving,&rdquo; she told herself again, and that helped her to
+      forget her own troubles and to struggle on. But oh, if the world were only
+      not so cruel, oh, if there were anyone to give her a word of cheer, nay, a
+      glance of pity! But nobody had looked at her except the women who stole
+      her bread and the men who shamed her with their wicked eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That one day's experience did more than all her life before it to fill her
+      with the bitter fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Her
+      illusions fell away from her, and her sweet childish faith was broken
+      down. She saw herself as she was: a simple girl, a child ignorant of the
+      ways of the world, going alone on a long journey unknown to her, thinking
+      to succour her father in prison, and carrying a handful of eggs and a few
+      poor cakes of bread. When at length the scales fell from the eyes of her
+      mind, and as she trudged along on her bony mule, afraid to ask her way,
+      she saw herself, with all her fine purposes shrivelled up, do what she
+      would to be brave, she could not help but cry. It was all so vain, so
+      foolish; she was such a weak little thing. Her father knew this, and that
+      was why he told her to stay where he left her. What if he came home while
+      she was absent! Should she go back?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had almost resolved to return, struggle as she might to push forward,
+      when going close under the town walls, near to the very gate, the Bab Toot
+      whereat she had been cast out with her father remembering this scene of
+      their abasement with a new sense of its cruelty and shame born of her own
+      simple troubles, she lit upon a woman who was coming out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Habeebah. She was now the slave of Ben Aboo, and was just then
+      stealing away from the Kasbah in the early morning that she might go in
+      search of Naomi, whose whereabouts and condition she had lately learned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled, but that Naomi
+      had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In another moment the poor
+      frightened girl, with all her brave bearing gone, was weeping on the black
+      woman's breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whither are you going?&rdquo; said Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To my father,&rdquo; Naomi began. &ldquo;He is in prison; they say he is starving; I
+      was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don't know my way; and besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The very thing!&rdquo; cried Habeebah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win emancipation at
+      the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died. Naomi,
+      who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima. That was all. Then her troubles
+      would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her, and her father who
+      was in prison would be set free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant.
+      The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father was
+      everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah's bold promises like a
+      drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father will be let out of prison? You are sure&mdash;quite sure?&rdquo; she
+      asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite sure,&rdquo; answered Habeebah stoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi's hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and her poor
+      little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born
+      worldliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I will turn Muslima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes afterwards she was riding by Habeebah's side into the town,
+      through the Bab Toot across the Feddan, and up to the courtyard of the
+      Kasbah, which had witnessed the beginning of her own and her father's
+      degradation. Then, tethering the beast in the open stables there, Habeebah
+      took Naomi into her own little room and left her alone for some minutes,
+      while she hastened to Ben Aboo in secret with her wondrous news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord Basha,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the beautiful Jewess Naomi, the daughter of
+      Israel ben Oliel, will turn Muslima.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sidi,&rdquo; said Habeebah, &ldquo;I have promised that you will liberate her
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fetch her,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo, &ldquo;and it shall be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah's room and found Naomi there,
+      and heard of the vain hope which had brought her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My sweet jewel of gold and silver,&rdquo; the black woman cried, &ldquo;you don't
+      know what you are doing. Turn Muslima, and you will be parted from your
+      father for ever. He is a Jew, and will have no right to you any more. You
+      will never, never see him again. He will be lost to you&mdash;lost&mdash;I
+      say&mdash;lost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Habeebah, with two of the guard, came back to take Naomi to Ben Aboo. The
+      poor girl was bewildered. She had seen nothing but her father in Fatimah's
+      protest, just as she had seen nothing but her father in Habeebah's
+      promises. She did not know what to do, she was such a poor weak little
+      thing, and there was no strong hand to guide her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They led her through dark passages to an open place which she thought she
+      had seen before. It was a great patio, paved and walled with tiles. Men
+      were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white kaftans.
+      And before them all was one old man in garments that were of the colour of
+      the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells, a silver knife
+      at his waistband, and little leather bags, hung by yellow cords, about his
+      neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing cruel face, and she
+      herself, Naomi, stood in the midst, with every eye upon her. Where had she
+      seen all this before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he committed
+      her father to prison. He cherished schemes concerning her which he did not
+      share with his wife Katrina. But he had hitherto been withheld by two
+      considerations: the first being that he was beset with difficulties
+      arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money than he could
+      find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity that might perchance
+      arise of recalling Israel to his post. Out of these grave bedevilments he
+      had extricated himself at length by imposing dues on certain tribes of
+      Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the Sultan's authority, and by
+      calling on the Sultan's army to enforce them. The Sultan had come in
+      answer to his summons, the Reefians had been routed, their villages burnt,
+      and that morning at daybreak he had received a message saying that Abd
+      er-Rahman intended to keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan. So this
+      capture of Naomi was the luckiest chance that could have befallen him at
+      such a moment. She should witness to the Prophet; her father, the Jew,
+      would thereby lose his rights in her; and he himself, as her sole
+      guardian, would present her as a peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing
+      the boundary of his bashalic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing the
+      news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to Katrina.
+      But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid, so tired,
+      yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the light of
+      the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet mouth of a
+      child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back to his
+      former scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you wish to turn Muslima?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear &ldquo;No,
+      no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with protests
+      and remonstrances. &ldquo;She said so,&rdquo; Habeebah cried. &ldquo;'I will turn Muslima,'
+      she said. Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you say so?&rdquo; asked Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Naomi faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo; and he
+      told her what was the penalty of apostasy. It was death. She must choose
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead
+      with her. Still she saw one thing only. &ldquo;But what of my father?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He shall be liberated,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But shall I see him again? Shall I go back to him?&rdquo; said Naomi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl is a simpleton!&rdquo; said Katrina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is only a child,&rdquo; said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more at her
+      flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments of his
+      women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds, with
+      a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room that was stifling
+      from many perfumes, and certain smaller chambers. The garden was inhabited
+      by a gazelle, whose great startled eyes looked out through the long grass;
+      and the oblong room by a number of women of varying ages, among whom were
+      a matronly Mooress, called Tarha, in a scarlet head-dress, and with a
+      string of great keys swung from shoulder to waist; a Circassian, called
+      Hoolia, in a gorgeous rida of red silk and gold brocade; a Frenchwoman,
+      called Josephine, with embroidered red slippers and black stockings; and a
+      Jewess, called Sol, with a band of silk handkerchiefs tied round her
+      forehead above her coal-black curls, with her fingers pricked out with
+      henna and her eyes darkened with kohl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were Ben Aboo's wives and concubines and captives, whom he had not
+      divorced according to his promise; and when Naomi came among them they did
+      their duty by their master faithfully. Being trapped themselves, they
+      tried to entrap Naomi also. They overwhelmed her with caresses, they went
+      into ecstasies over her beauty, and caused the future which awaited her to
+      shine before her eyes. She would have a noble husband, magnificent
+      dresses, a brilliant palace, and the world would be at her feet. &ldquo;And
+      what's the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?&rdquo; said Sol; &ldquo;look at me!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; said Josephine, &ldquo;there's nothing to choose between them.&rdquo; &ldquo;For my
+      part,&rdquo; said Tarha, &ldquo;I don't see what it matters to us; they say Paradise
+      is for the men!&rdquo; &ldquo;And think of the jewels, and the earrings as big as a
+      bracelet,&rdquo; said Hoolia, &ldquo;instead of this,&rdquo; and she drew away between her
+      thumb and first finger the blanket which Naomi's neighbour had given her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all to no purpose. &ldquo;But what of my father?&rdquo; Naomi asked again and
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations,
+      ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs. &ldquo;Tut!&rdquo; they
+      said, &ldquo;why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan? She would
+      only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their tales,
+      their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon Naomi at
+      last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child. In this
+      hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no occupation
+      but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education but devising
+      new means of pleasing the lust of their husband's eye, no delight than
+      that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but jealousy, no
+      diversion but sporting on the roofs, no end but death and the Kabar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi to the
+      prison, and set Habeebah to guard her. The black woman was in terror at
+      the turn that events had taken. There was nothing to do now but to go on,
+      so she importuned Naomi with prayers. How could she be so hard-hearted?
+      Could she keep her father famishing in prison when one word out of her
+      lips would liberate him? Naomi had no answer but her tears. She remembered
+      the hareem, and cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Ben Aboo thought of a daring plan. He called the Grand Rabbi, and
+      commanded him to go to Naomi and convert her to Islam. The Rabbi obeyed
+      with trembling. After all, it was the same God that both peoples
+      worshipped, only the Moors called Him Allah and the Jews Jehovah. Naomi
+      knew little of either. It was not of God that she was thinking: it was
+      only of her father. She was too innocent to see the trick, but the Rabbi
+      failed. He kissed her, and went away wiping his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rumour of Naomi's plight had passed through the town, and one night a
+      number of Moors came secretly to a lane at the back of the Kasbah, where a
+      narrow window opened into her cell. They told her in whispers that what
+      she held as tragical was a very simple matter. &ldquo;Turn Muslima,&rdquo; they
+      pleaded, &ldquo;and save yourself. You are too young to die. Resign yourself,
+      for God's sake.&rdquo; But no answer came back to them where they were gathered
+      in the darkness, save low sobs from inside the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Ben Aboo made two announcements. The first, a public one, was that
+      Abd er-Rahman would reach Tetuan within two days, on the opening of the
+      feast of the Moolood, and the other, a private one, that if Naomi had not
+      said the Kelmah by first prayers the following morning she should die and
+      her father be cut off as the penalty of her apostasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was occupied
+      by a group of Jews. &ldquo;Sister,&rdquo; they whispered, &ldquo;sister of our people,
+      listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has robbed us of all we had
+      that he may pay for the Sultan's visit. Listen! We have heard something.
+      We want Israel ben Oliel back among us. He was our father, he was our
+      brother. Save his life for the sake of our children, for the Basha has
+      taken their bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we pray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi broke down at last. Next morning at dawn, kneeling among men in the
+      Grand Mosque in the Metamar, she repeated the Word after the Iman: &ldquo;I
+      testify that there is no God but God, and that our Lord Mohammed is the
+      messenger of God; I am truly resigned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she was taken back to the women's apartments, and clad gorgeously.
+      Her child face was wet with tears. She was only a poor weak little thing,
+      she knew nothing of religion, she loved her father better than God, and
+      all the world was against her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Such was the method of Israel's release. But, knowing nothing of the price
+      which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy. Nay, his
+      happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness which hung over
+      his life been lifted away. Any one who had seen him in prison would have
+      been puzzled by the change as he came away from it. He laughed with the
+      courier who walked with him to the town gate, and jested with the gate
+      porter as with an old acquaintance. His voice was merry, his eye gleamed
+      in the rays of the lantern, his face was flushed, and his step was light.
+      &ldquo;Afraid to travel in the night? No, no, I'll meet nothing worse than
+      myself. Others <i>may</i> who meet me? Ha, ha! Perhaps so, perhaps so!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;No evil with you, brother?&rdquo; &ldquo;No evil, praise be God.&rdquo; &ldquo;Well, peace be to
+      you!&rdquo; &ldquo;On you be peace!&rdquo; &ldquo;May your morning be blessed! Good-night!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Good-night!&rdquo; Then with a wave of the hand he was gone into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wonderful night. The moon, which was in its first quarter, was
+      still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead, making a silvery
+      dome that almost obliterated the blue. Rivers were rumbling on the
+      hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance, kine that could not be seen
+      were chewing audibly near at hand, and sheep like patches of white in the
+      gloom were scuttling through the grass before Israel's footsteps. Israel
+      walked quickly, tracing his course between the two arms of the Jebel
+      Sheshawan, whose summits were visible against the sky. The air was cool
+      and moist, and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Oh! the joy of it
+      to him who had lain long months in prison! Israel drank in the night air
+      as a young colt drinks in the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel's heart. &ldquo;I
+      am going to be happy,&rdquo; he told himself, &ldquo;yes, very happy, very happy.&rdquo; He
+      raised his eyes to heaven, and a star, bigger and brighter than the rest,
+      hung over the path before him. &ldquo;It is leading me to Naomi,&rdquo; he thought. He
+      knew that was folly, but he could not restrain his mind from foolishness.
+      And at least she had the same moon and stars above her sleep, for she
+      would be sleeping now. &ldquo;I am coming,&rdquo; he cried. He fixed his eye on the
+      bright star in front and pushed forward, never resting, never pausing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning dawned. Long rippling waves of morning air came down the
+      mountains, cool, chill, and moist. The grey light became tinged with red.
+      Then the sun rose somewhere. It had not yet appeared, but the peak of the
+      western hill was flushed and a raven flew out and perched on the point of
+      light. Israel's breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer step. &ldquo;She
+      will be waking soon,&rdquo; he told himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing&mdash;the wheatear
+      in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the
+      rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth
+      below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like vast
+      spiders' webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat, dogs to bark, kine to
+      low, horses to cross each other's necks, and over the freshness of the air
+      came the smell of peat and of green boughs burning. Israel did not stop,
+      but pushed on with new eagerness. &ldquo;She will have risen now,&rdquo; he told
+      himself. He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door and looking out
+      for him in the sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little thing,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;how she misses me! But I am coming, I am
+      coming!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed since he saw it
+      last. Then it had been like a dead man's face; now it was like a face that
+      was always smiling. And though the year was so old it seemed to be quite
+      young. No tired look of autumn, no warning of winter; only the freshness
+      and vigour of spring. &ldquo;I am going to see my child, and I shall be happy
+      yet,&rdquo; thought Israel. The dust of life seemed to hang on him no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer&mdash;&ldquo;the house of the
+      poor one.&rdquo; The place did not even justify its name, for it was a cinereous
+      wreck. Not a living creature was to be seen anywhere. The village had been
+      sacked by the Sultan's army, and its inhabitants had fled to the
+      mountains. Israel paused a moment, and looked into one of the ruined
+      houses. He knew it must have been the house of a Jew, for he could
+      recognise it by its smell. The floor was strewn over with rubbish&mdash;cans,
+      kettles, water-bottles, a woman's handkerchief, and a dainty red slipper.
+      On the ragged grass in the court within there were some little stones
+      built up into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the ground in
+      lines. A young girl had lived in that house; children had played there;
+      the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits still. &ldquo;Poor souls!&rdquo;
+       thought Israel, but the troubles of others could not really touch him. At
+      that very moment his heart was joyful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was warm, but not too hot for walking. Israel did not feel weary,
+      and so he went on without resting. He reckoned how far it was from Shawan
+      to his home near Semsa. It was nearly seventy miles. That distance would
+      take two days and two nights to cover on foot. He had left the prison on
+      Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset before he reached Naomi.
+      It was now Thursday morning. He must lose no time. &ldquo;You see, the poor
+      little thing will be waiting, waiting, waiting,&rdquo; he told himself. &ldquo;These
+      sweet creatures are all so impatient; yes, yes, so foolishly impatient.
+      God bless them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They answered
+      his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their trouble.
+      Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred dollars which
+      they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he had ransacked
+      their houses and then gone on with his great army, his twenty wives, and
+      fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel hardly knew what
+      they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their story. He was
+      thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi he was to leave
+      Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty, noble, beautiful
+      England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little white island of the
+      sea! His mother's home! England! Yes, he would go back to it. True, he had
+      no friends there now; but what matter of that? Ah, yes, he was old, and
+      the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful gaps. His mother! Ruth!
+      But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name aloud, softly, tenderly,
+      caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on her hair. Then recovering
+      himself, he laughed to think that he could be so childish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place. It
+      was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were
+      picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the
+      voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning
+      under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel that
+      he had not eaten since the previous day. &ldquo;I must have food,&rdquo; he thought,
+      &ldquo;though I do not feel hungry.&rdquo; So he stopped, and the wandering Arabs
+      hailed him. &ldquo;Markababikum!&rdquo; they cried from where they sat within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!&rdquo; Their land was the
+      world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled beans
+      and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a woman,
+      half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while she
+      worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles. Some
+      fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young girl
+      was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and baking cakes
+      on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three stones. All
+      were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On a long journey, brother?&rdquo; said the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, oh no, no,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Only to Semsa, no farther.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you must sleep here to-night,&rdquo; said the Arab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I cannot do that,&rdquo; said Israel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor child,
+      and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of a man to
+      stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient, you know.
+      And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I suppose we must
+      humour them&mdash;that's what I always say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!&rdquo; said the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister,&rdquo; said Israel. &ldquo;Well, peace! Farewell
+      all, farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the
+      darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense black
+      cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness ahead of
+      him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on every side.
+      Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort. The ground
+      seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses. He began to
+      feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke out on his brow,
+      and at length, when the sound of a river came from somewhere near, though
+      on which side of him he could not tell, he had no choice but to stop.
+      &ldquo;After all, it is better,&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;Strange, how things happen for the
+      best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I will get no sleep at
+      all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and to ask and to hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept
+      upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense night
+      between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in a childish
+      way that he might comfort his aching heart. &ldquo;Yes, I must sleep&mdash;sleep&mdash;to-morrow
+      <i>she</i> must sleep and I must watch by her&mdash;watch by her as I used
+      to do&mdash;used to do&mdash;how soft and beautiful&mdash;how beautiful&mdash;sleeping&mdash;sleep&mdash;Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance,
+      the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the
+      borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river,
+      which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was now
+      Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his home
+      near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white walls,
+      and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with the
+      snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange orchards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
+      Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown
+      dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could see
+      now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi's eyes!
+      Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world was new
+      to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far sweeter
+      youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi&mdash;Naomi&mdash;always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as
+      she had appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.
+      But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two
+      months and a half&mdash;it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown
+      from a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big,
+      slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.
+      Nevertheless, he was her father still&mdash;her old, tired, dim-eyed
+      father; and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He
+      could see and hear it all. First Naomi's voice: &ldquo;A bow in the sky&mdash;red,
+      blue, crimson&mdash;oh!&rdquo; Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome
+      darkness: &ldquo;A rainbow, child!&rdquo; Ah! the dreams were beautiful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice&mdash;the voice of his
+      poor dead Ruth&mdash;and to remember the song that she used to sing&mdash;the
+      song she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he
+      was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the
+      street&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he sang
+      it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was making
+      was Naomi's voice and not his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the Sultan's
+      gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping sewers, and
+      there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation that had come
+      out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his face they were
+      shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true, but strong and
+      firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had passed, and he was
+      coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering, infirm old man of
+      eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but after a pause one of
+      them&mdash;Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name was Solomon
+      Laredo&mdash;stepped up and said, &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel, our poor Tetuan is in
+      trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God has punished
+      us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of you; for we have
+      heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of Seedna
+      Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also something
+      they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel, who was to bombard
+      Marteel. But Israel heard very little. &ldquo;I think my hearing must be failing
+      me,&rdquo; he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if that did not greatly
+      matter. &ldquo;And to tell you the truth, though I pity my poor brethren, I can
+      no longer help them. God will raise up a better minister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; cried the Jews in many voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anyhow,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;my life among you is ended. I set no store by
+      place and power. What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand of God
+      I stand.' Shakespeare&mdash;oh, a mighty creature&mdash;one who knew where
+      the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you've not lived in England. Do you
+      know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You remember
+      her&mdash;Naomi&mdash;a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and
+      speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am going
+      to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one will be
+      waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was on
+      every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation stood
+      and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him of
+      some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began to think
+      of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His absence had
+      been so long, and so many things might have happened since he went away.
+      In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain shamble. At nearly
+      every step the body lurched for poise and balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the little
+      rush-covered house ought to be seen. &ldquo;It's yonder,&rdquo; he cried, and pointed
+      it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and its
+      strong rays were in his face. &ldquo;She's there, I see her!&rdquo; he shouted. A few
+      minutes later he was near the door. &ldquo;No, my eyes deceived me,&rdquo; he said in
+      a damp voice. &ldquo;Or perhaps she has gone in&mdash;perhaps she's hiding&mdash;the
+      sweet rogue!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he
+      called in a voice like a caress. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; His voice trembled now. &ldquo;Come to
+      me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!&rdquo; He listened.
+      There was not a sound, not a movement. &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; The name was like a gurgle
+      in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly and simply,
+      &ldquo;She's not here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a slipper
+      covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his face. Dead?
+      Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before&mdash;for himself, for
+      others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him. Death!
+      Oh, oh!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the
+      floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He
+      flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi&mdash;it must be
+      she!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had
+      been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too
+      suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. &ldquo;Where is she laid?&rdquo; he
+      said in a voice of awe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatimah saw his error instantly. &ldquo;Naomi is alive,&rdquo; she said, and, seeing
+      how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, &ldquo;and well, very
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a cry
+      of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what she
+      had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she not
+      here? Lead me to her, lead me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. &ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; she said, weeping, &ldquo;that
+      cannot be.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel steadied himself and waited. &ldquo;She cannot come to you, and neither
+      can you go to her.&rdquo; said Fatimah. &ldquo;But she is well, oh! very well. Poor
+      child, she is at the Kasbah&mdash;no, no, not the prison&mdash;oh no, she
+      is happy&mdash;I mean she is well, yes, and cared for&mdash;indeed, she is
+      at the palace&mdash;the women's palace&mdash;but set your mind easy&mdash;she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
+      and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
+      lived a lifetime in that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The palace!&rdquo; he said in a bewildered way. &ldquo;The women's palace&mdash;the
+      women's&mdash;&rdquo; and then broke off shortly. &ldquo;Fatimah, I want to go to
+      Naomi,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Fatimah stammered, &ldquo;Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fatimah,&rdquo; said Israel, with an awful calm. &ldquo;Can't you see, woman, I have
+      come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not understand?&mdash;I
+      want to go to my daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;but you can never go to her any more. She is in
+      the women's apartments&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen,&rdquo; said Fatimah; &ldquo;only listen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
+      everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. &ldquo;Silence!&rdquo;
+       he cried. &ldquo;What need is there for words? She is in the palace!&mdash;that's
+      enough. The women's palace&mdash;the hareem&mdash;what more is there to
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in all
+      its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. &ldquo;O God!&rdquo; he
+      cried, &ldquo;my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting, starving. I
+      think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home to her. But
+      where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy. Curse her! . .
+      . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not that, whatever
+      happens! But the palace&mdash;the women's palace. Naomi! My little
+      daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn that she
+      was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to see that she
+      loved me! And now the hareem&mdash;that hell, and Ben Aboo&mdash;that
+      libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine&mdash;I
+      wrestled with God for it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
+      his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven, and
+      cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, &ldquo;Kill her, O God! Kill
+      her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of
+      tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned
+      the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way while
+      sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look. Sometimes
+      he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own condition: &ldquo;I
+      am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed my heart in
+      vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh slipped. . .
+      . I am as one whom his mother comforteth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple
+      foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly and
+      tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared to
+      think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer&mdash;always
+      the same&mdash;that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he
+      seemed to hear a voice that cried, &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Here! Israel is here!&rdquo; he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling him.
+      The Kaid was the King. &ldquo;Yes, I will go back to the King,&rdquo; he said. Then he
+      looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt, and tried
+      to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged threads of it.
+      At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he were a master
+      still, &ldquo;Bring me robes&mdash;clean robes&mdash;white robes; I am going
+      back to the King!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty, the
+      Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away, encamped
+      with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment of his army,
+      somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed for eight
+      o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were everywhere
+      afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and nothing was to be
+      heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of the streets, and the
+      hanging of flags and of carpets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum, and
+      crying in a hoarse voice, &ldquo;Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord! Awake!
+      Awake!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds. The
+      sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel of gold
+      down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange orchards lying to
+      the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red rather than yellow,
+      and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above them were crimson
+      rather than white. In the town itself the small red flag that is the
+      Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets of various colours
+      swung on many walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It was
+      a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment of
+      Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their heads&mdash;a
+      big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They poured
+      into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and squeezed
+      their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the air, and
+      shouting as they went, &ldquo;Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is coming!
+      Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
+      perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
+      through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
+      that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
+      himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
+      there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
+      spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file, not hand
+      to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a hundred
+      miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking, or faint
+      or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping blood; the
+      faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines of sweat. And
+      thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight of God's own morning,
+      under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the many-coloured carpets of Rabat,
+      to the Kasbah beyond the market-place. They were Reefians whose homes the
+      Sultan had just stripped, whose villages he had just burnt, whose wives
+      and children he had just driven into the mountains. And they were going to
+      die in his dungeons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's
+      train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
+      human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
+      Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the streets
+      were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban within
+      range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the principal
+      thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their haiks, had
+      already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next, a body of
+      the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the walls to protect
+      the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was coming. Then into
+      the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from their own little
+      quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish people, in their
+      black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and children, carrying
+      banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at tambourines and crying
+      in wild discords, &ldquo;God bless our Lord!&rdquo; &ldquo;God give victory to our Lord the
+      Sultan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the Caliphs
+      of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them with
+      exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar crouching at
+      the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your slippers&mdash;Abd
+      er-Rahman is coming!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed, jostled,
+      and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners were torn out
+      of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their voices were drowned,
+      and finally they were driven back into their Mellah and shut up there, and
+      forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan even from their roofs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
+      having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
+      themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
+      and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the Sultan's
+      train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls, donkeys with
+      packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified old camel. It
+      was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces thrust into white
+      ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and clenched fists uplifted.
+      Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like hyenas, shrill and guttural,
+      piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings, quarrellings, cursings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curses on your grandfather!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah! Allah! Allah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Balak! Balak! Balak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of the
+      Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by the
+      Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were thrust
+      back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the street,
+      and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen who
+      had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused and
+      disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they came up
+      to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs could see
+      them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river, none could
+      help but hear their shouts and oaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
+      camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
+      himself was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
+      their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
+      four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
+      outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And
+      then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him, came
+      the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks, his
+      rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father of
+      Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in gorgeous
+      trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold. Solomon's
+      seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar&mdash;a
+      safeguard against the evil eye&mdash;was suspended from its neck. Its
+      saddle was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups
+      were of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of
+      his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
+      girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
+      transparent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the Kasbah
+      boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his stirrup, and the
+      crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless our Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sultan Abd er-Rahman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God prolong the life of our Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
+      Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to the
+      left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless the
+      people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening acclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All's well, all's well,&rdquo; they told each other, and pointed to the white
+      horse&mdash;the sign of peace&mdash;which the Sultan rode, and to the
+      riderless black horse&mdash;the sign of strife&mdash;that pranced behind
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
+      Sultan with a shrill ululation: &ldquo;Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some of
+      them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
+      coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
+      articulate cries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
+      Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
+      cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
+      State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
+      head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
+      greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem. The
+      ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their heart
+      of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they knew that
+      the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their taxes. Not a
+      man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he saved from
+      dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his messages,
+      nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed only for
+      himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues. And yet his
+      people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,
+      whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind
+      beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he
+      dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet
+      streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses
+      tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk unheard
+      and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold significance
+      passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And this was the
+      way and the word of it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is back in the Kasbah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She has fallen sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is saved
+      from the Sultan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the present, only for the-present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
+      news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ya Allah! well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hark! A footstep on the street&mdash;some one is near&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But quick. Behind the Mahdi&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In peace!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
+      before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
+      state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
+      bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
+      him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all his
+      bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had entered
+      Tetuan that day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like a
+      conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
+      come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under the
+      walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the rabble
+      of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load of
+      kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each man.
+      Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of the
+      market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades. Black
+      jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and story-tellers
+      both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous ginbri, had been
+      seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and their women. But the
+      Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Away!&rdquo; he had cried. &ldquo;Away with your uncleanness and deception.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the indecent
+      gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk off like a
+      pariah dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan were
+      going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of excited
+      spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in line from
+      opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some standing.
+      Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at full gallop,
+      firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length, throwing their
+      barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping back, amid deafening
+      shouts of &ldquo;Allah! Allah! Allah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allah indeed!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without fear.
+      &ldquo;That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and
+      bloodshed. Away, away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he
+      approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for the
+      mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out in
+      all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked men, and
+      one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the Mukaddameen,
+      three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark flowing robes
+      and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive and eaten raw;
+      while women and children; crouching in the gathering darkness overhead
+      looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the frenzy increased
+      among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each fanatic turned upon
+      himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head against the stones
+      until blood ran like water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fools and blind guides!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like
+      sheep. &ldquo;Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the
+      abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but
+      forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away!
+      Away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after various
+      parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding ways of the
+      gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha's presence. The Basha
+      received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his face. Ben
+      Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog with his
+      muzzle on his forepaws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Welcome,&rdquo; he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious
+      posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi did not sit. &ldquo;Ben Aboo,&rdquo; he said in a voice that was half choked
+      with anger, &ldquo;I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to you if
+      you send me away unsatisfied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,
+      &ldquo;What is it now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which
+      his dusky muzzle had rested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, do not lie to me,&rdquo; cried the Mahdi. &ldquo;I know where she is&mdash;she is
+      in prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime
+      but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the
+      other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some
+      half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled about
+      in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and said with
+      an air of mock inquiry, &ldquo;Ya Allah! who is this infidel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, &ldquo;Sir, I know who you are! You
+      come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your
+      purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you were
+      a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here&mdash;my guest and protector.
+      You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin our
+      religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by Allah
+      you shall die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his
+      superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half
+      deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi took
+      a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to
+      death. You dare not and you cannot do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a swagger.
+      &ldquo;What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man need know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Basha,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;do you think you are talking to a child? Do you
+      think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than
+      ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for my
+      return? And do you think, too,&rdquo; he cried, lifting one hand and his voice
+      together, &ldquo;that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on an errand
+      of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I say; you are
+      a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage. But he was cowed. He
+      hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of braggadocio&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what if I do not liberate the girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;if any evil befalls her the consequences shall be
+      on your head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What consequences?&rdquo; said the Basha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse consequences than you expect or dream,&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What consequences?&rdquo; said the Basha again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No matter,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;You are walking in darkness, and do not know
+      where you are going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What consequences?&rdquo; the Basha cried once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is God's secret,&rdquo; said the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo began to laugh. &ldquo;Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,&rdquo; he shouted
+      to his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi. &ldquo;I have delivered my message. Now woe to you,
+      Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come
+      no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison.
+      Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward
+      awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword
+      will reach to your soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where
+      he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, &ldquo;This is the last word
+      that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben Aboo&mdash;I
+      to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt, and death
+      and hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place
+      where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks under
+      a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed through
+      it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the stars before
+      the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, &ldquo;Abd er-Rahman! Abd
+      er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the sound of the trumpet
+      and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me for my country, but
+      the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd er-Rahman! You have
+      filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you, slave of the
+      Compassionate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of the
+      hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But his
+      voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly thing,
+      and no man raised a hand to stop him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Mahdi,&rdquo; they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers
+      of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms,
+      were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from
+      these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos
+      and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the
+      M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret. It
+      was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had
+      visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also of
+      her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as well
+      as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in gasps,
+      without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he listened to
+      her with emotion while the agitated black face was before him, and when it
+      was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of night, a silent man,
+      with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was imprisoned in the dungeons
+      of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father, who supposed that she was
+      living in luxury in the palace of his enemy while he himself lay sick in
+      the poor hut which had been their home. These false notions, which were at
+      once the seed and the fruit of Israel's madness, should at least be
+      dispelled. Let come what would, the man should neither live nor die in
+      such bitterness of cruel error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
+      and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet, the
+      traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's following
+      had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a wonderful night. The
+      air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter, but not a breath of
+      wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the town wall did not
+      send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf. Stars were out and
+      the big moon of the East shone white on the white walls and minarets.
+      Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as in an Eastern city.
+      Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white roofs, and between them
+      were the dark streets going in and out, trailing through and along, like
+      to narrow streams of black water in a bed of quarried chalk. Here or
+      there, where a belated townsman lit himself homeward with a lamp, a red
+      light gleamed out of one of the thin darknesses, crept along a few paces,
+      and then was gone. Sometimes a clamour of voices came up with their own
+      echo from some unseen place, and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep,
+      all was sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Tetuan,&rdquo; thought the Mahdi, &ldquo;how soon will your streets be uprooted and
+      your sanctuaries destroyed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
+      gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the dawn.
+      He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the bare soil
+      outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to be awake. Even
+      their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the circles where they
+      had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled and still saddled,
+      were up and feeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
+      had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
+      were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
+      which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
+      right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected air,
+      a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was one
+      worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare. But
+      so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not until
+      then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on him
+      only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man who for
+      good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled with God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside Israel
+      at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way, telling
+      him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came, and
+      whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a brave
+      show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen clod,
+      whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves of his
+      fingers were also frozen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the head.
+      He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to prison,
+      and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he described
+      the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how she fell
+      into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face that the
+      affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully. At last he
+      recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had yielded at
+      length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child, seeing her father
+      in everything and thinking to save his life, though she herself must see
+      him no more (for all this he had gathered from Fatimah), and then the
+      great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers trembled, and his face
+      twitched, and the hot tears rained down his cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My poor darling!&rdquo; he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he asked
+      in a faltering voice where she was at that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against the
+      fortune intended for her&mdash;that of becoming a concubine of the Sultan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brave girl!&rdquo; he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
+      that was both pride and pain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she could
+      hear: &ldquo;Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old father;
+      forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
+      and said in almost a childish tone, &ldquo;I suppose there is no help for it
+      now, sir. I meant to take her to England&mdash;to my poor mother's home,
+      but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, rising to
+      his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he had
+      thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
+      clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
+      impulse, should at length be carried into effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali's, for the black
+      lad was back in Tetuan. After he had fulfilled his errand of mercy at
+      Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there, with a spirit afire for the
+      wrongs of his master, from whom he was so cruelly parted, he had set
+      himself with shrewdness and daring to incite the Spanish powers to
+      vengeance upon his master's enemies. This had been a task very easy of
+      execution, for just at that time intelligence had come from the Reef, of
+      barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo upon mountain tribes that had hitherto
+      offered allegiance to the Spanish crown. A mission had gone up to Fez, and
+      returned unsatisfied. War was to be declared, Marteel was to be bombarded,
+      the army of Marshal O'Donnel was to come up the valley of the river, and
+      Tetuan was to be taken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely
+      revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was the
+      feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the eighth
+      night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to give a
+      &ldquo;gathering of delight,&rdquo; to the Sultan, his Ministers, his Kaids, his
+      Kadis, his Khaleefas, his Umana, and great rascals generally. Ali's stout
+      heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the Spaniards brought up to the
+      gates of the town, on the very night when the whole majesty and iniquity
+      of Barbary would be gathered in one room; then, locking the entire kennel
+      of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and burning it to the
+      ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like rats in a trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One danger attended his bold adventure, for Naomi's person was within the
+      Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to find his way into the
+      dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate, and deliver up to another
+      the key that should serve as a signal for the beginning of the great
+      night's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah
+      there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment for
+      the siege&mdash;no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely not to
+      lead them blindfold into a trap. To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in
+      search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help in
+      the downfall of his master's enemies by leading the Spaniards at the right
+      moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing Ali's story, the Mahdi had been aflame with tender thoughts of
+      Naomi's trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo's tyrannies, and pity of Israel's
+      miseries. But at first his humanity had withheld him from sympathy with
+      Ali's dark purpose, so full, as it seemed, of barbarity and treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ali,&rdquo; he had said, &ldquo;is it not all you wish for to get Naomi out of prison
+      and take her back to her father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sidi,&rdquo; Ali had answered promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don't want to torture these tyrants if you can do what you desire
+      without it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o, Sidi,&rdquo; Ali had said doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; the Mahdi had said, &ldquo;let us try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But when the Mahdi was gone to Tetuan on his errand of warning that proved
+      so vain, Ali had crept back behind him, so that secretly and independently
+      he might carry out his fell design. The towns-people were ready to receive
+      him, for the air was full of rebellion, and many had waited long for the
+      opportunity of revenge. To certain of the Jews, his master's people, who
+      were also in effect his own, he went first with his mission, and they
+      listened with eagerness to what he had come to say. When their own time
+      came to speak they spoke cautiously, after the manner of their race, and
+      nervously, like men who knew too well what it was to be crushed and kept
+      under; but they gave their help notwithstanding, and Ali's scheme
+      progressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than three days the entire town, Moorish and Jewish, was
+      honeycombed with subterranean revolt. Even the civil guard, the soldiers
+      of the Kasbah, the black police that kept the gates, and the slaves that
+      stood before the Basha's table were waiting for the downfall to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi had gone again by this time, and the people had resumed their
+      mock rejoicings over the Sultan's visit. These were the last kindlings of
+      their burnt-out loyalty, a poor smouldering pretence of fire. Every
+      morning the town was awakened by the deafening crackle of flintlocks,
+      which the mountaineers discharged in the Feddan by way of signal that the
+      Sultan was going to say his prayers at the door of some saint's house.
+      Beside the firing of long guns and the twanging of the ginbri the chief
+      business of the day seemed to be begging. One bow-legged rascal in a
+      ragged jellab went about constantly with a little loaf of bread, crying,
+      &ldquo;An ounce of butter for God's sake!&rdquo; and when some one gave him the alms
+      he asked he stuck the white sprawling mess on the top of the loaf and
+      changed his cry to &ldquo;An ounce of cheese for God's sake!&rdquo; A pert little
+      vagabond&mdash;street Arab in a double sense&mdash;promenaded the town
+      barefoot, carrying an odd slipper in his hand, and calling on all men by
+      the love of God and the face of God and the sake of God to give him a
+      moozoonah towards the cost of its fellow. Every morning the Sultan went to
+      mosque under his red umbrella, and every evening he sat in the hall of the
+      court of justice, pretending to hear the petitions of the poor, but
+      actually dispensing charms in return for presents. First an old wrinkled
+      reprobate with no life left in him but the life of lust: &ldquo;A charm to make
+      my young wife love me!&rdquo; Then an ill-favoured hag behind a blanket: &ldquo;A
+      charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has taken instead of
+      me!&rdquo; Again, a young wife with a tearful voice: &ldquo;A charm to make me bear
+      children!&rdquo; A greasy smile from the fat Sultan, a scrap of writing to every
+      supplicant, chinking coins dropped into the bag of the attendant from the
+      treasury, and then up and away. It was a nauseous draught from the
+      bitterest waters of Islam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived by the outward
+      marks of devotion. At the corners of the streets, on the Feddan, by the
+      fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard, there they stood in
+      little groups, crossing their forefingers, the sign of strife, or rubbing
+      them side by side, the sign of amity. It was clear that, notwithstanding
+      the hubbub of their loyalty to the sultan, they knew that the Spaniard was
+      coming and were glad of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Ali waited with impatience for the day that was to see the end of
+      his enterprise. To beguile himself of his nervousness in the night, during
+      the dark hours that trailed on to morning, he would venture out of the
+      lodging where he lay in hiding throughout the day, and pick his steps in
+      the silence up the winding streets, until he came under a narrow opening
+      in an alley which was the only window to Naomi's prison. And there he
+      would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought that besides the
+      comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi, the tramp, tramp, tramp of
+      his footsteps, which once or twice provoked the challenge of the
+      night-guard on his lonely round, would be company to her in her solitude.
+      And sometimes, watching his opportunity that he might be unseen and
+      unheard, he would creep in the darkness under the window and cry up the
+      wall in an underbreath, &ldquo;Naomi! Naomi! It is I, Ali! I have come back! All
+      will be well yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then if he heard nothing from within he would torture himself with a
+      hundred fears lest Naomi should be no longer there, but in a worse place;
+      and if he heard a sob he would slink away like a dog with his muzzle to
+      the dust, and if he heard his own name echoed in the softer voice he knew
+      so well he would go off with head erect, feeling like a man who walked on
+      the stars rather than the stones of the street. But, whatever befell,
+      before the day dawned he went back to his lodging less sore at heart for
+      his lonely vigil, but not less wrathful or resolute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day of the feast came at length, and then Ali's impatience rose to
+      fever. All day he longed for the night, that the thing he had to do could
+      be done. At last the sunset came and the darkness fell, and from his place
+      of concealment Ali saw the soldiers of the assaseen going through the
+      streets with lanterns to lead honoured guests to the banquet. Then he set
+      out on his errand. His foresight and wit had arranged everything. The
+      negro at the gate of the Kasbah pretended to recognise him as a messenger
+      of the Vizier's, and passed him through. He pushed his way as one with
+      authority along the winding passages to the garden where the Mahdi had
+      called on Abd er-Rahman and foretold his fate. The garden opened upon the
+      great hall, and a number of guests were standing there, cooling themselves
+      in the night air while they waited for the arrival of the Sultan. His
+      Shereefian Majesty came at length, and then, amid salaams and
+      peace-blessings, the company passed in to the banquet. &ldquo;Peace on you!&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;And on you the peace!&rdquo; &ldquo;God make your evening!&rdquo; &ldquo;May your evening be
+      blessed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment? No, a thousand times no!
+      While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen and
+      scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup and to laugh and
+      to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel broken and alone in the
+      poor hut which had been described to him, and Naomi lying in her damp cell
+      beyond the wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests
+      entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop
+      in after them with great dishes under huge covers. Then he held a short
+      parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him, and in
+      another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi's prison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down to
+      the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he had
+      never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of all&mdash;the
+      fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by the gift of
+      sight, and would now first look upon <i>him</i>. That he would be the same
+      as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was; that she
+      would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to belie the
+      evidence of the newborn sense&mdash;this was the least of Ali's trouble.
+      By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had haunted him in
+      the days before he left her with her father on his errand to Shawan. He
+      was black, and she would see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,
+      flashed upon his mind. His shame was abject. It cut him to the quick. On
+      the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him since
+      times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood. She had played with
+      him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face. And she was
+      fair as the morning, and he was black as the night! He had come to deliver
+      her. Would she recoil from him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything. But
+      his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose. &ldquo;What matter?&rdquo;
+       he thought. &ldquo;What matter about me?&rdquo; he asked himself aloud in a shrill
+      voice and with a brave roll of his round head. Then he found himself
+      inside the cell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief. Naomi must have
+      been lying at the farther end of it. She spoke when the door was opened.
+      As though by habit, she framed the name of her jailer Habeebah, and then
+      stopped with a little nervous cry and seemed to rise to her feet. In his
+      confusion Ali said simply, &ldquo;It is I,&rdquo; as though that meant everything.
+      Recovering himself in a moment he spoke again, and then she knew his
+      voice: &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Ali,&rdquo; she whispered to herself. After that she cried in a trembling
+      undertone &ldquo;Ali! Ali! Ali!&rdquo; and came straight in the accustomed darkness to
+      the spot where he stood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, gathering courage and voice together, Ali told her hurriedly why he
+      was there. When he said that her father was no longer in prison, but at
+      their home near Semsa and waiting to receive her, she seemed almost
+      overcome by her joy. Half laughing, half weeping, clutching at her breast
+      as if to ease the wild heaving of her bosom she was transformed by his
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said Ali; &ldquo;not a sound until we are outside the town,&rdquo; and Naomi
+      knitted her fingers in his palm, and they passed out of the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors where
+      they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by, and coming into
+      the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle of laughter from the great
+      hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals feasted together. They reached
+      the quiet alley outside the Kasbah (for the negro was gone from his post),
+      and drew a lone breath, and thanked Heaven that this much was over. There
+      had been no group of beggars at the gate, and the streets around it were
+      deserted; but in the distance, far across the town in the direction of the
+      Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel, they heard a low hum as
+      of vast droves of sheep. The Spaniard was coming, and the townsmen were
+      going out to meet him. Casual passers-by challenged them, and though Ali
+      knew that even if recognised they had nothing to fear from the people, yet
+      more than once his voice trembled when he answered, and sometimes with a
+      feeling of dread he turned to see that no one was following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame of
+      that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door of
+      Naomi's prison. By the light of the lamps in the hands of the passers-by
+      Naomi was looking at him. Again and again, as the glare fell for an
+      instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face. At such moments he
+      thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them
+      seemed wider. But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head
+      aside, and hastened on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matter about me?&rdquo; he whispered again. But the brave word brought him
+      no comfort. &ldquo;Now she's looking at my hand,&rdquo; he told himself, but he could
+      not draw it away. &ldquo;She is doubting if I am Ali after all,&rdquo; he thought.
+      &ldquo;Naomi!&rdquo; he tried to say with averted head, so that once again the sound
+      of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and he could
+      not speak. Still he pushed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has
+      been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a
+      loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to move
+      and pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of
+      Israel's humiliation and Naomi's shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,
+      came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people. It was the
+      Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the town
+      on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the gates
+      were coming in on the east. The Mahdi himself was locking the synagogues
+      and the sanctuaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lock them up,&rdquo; he was saying. &ldquo;It is enough that the foreigner must burn
+      down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought her,&rdquo; he said breathlessly; &ldquo;Naomi, Israel's daughter,
+      this is she.&rdquo; And then there was a moment of surprise and joy, and pain
+      and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look of the eyes
+      of the three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mahdi looked at Naomi, and his face lightened. Naomi looked at Ali,
+      and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair
+      across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break from
+      her mouth. Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted and her eyes
+      shone. Ali looked at both, and his face twitched and fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was only the work of an instant, but it was enough. Enough for the
+      Mahdi, for it told him a secret that the wisdom of life had not yet
+      revealed; enough for Naomi, for a new sense, a sixth sense, had surely
+      come to her; enough for Ali also, for his big little heart was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matter about me?&rdquo; thought Ali again. &ldquo;Take her, Mahdi,&rdquo; he said
+      aloud in a shrill voice. &ldquo;Her father is waiting for her&mdash;take her to
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lady,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;can you trust me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then without a word she went to him; like the needle to the magnet she
+      went to the Mahdi&mdash;a stranger to her, when all strangers were as
+      enemies&mdash;and laid her hand in his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ali began to laugh, &ldquo;I'm a fool,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Who could have believed it?
+      Why, I've forgotten to lock the Kasbah! The villains will escape. No
+      matter, I'll go back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; cried the Mahdi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear. &ldquo;I'll see to it yet,&rdquo; he
+      cried, turning on his heel. &ldquo;Good night, Sidi! God bless you! My love to
+      my father! Farewell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And in another moment he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the doom
+      that was impending. Squatting on the floor in little circles, around
+      little tables covered with steaming dishes, wherein each plunged his
+      fingers, they began the feast with ceremonious wishes, pious exclamations,
+      cant phrases, and downcast eyes. First, &ldquo;God lengthen your age,&rdquo; &ldquo;God
+      cover you,&rdquo; and &ldquo;God give you strength.&rdquo; Then a dish of dates, served with
+      abject apologies from Ben Aboo: &ldquo;You would treat us better in Fez, but
+      Tetuan is poor; the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!&rdquo; Then fish in
+      garlic, eaten with loud &ldquo;Bismillah's.&rdquo; Then kesksoo covered with powdered
+      sugar and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned fowls, and fowls and
+      olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters, each eaten in its turn amid
+      a chorus of &ldquo;La Ilah illa Allah's.&rdquo; Finally three cups of green tea, as
+      thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many &ldquo;Do me the favour's,&rdquo; and
+      countless &ldquo;Good luck's.&rdquo; Last of all, the washing of hands, and the
+      fumigating of garments and beard and hair by the live embers of scented
+      wood burning in a brass censer, with incessant exchanges of &ldquo;The Prophet&mdash;God
+      rest him&mdash;loved sweet odours almost as much as sweet women.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed down
+      to a warm and flowing brotherhood. Lolling at ease on their rugs, trifling
+      with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries for idleness more
+      than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling on the pavement the
+      carved ends of their silver knife-shields, they laughed and jested, and
+      told dubious stories, and held doubtful discourse generally. The talk
+      turned on the distinction between great sins and little ones. In the
+      circle of the Sultan it was agreed that the great sins were two: unbelief
+      in the Prophet, whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking keef and
+      tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and unquestionable
+      Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five prayers a day,
+      thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the Koran, and as many
+      inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and as for murder and
+      adultery, and bearing false witness&mdash;well, God was Merciful, God was
+      Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors of the great
+      sins. These were terrible. Putting on a profound air, the Vizier, a fat
+      man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco and denied the Prophet
+      had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned in his grave with his
+      face from Mecca. Then the Kaid of Fez, head of the Mosque and general
+      Grand Mufti, led away with stories of the little sins. These were
+      delightful. They pictured the shifts of pretty wives, married to worn out
+      old men, to get at their youthful lovers in the dark by clambering in
+      their dainty slippers from roof to roof. Also of the discomfiture of pious
+      old husbands and the wicked triumph of rompish little ladies, under
+      pretences of outraged innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told, was the
+      conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah. At every fresh
+      story the laughter became louder, and soon the reserve and dignity of the
+      Moor were left behind him and forgotten. At length Ben Aboo, encouraged by
+      the Sultan's good fellowship, broke into loud praises of Naomi, and yet
+      louder wails over the doom that must be the penalty of her apostasy; and
+      thereupon Abd er-Rahman, protesting that for his part he wanted nothing
+      with such a vixen, called on him to uncover her boasted charms to them.
+      &ldquo;Bring her here, Basha,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;let us see her,&rdquo; and this command was
+      received with tumultuous acclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the beginning of the end. In less than a minute more, while the
+      rascals lolled over the floor in half a hundred different postures, with
+      the hazy lights from the brass lamps and the glass candelabras on their
+      dusky faces, their gleaming teeth, and dancing eyes, the messenger who had
+      been sent for Naomi came back with the news that she was gone. Then Ben
+      Aboo rose in silent consternation, but his guests only laughed the louder,
+      until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running with more
+      startling news. Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards; the army of
+      Marshall O'Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan, and their own people were
+      opening the gates to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not
+      need to be detailed. Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to
+      the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of
+      horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark
+      corridors of men carrying torches and flares. There was no attempt at
+      resistance. That was seen to be useless. Both the civil guard and the
+      soldiery had deserted. The Kasbah was betrayed. Terror spread like fire.
+      In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and
+      eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of their
+      disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on the
+      southern side of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman. He remembered that he had
+      treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it. There were
+      fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people. No one
+      knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he had killed
+      the mason who built it. In the dark he found the place, and taking bags in
+      both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his selham, he tried to
+      escape from the Kasbah unseen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and Ben
+      Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground, near the
+      wall of the Kasbah gate. From that dark cell, crouching on the grain,
+      which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds of the
+      night. First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead; then the
+      furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of the crowd.
+      &ldquo;Damn it&mdash;they've given us the slip.&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes; they've crawled off like
+      rats from a sinking ship.&rdquo; &ldquo;Curse it all, it's only a bungle.&rdquo; This in the
+      Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country Ben Aboo heard
+      the guttural shouts of his own people: &ldquo;Sidi, try the palace.&rdquo; &ldquo;Try the
+      apartments of his women, Sidi.&rdquo; &ldquo;Abd er-Rahman's gone, but Ben Aboo's
+      hiding.&rdquo; &ldquo;Death to the tyrant!&rdquo; &ldquo;Down with the Basha!&rdquo; &ldquo;Ben Aboo! Ben
+      Aboo!&rdquo; Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence. &ldquo;Silence, you
+      shrieking hell-babies, silence!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to
+      hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.
+      So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked the
+      Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for the
+      women's apartments, and rattled at their door. It was folly, it was
+      lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone. He could
+      hear the sounds of voices within&mdash;wailing and weeping of the women&mdash;but
+      no one answered his knocking. Again and again he knocked with his elbows
+      (still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw
+      through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood. Still the door
+      remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for company,
+      fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that led to the
+      alley behind the Kasbah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers who were
+      helping her flight. &ldquo;We are safe,&rdquo; she whispered&mdash;&ldquo;they've gone back
+      into the Feddan&mdash;come;&rdquo; and by the light of a lamp which she carried
+      she made for the winding corridor that led past the bath and the sanctuary
+      to the Kasbah gate. But Ben Aboo only cursed her, and fumbled at the low
+      door of the passage that went out from the alcove to the alley. He was
+      lumbering through with his armless roll, intending to clash the door back
+      in Katrina's face, when there was a fierce shout behind him, and for some
+      minutes Ben Aboo knew no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shout was Ali's. After leaving the Mahdi on the heath outside the Bab
+      Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha. When the Spanish soldiers
+      abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search. Up and down he had traversed
+      the place in the darkness; and finding Ben Aboo at last, on the spot where
+      he had first seen him, he rushed in upon him and brought him to the
+      ground. Seeing Ben Aboo down, the black soldiers fell upon Ali. The brave
+      lad died with a shout of triumph. &ldquo;Israel ben Oliel,&rdquo; he cried, as if he
+      thought that name enough to save his soul and damn the soul of Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Ben Aboo was not yet done with his own. The blow that had been aimed
+      at his heart had no more than grazed his shoulder. &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; whispered
+      Katrina, half in wrath; and while she stooped to look for his wounds, her
+      face and hands as seen in the dim light of the lantern were bedaubed with
+      his blood. At that moment the guards were crying that the Kasbah was
+      afire, and at the next they were gone, leaving Katrina alone with the
+      unconscious man. &ldquo;Get up,&rdquo; she cried again, and tugging at Ben Aboo's
+      unconscious body she struck it in her terror and frenzy. It was every one
+      for himself in that bad hour. Katrina followed the guards, and was never
+      afterwards heard of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ben Aboo came to himself the patio was aglow with flames. He
+      staggered to his feet, still grappling to his breast the money-bags hidden
+      under his selham. Then, bleeding from his shoulder and with blood upon his
+      beard, he made afresh for the passage leading to the back alley. The
+      passage was narrow and dark. There were three winding steps at the end of
+      it. Ben Aboo was dizzy and he stumbled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the passage was silent, it was safe, and out in the alley a sea of
+      voices burst upon him. He could hear the tramp of countless footsteps, the
+      cries of multitudes of voices, and the rattle of flintlocks. Lanterns,
+      torches, flares and flashes of gunpowder came and went at both ends of the
+      long dark tunnel. In the light of these he saw a struggling current of
+      angry faces. The living sea encircled him. He knew what had happened. At
+      the first certainty that his power was gone and that there was nothing to
+      fear from his vengeance, his own people had gathered together to destroy
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two small mean houses on the opposite side of the alley, and
+      Ben Aboo tried to take refuge in the first of them. But the woman who came
+      with uncovered face to the door was the widow of the mason who had built
+      his strong-room. &ldquo;Murderer and dog!&rdquo; she cried, and shut the door against
+      him. He tried the other house. It was the house of the mason's son.
+      &ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;I am corrected by Allah! Yes, yes, it is true I
+      did wrong by your father, but forgive me and save me.&rdquo; Thus he pleaded,
+      throwing himself on the ground and crawling there. &ldquo;Dog and coward,&rdquo; the
+      young man shouted, and beat him back into the street.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo's terror was now appalling to look upon. His face was that of a
+      snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick breath,
+      he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where he thought
+      he might find a friend. &ldquo;Alee, don't you know me?&rdquo; &ldquo;Mohammed, it is I, Ben
+      Aboo.&rdquo; &ldquo;See, El Arby, here's money, money; it's yours, only save me, save
+      me!&rdquo; With such frantic cries he raced about in the darkness like a hunted
+      wolf. But not a house would shelter him. Everywhere he met relatives of
+      men who had died through his means, and he was driven away with curses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, a rumour that Ben Aboo was in the streets had been bruited
+      abroad among the people, and their lust of blood was thereby raised to
+      madness. Screaming and spitting and raving, and firing their flintlocks,
+      they poured from street into street, watching for their victim and seeing
+      him in every shadow. &ldquo;He's here!&rdquo; &ldquo;He's there!&rdquo; &ldquo;No, he's yonder!&rdquo; &ldquo;He's
+      scaling the high wall like a cat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo heard them. Their inarticulate cries came to him laden with one
+      message only&mdash;death. He could see their faces, their snarling teeth.
+      Sometimes he would rave and blaspheme. Then he would make another effort
+      for his life. But the whirlpool was closing in upon him; and at last, like
+      one who flings himself over a precipice from dizziness, fears, and
+      irresistible fascination, he flung himself into the middle of the
+      infuriated throng as they scurried across the open Feddan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that moment Ben Aboo's doom was sealed. The people received him with
+      a long furious roar, a cry of triumphant execration, as if their own
+      astuteness at length had entrapped him. He stood with his back to the high
+      wall; the bellowing crowd was before him on either side. By the torches
+      that many carried all could see him. Turban and shasheeah had fallen off,
+      and the bald crown of his head was bare. His face retained no human
+      expression but fear. He was seen to draw his arms from beneath his selham,
+      to hold both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a hand into the
+      necks of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people. &ldquo;Silver,&rdquo; he
+      cried; &ldquo;silver, silver for everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The despairing appeal was useless. Nobody touched the money. It flashed
+      white through the air, and fell unheard. &ldquo;Death to the Kaid!&rdquo; was shouted
+      on every side. Nevertheless, though half the men carried guns, no man
+      fired. By unspoken consent it seemed to be understood that the death of
+      Ben Aboo was not to be the act of one, but of all. &ldquo;Stones,&rdquo; cried
+      somebody out of the crowd, and in another moment everybody was picking
+      stones, and piling them at his feet or gathering them in the skirt of his
+      jellab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Aboo knew his awful fate. Gesticulating wildly, having flung the
+      money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was seen
+      to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips working
+      visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant the
+      stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he reeled
+      under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself like the
+      neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that came from
+      his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and fro, and grunted,
+      with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue lolling out. Faster
+      and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered upon him, darting out of
+      the darkness like swallows of the night. His clothes were rent, his blood
+      spirted over them, he staggered as a beast staggers in the slaughter, and
+      at length his thick knees doubled up, and he fell in a round heap like a
+      ball.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of Ben
+      Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower upon his
+      body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it. Then they left it
+      with curses of content and went their ways. When the Spanish soldiers, who
+      had stood aside while the work was done, came up with their lanterns to
+      look at this monument of Eastern justice, the heap of stones was still
+      moving with the terrific convulsions of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;ALLAH-U-KABAR&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      Travelling through the night,&mdash;Naomi laughing and singing snatches in
+      her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals at the huge
+      outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,&mdash;they came to the
+      hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day. But they had come too late.
+      Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England. He was going
+      on a longer journey. His lonely hour had come to him, his dark hour
+      wherein none could bear him company. On a mattress by the wall he lay
+      outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end. Two neighbours from the
+      village were with him, and but for these he must have been alone&mdash;the
+      mighty man in his downfall deserted by all save the great Judge and God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her, what
+      she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task to tell.
+      Oh, the irony of fate! Ay, the irony of God! That scene, and what followed
+      it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest&mdash;none the less cruel
+      because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was useless to go out in search of a doctor. The country was as
+      innocent of leechcraft as the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham. All
+      they could do was to submit, absolutely and unconditionally. They were in
+      God's hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves as
+      Israel awoke to consciousness. He opened his eyes as if from sleep, and
+      saw Naomi beside him. No surprise did he show at this, and neither did he
+      at first betray pleasure. Dimly and softly he looked upon her, and then
+      something that might have been a smile but for lack of strength passed
+      like sunshine out of a cloud across his wasted face. Naomi pressed a
+      pillow-under his loins, and another under his head, thinking to ease the
+      one and raise the other. But the iron hand of unconsciousness fell upon
+      him again, and through many hours thereafter Naomi and the Mahdi sat
+      together in silence with the multitudinous company of invisible things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of
+      Tetuan. The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of
+      his Ministers had escaped. Ben Aboo had tried to follow them, but he had
+      been killed in the alcove of the patio. Ali had killed him. He had rushed
+      in upon him through a line of his guards. One of the guards had killed
+      Ali. The brave black lad had fallen with the name of Israel on his lips
+      and with a dauntless shout of triumph. The Kasbah was afire; it had been
+      burning since the banquet of the night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that
+      the end was very near. Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and the
+      Mahdi was standing at his left. Israel looked at the girl with a world of
+      tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening his noble
+      face. More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he wished to say
+      something, and yet could not do so, because the power of life was low; but
+      at last his voice found strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have left it too late,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I cannot go to England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words, and it
+      was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think no more of that,&rdquo; he said, and then he stopped, as if the word that
+      he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is hard to leave her,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;for she is alone; and who will
+      protect her when I am gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God lives,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;and He is Father to the fatherless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what Jew,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;would not repeat for her her father's
+      troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who that trusts in God,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, &ldquo;need fear the Kaid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what man can save her?&rdquo; cried Israel again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi's tears as well as her father's
+      importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace, peace! If there is no one else to take her, from this day forward
+      she shall go with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes as he
+      has often since, but had never before seen there, and Israel ben Oliel who
+      had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly at his wrist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless you!&rdquo; he said, as well as he could for the two angels, the
+      angel of love and the angel of death, were struggling at his throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel looked steadily at the Mahdi for a moment more, and then said very
+      softly&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Death may come to me now; I am ready. Farewell, my father! I tried to do
+      your bidding. Do you remember your watchword? But God <i>has</i> given me
+      rewards for repentance&mdash;see,&rdquo; and he turned his eyes towards the eyes
+      of Naomi with a wasting yet sunny smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God is good,&rdquo; said the Mahdi; &ldquo;lie still, lie still,&rdquo; and he laid his
+      cool hand on Israel's forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am leaving her to you,&rdquo; said Israel; &ldquo;and you alone can protect her of
+      all men living in this land accursed of God, for God's right arm is round
+      you. Yes, God is good. As long as you live you will cherish her. Never was
+      she so dear to me as now, so sweet, so lovable, so gentle. But you will be
+      good to her. God is very good to me. Guard her as the apple of your eye.
+      It will reward you. And let her think of me sometimes&mdash;only
+      sometimes. Ah! how nearly I shipwrecked all this! Remember! Remember!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, hush! Do not increase your pains,&rdquo; said the Mahdi. &ldquo;Are you feeling
+      better now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am feeling well,&rdquo; said Israel, &ldquo;and happy&mdash;so happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun had set, and the swift twilight was passing into night, when
+      another messenger arrived from Tetuan. It was Ali's old Taleb, shedding
+      tears for his boy, but boasting loudly of his brave death. He had heard of
+      it from the black guards themselves. After Ali fell he lived a moment,
+      though only in unconsciousness. The boy must have thought himself back at
+      Israel's side, &ldquo;I've done it, father,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;he'll never hurt you
+      again. You won't drive me away from you any more; will you, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They could see that Israel had heard the story. The eyes of the dying are
+      dry, but well they knew that the heart of the man was weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Taleb came with the idea that Israel also was gone, for a rumour to
+      that effect had passed through the town. &ldquo;El hamdu l'Illah!&rdquo; he cried,
+      when he saw that Israel was still alive. But then he remembered something,
+      and whispered in the Mahdi's farther ear that a vast concourse of Moors
+      and Jews including his own vast fellowship was even then coming out to
+      bury Israel, thinking he was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel overheard him and smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little also.
+      &ldquo;It will soon be true,&rdquo; he muttered under his breath, that came so quick.
+      And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the distance. It
+      was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear. First a mighty bass
+      voice: &ldquo;Allah Akbar!&rdquo; Again another and another voice: &ldquo;Allah Akbar!&rdquo; and
+      then the long roar of a vast multitude: &ldquo;Al&mdash;l&mdash;lah-u-kabar!&rdquo;
+       Finally a slow melancholy wail, rising and falling on the darkening air:
+      &ldquo;There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a solemn sound&mdash;nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive
+      to hear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O gratitude that is only a death-song! O fame that is only a funeral!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Israel listened and smiled again. &ldquo;Ah, God is great!&rdquo; he whispered; &ldquo;God
+      is great!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to the
+      door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession approaching&mdash;a
+      moving black shadow against the sky. Also over their billowy heads he
+      could see a red glow far away in the clouds. It was the last smouldering
+      of the fire of the modern Sodom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice behind
+      him. It was Israel's voice. He was speaking to Naomi. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he was
+      saying, &ldquo;it is hard to part. We were going to be very happy. . . . But you
+      must not cry. Listen! When I am there&mdash;eh? you know, <i>there</i>&mdash;I
+      will want to say, 'Father, you did well to hear my prayer. My little
+      daughter&mdash;she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.'
+      So you must not weep. Never, never, never! Remember! . . . . Ah! that's
+      right, that's right. My simple-hearted darling! My sunny, merry, happy
+      girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father's will. She was
+      combing his white beard with her fingers&mdash;it was knotted and tangled&mdash;and
+      he was labouring hard to speak again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naomi, do you remember?&rdquo; he said; and then he tried to sing, and even to
+      lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done. &ldquo;Do you
+      remember&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
+     Sings 'Love'&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sing it,&rdquo; he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure. And
+      then the brave girl&mdash;all courage and strength, a quivering bow of
+      steel&mdash;took up the song where he had left it, though her voice
+      trembled and the tears started to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her, though
+      once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast. When she had
+      done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her, and smiled, as if
+      he and she and the song were one to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again, now nearer
+      than before, and louder. Israel heard it. &ldquo;Hark! They are coming. Keep
+      close,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan. The Mahdi
+      thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct of help that a
+      woman has in scenes like these, understood him better. In the disarray of
+      his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself that he might
+      listen the easier to the song outside. The girl slid her arm under his
+      neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest. &ldquo;Ah! closer. 'God is
+      great'!&rdquo; he murmured again. &ldquo;'God&mdash;is&mdash;great'!&rdquo; With that word
+      on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back. It was now quite dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel's feet the dying man seemed
+      to have been feeling for his hand. Taking it now, he brought it to his
+      breast, where Naomi's hand lay under his own trembling one. With that last
+      effort, and a look into the girl's face that must have pursued him home,
+      his grand eyes closed for ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell of
+      the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air: &ldquo;Allah Akbar!
+      Al-lah-u-kabar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had come
+      out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has gone,&rdquo; said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes
+      towards heaven, he added, &ldquo;TO THE KING!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> Notes: <br /> <br /> 1. Where spelling inconsistencies in the printed
+      text appear to be unintentional, they have been made consistent in this
+      Etext version, either by adopting the dictionary spelling or the spelling
+      most frequently used in the printed text. <br /> <br /> 2. In the printed
+      text, many representations of Arabic words use accented characters; in
+      this Etext version, the accents have been removed to allow transmission by
+      email using the 7-bit character set.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Scapegoat
+
+Author: Hall Caine
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2006 [EBook #1303]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SCAPEGOAT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Alan Cleary and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SCAPEGOAT
+
+By Hall Caine
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     PREFACE
+     1. ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+     2. THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+     3. THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+     4. THE DEATH OF RUTH
+     5. RUTH'S BURIAL
+     6. THE SPIRIT-MAID
+     7. THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+     8. THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+     9. ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+     10. THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+     11. ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+     12. THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+     13. NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+     14. ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+     15. THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+     16. NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+     17. ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+     18. THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+     19. THE RAINBOW SIGN
+     20. LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+     21. ISRAEL IN PRISON
+     22. HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+     23. ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+     24. THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+     25. THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+     26. ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+     27. THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+     28. "AT ALLAH-U-KABAR"
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+_Within sight of an English port, and within hail of English ships as
+they pass on to our empire in the East, there is a land where the ways
+of life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago; a land
+wherein government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny, wherein
+justice is bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich and a
+danger to be poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man, and women
+is no more than a creature of lust--a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to
+the century, an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion! That land is
+Morocco!_
+
+_This is a story of Morocco in the last years of the Sultan Abd
+er-Rahman. The ashes of that tyrant are cold, and his grandson sits in
+his place; but men who earned his displeasure linger yet in his noisome
+dungeons, and women who won his embraces are starving at this hour in
+the prison-palaces in which he immured them. His reign is a story of
+yesterday; he is gone, he is forgotten; no man so meek and none so mean
+but he might spit upon his tomb. Yet the evil work which he did in his
+evil time is done to-day, if not by his grandson, then in his grandson's
+name--the degradation of man's honour, the cruel wrong of woman's, the
+shame of base usury, and the iniquity of justice that may be bought! Of
+such corruption this story will tell, for it is a tale of tyranny that
+is every day repeated, a voice of suffering going up hourly to the
+powers of the world, calling on them to forget the secret hopes and
+petty jealousies whereof Morocco is a cause, to think no more of any
+scramble for territory when the fated day of that doomed land has come,
+and only to look to it and see that he who fills the throne of Abd
+er-Rahman shall be the last to sit there._
+
+_Yet it is the grandeur of human nature that when it is trodden down
+it waits for no decree of nations, but finds its own solace amid the
+baffled struggle against inimical power in the hopes of an exalted
+faith. That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the
+narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning
+of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where
+humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt. On the one hand, the hard
+experience of daily existence; on the other hand, the soul crying out
+that the things of this world are not the true realities. Savage vices
+make savage virtues. God and man are brought face to face._
+
+_In the heart of Morocco there is one man who lives a life that is like
+a hymn, appealing to God against tyranny and corruption and shame. This
+great soul is the leader of a vast following which has come to him from
+every scoured and beaten corner of the land. His voice sounds throughout
+Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him, and wheresoever
+women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy and the shelter of his
+face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but
+that is the best thing of all--it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope
+in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him. Man that
+veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter, and science that
+reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God, have no place
+with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty; the miracle is all in all
+to him; he throngs the air with marvels; God speaks to him in dreams
+when he sleeps, and warns and directs him by signs when he is awake._
+
+_With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the joyous
+child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with a
+beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond the
+wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged fellowship
+of the poor behind them, having no homes and no possessions, pass
+from place to place, unharmed and unhindered, through that land of
+intolerance and iniquity, being protected and reverenced by virtue of
+the superstition which accepts them for Saints. Who are they? What have
+they been?_
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
+
+
+Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was
+the daughter of a banker in London. The father's name was Oliel; the
+mother's was Sara. Oliel had held business connections with the house of
+Sara's father, and he came over to England that he might have a personal
+meeting with his correspondent. The English banker lived over his
+office, near Holborn Bars, and Oliel met with his family. It consisted
+of one daughter by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a second
+wife, still living. They were not altogether a happy household, and the
+chief apparent cause of discord was the child of the first wife in the
+home of the second. Oliel was a man of quick perception, and he saw the
+difficulty. That was how it came about that he was married to Sara. When
+he returned to Morocco he was some thousand pounds richer than when he
+left it, and he had a capable and personable wife into his bargain.
+
+Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and
+spending, always taking care to have much of the one, and no more than
+he could help of the other. Sara was a nervous and sensitive little
+woman, hungering for communion and for sympathy. She got little of
+either from her husband, and grew to be as silent as he. With the people
+of the country of her adoption, whether Jews or Moors, she made no
+headway. She never even learnt their language.
+
+Two years passed, and then a child was born to her. This was Israel, and
+for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely woman. His
+coming made no apparent difference to his father. He grew to be a tall
+and comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be of a sweet and
+cheerful disposition. But the school of his upbringing was a hard one. A
+Jewish child in Morocco might know from his cradle that he was not born
+a Moor and a Mohammedan.
+
+When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife,
+his first wife being still alive. This was lawful, though unusual in
+Tangier. The new marriage, which was only another business transaction
+to Oliel, was a shock and a terror to Sara. Nevertheless, she supported
+its penalties through three weary years, sinking visibly under them day
+after day. By that time a second family had begun to share her husband's
+house, the rivalry of the mothers had threatened to extend to the
+children, the domesticity of home was destroyed and its harmony was no
+longer possible. Then she left Oliel, and fled back to England, taking
+Israel with her.
+
+Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers was
+not warm. They had no sympathy with her rebellion against her husband's
+second marriage. If she had married into a foreign country, she should
+abide by the ways of it. Sara was heartbroken. Her health had long been
+poor, and now it failed her utterly. In less than a month she died.
+On her deathbed she committed her boy to the care of her brothers, and
+implored them not to send him back to Morocco.
+
+For years thereafter Israel's life in London was a stern one. If he had
+no longer to submit to the open contempt of the Moors, the kicks and
+insults of the streets, he had to learn how bitter is the bread that one
+is forced to eat at another's table. When he should have been still at
+school he was set to some menial occupation in the bank at Holborn Bars,
+and when he ought to have risen at his desk he was required to teach the
+sons of prosperous men the way to go above him. Life was playing an evil
+game with him, and, though he won, it must be at a bitter price.
+
+Thus twelve years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty, was a
+tall, silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects, and a
+master of figures. Never once during that time had his father written
+to him, or otherwise recognised his existence, though knowing of his
+whereabouts from the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles.
+Then one day a letter came written in distant tone and formal manner,
+announcing that the writer had been some time confined to his bed, and
+did not expect to leave it; that the children of his second wife had
+died in infancy; that he was alone, and had no one of his own flesh
+and blood to look to his business, which was therefore in the hands of
+strangers, who robbed him; and finally, that if Israel felt any duty
+towards his father, or, failing that, if he had any wish to consult his
+own interest, he would lose no time in leaving England for Morocco.
+
+Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
+nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
+landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
+before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
+thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
+lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the
+ruins of the mole, his father's body was being buried in the little
+Jewish cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and
+cousins' cousins, to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of
+sentiment, were busily dividing his inheritance among them.
+
+Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
+restitution of his father's substance. But his cousins made the Kadi,
+the judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
+impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father's
+letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi
+to the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed
+cases; but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan
+law to offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the
+British Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention,
+being a subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage. Meantime, his
+dispute with his cousins was set at rest for ever by the Governor of the
+town, who, concluding that his father had left neither will nor heirs,
+confiscated everything he had possessed to the public treasury--that is
+to say, to the Kaid's own uses.
+
+Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco, whether as a
+Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger in his father's country, and
+openly branded as a cheat. That he did not return to England promptly
+was because he was already a man of indomitable spirit. Besides that,
+the treatment he was having now was but of a piece with what he had
+received at all times. Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing
+ever does avail to crush a man of character. But the obstacles and
+torments which make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make
+a very sensible impression on his heart; the mind triumphs, it is
+the heart that suffers; the mind strengthens and expands after every
+besetting plague of life, but the heart withers and wears away.
+
+So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together to
+beat him down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means of
+settling there.
+
+His opportunity came early. The Governor, either by qualm of conscience
+or further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the
+Oomana, the three Administrators of Customs at Tangier. He held the post
+six months only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid, but amid the
+muttered discontent of the merchants and tradesmen. Then the Governor of
+Tetuan, a bigger town lying a long day's journey to the east, hearing
+of Israel that as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled the custom revenues in
+half a year, invited him to fill an informal, unofficial, and irregular
+position as assessor of tributes.
+
+Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did in
+his new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and appointed a
+Mut'hasseb, a clerk of the market, to collect them--so many moozoonahs
+for every camel sold, so many for every horse, mule, and ass, so many
+floos for every fowl, and so many metkals for the purchase and sale of
+every slave; how he numbered the houses and made lists of the trades,
+assessing their tribute by the value of their businesses--so much for
+gun-making, so much for weaving, so much for tanning, and so on through
+the line of them, great and small, good and bad, even from the trades
+of the Jewish silversmiths and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the
+callings of the Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.
+
+All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran, which
+entitled the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever; but it would
+not wrong the truth to say that he did it also by the impulse of a sour
+and saddened heart. The world had shown no mercy to him, and he need
+show no mercy to the world. Why talk of pity? It was only a name, an
+idea a mocking thought. In the actual reckoning of life there was no
+such name as pity. Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings,
+whatever their severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.
+
+And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed
+it.
+
+"Ya Allah! Allah!" the Moors would cry. "Who is this Jew--this son of
+the English--that he should be made our master?"
+
+They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him, and at
+length they insulted him openly. Since his return from England he had
+resumed the dress of his race in his country--the long dark gabardine
+or kaftan, with a scarf for girdle, the black slippers, and the black
+skull-cap. And, going one day by the Grand Mosque, a group of the
+beggars; who lay always by the gate, called on him to uncover his feet.
+
+"Jew! Dog!" they cried, "there is no god but God! Curses on your
+relations! Off with your slippers!"
+
+He paid no heed to their commands, but made straight onward. Then one
+blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and struck off his cap
+with a crutch. He picked it up again without a look or a word, and
+strode away. But next morning, at early prayers, there was a place empty
+at the door of the mosque. Its accustomed occupant lay in the prison at
+the Kasbah.
+
+And if the Muslimeen hated Israel for what he was doing for their
+Governor, the Jews hated him yet more because it was being done for a
+Moor.
+
+"He has sold himself to our enemy," they said, "against the welfare of
+his own nation."
+
+At the synagogue they ignored him, and in taking the votes of their
+people they counted others and passed him by. He showed no malice. Only
+his strong face twitched at each fresh insult and his head was held
+higher. Only this, and one other sign of suffering in that secret place
+of his withering heart, which God's eye alone could see.
+
+Thus far he had done no more to Moor and Jew than exact that tenth part
+of their substance which the faiths of both required that they should
+pay. But now his work went further. A little group of old Jews, all held
+in honour among their people--Abraham Ohana, nicknamed Pigman, son of
+a former rabbi; Judah ben Lolo, an elder of his synagogue; and Reuben
+Maliki, keeper of the poor-box--were seized and cast into the Kasbah for
+gross and base usury.
+
+At this the Jewish quarter was thrown into wild hubbub. The hand that
+was on their people was a daring and terrible one. None doubted whose
+hand it was--it was the hand of young Israel the Jew.
+
+When the three old usurers had bought themselves out of the Kasbah, they
+put their heads together and said, "Let us drive this fellow out of the
+Mellah, and so shall he be driven out of the town." Then the owner of
+the house which Israel rented for his lodging evicted him by a poor
+excuse, and all other Jewish owners refused him as tenant. But the
+conspiracy failed. By command of the Governor, or by his influence,
+Israel was lodged by the Nadir, the administrator of mosque property,
+in one of the houses belonging to the mosque on the Moorish side of the
+Mellah walls.
+
+Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said, "Let
+us see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life be a
+burden." Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him, and
+when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not obey the
+unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes out of the Soudan he
+was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave. But the conspiracy failed
+again. Two black female slaves from Soos, named Fatimah and Habeebah,
+were bought in the name of the Governor and assigned to Israel's
+service.
+
+And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel's
+material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
+again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they
+said, "He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named
+the prophetess put her curse upon him." Then she who was so called, one
+Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
+of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki kept,
+crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
+predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo
+with the groans of God's elect, so should his own spirit be broken
+within them and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he
+heard her out, and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only
+smiled coldly, and passed on in silence.
+
+"The clouds are not hurt," he thought, "by the bark of dogs."
+
+Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture
+him; yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter
+of their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was young,
+and God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many young
+Jewish men, of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he favour. Of
+Israel's duty she knew little, save what report had said of it, that
+it was evil; and of the act which had made him an outcast among his
+own people, and an Ishmael among the sons of Ishmael she could form
+no judgment. But what a woman's eyes might see in him, without help of
+other knowledge, that she saw.
+
+She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
+manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been
+cheated of his youth and had missed his early manhood, the when he was
+ignored he ignored his insult, and when he was reviled he answered not
+again; in a word, the he was silent and strong and alone, and, above all
+that he was sad.
+
+These were credentials enough to the true girl's favour, and Israel soon
+learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him. There the lonely man
+first found himself. The cold eyes of his little world had seen him as
+his father's son, but the light and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw
+him as the son of his mother also. The Rabbi himself was old, very
+old--ninety years of age--and length of days had taught him charity.
+And so it was that when, in due time, Israel came with many excuses and
+asked for Ruth in marriage, the Rabbi gave her to him.
+
+The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses stood
+beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief; and, when
+the marriage came in its course, few stood beside the Chief Rabbi.
+Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan
+were alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a
+great company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them,
+gathered in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss and jeer.
+
+The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio,
+and when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him above
+the tumult, crying, "Woe to her that has married the enemy of her
+nation, and woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people!
+They shall taste death. He shall see them fall from his side and die,"
+then the old man listened and trembled visibly. In confusion and fierce
+anger he rose up and stumbled through the crooked passage to the door,
+and flinging it wide, he stood in the doorway facing them that stood
+without.
+
+"Peace! Peace!" he cried, "and shame! shame! Remember the doom of him
+that shall curse the high priest of the Lord."
+
+This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath. Then suddenly, his voice
+failing him, he said in a broken whisper, "My good people, what is this?
+Your servant is grown old in your service. Sixty and odd years he has
+shared your sorrows and your burdens. What has he done this day that
+your women should lift up their voices against him?"
+
+But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in
+the darkness were silent and made no answer. Then he staggered back, and
+Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to compose
+him. But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.
+
+When the Rabbi's death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered,
+"It is the first-fruits!" and the Moors touched their foreheads and
+murmured "It is written!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
+
+
+Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the
+building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in
+comfort many years together. In the south-east corner of the Mellah
+he placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the
+English fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a
+marble staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but
+also with windows and with doors. And when his house was raised he put
+no haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for
+tables and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in
+this wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and
+Jews.
+
+And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out
+of the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly
+it occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had
+built was a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a
+prison for his wife. In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his
+intimates by one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had
+reduced even her friends to that number. Her father was dead; if she was
+the daughter of a Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast, the
+companion of a pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone.
+Even their bondwomen still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with
+them was mainly by signs.
+
+Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on
+Israel's mind, one hope on his heart--that Ruth might soon bear a child.
+Then would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman
+might know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would make
+amends.
+
+Israel thought of this again and again. The delicious hope pursued him.
+It was his secret, and he never gave it speech. But time passed, and no
+child was born. And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she began
+to cast down her head before her husband. Israel's hope was of longer
+life, but the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he perceived
+that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him. He had been
+thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she
+had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he
+never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the
+cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss
+of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given
+no children.
+
+This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
+half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the
+woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and
+she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, "Israel ben Oliel,
+the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise
+up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!"
+
+"Out upon you, woman!" cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
+his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions
+had passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut
+himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to
+him.
+
+Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife's barrenness he was now
+angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What
+was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had
+first beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his
+feet? Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was
+the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.
+
+That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and
+his spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
+offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might
+persuade himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the
+ordinances and commandments of God.
+
+Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
+since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of
+their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might
+straightway be divorced by her husband.
+
+Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
+would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
+still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
+his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.
+
+"Send me away from you!" she cried. "Send me away!"
+
+"Not for the place of the Kaid," he answered stoutly; "no, nor the
+throne of the Sultan!"
+
+At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their
+tears together. But he comforted her at length, and said, "Look up, my
+dearest! look up! I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord
+may deal with me. And which of us shall murmur against God?"
+
+At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full
+of a sudden thought.
+
+"Then let us ask of the Lord," she whispered hotly, "and surely He will
+hear our prayer."
+
+"It is the voice of the Lord Himself!" cried Israel; "and this day it
+shall be done!"
+
+At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand
+together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki. And
+Ruth knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and
+the candles that hung above it, and she prayed: "O Lord, have pity on
+this Thy servant, and take away her reproach among women. Give her grace
+in Thine eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed. Grant her a
+child of Thy mercy, that his eye may smile upon her. Yet not as
+she willeth, but as Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be
+satisfied."
+
+But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart and his
+eyes to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not
+be appeased, saying: "How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? My enemies
+triumph over me and foretell Thy doom upon me. They sit in the
+lurking-places of the streets to deride me. Confound my enemies, O Lord,
+and rebuke their counsels. Remember Ruth, I beseech Thee, that she is
+patient and her heart is humbled. Give her children of Thy servant, and
+her first-born shall be sanctified unto Thee. Give her one child, and
+it shall be Thine--if it is a son, to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues. Hear
+me, O Lord, and give heed to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee.
+One child, but one, only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is
+before Thee. How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?"
+
+The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble
+was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come without
+delay to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues. This
+request the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef
+was a prince of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces the
+believers paid him tribute. So in three days' time Israel was ready
+to set out on his journey, with men and mules at his door, and camels
+packed with tents. He was likely to be some months absent from Tetuan,
+and it was impossible that Ruth should go with him. They had never been
+separated before, and Ruth's concern was that they should be so long
+parted, but Israel's was a deeper matter.
+
+"Ruth," he said when his time came, "I am going away from you, but my
+enemies remain. They see evil in all my doings, and in this act also
+they will find offence. Promise me that if they make a mock at you for
+your husband's sake you will not see them; if they taunt you that you
+will not hear them; and if they ask anything concerning me that you will
+answer them not at all."
+
+And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her she should
+be as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that was deaf, and
+if they questioned her concerning her husband as one that was dumb. Then
+they parted with many tears and embraces.
+
+Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,
+having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan
+loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers and
+attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him to the door
+of his own house.
+
+And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with
+tears of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great
+news on her tongue.
+
+"Listen," she whispered; "I have something to tell you--"
+
+"Ah, I know it," he cried; "I know it already. I see it in your eyes."
+
+"Only listen," she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck of his
+kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.
+
+Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child they had
+asked for was to come.
+
+Israel was like a man beside himself with joy. He burst in upon the
+message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again,
+and kissed her. Long they stood together so, while he told her of the
+chances which had befallen him during his absence from her, and she
+told him of her solitude of six long months, unbroken save for the poor
+company of Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind and deaf and
+dumb to all the world.
+
+During the months thereafter until Ruth's time was full Israel sat with
+her constantly. He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company. He
+covered her chamber with fruits and flowers. There was no desire of her
+heart but he fulfilled it. And they talked together lovingly of how they
+would name the child when the time came to name it. Israel concluded
+that if it was a son it should be called David, and Ruth decided that if
+it was a daughter it should be called Naomi. And Ruth delighted to tell
+of how when it was weaned she should take it up to the synagogue and
+say, "O Lord: I am the woman that knelt before Thee praying. For this
+child I prayed, and Thou hast heard my prayer." And Israel told of how
+his son should grow up to be a Rabbi to minister before God, and how
+in those days it should come to pass that the children of his father's
+enemies should crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of
+bread. Thus they built themselves castles in the air for the future of
+the child that was to come.
+
+Ruth's time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast of
+the Passover, being in the month of Nisan. This was a cause of joy to
+Israel, for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face, and
+he could not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So
+he set a supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg
+of an ox, the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three
+Mitzvoth, and the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife
+had been summoned, and it was the day of the night of the Seder.
+
+Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests. Only
+his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers, and
+among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman, Judah ben Lolo,
+and Reuben Maliki. "They cursed me," he thought, "and I shall look on
+their confusion." His heart thirsted to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also,
+but well he knew that her dainty masters would not sit at meat with her.
+
+And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves and
+refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man should
+sit save in his own house and at his own table. But Israel was not to be
+gainsaid. He went out to them himself, and said, "Come, let bygones be
+bygones. It is the feast of our nation. Let us eat and drink together."
+So, partly by his importunity, but mainly in their bewilderment, yet
+against all rule and custom, they suffered themselves to go with him.
+
+And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table
+in the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine and blessed
+it, and passed it to all, and they had drunk together, he could not keep
+back his tongue from taunting them. Then when he had washed again and
+dipped the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk of the wine once
+more, he taunted them afresh and laughed. But nothing yet had they
+understood of his meaning, and they looked into each other's faces and
+asked, "What is it?"
+
+"Wait! Only wait!" Israel answered. "You shall see!"
+
+At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.
+
+"I am a sorrowful woman," she said. "Some evil is about to befall--I
+know it, I feel it."
+
+But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy on the
+morrow. Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes had been
+broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat and drink
+as much as their hearts desired.
+
+They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight of
+Israel's frenzy. The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben, rose
+to go, but Israel cried, "Stay! Stay, and see what is come!" and under
+the very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.
+
+Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them. In the wild torrent of
+his madness he called them by names they knew and by names they did not
+know--Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu--and at every new name he laughed
+again. And while he carried himself so in the outer court the slave
+woman Fatimah came from the inner room with word that the child was
+born.
+
+At that Israel was like a man distraught. He leapt up from the table and
+faced full upon his guests, and cried, "Now you know what it is; and now
+you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice
+with me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!" And he
+lifted a winecup and drank himself.
+
+They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into
+the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.
+
+"You will not drink?" he said. "Then listen to me." He dashed the
+winecup out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor. His
+laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill
+cry. "You foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made
+me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women
+to prophesy that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a
+reproach and a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a
+son like the best of you. More than that--more than that--my son shall
+yet see--"
+
+The slave woman was touching his arm. "It is a girl," she said; "a
+girl!"
+
+For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, "No matter!
+She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them
+mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against
+them! She shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate
+places! And now you can go! Go! go!"
+
+He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was
+driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded and with their
+eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.
+
+It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in
+to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct,
+followed him and listened from the threshold.
+
+Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came
+from them.
+
+And Israel said, "How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and pride
+of my pride?"
+
+Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said "The Lord has counted
+my prayer to me as sin--look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!"
+
+At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered out of his
+dry throat, "No, no, never believe it!"
+
+"True, true, it is true," she moaned; "the child has not uttered a cry,
+and its eyelids have not blinked at the light."
+
+"Never believe it, I say!" Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his
+arms to try it.
+
+But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon
+the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the
+eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then
+his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his
+arms and laid it again on its mother's bosom.
+
+And Ruth wept over it, saying, "Even if it were a son never could it
+serve in the synagogue! Never! Never!"
+
+At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed
+themselves into the chamber, and they cried, "Peace! Peace!" And old
+Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, "Is it
+not written that no one afflicted of God shall minister in His temples?"
+
+Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into
+the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he
+had bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, "What matter?
+Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!" But after that he staggered,
+his knees gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a
+falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.
+
+The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with
+water; but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves,
+"The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and
+into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to
+slip."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
+
+
+Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object
+of contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low,
+God Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him
+mercy?
+
+But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult
+him. And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the
+rabble to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus,
+they would call their dogs and their asses by his name, and the dogs
+would be the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses the laziest in the
+market.
+
+He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at
+the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of
+pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily,
+"Accursed old Israel! Get on home to your mother!" Then, turning quickly
+round, he would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent
+countenance was cudgelling his donkey by that title.
+
+He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound
+of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white
+walls crying "Allah! Allah! Allah!" would suddenly change their cry to
+"Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!" "Go on! Go on! Go on!"
+
+He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of
+laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his
+direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his
+voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.
+
+His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God's
+displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight
+of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber--they all despised him!
+
+Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed
+him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his
+soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with
+God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.
+
+There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form
+of warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other,
+the better for his person.
+
+It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known
+as Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other
+than the late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman,
+though by another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan's brother in
+Morocco is not to be a Sultan's favourite, but a possible aspirant to
+his throne. Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the
+Sultan's army, and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry.
+In that capacity he had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni
+Hasan, the Beni Idar, and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit
+the country near to Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been
+first directed to that town. When he had returned from his expedition he
+offered the Sultan fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha
+or Governor, and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.
+The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha
+at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man
+was summoned to the Sultan's presence, accused of appropriating the
+Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.
+
+That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of
+how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no
+less curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious
+transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He
+was a valiant soldier--the black blood of his slave-mother had counted
+for so much; but he was a bad administrator--he could neither read nor
+write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would
+have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this
+man had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him.
+He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and
+his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters
+of his name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel, his scribe the notary,
+Hosain ben Hashem, styled Haj, because he had made the pilgrimage to
+Mecca, but he was also the Imam, or head of the Mosque, and the wily
+Ben Aboo foresaw the danger of some day coming into collision with the
+religious sentiment of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed
+ben Arby, but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he
+wanted a man who should be under his hand. That was the combination of
+circumstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan.
+
+Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master
+entirely. He had carried the Basha's seal and acted for him in all
+affairs of money. The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars, so
+that the Basha had twenty thousand to the good. Then Ben Aboo's ambition
+began to override itself. He started an oil-mill, and wanted Israel to
+select a hundred houses owned by rich men, that he might compel each
+house to take ten kollahs of oil--an extravagant quantity, at seven
+dollars for each kollah--an exorbitant price. Israel had refused. "It is
+not just," he had said.
+
+Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but
+Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor
+had pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a
+gross and wicked tax, but Israel's answer had been the same. "There is
+no evil in the world but injustice," he had said. "Do justice, and you
+do all that God can ask or man expect."
+
+For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have
+been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by
+day. Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn
+of that day whereon he should need him no more.
+
+But since the disaster which had befallen Israel's house everything
+had undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious
+means of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning
+the very air itself into money--ransoms, promissory notes, and false
+judgments--but Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to
+send his small currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver
+dollars at the rate of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was
+worth ten in currency. And after certain of the shopkeepers, having
+changed fifty thousand dollars at that rate, fled to the Sultan to
+complain, Israel advised that their debtors should be called together,
+their debts purchased, and bonds drawn up and certified for ten times
+the amounts of them. Thus a few were banished from their homes in fear
+of imprisonment, many were sorely harassed, and some were entirely
+ruined.
+
+It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public
+streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and
+their asses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty must
+answer to it.
+
+Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching at his
+indignities nor glorying in his power. He beheld the wreck of families
+without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry of children
+without a qualm. Neither did he delight in the sufferings of them that
+had derided him. His evil impulse was a higher matter--his faith in
+justice had been broken up. He had been wrong. There was no such thing
+as justice in the world, and there could, therefore, be no such thing
+as injustice. There was no thing but the blind swirl of chance, and the
+wild scramble for life. The man had quarrelled with God.
+
+But Israel's heart was not yet dead. There was one place, where he who
+bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great
+tenderness. That place was his own home. What he saw there was enough to
+stir the fountains of his being--nay, to exhaust them, and to send him
+abroad as a river-bed that is dry.
+
+In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before
+the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of
+himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only of the
+babe.
+
+The child was born blind and dumb and deaf. At the feast of life there
+was no place left for it. So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall,
+and called on God to take it.
+
+"Take it!" she cried--"take it! Make haste, O God, make haste and take
+it!"
+
+But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself
+suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over
+it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little
+by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived
+her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side
+and whisper "Take heart of hope, O Ruth! God does not afflict willingly.
+Perhaps the child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is
+not dumb. Who shall ye say? Wait and see!"
+
+And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no
+difference in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she
+would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an
+the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the
+little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she
+would look at the pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and
+full as a shell on the shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the
+sea was not heard in it, and that all within was silence.
+
+So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
+"It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and
+see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue
+will yet speak to me, and make me very glad." And then an ineffable
+serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.
+
+But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar
+with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its
+little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful
+perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child did not open
+in seeing, but lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that
+a child's ears should hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a
+mother's love, and its tongue begin to give back the words in lisping
+sounds, the ear of Ruth's child heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.
+
+Then Ruth's spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to
+come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, "Wait, Ruth; only
+wait, only a little longer."
+
+So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched
+for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the
+prattle of its little lips. But never a sound as of speech seemed to
+break the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue,
+and never once across her baby's face passed the light of her tearful
+smile. It was a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful
+of all for the pains she was at to conceal them. Thus, every day at
+midday she would carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its
+eyes should blink in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon
+her then, she would drop her head and say, "How sweet the air is to-day,
+and how pleasant to sit in the sun!"
+
+"So it is," he would answer, "so it is."
+
+Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the
+court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if
+its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh--a little
+shrill laugh like a cry--and cover her face in confusion.
+
+"How merry you are, sweetheart," he would say, and then pass into the
+house.
+
+For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw,
+and pretending not to hear what he heard. But every day his heart bled
+at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very
+soul had sickened, and he cried, "Have done, Ruth!--for mercy's sake,
+have done! The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison. Her
+eyes are darkness, like the tomb's, and her ears are silence, like the
+grave's. Never will she smile to her mother's smile, or answer to her
+father's speech. The first sound she will hear will be the last trump,
+and the first face she will see will be the face of God."
+
+At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.
+The hope that she had cherished was dead. Israel could comfort her no
+longer. The fountain of his own heart was dry. He drew a long breath,
+and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.
+
+The child lived and thrived. They had called her Naomi, as they had
+agreed to do before she was born, though no name she knew of herself,
+and a mockery it seemed to name her. At four years of age she was
+a creature of the most delicate beauty. Notwithstanding her Jewish
+parentage, she was fair as the day and fresh as the dawn. And if her
+eyes were darkness, there was light within her soul; and if her ears
+were silence, there was music within her heart. She was brighter than
+the sun which she could not see, and sweeter than the songs which she
+could not hear. She was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage, and never
+did she fret at the bars which bound her. And, like the bird that sings
+at midnight, her cheery soul sang in its darkness.
+
+Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was the
+sound of laughter. With this she lay down to sleep at night, and rose
+again in the morning. She laughed as she combed her hair, and laughed
+again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.
+
+She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the
+sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day from
+the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark. She
+knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by
+the brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew in the fields
+outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap,
+as other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands. She
+seemed almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she
+would twine in her hair were red, and the white were those which she
+would lay on her bosom. And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto
+the wind alone could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.
+
+Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them
+that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she
+knew no delight like to that of playing with other children. But her
+father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was
+allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met
+in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand, no child did
+she ever meet.
+
+Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of
+the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel. She
+herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi
+was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child that is the only
+child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off
+from the parents of other children; and yet again, once more, alone as a
+child that is blind and dumb.
+
+But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him from the
+Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and big innocent white
+eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel. The boy's name was
+Ali, and he was four years old. His father had killed his mother for
+infidelity and neglect of their child, and, having no one to buy him out
+of prison, he had that day been executed. Then little Ali had been left
+alone in the world, and so Israel had taken him.
+
+Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him. He had been born a Mohammedan,
+but secretly she brought him up as a Jew. And for some years thereafter
+no difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes
+could see. They ate together, they walked abroad together, they played
+together, they slept together, and the little black head of the boy lay
+with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.
+
+Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles of
+humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them. First, on Ali's
+part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi, "Come!" she did
+not hear, when he asked "Why?" she did not answer; and when he said
+"Look!" she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed to gaze full into
+his face. Then, a sort of amused bewilderment that her little nervous
+fingers were always touching his arms and his hands, and his neck and
+his throat. But long before he had come to know that Naomi was not as
+he was, that Nature had not given her eyes to see as he saw, and ears to
+hear as he heard, and a tongue to speak as he spoke, Nature herself had
+overstepped the barriers that divided her from him. He found that Naomi
+had come to understand him, whatever in his little way he did, and
+almost whatever in his little way he said. So he played with her as he
+would have played with any other playmate, laughing with her, calling
+to her, and going through his foolish little boyish antics before her.
+Nevertheless, by some mysterious knowledge of Nature's own teaching, he
+seemed to realise that it was his duty to take care of her. And when the
+spirit and the mischief in his little manly heart would prompt him to
+steal out of the house, and adventure into the streets with Naomi by his
+side, he would be found in the thick of the throng perhaps at the heels
+of the mules and asses, with Naomi's hand locked in his hand, trying to
+push the great creatures of the crowd from before her, and crying in his
+brave little treble, "Arrah!" "Ar-rah!" "Ar-r-rah!"
+
+As for Naomi, the coming of little black Ali was a wild delight to her.
+Whatever Ali did, that would she do also. If he ran she would run; if he
+sat she would sit; and meanwhile she would laugh with a heart of glee,
+though she heard not what he said, and saw not what he did, and knew not
+what he meant. At the time of the harvest, when Ruth took them out into
+the fields, she would ride on Ali's back, and snatch at the ears of
+barley and leap in her seat and laugh, yet nothing would she see of the
+yellow corn, and nothing would she hear of the song of the reapers, and
+nothing would she know of the cries of Ali, who shouted to her while
+he ran, forgetting in his playing that she heard him not. And at night,
+when Ruth put them to bed in their little chamber, and Ali knelt with
+his face towards Jerusalem, Naomi would kneel beside him with a reverent
+air, and all her laughter would be gone. Then, as he prayed his prayer,
+her little lips would move as if she were praying too, and her little
+hands would be clasped together, and her little eyes would be upraised.
+
+"God bless father, and mother, and Naomi, and everybody," the black boy
+would say.
+
+And the little maid would touch his hands and hi throat, and pass her
+fingers over his face from his eyelids to his lips, and then do as he
+did, and in her silence seem to echo him.
+
+Pretty and piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One
+thing at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison,
+nevertheless it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it
+could not die, but was immortal and unmaimed and waited only for the
+hour when it should be linked to other souls, soul to soul in the chains
+of speech. But the years went on, and Naomi grew in beauty and increased
+in sweetness, but no angel came down to open the darkened windows of her
+eyes, and draw aside the heavy curtains of her ears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DEATH OF RUTH
+
+
+For all her joy and all her prettiness, Naomi was a burden which only
+love could bear. To think of the girl by day, and to dream of her by
+night, never to sit by her without pity of her helplessness, and never
+to leave her without dread of the mischances that might so easily
+befall, to see for her, to hear for her, to speak for her, truly the
+tyranny of the burden was terrible.
+
+Ruth sank under it. Through seven years she was eyes of the child's
+eyes, and ears of her ears, and tongue of her tongue. After that her
+own sight became dim, and her hearing faint. It was almost as if she had
+spent them on Naomi in the yearning of dove and pity. Soon afterwards
+her bodily strength failed her also, and then she knew that her time had
+come, and that she was to lay down her burden for ever. But her burden
+had become dear, and she clung to it. She could not look upon the child
+and think it, that she, who had spent her strength for her from the
+first, must leave her now to other love and tending. So she betook
+herself to an upper room, and gave strict orders to Fatimah and Habeebah
+that Naomi was to be kept from her altogether, that sight of the child's
+helpless happy face might tempt her soul no more.
+
+And there in her death-chamber Israel sat with her constantly, settling
+his countenance steadfastly, and coming and going softly. He was more
+constant than a slave, and more tender than a woman. His love was great,
+but also he was eating out his big heart with remorse. The root of his
+trouble was the child. He never talked of her, and neither did Ruth
+dwell upon her name. Yet they thought of little else while they sat
+together.
+
+And even if they had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to
+say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings,
+no simple broken speech, no pretty lisp--they had nothing to bring back
+out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that
+lies stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That
+way everything was a waste. Always, as Israel entered her room, Ruth
+would say, "How is the child?" And always Israel would answer, "She is
+well." But, if at that moment Naomi's laughter came up to them from the
+patio, where she played with Ali, they would cover their faces and be
+silent.
+
+It was a melancholy parting. No one came near them--neither Moor
+nor Jew, neither Rabbi nor elder. The idle women of the Mellah would
+sometimes stand outside in the street and look up at their house,
+knowing that the black camel of death was kneeling at their gate. Other
+company they had none. In such solitude they passed four weeks, and when
+the time of the end seemed near, Israel himself read aloud the prayer
+for the dying, the prayer Shema' Yisrael, and Ruth repeated the words of
+it after him.
+
+Meantime, while Ruth lay in the upper chamber little Naomi sported and
+played in the patio with Ali, but she missed her mother constantly. This
+she made plain by many silent acts of helpless love that knew no way to
+speak aloud. Thus she would lay flowers on the seats where her mother
+had used to sit, and, if at night she found them untouched where she
+had left them, her little face would fall, and her laughter die off her
+lips; but if they had withered and some one had cast them into the oven,
+she would laugh again and fetch other flowers from the fields, until
+the house would be full of the odour of the meadow and the scent of the
+hill.
+
+And well they knew, who looked upon her then, whom she missed, and what
+the question was that halted on her tongue; yet how could they answer
+her? There was no way to do that until she herself knew how to ask.
+
+But this she did on a day near to the end. It was evening, and she
+was being put to bed by Habeebah, and had just risen from her innocent
+pantomime of prayer beside Ali, when Israel, coming from Ruth's chamber,
+entered the children's room. Then, touching with her hand the seat
+whereon Ruth had used to sit, Naomi laid down her head on the pillow,
+and then rose and lay down again, and rose yet again and rose yet again
+lay down, and then came to where Israel was and stood before him. And at
+that Israel knew that the soul of his helpless child had asked him, as
+plainly as words of the tongue can speak, how often she should lie to
+sleep at night and rise to play in the morning before her mother came to
+her again.
+
+The tears gushed into his eyes, and he left the children and returned to
+his wife's chamber.
+
+"Ruth," he cried, "call the child to you, I beseech you!"
+
+"No, no, no!" cried Ruth.
+
+"Let her come to you and touch you and kiss you, and be with you before
+it is too late," said Israel. "She misses you, and fills the house with
+flowers for you. It breaks my heart to see her."
+
+"It will break mine also," said Ruth.
+
+But she consented that Naomi should be called, and Fatimah was sent to
+fetch her.
+
+The sun was setting, and through the window which looked out to the
+west, over the river and the orange orchards and the palpitating plains
+beyond, its dying rays came into the room in a bar of golden light. It
+fell at that instant on Ruth's face, and she was white and wasted. And
+through the other window of the room, which looked out over the Mellah
+into the town, and across the market-place to the mosque and to the
+battery on the hill, there came up from the darkening streets below the
+shuffle of the feet of a crowd and the sound of many voices. The Jews
+of Tetuan were trooping back to their own little quarter, that their
+Moorish masters might lock them into it for the night.
+
+Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her
+nightdress. She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she
+laughed as Fatimah held her by the hand, and danced as she was led to
+her mother's chamber. But when she was come to the door of it, suddenly
+her laughter ceased, and her little face sobered, as if something in the
+close abode of pain had troubled the senses that were left to her.
+
+It is, perhaps, the most touching experience of the deaf and blind that
+no greeting can ever welcome them. When Naomi stood like a little white
+vision at the threshold of the room, Israel took her hand in silence,
+and drew her up to the pillow of the bed where her mother rested, and in
+silence Ruth brought the child to her bosom.
+
+For a moment Naomi seemed to be perplexed. She touched her mother's
+fingers, and they were changed, for they had grown thin and long. Then
+she felt her face, and that was changed also, for it was become withered
+and cold. And, missing the grasp of one and the smile of the other, she
+first turned her little head aside as one that listens closely, and then
+gently withdrew herself from the arms that held her.
+
+Ruth had watched her with eyes that overflowed, and now she burst into
+sobs outright.
+
+"The child does not know me!" she cried. "Did I not tell you it would
+break my heart?"
+
+"Try her again," said Israel; "try her again."
+
+Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back
+to her side. Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck,
+she bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were
+on her wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child.
+This she did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind to
+her always. But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only to
+know, by the quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely,
+and giving no thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp of
+recognition and the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again from her
+mother's arms, and bounded into the middle of the room, and suddenly
+began to laugh and to dance.
+
+The sun's dying light, which had rested on Ruth's wasted face, now
+glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed on
+her blind eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened her white
+nightdress, while she danced and laughed to her mother's death. Nothing
+did the child know of death, any more than Adam himself before Abel was
+slain, and it was almost as if a devil out of hell had entered into her
+innocent heart and possessed it, that she might make a mock of the dying
+of the dearest friend she had known on earth.
+
+On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child's
+uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down
+at speech, but wildly and deliriously. The room was darkening fast, but
+still across the nether end, by the foot of the bed, streamed the dull
+red bar of sunlight with the little red figure leaping and prancing and
+laughing in the midst of it.
+
+With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to
+the wall. The black woman dropped her head that she might not see. And
+Israel covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, "O Lord God,
+long hast Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with
+scorpions!"
+
+Ruth recovered herself quickly. "Bring her to me again!" she faltered;
+and once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside. Then, embracing
+and kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her
+trouble that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, "It's your mother,
+Naomi! your mother, darling, though so sick and changed! Don't you know
+her, Naomi? Your mother, your own mother, sweet one, your dear mother
+who loves you so, and must leave you now and see you no more!"
+
+Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness of the
+child at last, only God Himself can say. But first Naomi's cheeks grew
+pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they reddened,
+and then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth's hands again, and
+then her little lips trembled, and then, at length, she flung herself
+along Ruth's bosom and nestled close in her embrace.
+
+Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman
+stood and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any
+longer was melted and unmanned. The sun had gone down, and the room was
+darkening rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short; the streets
+were quiet, and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret was chanting in
+the silence, "God is great, God is great!"
+
+After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother's bosom, and,
+seeing this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back
+to her own bed; but Ruth said, "No; leave her, let me have her with me
+while I may."
+
+"No one shall take her from you," said Israel.
+
+Then she gazed down at the child's face and said, "It is hard to leave
+her and never once to have heard her voice."
+
+"That is the bitterest cup of all," said Israel.
+
+"I shall not return to her," said Ruth, "but she shall come to me, and
+then, perhaps--who knows?--perhaps in the resurrection I shall hear it."
+
+Israel made no answer.
+
+Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, "My helpless darling! Who
+will care for you when I am gone?"
+
+"Rest, rest, and sleep!" said Israel.
+
+"Ah, yes, I know," said Ruth. "How foolish of me! You are her father,
+and you love her also. Yet promise me--promise--"
+
+"For love and tending she shall never lack," said Israel. "And now lie
+you still, my dearest; lie still and sleep."
+
+She stretched out her hand to him. "Yes, that was what I meant," she
+said, and smiled. Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom. "But when
+I am gone," she said, "will Naomi ever know that her mother who is dead
+had wronged her?"
+
+"You have never wronged her," said Israel. "Have done, oh, have done!"
+
+"God punished us for our prayer, my husband," said Ruth.
+
+"Peace, peace!" said Israel.
+
+"But God is good," said Ruth, "and surely He will not afflict our child
+much longer."
+
+"Hush! Hush! You will awaken her," said Israel, not thinking what he
+said. "Now lie still and sleep, dearest. You are tired also."
+
+She lay quiet for a time, gazing, while the light remained, into the
+face of the sleeping child, and listening, when the light failed, to her
+gentle breathing. Then she babbled and crooned over her with a childish
+joy. "Yes, yes, father is right, and mother must lie quiet--very quiet,
+and so her little Naomi will sleep long--very long, and wake happy and
+well in the morning. How bonny she will look! How fresh and rosy!"
+
+She paused a moment. Her laboured breathing came quick and fast. "But
+shall I be here to see her? shall I?"
+
+She paused again, and then, as though to banish thought, she began to
+sing in a low voice that was like a moan. Presently her singing ceased,
+and she spoke again, but this time in broken whispers.
+
+"How soft and glossy her hair is! I wonder if Fatimah will remember to
+wash it every day. She should twist it around her fingers to keep it in
+pretty curls. . . . Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . .
+Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves, it's a
+chance if Habeebah has seen to it. Then there's her underclothing. . . .
+Will she be deaf and blind and dumb always? I wonder if I shall see her
+when I. . . . They say that angels are sent. . . . Yes, yes, that's it,
+when I am there--there--I will go to God and say, 'O Lord! my little
+girl whom I have left behind, she is. . . . You would never think, O
+Lord, how many things may happen to one like her. Let me go--only let me
+watch over her--O Lord, let me be her guar--'"
+
+Her weakness had conquered her, and she was quiet at last. Israel sat in
+silence by the post of the bed. His heart was surging itself out of his
+choking breast. The black woman stood somewhere by the wall. After a
+time Ruth seemed to awake as from sleep. She was in great excitement.
+
+"Israel, Israel!" she cried in a voice of joy, "I have seen a vision. It
+was Naomi. She was no longer deaf and blind and dumb. She was grown to
+be a woman, but I knew her instantly. Not a woman either, but a young
+maiden, and so beautiful, so beautiful! Yes, and she could see and hear
+and speak."
+
+Israel thought Ruth had become delirious, and he tried to soothe her,
+but her agitation was not to be overcome. "The Lord hath seen our
+tears at last," she cried. "He has put our sin beneath His feet. We are
+forgiven. It will be well with the child yet."
+
+Israel did not try to gainsay her, and at sight and sound of her joy,
+seeing it so beautiful, yet thinking it so vain, he could not help at
+last but weep. Presently she became quiet again, and then again, after a
+little while, she woke as from a sleep.
+
+"I am ready now," she said in a whisper, "quite ready, sweet Heaven,
+quite, quite ready now."
+
+Then with her one free hand she felt in the darkness for Israel, where
+he sat beside her, and touching his forehead she smoothed it, and said
+very softly, "Farewell, my husband!"
+
+And Israel answered her, "Farewell!"
+
+"Good-night!" she whispered.
+
+And Israel drew down her hand from his forehead to his lips and sobbed,
+and said, "Good-night, beloved!"
+
+Then she put her white lips to the child's blind eyes, and at that
+moment the spirit of the Lord came to her, and the Lord took her, and
+she died.
+
+When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw that the end
+had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth's bosom, but the child
+awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers about the
+dead mother's neck and covered the mouth with kisses. And when she felt
+that the lips did not answer to her lips, and that the arms which had
+held her did not hold her any longer, but fell away useless, she clung
+the closer, and tears started to her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+RUTH'S BURIAL
+
+
+The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth of his
+sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him. By noon of the day
+following the night of Ruth's death, Israel knew that he was to be left
+alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death
+in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the
+first service thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra
+Kadisha of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make
+arrangements for burial. Early prayers had been held in the synagogue
+at eight o'clock that morning, and no one had yet come near to Israel's
+house. The men of the Hebra were going about their ordinary occupations.
+They knew nothing of Ruth's death by official announcement. The clerk
+had not published it. Israel remembered with bitterness that notice
+of it had not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout
+Tetuan. There was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken
+it to each house he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little
+groups of idle Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the
+streets outside, talking of it in whispers and looking up at the
+darkened windows with awe. But the synagogue knew nothing of it.
+Israel had omitted the customary ceremony, and in that omission lay the
+advantage of his enemies. He must humble himself and send to them. Until
+he did so they would leave him alone.
+
+Israel did not send. Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed
+the threshold of the synagogue. He would not cross it now, whether in
+body or in spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he
+had lost the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews
+that a body should be buried within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from
+the time of death. He must do something immediately. Some help must be
+summoned. What help could it be?
+
+It was useless to think of the Muslimeen. No believer would lend a hand
+to dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead. It
+was just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of
+this burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that he would
+have need to know more. And of Christians of any sort or condition there
+were none in all Tetuan.
+
+The gall of Israel's heart rose to his throat. Was he to be left alone
+with his dead wife? Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave
+with his own hands? Or did they expect him to come to them with bowed
+forehead and bended knee? Either way their reckoning was a mistake.
+They might leave him terribly and awfully alone--alone in his hour of
+mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when
+he had married the dear soul who was dead. But his strength and energy
+they should not crush: his vital and intellectual force they should
+not wither away. Only one thing they could do to touch him--they could
+shrivel up his last impulse of sweet human sympathy. They were doing it
+now.
+
+When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message
+to the Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six State
+prisoners, fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.
+
+The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed
+by Jewish custom. It was twilight when the body was brought down from
+the upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that
+had been raised for it on chairs standing back to back. And there, too,
+sat Israel, with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.
+
+Israel's manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock, and
+his dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.
+Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself, down to
+the least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in
+the larger sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his
+riches except to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down and to
+abash the enemies who still menaced him. Nothing was lacking that money
+could buy in Tetuan to make this burial an imposing ceremony. Only one
+thing it wanted--it wanted mourners, and it had but one.
+
+Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited. She ran to and fro,
+clutched at Israel's clothes and seemed to look into his face, clasped
+the hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear. Whether she knew
+what work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or
+sense she learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the
+presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah
+brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black
+women clinging to it, kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke
+away from Israel and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her
+little white arms upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need
+to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in
+dread to her father's side.
+
+"God be gracious to my father, look at that," whispered Fatimah.
+
+"My child, my poor child," said Israel, "is there but one thing in life
+that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!"
+
+It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of
+the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs
+according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger
+had wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had
+sunken their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them,
+and concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep,
+rich, velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two
+remaining prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand--the
+right arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a
+soldier, carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the
+twilight, and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone.
+Thus they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated
+at the door, through the streets of the Mellah and out into the
+marketplace, and up the narrow lane that leads to the chief town gate.
+
+There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage, and
+the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel. As the procession went
+through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent until
+it had gone. Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing fowls
+and taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work and fell
+back as the procession approached. A blind beggar crouching at the other
+side of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close
+at his elbow were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were
+playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the
+procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler
+was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller
+was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the
+juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the
+storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of
+the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling of the bells of the
+water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from the country were
+dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their panniers full of
+street-filth, were drawn up by the wall. From the market-place and out
+of the shops, out of the houses and out of the mosque itself, the people
+came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close line on either side
+of the course which the procession must take. And through this avenue
+of onlookers the strange company made its way--the two prisoners
+bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the two soldiers
+carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported and alone.
+Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of the feet
+of the six men, and the clank of their chains.
+
+The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every
+one knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet
+he did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither
+to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.
+
+The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the
+procession came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white
+tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock
+of sheep asleep among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence,
+and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.
+
+Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi
+her father. He had asked no man's permission to do so, but if no one had
+helped at that day's business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
+when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
+forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch
+in his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white
+earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a
+padlock and flung away the key. Last of all, when the body had been
+taken out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in
+after it, and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern. And
+then, kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both
+his hands, and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down
+at her where she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the
+synagogue, and speaking to her as though she heard: "Ruth, my wife, my
+dearest, for the cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered
+you to marry me, being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people,
+forgive me now, my beloved, and ask God to forgive me also."
+
+The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two
+soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted
+man kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the
+custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet
+no more until the resurrection itself reunited them! The traffic of the
+streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel
+had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.
+
+The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for
+each carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day
+following. But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened
+mind. As he had plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over
+his shoulder, saying, "They shall spring in the cities as the grass in
+the earth," he had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the
+world were peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was
+dead. God had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert. Only one
+glimpse of human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken
+from him for ever.
+
+And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again. She was
+a helpless exile among men, a creature banished from all human
+intercourse, a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a
+good God who had taken the mother from such a child--the child from such
+a mother? Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not
+God but the devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that
+governed it.
+
+Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's
+loss and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to
+be saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
+fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
+strange and beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SPIRIT-MAID
+
+
+The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should
+not lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time
+forward he became as father and mother both to the child.
+
+At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
+it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of
+the tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and
+blind, but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied.
+It implied that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest
+of the family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart
+as if she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could
+reach her in joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In
+the midst of a world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was
+in a world of silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a
+living and buried soul.
+
+And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had
+memory, for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had
+love, for she had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love
+and memory without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet
+locked in a casket--idle and useless to any purposes of man or the
+world.
+
+Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
+affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
+but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
+twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not
+merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human
+speech.
+
+For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
+father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows he must have
+soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
+beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
+must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
+though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
+might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if
+she felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he
+must have known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the
+world and what the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book
+for her to read. But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of
+being deaf, being dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation
+of her state, the blank void of her isolation--cut off, apart, aloof,
+shut in, imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other
+souls: alive, and yet dead?
+
+Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
+Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and
+silent soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to
+her, that he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his
+own great comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but
+the one gift only whereof he had known from the beginning--the gift of
+touch and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light
+should always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or
+silence should be her speech for ever.
+
+Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
+stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not
+hear, and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent
+to England for many books written on the treatment of these children
+of affliction, and when they were come he pondered them closely and was
+thrilled by the marvellous works they described. But when he came to
+practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the
+impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always,
+to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child
+through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought
+nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense
+were the walls of the prison that encompassed it. "Yes" was a mystery
+that could not at first be revealed to her, and "No" was a problem
+beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and frowns were useless to teach
+her. No discipline could be addressed to her mind or heart. Except mere
+bodily restraint, no control could be imposed upon her. She was swayed
+by her impulses alone.
+
+Israel did not despair. If he was broken down today he strengthened his
+hands for tomorrow. At length he had got so far, after a world of toil
+and thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was for
+approval, and when he touched her hand it was for assent. Then he
+stopped very suddenly. His hope had not drooped, and neither had his
+energy failed, but the conviction had fastened upon him that such effort
+in his case must be an offence against Heaven. Naomi was not merely an
+infirm creature from the left hand of Nature; she was an afflicted being
+from the right hand of God. She was a living monument of sin that was
+not her own. It was useless to go farther. The child must be left where
+God had placed her.
+
+But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human
+kind, she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they
+possessed. It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her,
+and from that source alone could she have imbibed her power. To tell of
+all she could do to guide her steps, and to minister to her pleasures,
+and to cherish her affections, would be to go beyond the limit of
+belief. Truly it seemed as if Naomi, being blind with her bodily eyes,
+could yet look upon a light that no one else could see, and, being deaf
+with her bodily ears, could yet listen to voices that no one else could
+hear.
+
+Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew
+when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.
+Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears
+had taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her
+hands to take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it
+against her cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms
+to encircle his neck; and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to
+her bosom; and always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by. Did she go
+with Ali into the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of
+the town, and the narrow lanes from the open Sok. Did she pass the lofty
+mosque in the market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled
+under and behind and around. Did a troop of mules and camels come near
+her, she knew them from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two
+streets crossed, she would stand and face both ways.
+
+And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around
+Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah
+and the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river
+under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and
+even some of their rocky gorges. She could find her way among them all
+without help or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her
+to keep her out of the way of harm. While Ali was a little fellow he was
+her constant companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet
+heart suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school
+every day early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny
+white goat which her father had bought to be another playfellow.
+
+And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the
+crown of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her
+feet felt the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded
+whether the sun was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from
+the rising of the morning until the coming of the stars. So, casting off
+her slippers and the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and
+clad in her white woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of
+airy grace, and with the little goat going before her, though she could
+neither see nor hear it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery,
+and stand on the summit, like a spirit poised in air. She could see
+nothing of the green valley then stretched before her, or of the white
+town lying below, with its domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult
+in her lofty place, and to drink new life from the rush of mighty winds
+about her. Then coming back to the dale, she would seem, to those who
+looked up at her, with fear and with awe, to leap as the goat leapt
+in the rocky places; and as a bird sweeps over the grass with wings
+outstretched, so with her arms spread out, and her long fair hair flying
+loose, she would sweep down the hill, as though her very tiptoes did not
+touch it.
+
+By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were
+the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind,
+which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child
+into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring,
+when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were
+abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder
+thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic
+tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her she would run
+and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter
+would be on her lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and,
+having found her in the pelting storm without covering on her head or
+shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand, and as they
+passed through the streets together his forehead would be bowed and his
+eyes bent down.
+
+But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
+joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature
+of joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
+darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
+though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did
+not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with
+a child's expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
+maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
+seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant
+flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars
+of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars
+that stood in it. And with the girl's expanding nature her love of dress
+increased as well; but it was not a young maid's love of lovely things;
+it was a wild passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled
+in native grace about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness.
+She was happy as a day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.
+The ripple of her laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed
+to follow in the air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her
+father, she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.
+
+Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel
+in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that
+the little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling
+could only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and
+many throbs of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially
+at seasons when no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful
+silence haunted the air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick
+longing from causes that were beyond Israel's power to fathom. Then her
+sweet face would sadden, and her beautiful blind eyes would fill, and
+her pretty laughter would echo no more through the house. And sometimes,
+in the dead of the night, she would rise from her bed and go through
+the dark corridors, for darkness and light were as one to her, until she
+came to Israel's room, and he would awake from his sleep to find her,
+like a little white vision, standing by his bedside. What she wanted
+there he could never know, for neither had he power to ask nor she to
+answer, whether she were sick or in pain, or whether in her sleep she
+had seen a face from the invisible world, and heard a voice that called
+her away, or whether her mother's arms had seemed to be about her once
+again and then to be torn from her afresh, and she had come to him on
+awakening in her trouble, not knowing what it is to dream, but thinking
+all evil dreams to be true fact and new sorrow. So, with a sigh, he
+would arise and light his lamp and lead her back to her bed, and more
+scalding than the tears that would be standing in Naomi's eyes would be
+the hot drops that would gush into his own.
+
+"My poor darling," he would say, "can you not tell me your trouble, that
+I may comfort you? No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot comfort her.
+My darling, my darling."
+
+Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle
+out of heaven to find a way to the little maiden's mind that she might
+ask and answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it, for still
+greater than his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath of God.
+And out of this fear there came to him at length an awful and terrible
+thought: though so severed on earth, his child and he, yet before the
+bar of judgment they would one day be brought together, and then how
+should it stand with her soul?
+
+Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man. Would God
+condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever? No, no, no! God would
+not ask her for good works in the land of silence, and for labour in the
+land of night. She had no eyes to see God's beautiful world, and no ears
+to hear His holy word. God had created her so, and He would not destroy
+what He had made. Far rather would He look with love and pity on His
+little one, so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to
+be a blessed saint in heaven.
+
+Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain. He was a
+Jew to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself out of his
+own mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God's will, that
+had sent Naomi into the world as she was. Then, on the day of the great
+account, how should he answer to her for her soul?
+
+Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul that
+knew not God. These were the most awful terrors of his sleepless nights,
+but at length peace came to him, for he saw his path of duty. It was his
+duty to Naomi that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the
+Lord to her! What matter if she could not hear? Though she had senses as
+the sands of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could
+lead her. What matter though she could not see? The soul was the eye
+that saw God, and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.
+
+So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and led
+her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and, fetching
+from a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her of
+the commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets, and of the
+Kings. And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet, with his one
+free hand in both of her hands, clasped close against her cheek.
+
+What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom, what
+mystery it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks into
+darkness could see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun had
+set--for she knew when the sun was gone--Naomi herself would take her
+father by the hand, and lead him to the upper room, and fetch the book
+to his knees.
+
+And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,
+and make a mock at him, and say, "The child is deaf and hears not--go
+read your book in the tombs!" But he only hardened his neck and laughed
+proudly. And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say, "Why waste
+yourself in this misspent desire? The child is buried while she is still
+alive, and who shall roll away the stone?" But Israel only answered, "It
+is for the Lord to do miracles, and the Lord is mighty."
+
+So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night, and when
+his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice would be hoarse,
+and he would read the law which says, "_Thou shalt not curse the deaf,
+nor put a stumbling-block before the blind._" But when his heart was
+at peace his voice would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel
+sanctified to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he
+answered--
+
+"_And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
+and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp
+of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was,
+and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel, and he
+answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou
+calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and
+lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and
+went to Eli and said, Here am I for thou didst call me. And he answered,
+I called not my son; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the
+Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him._"
+
+And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book, and sing
+out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says, "It is good for me that
+I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes."
+
+Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read
+of the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter, who was both
+blind and deaf. And though Naomi heard not, and neither did she see, yet
+in their silent hour together there was another in their chamber always
+with them--there was a third, for there was God.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE
+
+
+When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then
+fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife.
+The woman's name was Katrina. She was a Spaniard by birth, and had
+first come to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy, which travelled
+through Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez. What her belongings
+were, and what her antecedents had been, no one appeared to know, nor
+did Ben Aboo himself seem to care. She answered all his present needs in
+her own person, which was ample in its proportions and abundant in its
+charms.
+
+In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions. The first
+was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement of
+four Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as the many
+concubines that he had annexed in his way through life, and now kept
+lodged in one unquiet nest in the women's hidden quarter of the Palace.
+The second condition was, that she herself should never be banished
+to such seclusion, but, like the wife of any European governor, should
+openly share the state of her husband.
+
+Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan,
+and he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to
+abide by, but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a
+prelude to that public life which she intended to live by his side, she
+insisted on a public marriage.
+
+They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church by a
+Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival lasted
+six days. Great was the display, and lavish the outlay. Every morning
+the cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill, every
+evening the tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats of
+powder-play in the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa from
+Mequinez yelled and shrieked in the enclosure called the M'salla, near
+the Bab er-Remoosh. Feasts were spread in the Kasbah, and relays of
+guests from among the chief men of the town were invited daily to
+partake of them.
+
+No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute of a
+present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light
+of their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though
+it galled the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage of a
+Christian and a Muslim--no man except Israel, and he excused himself
+with what grace he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick with
+sorrow of the heart.
+
+The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid. She had taken her measure of
+the man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel should
+pay her court and tribute before all. Therefore she caused him to be
+invited again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman, and with
+some lack of courtesy he excused himself afresh.
+
+Katrina was not yet done. She was a creature of resource, and having
+heard of Naomi with strange stories concerning her, she devised a
+children's feast for the last day of the marriage festival, and
+caused Ben Aboo to write to Israel a formal letter, beginning "To our
+well-beloved the excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise to the one God,"
+and setting forth that on the morrow, when the "Sun of the world" should
+"place his foot in the stirrup of speed," and gallop "from the kingdom
+of shades," the Governor would "hold a gathering of delight" for all the
+children of Tetuan and he, Israel, was besought to "lighten it with the
+rays of his face, rivalled only by the sun," and to bring with him
+his little daughter Naomi, whose arrival "similar to a spring breeze,"
+should "dissipate the dark night of solitude and isolation." This
+despatch written in the common cant of the people, concluded with
+quotations from the Prophet on brotherly love and a significant and
+more sincere assurance that the Basha would not admit of excuses "of the
+thickness of a hair."
+
+When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious. He
+leapt to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi, the
+Spanish woman, who must know of the child's condition desired only to
+make a show of it. But, after a fume, he put that thought from him as
+uncharitable and unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.
+
+And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi's
+own eagerness must have driven it away. The little maid seemed to know
+that something unusual was going on. Troops of poor villagers from every
+miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating
+drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them--bullocks,
+cows, and sheep--and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and
+were glad. Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in
+the marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle
+everywhere.
+
+Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement. The
+children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had
+been summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be
+dancing and singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself,
+who had lately practised the kanoon--the lute, the harp--under his
+teacher, was to show his skill before the Governor. Therefore, great
+was the little black man's excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would
+talk to every one of the event forthcoming--to Fatima, to Habeebah, and
+often to Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to
+him, or perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him,
+and then, thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them
+like a fury, and they would scamper away.
+
+When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and
+Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs. Every
+child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then
+a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling
+them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly
+happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree
+of the knowledge of good and evil.
+
+Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and
+followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the
+lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through
+the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women
+stood together closely covered in their blankets--the mothers and
+sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into
+the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther--then down the crooked passage,
+past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and
+finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+
+This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a
+great company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors,
+Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white
+and blue and black and red--they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and,
+perhaps, a beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.
+
+As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every
+eye was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made
+for them, he heard the whispered exclamations of the people. "Shoof!"
+muttered a Moor. "See!" "It's himself," said a Jew. "And the child,"
+said another Jew. "Allah has smitten her," said an Arab "Blind and
+dumb and deaf," said another Moor "God be gracious to my father!" said
+another Arab.
+
+Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and
+from the flat roof above it the women of the Governor's hareem, not yet
+dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were
+gazing furtively down from behind their haiks. There was a fountain in
+the middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an
+alcove that opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with
+stalactites, against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat
+rugs of many colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.
+
+It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at
+the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome
+woman, but plainly a heartless one--selfish, vain, and vulgar.
+
+Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina
+drew Naomi to her side.
+
+"So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?" said
+Katrina.
+
+Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman's
+feet.
+
+"The darling is as fair as an angel," said Katrina, and she kissed
+Naomi.
+
+The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.
+
+Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a
+pretty and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the
+black shadows of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people
+massed around the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going
+in the middle of it. First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered
+hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting
+and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then,
+a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish
+manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around
+with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above
+their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the
+Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and
+chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by
+a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song
+of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little
+black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in
+his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of
+pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting,
+and his face aglow.
+
+Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been
+agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes
+playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.
+It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going
+forward, and knew that they were children who were making it. Perhaps
+the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or
+perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to
+her sensitive body. Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to
+her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was
+full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.
+
+But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
+his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement. The girl
+leaped up from her place at the woman's feet, and with the utmost
+rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to
+the boy's side. And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it,
+and then a low cry came from her lips. Again she touched it, and her
+eyes, though blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire. Then, with
+both her hands she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she
+kissed it, while her whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.
+
+Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with
+wild thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope. As well as he
+could in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the
+little maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave
+her.
+
+"Leave her!" she cried. "Let us see what the child will do!"
+
+At that moment Ali's playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp
+pass to Naomi's clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling
+on the ground beside it, the girl took it to herself. She caressed it,
+she patted it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then a faint
+smile crossed her rosy lips. She laid her cheek against it and touched
+its strings again, and then she laughed aloud. She flung off her
+slippers and the garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid
+her pure flesh against the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and
+touched its strings once more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh
+with delight.
+
+Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious
+saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds
+so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet
+heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes
+of a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds
+such as no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.
+
+It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion
+to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found
+to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them
+some of the sensations of sound--the trembling of the air after thunder,
+the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls
+after the ringing of mighty bells--so Naomi, who was blind as well and
+had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up the
+force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument
+of music the movement of things that moved about her--the patter of the
+leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great
+winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling
+of the levanter in her hair.
+
+This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion
+in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the
+music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings of the
+harp. But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of
+sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it. She lifted
+her head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she
+played, she laughed again and again.
+
+There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the
+beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through
+the robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white
+fingers flying across the strings. There was something gruesome and
+awful, as well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard
+nothing of the sounds that her fingers were making.
+
+Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was
+agape. And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from
+their first surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words
+they passed between them. "Where has she learnt it?" asked a Moor.
+"From her master himself," muttered a Jew. "Who is it?" asked the Moor.
+"Beelzebub," growled the Jew. "God pity me, the evil eye is on her,"
+said an Arab. "God will show," said a Shereef from Wazzan. "They say
+her mother was a childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah's
+blessing at the tomb of Rabbi Amran." "No," said the Arab; "she sent her
+girdle." "Anyhow, the child is a saint," whispered the Shereef. "No, but
+a devil," snorted the Jew.
+
+"Brava, brava, brava!" cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered
+and laughed as the girl played. "What did I tell you?" she said, looking
+toward her husband. "The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either. Oh,
+it's a brave imposture! Brava, brave!"
+
+Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded, her head
+dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp and
+sighed audibly.
+
+"Good again!" cried the woman. "Very good!" and she clapped her
+hands, whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread, felt
+constrained to follow her example, and they cheered in their wilder way,
+but the Jews continued to mutter, "Beelzebub, Beelzebub!"
+
+Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind and the
+confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight of what Naomi did.
+Had God opened a gateway to her soul? Were the poor wings of her spirit
+to spread themselves out at last? Was this, then, the way of speech
+that Heaven had given her? But hardly had Israel overflowed with the
+tenderness of such thoughts when the bleating and barking of the faces
+about him awakened his anger. Then, like blows on his brain, came the
+cries of the wife of the Governor, who cheered this awakening of
+the girl's soul as it were no better than a vulgar show; and at that
+Israel's wrath rose to his throat.
+
+"Brava, brava!" cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel, she said,
+"You shall leave the child with me. I must have her with me always."
+
+Israel's throat seemed to choke him at that word. He looked at Katrina,
+and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and vain of heart, who
+had married Ben Aboo because he was rich. Then he looked at Naomi,
+and remembered that her heart was clear as the water, and sweet as the
+morning, and pure as the snow.
+
+And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the
+people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to
+take up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the
+spell had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp, her head
+had dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to
+her face.
+
+"Take her in!" said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped
+up to where the little maiden lay. But before they had touched her
+Israel strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.
+
+"Stop!" he cried.
+
+The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.
+
+"Do as you are bidden--take her in!" said Ben Aboo.
+
+"Stop!" cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.
+Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up the
+unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.
+
+"Madam," he cried, "I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor, but
+my child belongs to me."
+
+So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms,
+and in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed to
+know what he had done until he was gone.
+
+Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event he
+found courage in his heart to begin his task again. Let his enemies
+bleat and bark "Beelzebub," yet the child was an angel, though suffering
+for his sin, and her soul was with God. She was a spirit, and the songs
+she had played were the airs of paradise. But, comforting himself so,
+Israel remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered her
+powers. He had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death, but
+would the Lord yet bring it to pass? Would God in His mercy some day
+take the angel out of his house, though so strangely gifted, so radiant
+and beautiful and joyful, and give him instead for the hunger of his
+heart as a man this sweet human child, his little, fair-haired Naomi,
+though helpless and simple and weak?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
+
+
+Israel's instinct had been sure: the coming of Katrina proved to be
+the beginning of his end. He kept his office, but he lost his power. No
+longer did he work his own will in Tetuan; he was required to work the
+will of the woman. Katrina's will was an evil one, and Israel got the
+blame of it, for still he seemed to stand in all matters of tribute and
+taxation between the people and the Governor. It galled him to take the
+woman's wages, but it vexed him yet more to do her work. Her work was to
+burden the people with taxes beyond all their power of paying; her wages
+was to be hated as the bane of the bashalic, to be clamoured against
+as the tyrant of Tetuan, and to be ridiculed by the very offal of the
+streets.
+
+One day a gang of dirty Arabs in the market-place dressed up a blind
+beggar in clothes such as Israel wore, and sent him abroad through the
+town to beg as one that was destitute and in a miserable condition. But
+nothing seemed to move Israel to pity. Men were cast into prison for no
+reason save that they were rich, and the relations of such as were there
+already were allowed to redeem them for money, so that no felon suffered
+punishment except such as could pay nothing. People took fright and fled
+to other cities. Israel's name became a curse and a reproach throughout
+Barbary.
+
+Yet all this time the man's soul was yearning with pity for the people.
+Since the death of Ruth his heart had grown merciful. The care of the
+child had softened him. It had brought him to look on other children
+with tenderness, and looking tenderly on other children had led him to
+think of other fathers with compassion. Young or old, powerful or weak,
+mighty or mean, they were all as little children--helpless children who
+would sleep together in the same bed soon.
+
+Thinking so, Israel would have undone the evil work of earlier years;
+but that was impossible now. Many of them that had suffered were
+dead; some that had been cast into prison had got their last and long
+discharge. At least Israel would have relaxed the rigour whereby his
+master ruled, but that was impossible also. Katrina had come, and she
+was a vain woman and a lover of all luxury, and she commanded Israel to
+tax the people afresh. He obeyed her through three bad years; but many
+a time his heart reproached him that he dealt corruptly by the poor
+people, and when he saw them borrowing money for the Governor's tributes
+on their lands and houses, and when he stood by while they and their
+sons were cast into prison for the bonds which they could not pay to the
+usurers Abraham or Judah or Reuben, then his soul cried out against him
+that he ate the bread of such a mistress.
+
+But out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
+sweetness, and out of this coming of the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo came
+deliverance for Israel from the torment of his false position.
+
+There was an aged and pious Moor in Tetuan, called Abd Allah, who was
+rumoured to have made savings from his business as a gunsmith. Going to
+mosque one evening, with fifteen dollars in his waistband, he unstrapped
+his belt and laid it on the edge of the fountain while he washed his
+feet before entering, for his back was no longer supple. Then a younger
+Moor, coming to pray at the same time, saw the dollars, and snatched
+them up and ran. Abd Allah could not follow the thief, so he went to the
+Kasbah and told his story to the Governor.
+
+Just at that time Ben Aboo had the Kaid of Fez on a visit to him. "Ask
+him how much more he has got," whispered the brother Kaid to Ben Aboo.
+
+Abd Allah answered that he did not know.
+
+"I'll give you two hundred dollars for the chance of all he has," the
+Kaid whispered again.
+
+"Five bees are better than a pannier of flies--done!" said Ben Aboo.
+
+So Abd Allah was sold like a sheep and carried to Fez, and there cast
+into prison on a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars imposed upon
+him on the pretence of a false accusation.
+
+Israel sat by the Governor that day at the gate of the hall of justice,
+and many poor people of the town stood huddled together in the court
+outside while the evil work was done. No one heard the Kaid of Fez when
+he whispered to Ben Aboo, but every one saw when Israel drew the warrant
+that consigned the gunsmith to prison, and when he sealed it with the
+Governor's seal.
+
+Abd Allah had made no savings, and, being too old for work, he had lived
+on the earnings of his son. The son's name was Absalam (Abd es-Salem),
+and he had a wife whom he loved very tenderly, and one child, a boy of
+six years of age. Absalam followed his father to Fez, and visited him in
+prison. The old man had been ordered a hundred lashes, and the flesh was
+hanging from his limbs. Absalam was great of heart, and, in pity of his
+father's miserable condition he went to the Governor and begged that the
+old man might be liberated, and that he might be imprisoned instead.
+His petition was heard. Abd Allah was set free, Absalam was cast into
+prison, and the penalty was raised from two hundred and fifty dollars to
+three hundred.
+
+Israel heard of what had happened, and he hastened to Ben Aboo, in great
+agitation, intending to say "Pay back this man's ransom, in God's name,
+and his children and his children's children will live to bless you."
+But when he got to the Kasbah, Katrina was sitting with her husband, and
+at sight of the woman's face Israel's tongue was frozen.
+
+Absalam had been the favourite of his neighbours among all the gunsmiths
+of the market-place, and after he had been three months at Fez they
+made common cause of his calamities, sold their goods at a sacrifice,
+collected the three hundred dollars of his fine, bought him out of
+prison, and went in a body through the gate to meet him upon his return
+to Tetuan. But his wife had died in the meantime of fear and privation,
+and only his aged father and his little son were there to welcome him.
+
+"Friends," he said to his neighbours standing outside the walls, "what
+is the use of sowing if you know not who will reap?"
+
+"No use, no use!" answered several voices.
+
+"If God gives you anything, this man Israel takes it away," said
+Absalam.
+
+"True, true! Curse him! Curse his relations!" cried the others.
+
+"Then why go back into Tetuan?" said Absalam.
+
+"Tangier is no better," said one. "Fez is worse," said another. "Where
+is there to go?" said a third.
+
+"Into the plains," said Absalam--"into the plains and into the
+mountains, for they belong to God alone."
+
+That word was like the flint to the tinder.
+
+"They who have least are richest, and they that have nothing are best
+off of all," said Absalam, and his neighbours shouted that it was so.
+
+"God will clothe us as He clothes the fields," said Absalam, "and feed
+our children as He feeds the birds."
+
+In three days' time ten shops in the market-place, on the side of the
+Mosque, were sold up and closed, and the men who had kept them were gone
+away with their wives and children to live in tents with Absalam on the
+barren plains beyond the town.
+
+When Israel heard of what had been done he secretly rejoiced; but Ben
+Aboo was in a commotion of fear, and Katrina was fierce with anger, for
+the doctrine which Absalam had preached to his neighbours outside the
+walls was not his own doctrine merely, but that of a great man lately
+risen among the people, called Mohammed of Mequinez, nicknamed by his
+enemies Mohammed the Third.
+
+"This madness is spreading," said Ben Aboo.
+
+"Yes," said Katrina; "and if all men follow where these men lead, who
+will supply the tables of Kaids and Sultans?"
+
+"What can I do with them?" said Ben Aboo.
+
+"Eat them up," said Katrina.
+
+Ben Aboo proceeded to put a literal interpretation upon his wife's
+counsel. With a company of cavalry he prepared to follow Absalam and his
+little fellowship, taking Israel along with him to reckon their taxes,
+that he might compel them to return to Tetuan, and be town-dwellers
+and house-dwellers and buy and sell and pay tribute as before, or else
+deliver themselves to prison.
+
+But Absalam and his people had secret word that the Governor was coming
+after them, and Israel with him. So they rolled their tents, and fled to
+the mountains that are midway between Tetuan and the Reef country, and
+took refuge in the gullies of that rugged land, living in caves of the
+rock, with only the table-land of mountain behind them, and nothing but
+a rugged precipice in front. This place they selected for its safety,
+intending to push forward, as occasion offered, to the sanctuaries of
+Shawan, trusting rather to the humanity of the wild people, called the
+Shawanis, than to the mercy of their late cruel masters. But the valley
+wherein they had hidden is thick with trees, and Ben Aboo tracked them
+and came up with them before they were aware. Then, sending soldiers
+to the mountain at the back of the caves, with instructions that they
+should come down to the precipice steadily, and kill none that they
+could take alive, Ben Aboo himself drew up at the foot of it, and
+Israel with him, and there called on the people to come out and deliver
+themselves to his will.
+
+When the poor people came from their hiding-places and saw that they
+were surrounded, and that escape was not left to them on any side, they
+thought their death was sure. But without a shout or a cry they knelt,
+as with one accord, at the mouth of the precipice, with their backs
+to it, men and women and children, knee to knee in a line, and joined
+hands, and looked towards the soldiers, who were coming steadily down on
+them. On and on the soldiers came, eye to eye with the people, and their
+swords were drawn.
+
+Israel gasped for his breath, and waited to see the people cut in pieces
+at the next instant, when suddenly they began to sing where they knelt
+at the edge of the precipice, "God is our refuge and our strength, a
+very present help in trouble."
+
+In another moment the soldiers had drawn up as if swords from heaven
+had fallen on them, and Israel was crying out of his dry throat, "Fear
+nothing! Only deliver your bodies to the Governor, and none shall harm
+you."
+
+Absalam rose up from his knees and called to his father and his son.
+And standing between them to be seen by all, and first looking upon both
+with eyes of pity, he drew from the folds of his selham a long knife
+such as the Reefians wear, and taking his father by his white hair he
+slew him and cast his body down the rocks. After that he turned towards
+his son, and the boy was golden-haired and his face was like the
+morning, and Israel's heart bled to see him.
+
+"Absalam!" he cried in a moving voice; "Absalam, wait, wait!"
+
+But Absalam killed his son also, and cast him down after his father.
+Then, looking around on his people with eyes of compassion, as seeming
+to pity them that they must fall again into the hands of Israel and his
+master, he stretched out his knife and sheathed it in his own breast,
+and fell towards the precipice.
+
+Israel covered his face and groaned in his heart, and said, "It is the
+end, O Lord God, it is the end--polluted wretch that I am, with the
+blood of these people upon me!"
+
+The companions of Absalam delivered themselves to the soldiers, who
+committed them to the prison at Shawan, and Ben Aboo went home in
+content.
+
+Rumour of what had come to pass was not long in reaching Tetuan, and
+Israel was charged with the guilt of it. In passing through the streets
+the next day on his way to his house the people hissed him openly.
+"Allah had not written it!" a Moor shouted as he passed. "Take care!"
+cried an Arab, "Mohammed of Mequinez is coming!"
+
+It chanced that night, after sundown, when Naomi, according to her wont,
+led her father to the upper room, and fetched the Book of the Law from
+the cupboard of the wall and laid it upon his knees, that he read the
+passage whereon the page opened of itself, scarce knowing what he read
+when he began to read it, for his spirit was heavy with the bad doings
+of those days. And the passage whereon the book opened was this--
+
+"_Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and
+the other lot for the scapegoat. . . . Then shall he kill the goat of
+the sin-offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the
+vail. And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of
+the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their
+transgressions in all their sins. . . . And when he hath, made an end of
+reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and
+the altar, he shall bring the live goat: and Aaron shall lay both his
+hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the
+iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in
+all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send
+him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat
+shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited._"
+
+That same night Israel dreamt a dream. He had been asleep, and
+had awakened in a place which he did not know. It was a great arid
+wilderness. Ashen sand lay on every side; a scorching sun beat down on
+it, and nowhere was there a glint of water. Israel gazed, and slowly
+through the blazing sunlight he discerned white roofless walls like the
+ruins of little sheepfolds. "They are tombs," he told himself, "and this
+is a Mukabar--an Arab graveyard--the most desolate place in the world
+of God." But, looking again, he saw that the roofless walls covered the
+ground as far as the eye could see, and the thought came to him that
+this ashen desert was the earth itself, and that all the world of
+life and man was dead. Then, suddenly, in the motionless wilderness, a
+solitary creature moved. It was a goat, and it toiled over the hot sand
+with its head hung down and its tongue lolled out. "Water!" it seemed
+to cry, though it made no voice, and its eyes traversed the plain as if
+they would pierce the ground for a spring. Fever and delirium fell upon
+Israel. The goat came near to him and lifted up its eyes, and he saw its
+face. Then he shrieked and awoke. The face of the goat had been the face
+of Naomi.
+
+Now Israel knew that this was no more than a dream, coming of the
+passage which he had read out of the book at sundown, but so vivid was
+the sense of it that he could not rest in his bed until he had first
+seen Naomi with his waking eyes, that he might laugh in his heart to
+think how the eye of his sleep had fooled him. So he lit his lamp, and
+walked through the silent house to where Naomi's room was on the lower
+floor of it.
+
+There she lay, sleeping so peacefully, with her sunny hair flowing over
+the pillow on either side of her beautiful face, and rippling in little
+curls about her neck. How sweet she looked! How like a dear bud of
+womanhood just opening to the eye!
+
+Israel sat down beside her for a moment. Many a time before, at such
+hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways, and she
+had known nothing of it. She was like any other maiden now. Her eyes
+were closed, and who should see that they were blind? Her breath came
+gently, and who should say that it gave forth no speech? Her face was
+quiet, and who should think that it was not the face of a homely-hearted
+girl? Israel loved these moments when he was alone with Naomi while she
+slept, for then only did she seem to be entirely his own, and he was not
+so lonely while he was sitting there. Though men thought he was strong,
+yet he was very weak. He had no one in the world to talk to save Naomi,
+and she was dumb in the daytime, but in the night he could hold little
+conversations with her. His love! his dove! his darling! How easily he
+could trick and deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and
+speak to me! Yes; her eyes will open and see me here again, and I
+shall hear her voice, for I love it! "Father!" she will say.
+"Father--father--"
+
+Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!
+
+Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her. As he went back to his bed,
+through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him that
+made his hair to rise. It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.
+
+Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream to be a
+vision. It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream would be
+to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything. The vision as he
+thought he saw it was this, and these were the words of it as he thought
+he heard them--
+
+It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room, when
+a dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed, and a
+voice that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it, crying "Israel!"
+
+And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, "Speak, Lord, Thy servant
+heareth."
+
+Then the Lord said, "Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest
+cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat."
+
+And Israel answered trembling, "I have read."
+
+Then the Lord said to Israel, "Look now upon Naomi, thy child, for
+she is as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement for thy
+transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore she is
+dumb to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight, a soul
+in chains and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot that is
+cast for justice and for the Lord."
+
+And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, "Would that the lot had
+fallen upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou
+speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before
+Thee."
+
+Then said the Lord to Israel, "On thee, also, hath the lot fallen, even
+the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of God."
+
+And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said,
+"Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people, so
+cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo, and of his wife,
+Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins of the people into the
+wilderness, so, in the resurrection, shalt thou bear the sins of this
+man and of this woman into a land that no man knoweth."
+
+Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were
+drops of blood, and cried, "What shall I do, O Lord?"
+
+And the Lord said, "Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee to
+the country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard
+tidings, and he shall show thee what thou shalt do."
+
+Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, "Shall my soul live?
+Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?"
+
+But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed, and
+all around was darkness.
+
+Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath on
+the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice, not in
+his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight of all
+common things about him--his room and his bed; and the canopy that
+covered it. And on rising in the morning, at daydawn, so actual was the
+sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful the impression of
+it, that he straightway set himself to carry out the injunction it had
+made, without question of its reality or doubt of its authority.
+
+Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now
+grown to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate,
+Israel first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent
+from Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide, and to the
+market-place for mules.
+
+Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan was
+waiting at the door. Then Israel remembered Naomi. Where was the girl,
+that he had not seen her that morning? They answered him that she had
+not yet left her room, and he sent the black woman Fatimah to fetch
+her. And when she came and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in
+silence, his heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his
+foot to the stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio with
+the two bondwomen beside her.
+
+"Is she well?" he asked.
+
+"Oh yes, well--very well," said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.
+Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language
+of her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face,
+which had used to be cheerful, was now sad. At that he almost repented
+of his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone
+no farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick,
+nothing could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must
+let him go his ways without warning.
+
+He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last, with many
+words of tender protest which she did not hear, he had to break away
+from the beautiful arms that held him.
+
+Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier and guide
+and muleteers and tentmen were already mounted, amid a chattering throng
+of idle people looking on.
+
+"Ali, my lad," said Israel, "if anything should befall Naomi while I am
+away, will you watch over her and guard her with all your strength?"
+
+"With all my life," said Ali stoutly. He was Naomi's playfellow no
+longer, but her devoted slave.
+
+Then Israel set off on his journey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ISRAEL'S JOURNEY
+
+
+MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a
+Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died,
+and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's brothers, both men of
+yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at
+Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a
+land where there is one noble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and
+descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are
+mired with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest
+nobility. Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth
+that went along with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.
+
+He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out into
+the plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the
+shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed
+him. He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and
+lovers of poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They
+were never to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give
+what he had to him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet
+whatever they said was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be
+ministers of peace, and if any man did them violence they were never to
+resist him. Nevertheless they were not to lack for courage, but to laugh
+to scorn the enemies that tormented them, and smile in their pains and
+shed no tear. And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to
+esteem it more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible,
+but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released
+from the bondage of the flesh. Not dissenters from the Koran, but
+stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews, yet followers of
+Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.
+
+And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the
+cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets,
+from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service
+of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds
+and trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty,
+and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought
+nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs
+save the stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which
+they drove before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their
+fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for
+their food and the hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and
+desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering
+themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of
+battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded,
+passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about
+Mequinez. And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been
+so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as
+Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan: "God will feed
+us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He
+clothes the fields."
+
+Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his
+people too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties
+were enough already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a
+palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom
+had the dusty and tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the
+fast of Ramadhan, and Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the
+double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his
+famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the
+night. In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some
+obstacles, but his time was long.
+
+And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan,
+so he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed
+through, and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes
+very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was
+passing through his own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people
+think but that he had come to make a new assessment of their lands and
+holdings, their cattle and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and
+more fully. So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of
+their houses as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse,
+and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot
+in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord), a title never
+before given to a Jew, and offered him presents out of their meagre
+substance.
+
+"A gift for my lord," they would say, "of the little that God has given
+us, praise His merciful name for ever!"
+
+Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
+by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
+trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
+in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.
+
+Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.
+
+"Keep them," he would answer; "keep them until I come again," intending
+to tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.
+
+And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic
+of El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos
+hastened before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks
+and palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his
+errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in
+the early morning.
+
+"Peace be with you!" said the Kaid. "So my lord is going again to the
+Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!"
+
+Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of
+crooked lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near
+the market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the
+presents of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars
+who looked on with feverish eyes.
+
+Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of
+Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the
+foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand
+Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood
+waiting to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention
+of his journey.
+
+"Welcome! welcome!" said the Shereef; "all you see is yours until Allah
+shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our
+lord the Sultan at Fez--may God prolong his life and bless him!"
+
+"God make you happy!" said Israel, but he offered no answer to the
+question that was implied.
+
+"It is twenty and odd years, my lord," the Shereef continued, "since my
+father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that
+time has wrought since then, under Allah's will; but none in the past
+have been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in
+the future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (God keep
+our lord Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him."
+
+"God will show," said Israel.
+
+No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef
+alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel's
+horse instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past
+the old Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque
+of the Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live
+like cattle. A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy
+rags, a group of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled
+renegades leaning against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from
+their dishevelled heads and bowed.
+
+That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the
+ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company of Muslimeen--guests
+in the house of the descendants of the Prophet--were, by special
+Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at
+their pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and
+his men started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with
+the Shereef's black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of
+honour, through the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock
+that is warning to strike) a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with
+fierce and dirty faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid
+clouds of hot dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should
+proclaim the end of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains
+stood ready to fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on
+the ground with dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain
+rolled in their fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef,
+and flint and tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the
+minaret stood looking abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun
+was lazily sinking under the plain.
+
+Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were
+the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of
+their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought
+the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage,
+and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of
+his mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this
+lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!
+
+Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like
+ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over
+the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town,
+through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious
+barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they
+came in the grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the
+Father of Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept
+it were snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.
+
+"Selam! M'barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!" shouted the Shereef's
+black guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in
+Israel's honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him
+housed within.
+
+From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came
+yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. "Burn your father!
+Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!"
+
+"Selam!" shouted one of the black guard. "You dog of dogs! Your father
+was bewitched by a hyena! I'll teach you to curse your betters. Quick!
+get up,--or I'll shave your beard. Open! or I'll ride the donkey on your
+head! There!--and there!--and there again!" and at every word the butt
+of his long gun rang on the old oaken gate.
+
+"Hamed el Wazzani!" muttered several voices within.
+
+"Yes," shouted the Shereef's man. "And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his
+way to the Sultan, God grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi
+Israel el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and
+snoring in your dirt."
+
+There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys,
+and then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two
+of the four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse,
+asking forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime,
+the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had
+ridden far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his class and
+country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham
+and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.
+
+"I heard you were coming," he panted--"sent for by the Sultan--Allah
+preserve him!--but had I known you were to be here so soon--I--that
+is--"
+
+"Peace be with you!" interrupted Israel.
+
+"God grant you peace. The Sultan--praise the merciful Allah!" the Kaid
+continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup--"he reached Fez from
+Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him."
+
+"God will show," said Israel, and he pushed forward.
+
+"Ah, true--yes--certainly--my lord is tired," puffed the Kaid, bowing
+again most profoundly. "Well, your lodging is ready--the best in
+Mequinez--and your mona is cooking--all the dainties of Barbary--and
+when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand Vizier--"
+
+Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until
+they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until
+sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same--the Sultan, the
+Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!
+
+Israel could bear no more. "Basha," he said "it is a mistake; the Sultan
+has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him."
+
+"Not going to him?" the Kaid echoed vacantly.
+
+"No, but to another," said Israel; "and you of all men can best tell me
+where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen--yet a poor
+man--the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez."
+
+Then there was a long silence.
+
+Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after
+sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and
+no man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had
+gone off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind
+him his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen,
+who, like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in
+dudgeon. The Kaid had turned them out of the town.
+
+Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within
+their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the
+tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there
+passed them in the fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of
+the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and
+shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had to pass
+over. They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid
+of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace without
+delay, that he might give good account of his stewardship, or else
+deliver up his substance and be cast into prison for the defalcations
+with which rumour had charged him.
+
+Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people,
+who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at
+Fez; and great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they
+remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last
+in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly
+touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of
+its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his
+door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and
+built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken
+from him and the other failed him, where then was the hope of that man's
+salvation, whether in this world or the next? The dungeon, the chain,
+the lash, the wooden jellab--what else was left to him? Only the wail
+of the poor whom he has made poorer, the curse of the orphan whom he
+has made fatherless, and the execration of the down-trodden whom he has
+oppressed. These followed him into his prison, and mingled their cries
+with the clank of his irons, for they were voices which had never yet
+deserted the man that made them, but clamoured loud at the last when his
+end had come, above the death-rattle in his throat. One dim hour waited
+for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace--one lonely
+hour wherein none could bear him company--and what was wealth and
+treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on earth? Was it
+glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth--what could it be but a
+will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night! Oh! riches of
+gold and silver--what had they ever been but marsh-fire gathered in the
+dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the service of the
+prince of it!
+
+Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure--so far away. Though
+all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by
+God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from
+his child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling!
+His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose
+anything, everything, all that the world and all that the devil had
+given him; but let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what
+was gold without gladness, and what was plenty without peace?
+
+Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the
+musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of
+unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped
+like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were
+a vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included
+multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil
+moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago
+they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from
+Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from
+Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous
+Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but
+their substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them.
+Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
+privations patiently--the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains
+of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the
+Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of both
+in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
+that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or
+sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild
+bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.
+
+So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
+in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
+starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What
+of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them
+as He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was
+seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour,
+He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to
+plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it.
+"The hunger is on us!" "Our children are perishing!" "Find us food!"
+"Food!" "Food!"
+
+With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
+madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
+came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
+their leader when he answered them.
+
+First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
+quivering nostrils. "Do you think I am Moses," he cried, "that I should
+smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full?
+If you are naked, am I clothed?"
+
+But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
+was saying in a very moving voice, "My good people, who have followed
+me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than
+you can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that
+death itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that
+Allah sees a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that,
+unknown to us all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass!
+Patience, I beg of you; patience, my poor people--patience and trust!"
+
+At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered
+the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan
+had burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes
+worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings and
+earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang on the breast
+as safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much gold filagree of the
+kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box
+and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further
+thought to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of
+them, he said, "Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, 'A
+present to the man of God and to his people in their trouble.'"
+
+And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
+open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him,
+it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had
+opened and rained manna on their heads.
+
+"It is an answer to your prayer," he cried; "an angel from heaven has
+sent it."
+
+Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened
+to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched
+throats--
+
+"Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!"
+
+And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of
+men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together,
+and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great
+broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them succour, that they
+might not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every
+man looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, "I could
+have borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I
+was a fool."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
+
+
+Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of
+the new prophet for his guide and motto: "Exact no more than is just; do
+violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give
+to the poor." That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if
+any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been
+an idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after
+Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom.
+"I'll do it," he said; "at all risks and all costs, I'll do it."
+
+And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant
+to bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his
+pockets of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to
+return to his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in
+amazement, and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their
+ways by themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan
+at Fez had stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming
+behind them penniless.
+
+But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his
+homeward journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in
+his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out
+from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five
+long days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the
+daytime. Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done
+so much to wipe out God's displeasure as he was now doing and yet would
+do. He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of
+his vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the
+sin-offering must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would
+meet her without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance,
+then must her debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child
+been so smitten of God, and never had any father of an afflicted child
+bought God's mercy at so dear a price!
+
+Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared
+not to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing God out of his love
+of the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home,
+it was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity
+and pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through
+the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three
+sights which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence
+in that town and province.
+
+First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east of the new
+town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the
+high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room for a thousand
+women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco
+and rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders
+selling twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all
+black, and of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They
+had lately arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and
+the Wargha, and some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others
+were fresh and cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were
+adorned, after their doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters,
+with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers
+pricked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they
+were drawn up in a line for public auction; but before the sale of them
+could begin among the buyers that had gathered about them in the street,
+the overseers of the Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection
+for their master. This the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them
+nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces of evil old
+women and the hoarse voices of ravens--had picked out three fat black
+maidens, the business of the auction began by the sale of a negro girl
+of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and passed around.
+
+"Now, brothers," said the slave-master, "look see; sound of wind and
+limb--how much?"
+
+"Eighty dollars," said a voice from the crowd.
+
+"Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her--rosy lips, fit for the
+kisses of a king, eh? How much?"
+
+"A hundred dollars."
+
+"A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It's giving the girl away.
+Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound."
+
+The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her
+round the crowd again.
+
+"Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now's the chance for true
+believers. How much?"
+
+"A hundred and ten."
+
+"A hundred and ten--thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel of a
+girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles. Look at her flesh. Not
+a flaw anywhere. Pass her round, test her, try her, talk to her--she
+speaks good Arabic. Isn't she fit for a Sultan? She's the best thing
+I'll offer to-day, and by the Prophet, if you are not quick I'll keep
+her for myself. Now, for the third and last time--seventeen years of
+age, sound, strong, plump, sweet, and intact--how much?"
+
+Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl, and to
+hear what shameless questions they asked of her, and with a long sigh he
+was turning away from the crowd, when another man came up to it. The man
+was black and old and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white
+selham. But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him,
+he made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people, pushed his
+way to the girl's side, and opened his arms to her, and she fell into
+them with a cry of joy and pain together.
+
+It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before,
+had been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben
+Hashem, having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and
+from his only child, who thus strangely rejoined him. This story he
+told, in broken Arabic; to those that stood around, and, hard as were
+the faces of the bidders, and brutal as was their trade; there was not
+an eye among them all but was melted at his story.
+
+Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, "I will give
+twenty dollars to buy him the girl's liberty," and straightway another
+and another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount of
+the last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it, and the
+girl was free.
+
+Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand, came to
+Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks, and said in his
+broken way: "The blessing of Allah upon you, white brother, and if you
+have a child of your own may you never lose her, but may Allah favour
+her and let you keep her with you always!"
+
+That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear,
+and, facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned down the
+dark arcade that descends into the old town as into a vault, and having
+crossed the markets, he came upon the second of the three sights that
+were to smite out of his heart his pride towards God. A man in a blue
+tunic girded with a red sash, and with a red cotton handkerchief tied
+about his head, was driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees
+cut into short lengths to lie over its panniers. He was clearly a
+Spanish woodseller and he had the weary, averted, and downcast look of
+a race that is despised and kept under. His donkey was a bony creature,
+with raw places on its flank and shoulders where its hide had been worn
+by the friction of its burdens. He drove it slowly; crying "Arrah!" to
+it in the tongue of its own country, and not beating it cruelly. At
+the bottom of the arcade there was an open place where a foul ditch was
+crossed by a rickety bridge. Coming to this the man hesitated a moment,
+as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey over it or to make the beast
+trudge through the water. Concluding to cross the bridge, he cried
+"Arrah!" again, and drove the donkey forward with one blow of his stick.
+But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten thing gave way,
+and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch. The donkey's legs were
+broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry,
+had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water on to the
+paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a moment
+it was dead.
+
+At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
+called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.
+And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed to pity
+him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
+arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
+dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the
+man with bitter reproaches. "Allah blot out your name, you thief!" she
+cried. "You've killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself,
+you dog of a Nazarene!"
+
+This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl
+to hold her peace. "Silence, you young wanton!" he cried, in a voice
+of indignation. "Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
+trouble?"
+
+It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a
+renegade from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his
+father and his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's
+face, and said, "You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not
+be a good man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard when
+your own children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in
+their cradles, before they can speak to you to curse you."
+
+Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
+about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
+sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
+be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!
+
+He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice
+to part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell,
+and that was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost
+everything. And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved
+Naomi, and she clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him
+walk humbly before God, for God was great.
+
+Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased his
+cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet
+lighter spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow of
+the town walls. It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted by a
+white flag; and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out to
+the entrance. He was a poor, miserable creature--ragged, dirty, and with
+dishevelled hair--and, seeing Israel's eyes upon him, he began to talk
+in some wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only a fierce
+jabber of sounds that had no words in them, and of words that had no
+meaning. The poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught he was
+counted a holy man among his people, and put to live in this place,
+which was the tomb of a dead saint--though not more dead to the ways of
+life was he who lay under the floor than he who lived above it. The
+man continued his wild jabber as long as Israel's eyes were on him, and
+Israel dropped two coins into his hand and passed on.
+
+Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God's creatures.
+And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type and
+sign of how her soul was smitten.
+
+On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company of
+his people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey.
+And then, while they walked some paces together before parting, and the
+prophet talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying in the prison at
+Shawan (for he had heard of them from Israel), Israel himself mentioned
+Naomi.
+
+"My father," he said, "there is something that I have not told you."
+
+"Tell it now, my son," said the Mahdi.
+
+"I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.
+You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,
+for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone, and so she is
+very near and dear to me. But she is in the land of silence and in the
+land of night. Nothing can she see, and nothing hear, and never has
+her voice opened the curtains of the air, for she is blind and dumb and
+deaf."
+
+"Merciful Allah!" cried the Mahdi.
+
+"Ah! is her state so terrible? I thought you would think it so. Yes, for
+all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature of the fields that
+knows not God."
+
+"Allah preserve her!" cried the Mahdi.
+
+"And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me in the
+vision, and my soul trembles for her soul. But if God has washed me with
+water should not she also be clean?"
+
+"God knows," said the Mahdi. "He gives no rewards for repentance."
+
+"But listen!" said Israel. "In a vision of death her mother saw her, and
+she was afflicted no more. No, for she could see, and hear, and speak.
+Man of God, will it come to pass?"
+
+"God is good," said the Mahdi. "He needs that no man should teach Him
+pity."
+
+"But I love her," cried Israel, "and I vowed to her mother to guard her.
+She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has
+no freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will
+have mercy?"
+
+The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, "The Lord sees all. Go your
+way in trust. Farewell!"
+
+"Farewell!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING
+
+
+ISRAEL'S return home was an experience at all points the reverse of his
+going abroad. He had seven dollars in the pocket of his waistband on
+setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred and more with which he
+had started from Tetuan. His men had gone on before him and told their
+story. So the people whom he came upon by the way either ignored him or
+jeered at him, and not one that on his coming had run to do him honour
+now stepped aside that he might pass.
+
+Two days after leaving Fez he came again to Wazzan. Women were going
+home from market by the side of their camels, and charcoal-burners were
+riding back to the country on the empty burdas of their mules. It
+was nigh upon sunset when Israel entered the town, and so exactly
+was everything the same that he could almost have tricked himself and
+believed that scarce two minutes had passed since he had left it. There
+at the fountains were the water-carriers waiting with their water-skins,
+and there in the market-place sat the women and children with their
+dishes of soup; there were the men by the booths with their pipes ready
+charged with keef, and there was the mooddin in the minaret, looking
+out over the plain. Everything was the same save one thing, and that
+concerned Israel himself. No Grand Shereef stood waiting to exchange
+horses with him, and no black guard led him through the town. Footsore
+and dirty, covered with dust, and tired, he walked through the
+streets alone. And when presently the voice rang out overhead, and the
+breathless town broke instantly into bubbles of sounds--the tinkling
+of the bells of the water-carriers, the shouts of the children, and the
+calls of the men--only one man seemed to see him and know him. This was
+an Arab, wearing scarcely enough rags to cover his nakedness, who was
+bathing his hot cheeks in water which a water-carrier was pouring into
+his hands, and he lifted his glistening face as Israel passed, and
+called him "Dog!" and "Jew!" and commanded him to uncover his feet.
+
+Israel slept that night in one of the three squalid fondaks of Wazzan
+inhabited by the Jews. His room was a sort of narrow box, in a square
+court of many such boxes, with a handful of straw shaken over the earth
+floor for a bed. On the doorpost the figure of a hand was painted in
+red, and over the lintel there was a rude drawing of a scorpion, with an
+imprecation written under it that purported to be from the mouth of
+the Prophet Joshua, son of Nun. If the charm kept evil spirits from the
+place of Israel's rest, it did not banish good ones. Israel slept in
+that poor bed as he had never slept under the purple canopy of his own
+chamber, and all night long one angel form seemed to hover over him.
+It was Naomi. He could see her clearly. They were together in a little
+cottage somewhere. The house was a mean one, but jasmine and marjoram
+and pinks and roses grew outside of it, and love grew inside. And Naomi!
+How bright were her eyes, for they could see! Yes, and her ears could
+hear, and her tongue could speak!
+
+Two days after Israel left Wazzan he was back in the bashalic of Tetuan.
+Each night he had dreamt the same dream, and though he knew each morning
+when he awoke with a sigh that his dream was only a reflection of his
+dead wife's vision, yet he could not help but think of it the long day
+through. He tried to remember if he had ever seen the cottage with his
+waking eyes, and where he had seen it, and to recall the voice of Naomi
+as he had heard it in his dream, that he might know if it was the same
+as he used to think he heard when he sat by her in his stolen watches of
+the night while she lay asleep. Sometimes when he reflected he thought
+he must be growing childish, so foolish was his joy in looking forward
+to the night--for he had almost grown in love with it--that he might
+dream his dream again.
+
+But it was a dear, delicious folly, for it helped him to bear the
+troubles of his journey, and they were neither light nor few. After
+passing through El Kasar he had been robbed and stripped both of his
+small remaining moneys and the better part of his clothes by a gang of
+ruffians who had followed him out of the town. Then a good woman--the
+old wife, turned into the servant of a Moor who had married a young
+one--had taken pity on his condition and given him a disused Moorish
+jellab. His misfortune had not been without its advantage. Being forced
+to travel the rest of his way home in the disguise of a Moor, he had
+heard himself discussed by his own people when they knew nothing of his
+presence. Every evil that had befallen them had been attributed to him.
+Ben Aboo, their Basha, was a good, humane man, who was often driven to
+do that which his soul abhorred. It was Israel ben Oliel who was their
+cruel taxmaster.
+
+When Israel was within a day's journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge fell
+upon the country. A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud from
+the direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade of grass
+that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it
+had passed was as black and barren as a lava stream. The farmers
+were impoverished, and the poorer people made beggars. Even this last
+disaster they charged in their despair to Israel, for Allah was now
+cursing them for Israel's sake. They were the same people that had
+thrust their presents upon him when he was setting out.
+
+At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl of
+buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water. She gave him
+a dish of zummetta--barley roasted like coffee--and inquired if he
+was going on to Tetuan. He told her yes, and she asked if his home was
+there. And when he answered that it was, she looked at him again, and
+said in a moving way, "Then Allah help you, brother."
+
+"Why me more than another, sister?" said Israel.
+
+"Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man," said the old
+woman. "And that is the sort he is hardest upon."
+
+Israel faltered and said, "He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean--"
+
+"Who else but Israel the Jew?" said she, and then added, as by a sudden
+afterthought, "But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has
+stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this
+poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been--so
+wise and powerful!"
+
+Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame,
+he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him. "They
+tell me," he said, "that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has
+devils."
+
+"Blind and dumb, poor soul," said the old woman; "but Allah has pity for
+the afflicted--he is taking her away."
+
+Israel rose. "Away?"
+
+"She is ill since her father went to Fez."
+
+"Ill?"
+
+"Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying."
+
+Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered,
+and fled out of the hut. Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying
+with dreams--billing and cooing with his own fancies--fondling and
+nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and damned
+for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them that poor men's
+souls might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale
+face of Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had
+used to laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?
+
+With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running at his
+utmost velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting his
+imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist against the
+sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering to himself in awe.
+
+Would God not hear his prayer? God knew the child was very near and dear
+to him, and also that he was a lonely man. "Have pity on a lonely man,
+O God!" he whispered. "Let me keep my child; take all else that I have,
+everything, no matter what! Only let me keep her--yes, just as she is,
+let me have her still! Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I am
+humble, and ask that alone."
+
+On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down on
+his uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust, he
+prayed this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.
+
+When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening under the setting
+sun. Then he thought of his Moorish jellab, and looked at himself, and
+saw that he was returning home like a beggar; and he remembered with
+what splendour he had started out. Should he wait for the darkness, and
+creep into his house under the cover of it? If the thought had occurred
+an hour before he must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of
+every face in Tetuan than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now
+that he was so near he was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon
+to learn the truth he dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro on the
+heath outside the town, paltering with himself, struggling with himself,
+eating out his heart with eagerness, trying to believe that he was
+waiting for the night.
+
+The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening with
+thick stars, Israel passed unknown through the Moorish gate, which was
+still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square. At the gate
+of the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked, and demanded entrance in
+the name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards who kept it fell back at sight
+of him with looks of consternation.
+
+"Israel!" cried one, and dropped his lantern.
+
+Israel whispered, "Keep your tongue between your teeth!" and hurried on.
+
+At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again,
+but more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and,
+seeing his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.
+
+"Habeebah!" he cried, and he knocked once more.
+
+Then Ali came to the door. "What Moorish man are you?" cried Ali,
+pushing him back as he pressed forward.
+
+"Ali! Hush! It is I--Israel."
+
+Then Ali knew him and cried, "God save us! What has happened?"
+
+"What has happened here?" said Israel. "Naomi," he faltered, "what of
+her?"
+
+"Then you have heard?" said Ali. "Thank God, she is now well."
+
+Israel laughed--his laugh was like a scream.
+
+"More than that--a strange thing has befallen her since you went away,"
+said Ali.
+
+"What?"
+
+"She can hear!"
+
+"It's a lie!" cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to
+the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and
+saying, "Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know
+what I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true,
+there is no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no
+fiend in hell need envy me."
+
+And Ali answered through his tears, "It is true, my father--come and
+see."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
+
+
+WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story
+that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered
+from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in
+the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her
+father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and
+the book was in her hands.
+
+"Look at her, poor child," said Fatimah. "See, she thinks he will come
+as usual. God bless her sweet innocent face!"
+
+On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made
+her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife
+of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly
+through the courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from
+there to the gate of the prison.
+
+The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither
+did she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly,
+and seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and
+silent; she did not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of
+submission that was very touching to see.
+
+"Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel," said Fatimah. "How
+long will she wait, poor darling?"
+
+On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to
+restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands
+were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.
+
+It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel's fears on
+setting out from home had been right after all. And making his own
+reckoning with Naomi's condition, Ali went off for the only doctor
+living in Tetuan--a Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading
+to the western gate. This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her
+pulse, touched her throbbing forehead, with difficulty examined her
+tongue, and pronounced her illness to be fever. He gave some homely
+directions as to her treatment--for he despaired of administering drugs
+to such a one as she was--and promised to return the next day.
+
+About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood
+constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water;
+Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner
+outside the door of her room.
+
+The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but
+there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very
+solemnly, and said, "I will come again after two days more, when the
+fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out of
+Tangier along with me!"
+
+Meantime, Naomi's delirium continued. It was gentle as her own
+spirit tent there was this that was strange and eerie about her
+unconsciousness--that whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its
+dark cell must have been mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke
+without ceasing throughout the time of her reason's vanquishment. Not
+that her poor tongue in its trouble uttered speech such as those that
+heard could follow and understand, but only a restless babble of empty
+sounds, yet with tones of varying feeling, sometimes of gladness,
+sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of remonstrance, and sometimes of
+entreaty.
+
+All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat
+together by her bedside, holding each other's hands like little children
+in great fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness
+outside the door, listening in terror to the silvery young voice that
+had never echoed in that house before. This was the night when Israel,
+sleeping at the squalid inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi's
+voice in his dreams.
+
+At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone,
+and away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the
+fondak, which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his
+wet eyes in the pitiless sunlight for Israel's caravan that should soon
+come. On the first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he
+came upon Israel's men returning without him, and telling their lying
+story that he had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and
+was coming behind them penniless.
+
+Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.
+That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had
+fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad
+faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. "Liars and thieves!"
+he cried; "tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go
+straight to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all
+whipped through the streets for plundering my master."
+
+The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a
+mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no
+more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them
+concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by
+right of nature on the tongues of Moors--they said and knew nothing.
+
+While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of
+Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the
+wise leech shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was
+sinking--in plain words, she was dying--and if her father did not come
+before the morrow he would come too late to find her alive.
+
+Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to
+spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly
+become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was,
+therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a
+Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. "The Imam is good, the Imam
+is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?" "Nay, but our Sidi holds
+not with the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our
+lord is our sultan, our lord is our king." "Shoof! What is Sidi against
+paradise? And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a
+follower of Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her
+lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn
+everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum." "But, alack! how can the poor
+girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?" "Then how can she say
+the Shemang either?"
+
+Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and
+silenced both the bondwomen: "The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is
+a thief." There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his
+own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp
+in the days of the Governor's marriage. This person was an old negro,
+bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still
+partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated
+slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and
+willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he
+was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say,
+and not too much of either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance
+there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that
+this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark
+cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar,
+he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through
+thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive generations
+of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither and thither
+among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words, and often meat
+and drink of his meagre substance.
+
+Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence and his
+own great trouble, he tried away for him.
+
+"Father," cried the lad, "does it not say in the good book that the
+prayer of a righteous man availeth much?"
+
+"It does, my son," said the Taleb "You have truth. What then?"
+
+"Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover," said Ali.
+
+It was a sweet instance of simple faith. The old black Taleb dismissed
+his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled
+to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her
+through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and
+then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and
+a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and
+prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
+
+The negro's prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything;
+it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away
+and might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three
+days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was
+blind and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her.
+She was his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man.
+He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were
+gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart would be
+broken and his very soul in peril.
+
+Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb
+angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole
+of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager
+and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down
+mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.
+
+And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
+tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by
+the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and
+Naomi lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
+features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
+restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.
+
+The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
+"El hamdu l'Illah!" (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
+the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete
+the miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and
+wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
+Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
+were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
+breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept
+softly through the night and has just awakened in the morning.
+
+Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment
+of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was
+a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And
+then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while
+the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle
+hand and covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of
+dread.
+
+So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and
+they were shouting "Hallelujah!" with one voice, thinking only that
+she who had been dead to them was alive again. But the old Taleb cried
+eagerly, "Hush! my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing!
+I know what it is--who knows so well as I? Once I was deaf, my children,
+but now I hear. Listen! The maiden has had fever--fever of the brain.
+Listen! A watery humour had gathered in her head. It has gone, it has
+flowed away. Now she will hear. Listen, for it is I that know it--who
+knows it so well as I? Yes; she will be no longer deaf. Her ears will be
+opened. She will hear. Once she was living in a land of silence; now
+she is coming into the land of sound. Blessed be God, for He has wrought
+this wondrous work. God is great! God is mighty! Praise the merciful God
+for ever! El hamdu l'Illah!"
+
+And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb's story seemed to be,
+it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning in
+a slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath, Naomi turned
+her face full upon him; and when the black women in their ready faith,
+joined in his shouts of praise, she turned her face towards them also;
+and wherever a voice sounded in the room she inclined her head towards
+it as one who knew the direction of the sounds, and also as one who was
+in fear of them.
+
+But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one
+thing only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had
+been deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now
+heard their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
+laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
+black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
+around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in
+answer to his old Taleb's prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb's
+cries of warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen
+see the old man's uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes,
+so overpowered were they with their delight, so startled and so joy
+drunken. But over their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing
+shrieks. They were the cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror
+at the first sounds that had reached her of human voices. Her face
+was blanched, her eyelids were trembling, her lips were restless, her
+nostrils quivered, her whole being seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of
+dread, and, in the horrible disarray of all her sensations her brain,
+on its wakening from its dolorous sleep of three delirious days, was
+tottering and reeling at its welcome in this world of noise.
+
+Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their
+peace in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the
+clamour of tongues.
+
+It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in
+the jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
+entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
+remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
+was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance
+was changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No
+longer was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither
+was it as the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot
+and perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and
+as Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no
+cheer did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away
+from her when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears
+with terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then
+his sight grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick
+mist seemed to cover everything, and through the dense waves of
+semi-consciousness he heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice
+coming to him as from far away.
+
+"My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver!
+It is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear
+father has come back to her!"
+
+Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
+Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
+head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
+Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
+hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
+dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
+more than he had asked or deserved!
+
+Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob,
+yet uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only
+holding Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face.
+And the black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb
+in that great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose
+house had come the wonderful work that God had wrought.
+
+No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face, in
+joy over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had
+known him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she
+continued to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father
+and she loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it
+was also because he alone was silent of all that were about her.
+
+When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears,
+that, coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man
+was never heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and
+darkling as the air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit
+trembled in a new world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a
+little dark chamber, a vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul
+was ever passing to and fro, asking for news of the world without?
+Through seventeen dark and silent years the soul of Naomi had been
+passing and repassing within its beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying
+daily and hourly, "Watchman, what of the world?" At length it had found
+an answer, and it was terrified. The world had spoken to her soul and
+its voice was like the reverberations of a subterranean cavern, strange
+and deep and awful.
+
+In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the
+room, all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.
+
+Ali was saying, "Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
+returned yesterday, and said--"
+
+And the bondwomen were crying, "Sidi, you were right when you went
+away!" "Yes, the dear child was ill!" "Oh, how she missed you when
+you were gone." "She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of
+Tetuan--"
+
+And the old Taleb was muttering, "Master, it is all by God's mercy. We
+prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway
+to her spirit as well."
+
+Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi's
+ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned
+them out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of
+Naomi's fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her
+by the solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment
+of a soul.
+
+And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the
+door of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women
+were calling to their children without, and the children were still
+shouting in their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested
+her head against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put
+her arms about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart
+yearned to speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear.
+Let it be but one word, only one, that she might know her father's
+voice--for she had never once heard it--and answer it with a smile.
+
+"Daughter! My dearest! My darling."
+
+Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
+tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
+years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not
+speak lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that
+would break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation.
+It was terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence,
+hardly moving, scarcely breathing--a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
+holding Naomi in his arms.
+
+It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
+In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
+through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
+Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
+little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
+hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
+Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
+Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and
+women and children--country Arabs and Barbers--were squatting around the
+charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while the
+ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently the
+wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the
+streets came to an end; the "Balak" of the ass-driver was no more heard,
+the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the fires on
+the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts of the
+shoemakers' quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew the air
+until all was still.
+
+At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
+released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh she
+dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she
+would have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in
+thankfulness to God, that He was making the way of her great journey
+easy out of the land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke
+over the town. Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in
+the air, which had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and
+long and terrible. First from the direction of Marteel, over the four
+miles which divide Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea
+sends before trouble comes to the land--a deep moan as of waters falling
+from the sky. Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens
+on the gate called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to
+the port. Then came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down
+the gorges of the Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches
+far away to Kitan. Last of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied
+themselves over the town, and the rain fell in floods on the roof of the
+house and on the pavement of the patio, and leapt up again in great loud
+drops, making a noise to the ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a
+hidden multitude. Thus sound after sound broke over the darkness of the
+night in a thousand awful voices, now near, now far, now loud, now
+low, now long, now short, now rising, now falling, now rushing, now
+running--a mighty tumult and a fearsome anarchy.
+
+At last Naomi's terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her
+body as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of
+touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued
+to refer all sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out
+her arms before her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in
+her palms; and at the sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to
+protect her head.
+
+Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom.
+He yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
+words of love, gentle words of hope.
+
+"Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain;
+it is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They
+shall not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There,
+there, my little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you.
+Fear not, my child, fear not!"
+
+Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears,
+but, alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which
+moaned about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again
+and again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the
+solace of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of
+the storm.
+
+Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its
+fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise
+it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with
+the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed--the blessing of a
+pathway to his daughter's soul--a misfortune had come as well. What was
+it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
+And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
+silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but
+a circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
+shrieked and moved around her?
+
+Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror,
+and smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at
+length, in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens
+seemed rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell
+into a long unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer,
+but wept above her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name--
+
+"Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing!
+nothing! Listen! It is gone! Gone!"
+
+With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
+soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
+not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
+Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in
+ashes!
+
+Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
+grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
+could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
+she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the
+bars which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came
+dancing out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down
+at her knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his
+voice through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of
+Jacob, and rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.
+
+If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
+foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
+God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
+God's pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
+wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
+she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
+knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
+was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
+than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
+he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought
+this evil upon him!
+
+But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
+manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
+breathless quiet.
+
+And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away. She seemed
+to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing
+could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay
+over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was
+back in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices
+which had startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been
+nothing but an evil dream.
+
+In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
+with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,
+and said within himself, "It was her baptism. Now she will walk the
+world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the
+Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!"
+
+Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of
+the room on tiptoe.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT
+
+
+With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
+had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she
+had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
+disrobed.
+
+It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her
+new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house, and though
+she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached.
+They led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to
+the great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no
+more as of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see
+them through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on
+her lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took
+her to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod
+the familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did
+she exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty
+winds about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the
+world unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and
+heard the breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her
+ears. They gave Ali's harp into her hands, the same that she had played
+so strangely at the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again
+as on that day did she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound
+such as none had heard before and none could follow, but only touched
+and fumbled them with deftless fingers that knew no music.
+
+She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
+pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
+communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
+kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
+beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.
+
+Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
+of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years
+had bleated and barked "Beelzebub!" And if God in His mercy had taken
+the angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful,
+He had given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet
+human daughter, however helpless and frail.
+
+Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content. But
+day by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange
+sinkings of the heart. Naomi's frailty appeared to be not only of the
+body but also of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly
+fallen asleep. She betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her
+lips; no thought for herself or for others seemed to animate her. She
+neither laughed nor wept. When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not
+stretch out her arms as she had done before to draw down his head to her
+lips. Calmly, silently, sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day,
+without feeling and without thought--a beautiful statue of flesh and
+blood.
+
+What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself
+knows; but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first
+delight in the new gift with which God had gifted her.
+
+To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
+walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
+childhood--the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink, the
+thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered flowers
+in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for it was
+the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle, and
+under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
+Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
+direction.
+
+On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths
+of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the
+sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a
+tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the
+Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there--but by what
+impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had withdrawn her hand
+from his hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it
+took him to stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had
+sunk into the earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from
+his sight.
+
+Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,
+but she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would
+answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her
+laugh.
+
+"Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?"
+
+But no sound came back to him.
+
+Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a
+voice of fear.
+
+"Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?"
+
+Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor
+the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.
+
+Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
+left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
+and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly,
+until the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and
+deadened the sound of his voice.
+
+Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
+length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
+brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom.
+She was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had
+sat herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were
+still wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old
+olive-tree over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues;
+the little family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny
+creature of the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging
+itself on the low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a
+sheep of solemn face--gaunt and grim and ancient--was standing and
+palpitating before her. Bees were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing,
+the light wind was whispering, and cattle were lowing in the distance.
+The air of that sweet spot in that sweet hour was musical with every
+sweet sound of the earth and sky, and fragrant with all the wild odours
+of the wood.
+
+"My darling," cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
+he paused and looked at her again.
+
+The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the
+light that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her
+head was held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were
+flushed. She had pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair
+had fallen over her neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear,
+and the other strayed among the plants that grew on the bank beside her.
+She seemed to be listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and
+radiant joy, a pure and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her
+beautiful face. It was almost as though she believed that everything she
+heard with the great new gift which God had given her was speaking to
+her, and bidding her welcome and offering her love; as if the garrulous
+old olive over her head were stretching down his arms to sport with her
+hair, and pattering; "Kiss me, little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss
+me! kiss me!"--as if the rippling river at her feet were laughing and
+crying, "Catch me, naked feet! catch me, catch me!" as if the thrush
+on the bough were singing, "Where from, sunny locks? where from? where
+from?"--as if the young squirrel were chirping, "I'm not afraid, not
+afraid, not afraid!" and as if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly,
+"Pat me, little maiden! you may, you may!"
+
+"God bless her beautiful face!" cried Israel. "She listens with every
+feature and every line of it."
+
+It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
+forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever--in
+the voices of children at play--in the bleat of the goat--in the
+footsteps of them she loved--in the hiss and whirr of her mother's old
+spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work--and in Ali's harp, when
+he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.
+
+But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the
+ground first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what
+change was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of
+sound, the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself
+nor any one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a
+beautiful and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to
+give herself up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music
+she took most pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened
+to with a simple and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her
+joy, and the joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air
+wheresoever she went.
+
+There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
+beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah's homely ditties were
+all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times
+when she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the
+caravan, telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing
+cypress, and liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales
+which the good soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties
+whose silence was the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love
+tore the veil of their chastity.
+
+But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be
+the yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call
+down love out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a
+favourite song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had
+learned it in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she
+sang it over the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not
+hear. Naomi knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother's song at
+last, though silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her
+chief and dear delight.
+
+     O, where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+
+In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song, when
+Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it, and the simple
+silent arts she used, being mute and blind, to show her pleasure while
+it lasted, and to ask for it again when it was done, were very sweet and
+touching.
+
+And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves
+that child most among many children that most is helpless, so the
+earth-mother of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes were
+blind. Thus she seemed to hear many things that are unheard by the rest
+of the human family. It is only a dim echo of the outer world that the
+ears of men are allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow of the
+outer world that the eyes of men are allowed to see; but the ears of
+Naomi seemed to hear all.
+
+There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts, and a
+third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another in keenness
+even as one sight differs from another in strength. And all the earth
+is full of voices, and everything that moves upon the face of it has its
+sound; but the bird hears that which is unheard of the beast, and the
+beast hears that which is unheard of men. But Naomi appeared to hear all
+that is heard of each.
+
+Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only, with
+nothing that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground but
+she dropped her face, and nothing flew in the sky but she lifted her
+eyes. And whereas before the coming of her great gift her face had been
+all feeling, and she seemed to feel the sunset, and to feel the sky, and
+to feel the thunder and the light, now her face was all hearing, and
+her whole body seemed to hear, for she was like a living soul floating
+always in a sea of sound.
+
+Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,
+building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with which
+God had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was to her then,
+what the sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was with its roar,
+and what the face of man was, and the eyes of woman, none could know,
+and neither could she tell, for her soul was not linked to other
+souls--soul to soul, in the chains of speech.
+
+And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,
+beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words, and that
+words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill, made their mark
+on the soul that listened to them. So he continued to read to her out of
+the Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
+custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to
+say, "Fool! she hears, but does she understand?" he remembered how he
+had read to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself,
+"Shall I have less faith now that she can hear?"
+
+But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's
+soul at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to
+her it seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern
+and gets back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her
+of the sky, that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the
+great deeps to measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was
+green as the fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour?
+And sometimes as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words
+themselves which he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the
+notes which Ali struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at
+her feet.
+
+Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, "Let the
+Lord find His own way to her spirit." So he continued to speak with
+her as often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that
+concerned their household, as well as of the greater things it was good
+for her soul to know.
+
+It was a touching sight--the lonely man, the outcast among his people,
+talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling her of
+God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that his
+words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
+to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
+judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.
+
+Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on
+her ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was
+she putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering
+them, imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace
+for her spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would,
+he could never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He
+clung to all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor
+and his pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also--the
+false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before
+the eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.
+
+It was some three weeks after his return from his journey, and the
+fierce blaze of the sun continued. The storm that had broken over the
+town had left no results of coolness or moisture, for the ground had
+been baked hard, and the rain had been too short and swift to penetrate
+it. And what the withering heat had spared of green leaf and shrub a
+deadlier blight had swept away. The locusts had lately come up from
+the south and the east, in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on
+millions, making the air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue
+sky. They had swept the country of its verdure, and left a trail of
+desolation behind them. The grass was gone, the bark of the olives and
+almonds was stripped away, and the bare trees had the look of winter.
+
+The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.
+Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds. A
+Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls of the
+town. It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town's
+six gates. The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on
+the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind. It
+was a horrible place.
+
+The skinny dogs of the town soon found it. And after these scavengers
+of the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of
+bones, they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in
+search of water. By this time there was none that they could come at
+nearer than the sea, and that was salt. Nevertheless, they lapped it, so
+burning was their thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town. Then
+the people hunted them and killed them.
+
+Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to
+death on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult of
+the streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat,
+that went before her. The goat was grown old, but it was still her
+constant companion and also it was now her guide and guardian, for the
+little dumb creature seemed to know that she was frail and helpless. And
+so it was that she was crossing the Sok el Foki, a market of the town,
+and hearkening only to the patter of the feet of the goat going in
+front, when suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps hurrying towards her,
+with shouts and curses that were loud and deep. She stood in fear on the
+spot where she was, and no eyes had she to see what happened next, and
+she had none save the goat to tell her.
+
+But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward from
+the hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude of men and boys.
+And flying in its despair, it bit out wildly at whatever lay in its way,
+and Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight in front of it. Then she
+must have fallen before it, but instantly the goat flung itself across
+the dog's open jaws, and butted at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill
+cries of terror.
+
+The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if
+the madness of the monster shrank before it. But the people came down
+with their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat and
+felled it, and fled away. The people followed it, and then Naomi was
+alone in the market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.
+
+Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father's house in the
+Mellah, and her dying champion with her. And out of this hard chance,
+and not out of Israel's teaching, Naomi was first to learn what life is
+and what is death. She felt the goat with her hands, and as she did so
+her fingers shook. Then she lifted it to its feet, and when they slipped
+from under it she raised her white face in wonder. Again she lifted it,
+and made strange noises at its ear; but when it did not answer with its
+bleat her lips began to tremble. Then she listened for its breathing,
+and felt for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor
+the other to her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast. At length she
+fondled it in her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave
+back no sign of motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose
+at her heart. At last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat
+opened its heavy eyes upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her
+hand. With that last farewell the brave heart of the little creature
+broke, and it stretched itself and died.
+
+Israel saw it all. His heart bled to see the parting in silence between
+those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead than the
+human soul that was left alive. He tried to put the goat from Naomi's
+arms, saying, "It was only a goat, my child; think of it no more,"
+though it smote him with pain to say it, for had not the creature given
+its life for her life? And where, O God, was the difference between
+them? But Naomi clung to the goat, and her throat swelled and her bosom
+fluttered, and her whole body panted, and it was almost as if her soul
+were struggling to burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might
+speak and ask and know.
+
+"Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?"
+
+Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
+thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, "It is dead, my
+child--the goat is dead."
+
+But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in
+a dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that
+hour had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken
+of death had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that
+he had spoken of life, and of the little things which concerned their
+household? And if Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these--if
+she had not pondered and interpreted them--if they had fallen on her ear
+only as voices in a dark cavern--only as dead birds on a dead sea--what
+of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
+and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?
+
+Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
+great gift a mockery?
+
+Israel's feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself
+of God's mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand?
+Only a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi
+had heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked
+and cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer
+deaf. Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication
+and why had He received his prayer?
+
+But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi's new
+gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.
+
+"Give her speech, O Lord!" he cried, "speech that shall lift her above
+the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know!
+Give her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
+
+
+AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts of
+the young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his
+hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will
+of Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled
+the land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had
+unjustly extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had
+returned double--once for the tax and once for the excess; and if any
+man, having been unjustly taxed for the Kaid's tribute, had given
+bond on his lands for his debt and been cast into the Kasbah and
+died, without ransoming them, then to his children he had returned
+fourfold--double for the lands and double for the death. Israel had done
+this continually, and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out
+of his own purse, so that from being a rich man he had fallen within
+a month to the condition of a poor one, for what was one man's wealth
+among so many? Yet no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity and
+contempt, for the people that had taken his money had thanked the Kaid
+for it, who, according to their supposals, had called on him to correct
+what he had done amiss. And with Ben Aboo himself he had fared no
+better, for the Basha was provoked to anger with him when he heard from
+Katrina of the good money that he had been casting away in pity for the
+poor.
+
+"What have I told you a score of times?" said the woman. "That man has
+mints of money."
+
+"My money, burn his grandfather," said Ben Aboo.
+
+Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world's reckoning. When he
+lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done the devil's
+work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before he had made
+more powerful. People who had showed him lip-service when he was thought
+to be rich did not conceal the joy they had that he was brought down
+so near to be a beggar. Upstarts, who owed their promotion to his
+intercession, found in his charities an easy handle given them to be
+insolent, for, by carrying to Katrina their secret messages of his mercy
+to the people, they brought things at length to such a pass between him
+and the Kaid that Ben Aboo openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not
+once or twice but many times.
+
+"And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?"
+said Ben Aboo. "Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough
+to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones
+to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity
+you've got too much of it, I say."
+
+"The people are poor, Lord Basha," said Israel; "they are famishing, and
+they have no refuge save with God and with us."
+
+"Tut!" cried Ben Aboo. "A famine in my bashalic! Let no man dare to say
+so. The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness, mistress Israel.
+You poor old grandmother! I always suspected," he added, facing about
+upon his attendants, "I always suspected that I was served by a woman.
+Now I am sure of it."
+
+Israel felt the indignity. He had given good proof of his manhood in the
+past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo between
+him and his people, making him rich by his extortions, keeping him safe
+in his seat, and thereby saving him from the wooden jellab which Abd
+er-Rahman, the Sultan, kept for Kaids that could not pay. But Israel
+mastered his anger and held his peace.
+
+Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour of
+the Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him in
+the streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor, thinking
+himself accountable to God for their sufferings. He could have crushed
+the better part of his insulters to death in his brawny arms, but he was
+slow to anger and long-suffering. All the heed he paid to their insults
+was to do his good work with more secrecy.
+
+Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised
+him on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this
+difficulty. When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well
+down over his black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his
+face. In this innocent disguise he went out night after night for many
+nights among the poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters of the
+grain markets near the Bab Ramooz. How he bore himself being there,
+with what harmless deceptions he unburdened his soul by stealth, what
+guileless pretences he made that he might restore to the poor the money
+that had been stolen from them, would be a long story to tell.
+
+"Who are you?" he was asked a hundred times.
+
+"A friend," he answered
+
+"Who told you of our trouble?"
+
+"Allah has angels," he would reply.
+
+Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw the
+very children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention
+of his name. And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people whisper
+together and say, "He is a saint. He comes from the Kabar at nightfall.
+Allah sends him to help poor men who have been in the clutches of Israel
+the Jew."
+
+Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for
+good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask
+nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it
+was the breath of angels.
+
+One day, about a month after his return from his journey, when he
+was near to the end of his substance, a message came to him that the
+followers of Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison at Shawan.
+Their relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now, but the
+plague of the locust had fallen on the bread-winners, and they had no
+more bread to send. Israel concluded that it was his duty to succour
+them. From a just view of his responsibilities he had gone on to a
+morbid one. If in the Judgment the blood of the people of Absalam cried
+to God against him, he himself, and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into
+hell.
+
+Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began to take
+a view of his condition. Then he saw, to his dismay, that little as he
+had thought he possessed, even less remained to him out of the wreck of
+his riches. Only one thing he had still, but that was a thing so dear to
+his heart that he had never looked to part with it. It was the casket
+of his dead wife's jewels. Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to
+sell it now, and, taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept
+it--a closet that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart
+for ever, but in his house no more.
+
+Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the
+doorpost, and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour
+came out to them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried
+air itself had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay
+on everything. But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate
+shawls and gauzy haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red
+slippers, and many dainty things such as women love. And to him that
+came again after ten heavy years they were as a dream of her that had
+worn them when she was young that now was dead when she was beautiful
+that now was in the grave.
+
+"Ah me, ah me! Ruth! My Ruth!" he murmured. "This was her shawl. I
+brought it from Wazzan. . . . And these slippers--they came from Rabat.
+Poor girl, poor girl! . . . . This sash, too, it used to be yellow and
+white. How well I remember the first time she wore it! She had put it
+over her head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman. But her
+brown curls fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them. And
+then she laughed. My poor dear girl. How happy we were once in spite of
+everything! It is all like yesterday. When I think Ah no, I must think
+no more, I must think no more."
+
+Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket of
+the jewels where it stood by the wall. With trembling hands he took it
+and opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets, and rings
+and earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering of
+dust. He lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers, and looked at
+them while his eyes grew wet.
+
+"Not for myself," he murmured, "not for myself would I have sold them,
+not for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of
+worlds!"
+
+All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood
+by his side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks and
+looked serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed, and now at the
+jingling of the jewels she stretched out her hand and took one of
+them from her father's fingers, and feeling it, and finding it to be a
+necklace, she clasped it about her neck and laughed.
+
+At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed. It brought back
+the memory of the day when she danced to her mother's death, decked in
+that same necklace and those same ornaments. More on this head Israel
+could not think and hold to his purpose, so he took the jewels from
+Naomi's neck and returned them to the casket, and hastened away with it
+to a man to whom he designed to sell it.
+
+This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the
+Jews; for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop
+in the Sok el Foki. Israel was moved to go to this person by the
+remembrance of two things, of which either seemed enough for his
+preference--first, that he had bought the jewels of Reuben in the
+beginning, and next, the Reuben had never since ceased to speak of
+them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the gems of Ethiopia and the gold of
+Ophir.
+
+But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy, he
+eyed both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear to his
+covetous and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself in his
+need, and bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction that
+could come to it.
+
+"And what is this that you bring me?" said Reuben languidly.
+
+"A case of jewels," said Israel, with a downward look.
+
+"Jewels? umph! what jewels?"
+
+"My poor wife's. You know them, Reuben See!"
+
+Israel opened the casket.
+
+"Ah, your wife's. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere."
+
+"You have seen them here, Reuben."
+
+"Here?--do you say here?"
+
+"Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago."
+
+"Sold them to you? Never. I don't remember it. Surely you must be
+mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these."
+
+Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in
+expressions of contempt.
+
+Israel watched him closely. "Give them back to me," he said; "I can go
+elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling."
+
+Reuben's lip straightened instantly. "Wrangling? Who is wrangling,
+brother? You are too impatient, Sidi."
+
+"I am in haste," said Israel.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said,
+"The things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with
+them?"
+
+"To buy them," said Israel.
+
+"_Buy_ them?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But I don't want them."
+
+"Are they worth your money?--you don't want that either."
+
+"Umph!"
+
+A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded to
+examine the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems--the rich onyx,
+the sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the
+topaz, and first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back
+again. And seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers, the
+precious jewels which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist and her white
+neck, Israel could scarcely hold back his hand from snatching them away.
+But how can he that is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his
+twitching hands behind him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of
+Absalam, and when at length Reuben tendered him for the casket one half
+what he had paid for it, he took the money in silence and went his way.
+
+"Five hundred dollars--I can give no more," Reuben had said.
+
+"Do you say five hundred--five?"
+
+"Five--take it or leave it."
+
+It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through
+was a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow
+wooden boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a
+shelter from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay
+raisins and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers
+crouched in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous
+straw hats, with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats
+at their feet. Under arcades of dried leaves--made, like desert graves,
+of upright poles and dry branches thrown across--the butchers lay at
+their ease, flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. "Buy! buy!
+buy!" they all shouted together. A dense throng of the poor passed
+between them in torn jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought.
+Asses and mules crushed through amid shouts of "Arrah!" "Arrah!" and
+"Balak!" "Ba-lak!" It was a lively scene, with more than enough of
+bustle and swearing and vociferation.
+
+There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised
+with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of
+sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers
+for penance. "God forgive me," he muttered, "_God forgive me, God
+forgive me,_" and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer
+approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, "How much?" The merchant
+continued his prayers and did his business at a breath. "(_God forgive
+me_) How much? (_God forgive me_) Four pesetas (_God forgive me_)," and
+round went the restless rosary. "Too much," said the buyer; "I'll give
+three." The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, "(_God
+forgive me_) Couldn't take it for as much as you might put in your tooth
+(_God forgive me_); gave four myself (_God forgive me_)." "Then I'll
+leave it, old sweet-tooth," said the buyer, as he moved away. "Here!
+take it for nothing (_God forgive me_)," cried the merchant after the
+retreating figure. "(_God forgive me_) I'm giving it away (_God forgive
+me_); I'll starve, but no matter (_God forgive me_), you are my brother
+(_God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me_)."
+
+Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the
+prisoners needed--enough for the present and for many days to come. Then
+he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man two
+days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he knew
+full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of Absalam
+receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of
+famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his
+short journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was
+highest, hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to
+escape observation.
+
+His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came
+to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and
+deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+at which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a
+strange procession. It was a procession of penance and petition, asking
+God to wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and
+eating up the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white
+beard, walked side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in
+the folds of his snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews
+and the Imam of the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors
+walked abreast in the burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were
+Berbers were bareheaded also.
+
+"In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!" the Imam cried,
+and the Muslims echoed him.
+
+"By the God of Jacob!" the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words
+after him.
+
+"Spare us! Spare the land!" they all cried together. "Send rain to
+destroy the eggs of the locust!" cried the Rabbi. "Else will they
+rise on the ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor; and
+neither fire nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we
+ourselves will die, and our children with us!"
+
+And the Jews cried, "God of Jacob, be our refuge."
+
+And the Muslims shouted, "Allah, save us!"
+
+It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance--the
+haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of
+sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike,
+walking and praying in the public streets together.
+
+Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved. And being come
+into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the
+motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that,
+if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself
+for what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no
+merit could he make of his poverty.
+
+"Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her," he thought. Naomi was his hope
+and his salvation. His faith in God was his love of the child. He
+was only bribing God to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he
+journeyed towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for
+them that lay there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their
+miseries, the mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to
+himself. So the nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his
+breast, as if the sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head
+had eyes to peer into his deceiving soul.
+
+The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half
+of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set
+when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of
+the mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and
+vineyards that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners
+and pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from
+Tetuan and his heavy taxings.
+
+"It's Israel ben Oliel," whispered one.
+
+"God of Jacob, save us!" whispered another.
+
+"He has followed us for the arrears of taxes."
+
+"We must fly."
+
+"Let us go home first."
+
+"No time for that."
+
+"There is Rachel--"
+
+"She's a woman."
+
+"But I must warn my son--he has children."
+
+"Then you are lost. Come on."
+
+Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress
+and was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within,
+had heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild
+disorder of all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his
+visit, as if they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women
+and young children, gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some
+with faces that were hard and stony, some with faces that were weak and
+simple, some with eyes that were red as blood, all weary with waiting
+and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom of the
+foul place where they were immured together. Shedding tears, beating
+their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour, these unhappy creatures
+of God, who had been great of soul when they sang their death-song with
+the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front, now quaked for
+the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger and cherished in
+bitterness.
+
+By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found
+his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been
+gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one
+impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to
+their knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women
+in front, and mothers holding out their babes before their breasts so
+that he might see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart
+made for pity.
+
+Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head
+was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in
+wonder.
+
+"Arise," he said; "I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and
+God bless you!"
+
+So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the
+muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.
+
+And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had
+looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged
+within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat.
+For a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained
+their wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his
+new poverty such as his riches had never brought him--no, not once in
+all the days of his old prosperity.
+
+At length an old man--he was a Muslim--looked steadily into Israel's
+face and said, "May the God of Jacob bless thee also, brother!"
+
+After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of
+their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet
+with hearts so different.
+
+"May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!"
+
+"May the child of thy wife be blessed!"
+
+"Stop," he cried; "stop! you don't know what you are saying."
+
+He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had
+stung him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips;
+they pushed their children under his hands for his blessing.
+
+"No, no," he cried; "no, no, no!"
+
+Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town
+like one who was ashamed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MEETING ON THE SOK
+
+
+Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would
+have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered
+into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen
+years in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the
+father, still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since
+her mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears,
+touching her hand for assent, patting her head for approval, and guiding
+her fingers to teach them signs.
+
+Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter,
+more to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her
+sole gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit
+gazed upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and
+without him neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out
+to the world. Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on
+one side of all language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a
+mother with her first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery
+as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with
+her, then only did Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of
+wonder at the strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was
+gone from her, she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body's
+close abode, waiting to be born anew.
+
+When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder
+him, as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and
+connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence; or
+as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the
+world, what was to befall him before he returned. He put her from him
+with many tender words, and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead,
+as though to chide her while he blessed her for so much love. But her
+dread increased, and she held to him like a child to its mother's robe.
+And at last, when he unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in
+anger, and after that laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her
+meaning yet had no fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a
+fit of weeping.
+
+"Tut! tut! what is this?" he said. "I will be back to-morrow. Do you
+hear, my child?--tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow."
+
+When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed
+to increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered,
+and her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood
+she walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside,
+sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to
+herself in noises such as none had heard from her lips before.
+
+The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of
+her heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and
+with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the
+black woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its
+master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her
+fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which
+God Himself might have revealed to her.
+
+"Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?" cried Fatimah.
+
+"Alack! girl," said Habeebah, "the maid is sickening again."
+
+And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless
+agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic
+slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she
+awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the
+evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along
+in them like one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter,
+as if she were living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour
+followed long hour, but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her
+bosom heaved, her throat throbbed, her excitement became hysterical.
+Sometimes she broke into wild, inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the
+black women could have believed, in spite of knowledge and reason, that
+she was muttering and speaking words, though with a wild disorder of
+utterance.
+
+At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when
+this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh
+intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened,
+her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear
+nothing save the common sounds of the streets--the shouts of children
+at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and
+again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of
+the Moors--only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct
+murmur of multitudinous life coming and going on every side.
+
+Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears? Was her spiritual power, which
+was unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of
+some terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no
+more than recollection of her father's promise to be back at sunset, and
+mere anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw
+nothing. All that they could do was to wring their hands.
+
+Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would
+serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the
+black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her
+fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went
+out together.
+
+"Where are we going?" said Habeebah.
+
+"Nay, how should I know?" said Fatimah.
+
+"We are fools," said Habeebah.
+
+It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic
+was sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to
+custom, had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of
+Jews stood under it in earnest and passionate talk. There was a strange
+and bodeful silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond
+the gate was already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was
+empty. No snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their
+circles of squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These
+professors of science and magic and jocularity had never before been
+absent. Even the blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were
+silent. But out of the mosques there came a deep low chant as of many
+voices, from great numbers gathered within.
+
+"The girl was right," said Fatimah; "something has happened."
+
+"What is it?" said Habeebah.
+
+"Nay, how should I know that either?" said Fatimah.
+
+"I tell you we are a pair of fools," said Habeebah.
+
+Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she
+led. Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble
+frame as by an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed,
+and perhaps foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these
+helpless children of God, going whither they knew not and wherefore they
+knew not, save that a fear that was like to madness drew them on.
+
+"Listen! I hear something," said Fatimah.
+
+"Where?" said Habeebah.
+
+"The way we are going," said Fatimah.
+
+On and on Naomi passed from street to street. They were the same streets
+whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her
+goat was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither
+altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight
+forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the
+goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar.
+Then she could go no farther.
+
+"Holy saints, what is this?" cried Habeebah.
+
+"Didn't I tell you--the girl heard something?" said Fatimah.
+
+"God's face shine on us," said Habeebah. "What is all this crowd?"
+
+An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and
+overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It
+was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered
+on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving mass of
+haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare
+shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd of dark figures
+in black gowns and skull-caps. The assemblage was of Jews only--Jews of
+every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher
+in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold
+braid on his new kaftan.
+
+They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
+to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them
+to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the
+Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a
+vacant space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in
+their open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their
+reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country
+Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted
+on the vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently
+impassively, at the vast company of Jews.
+
+And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
+commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
+tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
+their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
+entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
+loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every
+side. It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were
+breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of
+man, and predicting fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which
+had befallen him early or late but they were remembering it, and
+reckoning it up and rejoicing in it. And there was no evil which had
+befallen themselves but they were laying it to his charge.
+
+Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
+penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
+that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
+expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain
+fall instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the
+thick hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in
+the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched
+and scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while
+the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and
+muttering to themselves, "It is written," they had returned to their
+synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like
+the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know
+for whose cause the evil was upon them.
+
+They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they
+were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance
+of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a
+Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden.
+But they were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had
+been adopted, and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers.
+So three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or
+slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.
+
+The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had
+been unanimous. The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel. He had sold
+himself to their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and
+interest of his own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race
+and nation into exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the
+Kasbah, and yet others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God,
+and God had given him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was
+cursed with devils, a daughter who had been born blind and dumb and
+deaf, and was still without sight and speech.
+
+Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed in fire
+upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this
+devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as
+He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
+Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them,
+never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a
+feast. Not until their judgment went out against him would God's anger
+be appeased. Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the
+blessed rain would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink
+it, and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed. But let them put
+off any longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the
+people, and their evil time would soon come. Within eight-and-twenty
+days the eggs would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other
+days the young locust would have wings. Before the end of those
+seventy-and-six days the harvest of wheat and barley would be yellow to
+the scythe and ripe for the granary, but the locust would cover the face
+of the earth, and there would be no grain to gather. The scythe would be
+idle, the granaries would be empty, the tillers of the ground would come
+hungry into the markets, and they themselves that were town-dwellers
+and tradesmen would be perishing for bread, both they and their children
+with them.
+
+Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
+three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had--contrary to
+Jewish custom--tried and convicted him. God would not let them perish
+for this man's life, and neither would He charge them with his blood.
+
+Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They
+could only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That
+the Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel's sin?
+Ben Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, "It is written."
+That to appease God's wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die?
+Convince the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land
+of the Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the
+whole community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.
+
+The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
+Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
+for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
+their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
+Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding
+on to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him--though
+sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful.
+But the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for
+them, upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them;
+but visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.
+
+The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow
+lane of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of
+the oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other
+ground of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find
+it. At length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the
+trial of an Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset.
+Also they had been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a
+capital case must not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So
+they had broken up and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they
+had told the crowds that waited there that judgment had fallen upon
+Israel ben Oliel, but that his doom could not be made known until sunset
+on the following day.
+
+That time was now come. In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood and
+anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday. The
+Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning. They had
+not broken bread since yesterday, for the day that condemned a son of
+Israel to death must be a fast-day to his judges.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open.
+The sentence was not ready yet, but the judges in council were near
+to their decision. At the open door the reader of the synagogue had
+stationed himself, holding a flag in his hand. Under the gate of the
+Mellah a second messenger was standing, so placed that he could see the
+movement of the flag. If the flag fell, the sentence would be "death,"
+and the man under the gate would carry the tidings to the people
+gathered in the market-place. Then the three-and-twenty judges would
+come in procession and tell what steps had been taken that the doom
+pronounced might be carried into effect.
+
+Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger which
+seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals of a few minutes
+to glance back towards the Mellah gate.
+
+If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight--these
+children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs and
+vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking and
+acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years
+before; again judging it expedient that one man should die rather than
+the whole people be brought to destruction; again probing their crafty
+heads, if not their hearts, for an artifice whereby their scapegoat
+might be killed by the hand of their enemy; children indeed, for all
+that some of their heads were bald, and some of their beards were
+grizzled, and some of their faces were wrinkled and hard and fierce;
+little children of God writhing in the grip of their great trouble.
+
+Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings
+of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led
+her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching
+ears had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness,
+filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought,
+of great and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher
+leading? Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always,
+and that when the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were
+following the blind maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn
+was following God?
+
+When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,
+though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,
+and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had
+infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and
+they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from
+danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a
+reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon
+him found a way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again and going
+back to the house.
+
+"Come," said Habeebah; "let us go--we are not safe."
+
+"Yes," said Fatimah; "let us take the poor child back."
+
+"Come along, then," said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.
+
+"Naomi, Naomi," whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, "we are going home.
+Come, dearest, come."
+
+But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her.
+She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,
+motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent
+save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet
+listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.
+
+And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her
+dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been
+terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness
+and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been
+learning speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in
+that crowd she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others
+saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the
+darkness outside her eyes that were blind.
+
+First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse,
+jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it
+was--it was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.
+
+"Brothers of Tetuan," the old man cried, "what are we waiting for? For
+the verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one
+thing to do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a
+humane master. If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been
+driven to do that which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say:
+'Lord Basha, through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has
+stood over us to oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been
+silent. In that time we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the
+houses of their fathers where they have lived since their birth. We have
+seen them buffeted and smitten, without a resting-place for the soles
+of their feet, and perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and
+the want of all things. Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your
+profit?'"
+
+The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once
+more silent, the thick voice went on: "And not the seed of Israel
+only, but the sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of
+misery. Under a Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice,
+in a land that breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God,
+our brethren the Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no
+standing. Every day brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At
+this moment a plague is upon us. The country is bare; the town is
+overflowing; every man stumbles over his fellow our lives hang in doubt;
+in the morning we say 'Would it were evening'; in the evening we say,
+'Would it were morning'; stretch out your hand and help us!"
+
+Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice
+continued: "Let us say to him 'Lord Basha, there is no way of help but
+one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race
+and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor,
+any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own
+people, and your servants will bless you.'"
+
+The old man's voice was drowned in great shouts of "Ben Aboo!" "To Ben
+Aboo!" "Why wait for the judges?" "To the Kasbah!" "The Kasbah!"
+
+But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those
+waves of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen.
+Naomi knew this voice also--it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo,
+the elder of the synagogue, who would have been sitting among the
+three-and-twenty-judges but that he was a usurer also.
+
+"Why go to the Kaid?" said the voice like a peahen. "Does the Basha
+love this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such
+affection? Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo
+be glad to have done with this servant who has been so long his master?
+Then why trouble him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the
+Kaid will thank you! And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord
+and worship Him, that He has not put it into the hearts of His people
+to play the game of breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the
+races around them, the Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more
+warm by nature, must long ago have done, and that not unjustly either,
+or altogether to the displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and
+merciful, and has never loved that his poor people should be oppressed."
+
+At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the
+crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. "Away with the man!"
+"Away with him!" rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and
+clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called
+for mercy or for patience.
+
+While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice
+came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice
+of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.
+
+"And does God," said Reuben, "any more than Ben Aboo--blessings on his
+life!--love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt with
+this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has His
+hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty
+years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife,
+how she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben
+Ohana, how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the
+day whereon his daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this
+offspring of sin, this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and
+speechless!"
+
+Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh of a
+breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering.
+"Come! Let us away!" But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.
+
+The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. "Do you say that
+the Lord gave him riches? Behold him!--he swallowed them down, but has
+he not vomited them up? Examine him!--that which he took by extortions
+has he not been made to restore? Does God's anger smoke against him?
+Answer me, yes or no!"
+
+Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of "Yes!" And
+instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice,
+a peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it--it
+was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and
+still deaf as a stone.
+
+"Tut! What is all this talking about?" she snapped and grunted. "Reuben
+Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don't give them too much of
+it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
+am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
+for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
+Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll
+laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is
+to ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her
+a miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
+children!"
+
+The people laughed--it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets the
+teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of the
+crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the counter-currents
+of an angry sea. "She's right," said a shrill voice. "He deserves it,"
+snuffled a nasal one. "At least let us drive him out of the town," said
+a third gruff voice. "To his house!" cried a fourth voice, that pealed
+over all. "To his house!" came then from countless hungry throats.
+
+"Come, let us go," whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold
+of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
+strange sounds to herself.
+
+"To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!" the people howled in a
+hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
+mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
+
+It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
+people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
+Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.
+
+Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait
+for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means
+whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry
+the sentence into effect. The procession was even then forming. It
+was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the
+Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front
+of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were
+the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his
+pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez.
+By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.
+
+But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and
+turning like worms on an upturned turf. "Why sack his house?" cried
+some. "Why drive him out?" cried others. "A poor revenge!" "Kill him!"
+"Kill him!"
+
+At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had
+waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly
+in the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of "He is
+there!" and then there was a great silence.
+
+It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town
+walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from
+Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one
+mule and leading another.
+
+He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers
+of Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out
+of their dry throats, saying, "May the God of Jacob bless you also,
+brother!" and "May the child of your wife be blessed!" Ah! those
+blessings, he could hear them still! They followed him as he walked.
+He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang in his ears and were
+like music in his melted soul. Once before he had heard such music.
+It was in England. The organ swelled and the voices rose, and he was a
+lonely boy, for his mother lay in her grave at his feet. His mother! How
+strangely his heart was softened towards himself and-all the world And
+Ruth! He could think of nothing without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the
+sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be waiting for him at home,
+for she was as one that had no life without his presence. What would
+befall if he were taken from her? That thought was like the sweeping of
+a dead hand across his face. So his body stooped as he walked with his
+staff, and his head was held down, and his step was heavy.
+
+Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were
+gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing
+and hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first
+surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.
+
+Naomi heard them.
+
+Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the
+air, crying, "God has given him into our hands!" After that all sounds
+seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled
+by the distance.
+
+But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great
+throat, the crowd encompassed Israel crying, "Kill him!" Israel stopped,
+and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out
+nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their
+midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their
+fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his
+face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on
+to his knees.
+
+No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight
+girl that stood there--blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly
+beautiful--a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the
+thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming to her ugly and
+terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!
+
+Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash
+of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust
+herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she
+was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God
+loosed her tongue, for she was crying, "Mercy! Mercy!"
+
+Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man
+dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against
+him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the
+midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow
+like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from
+their deed of blood as with the voice of God--she, the blind, the frail,
+the helpless.
+
+Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the
+procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how
+it was that in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come
+upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over
+his enemies and say, "You thought God's arm was against me, but behold
+how God has saved me out of your hands."
+
+But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
+seemed to have dropped upon him.
+
+At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, "Father!"
+
+Then the cup of Israel's heart was full. His throat choked him. So he
+took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they
+passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes
+were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted
+up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
+
+
+Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her
+gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different
+tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself,
+and to put out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than
+a child untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and
+broke down, and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must
+do, only quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because
+she was a girl and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and
+thinking shame of it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her
+father when she halted in her talk with him, and still more humbled by
+Ali's impetuous help when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back
+again on silence.
+
+Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
+when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the
+Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond "Yes" and "No," notwithstanding
+Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings, and Habeebah's
+breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst
+of the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the
+voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw
+bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he
+had possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.
+
+"Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak," Israel
+would say.
+
+His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and
+lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
+
+But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was
+returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor
+quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money
+which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife's jewels. The
+night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were
+almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was
+late, very late, and far and near the town was still.
+
+With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm,
+Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed
+to cross it after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through
+the sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of
+the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.
+
+All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift of
+speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past.
+He had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill
+him. Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing
+had not come to pass. Man's extremity had indeed been God's opportunity
+and Ruth's vision was all but realised.
+
+Ah, Ruth! Ruth! It had escaped Israel's notice until then that he had
+been thinking of his dead wife the whole night through. When he put it
+to himself so, he saw the reason of it at once. It was because there
+was a sort of secret charm in the certainty that where she was she
+must surely know that her dream was come true. There was also a kind
+of bitter pathos in the regret that she was only an angel now and not a
+woman; therefore she could not be with him to share his human joy.
+
+As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again: how she
+had sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear. Sung? Yes, he
+could almost fancy that he heard her singing yet. That voice so soft,
+so clear even in its whispers--there had been nothing like it in all
+the world. And her songs! Israel could also fancy that he heard her
+favourite one. It was a song of love, a pure but passionate melody
+wherein his own delicious happiness in the earlier days, before the
+death of the old Grand Rabbi, had seemed to speak and sing.
+
+Israel began to laugh at himself as he walked. To think that the warmth
+and softness of the night, the sweet caressing night, the light and
+beauty of the moon and the stillness and slumber of the town, could
+betray an old fellow into forgotten dreams like these!
+
+He had taken out of his pocket the big key of the clamped door to his
+house, and was crossing the shadowed lane in front of it, when suddenly
+he thought he heard music coating in the air above him. He stopped and
+listened. Then he had no longer any doubt. It was music, it was singing;
+he knew the song, and he knew the voice. The song was the song he had
+been thinking of, and the voice was the voice of Ruth.
+
+     O where is Love?
+     Where, where is Love?
+     Is it of heavenly birth?
+     Is it a thing of earth?
+     Where, where is Love?
+
+Israel felt himself rooted to the spot, and he stood some time without
+stirring. He looked around. All else was still. The night was as silent
+as death. He listened attentively. The singing seemed to come from his
+own house. Then he thought he must be dreaming still, and he took a step
+forward. But he stopped again and covered both his ears. That was of no
+avail, for when he removed his hands the voice was there as before.
+
+A shiver ran over his limbs, yet he could not believe what his soul was
+saying. The key dropped out of his hand and rang on the stone. When the
+clangour was done the voice continued. Israel bethought him then that
+his household must be asleep, and it flashed on his mind that if this
+were a human voice the singing ought to awaken them. Just at that moment
+the night guard went by and saluted him. "God bless your morning!" the
+guard cried; and Israel answered, "Your morning be blessed!" That was
+all. The guard seemed to have heard nothing. His footsteps were dying
+away, but the voice went on.
+
+Then a strange emotion filled Israel's heart, and he reflected that even
+if it were Ruth she could have come on no evil errand. That thought gave
+him courage, and he pushed forward to the door. As he fumbled the key
+into the lock he saw that a beggar was crouching by the doorway in the
+shadow cast by the moonlight. The man was asleep. Israel could hear his
+breathing, and smell his rags. Also he could hear the thud of his own
+temples like the beating of a drum in his brain.
+
+At length, as he was groping feebly through the crooked passage, a new
+thought came to him. "Naomi," he told himself in a whisper of awe. It
+was she. By the full flood of the moonlight in the patio he saw her. She
+was on the balcony. Her beautiful white-robed figure was half sitting on
+the rail, half leaning against the pillar. The whole lustre of the moon
+was upon her. A look of joy beamed on her face. She was singing her
+mother's song with her mother's voice, and all the air, and the sky, and
+the quiet white town seemed to listen:--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice
+     Sings--"Love, great Love
+     O come and claim shine own,
+     O come and take thy throne
+     Reign ever and alone,
+     Reign, glorious golden Love."
+
+Then Israel's fear was turned to rapture. Why had he not thought of this
+before? Yet how could he have thought of it? He had never once heard
+Naomi's voice save in the utterance of single words. But again, why had
+he not remembered that before the tongues of children can speak words of
+their own they sing the words of others?
+
+The singing ended, and then Israel, struggling with his dry throat,
+stepped a pace forward--his foot grated on the pavement--and he called
+to the singer--
+
+"Naomi!"
+
+The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below, but
+Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind.
+
+"My father!" she whispered.
+
+"Where did you learn it?" said Israel.
+
+"Fatimah, she taught me," Naomi answered; and then she added quickly,
+as if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean, "Oh
+yes, it was I! Was I not beautiful?"
+
+After that night Naomi's shyness of speech dropped away from her, and
+what was left was only a sweet maidenly unconsciousness of all faults
+and failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran in and out among the
+simple words that fell from her red lips like a young squirrel among the
+fallen leaves of autumn. It would be a long task to tell how her lisping
+tongue turned everything then to favour and to prettiness. On the coming
+of the gift of hearing, the world had first spoken to her; and now, on
+the coming of the gift of speech, she herself was first speaking to the
+world. What did she tell it at that first sweet greeting? She told it
+what she had been thinking of it in those mute days that were gone, when
+she had neither hearing nor speech, but was in the land of silence as
+well as in the land of night.
+
+The fancies of the blind maid so long shut up within the beautiful
+casket of her body were strange and touching ones. Israel took delight
+in them at the beginning. He loved to probe the dark places of the mind
+they came from, thinking God Himself must surely have illumined it
+at some time with a light that no man knew, so startling were some of
+Naomi's replies, so tender and so beautiful.
+
+One evening, not long after she had first spoken, he was sitting with
+her on the roof of their house as the sun was going down over the
+palpitating plains towards Arzila and Laraiche and the great sea beyond.
+Twilight was gathering in the Feddan under the Mosque, and the last
+light of day, which had parleyed longest with the snowy heights of the
+Reef Mountains, was glowing only on the sky above them.
+
+"Sweetheart," said Israel, "what is the sun?"
+
+"The sun is a fire in the sky," Naomi answered; "my Father lights it
+every morning."
+
+"Truly, little one, thy Father lights it," said Israel; "thy Father
+which is in heaven."
+
+"Sweetheart," he said again, "what is darkness?"
+
+"Oh, darkness is cold," said Naomi promptly, and she seemed to shiver.
+
+"Then the light must be warmth, little one?" said Israel.
+
+"Yes, and noise," she answered; and then she added quickly, "Light is
+alive."
+
+Saying this, she crept closer to his side, and knelt there, and by her
+old trick of love she took his hand in both of hers, and pressed it
+against her cheek, and then, lifting her sweet face with its motionless
+eyes she began to tell him in her broken words and pretty lisp what she
+thought of night. In the night the world, and everything in it, was cold
+and quiet. That was death. The angels of God came to the world in the
+day. But God Himself came in the night, because He loved silence,
+and because all the world was dead. Then He kissed things, and in the
+morning all that God had kissed came to life again. If you were to get
+up early you would feel God's kiss on the flowers and on the grass. And
+that was why the birds were singing then. God had kissed them in the
+night, and they were glad.
+
+One day Israel took Naomi to the mearrah of the Jews, the little
+cemetery outside the town walls where he had buried Ruth. And there he
+told her of her mother once more; that she was in the grave, but also
+with God; that she was dead, but still alive; that Naomi must not expect
+to find her in that place, but, nevertheless, that she would see her yet
+again.
+
+"Do you remember her, Naomi?" he said. "Do you remember her in the old
+days, the old dark and silent days? Not Fatimah, and not Habeebah, but
+some one who was nearer to you than either, and loved you better than
+both; some one who had soft hands, and smooth cheeks, and long, silken,
+wavy hair--do you remember, little one?"
+
+"Y-es, I think--I _think_ I remember," said Naomi.
+
+"That was your mother, my darling."
+
+"My mother?"
+
+"Ah, you don't know what a mother is, sweetheart. How should you? And
+how shall I tell you? Listen. She is the one who loves you first and
+last and always. When you are a babe she suckles you and nourishes you
+and fondles you, and watches for the first light of your smile, and
+listens for the first accent of your tongue. When you are a young child
+she plays with you, and sings to you, and tells you little stories, and
+teaches you to speak. Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine,
+and your childish lisp more sweet than music. If you are sick she is
+beside you constantly, and when you are well she is behind you still.
+Though you sin and fall and all men spurn you, yet she clings to you;
+and if you do well and God prospers you, there is no joy like her joy.
+Her love never changes, for it is a fount which the cold winds of the
+world cannot freeze. . . . And if you are a little helpless girl--blind
+and deaf and dumb maybe--then she loves you best of all. She cannot tell
+you stories, and she cannot sing to you, because you cannot hear; she
+cannot smile into your eyes, because you cannot see; she cannot talk to
+you, because you cannot speak; but she can watch your quiet face, and
+feel the touch of your little fingers and hear the sound of your merry
+laughter."
+
+"My mother! my mother!" whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.
+
+"Yes," said Israel, "your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the
+days before your great gifts came to you. But she is gone, she has left
+us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of
+memory can she smile back upon us now."
+
+Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears,
+and she said abruptly, "People who die are deceitful. They want to go
+out in the night to be with God. That is where they are when they go
+away. They are wandering about the world when it is dead."
+
+The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no
+search availed to find her. She was not in the Mellah, and therefore
+she must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at
+sunset. Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or
+among the Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before
+their tents. At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there
+he found her. It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent. The
+reflection of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the
+distant hum of voices came over the black town walls. And there, within
+the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones that
+lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the
+darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro, and
+crying, "Mother! Mother!"
+
+Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea
+might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat
+and fumes of the town. The day was soft and beautiful, the water was
+quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it. But Naomi listened
+to every sound with eager intentness--the light plash of the blue
+wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when
+the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the
+boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the
+fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to
+unload the cargoes.
+
+And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees,
+with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him
+another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing in the world
+that did not die at night, and it was water. That was because water was
+the way from heaven to earth. It went up into the mountains and over
+them into the air until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His
+angels came and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why
+it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.
+And the angels were always singing. That was why the waters were always
+making a noise, and were never silent like the grass. Sometimes their
+song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil
+spirits were struggling with the angels, and that was when the waters
+were terrible. Every time the sea made a little noise on the shore, an
+angel had stepped on to the earth. The angel was glad.
+
+Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart.
+Where had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out these beautiful
+dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come upon the joy of
+hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was and what life
+was, and death and heaven? The question was soon decided for him.
+
+Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
+Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her. Alone,
+without help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on
+to the water. It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made
+of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark. In this
+frail craft she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing,
+but sitting quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind
+was rising, and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with
+breakers. Israel put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes
+began to fill when she heard his voice.
+
+"My darling, my darling!" cried Israel; "where did you think you were
+going?"
+
+"To heaven," she answered.
+
+And truly she had all but gone there.
+
+Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart of this
+creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril. Naomi was
+no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone, but in more
+danger from herself than any child before her, because deprived of two
+of her senses until she had grown to be a maid, and no control could be
+imposed upon her.
+
+At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening
+while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting, and
+there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people shuffling
+back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind. The word made no
+impression upon her mind at first. She had heard it before, and it had
+passed her by like a sound that she did not know. She had been born
+blind, and therefore could not realise what it was to see. To open a way
+for the awful truth was difficult, and Israel's heart smote him while
+he persisted. Naomi laughed as he put his fingers over her eyes that
+he might show her. She laughed again when he asked if she could see the
+people whom she could only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun
+had gone down, and the mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque in the
+Metamar, and he asked if she could see the old blind man in the minaret,
+where he was crying, "God is great! God is great!"
+
+"Can you see him, little one?" said Israel.
+
+"See him?" said Naomi; "why yes, you dear old father, of course I can
+see him. Listen," she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger,
+and holding her head aslant, "listen: God is great! God is great!
+There--I saw him then."
+
+"That is only hearing him, Naomi--hearing him with your ears--with this
+ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?"
+
+Did her father mean to ask her if she could _feel_ the mooddin in his
+minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant. There was a
+pause, and then she cried impulsively--
+
+"Oh, _I_ know. But, you foolish old father, how _can_ I? He is too far
+away."
+
+Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.
+
+"There," she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences, "I have
+seen my _father_ anyway."
+
+It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it. He told
+her, with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like other
+maidens--not like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah; that she
+was a being afflicted of God; that there was something she had not got,
+something she could not do, a world she did not know, and had never yet
+so much as dreamt of. Darkness was more than cold and quiet, and light
+was more than warmth and noise. The one was day--day ruled by the fiery
+sun in the sky--and the other was night, lit by the pale moon and the
+bright stars in heaven. And the face of man and the eyes of woman were
+more than features to feel--they were spirit and soul, to watch and to
+follow and to love without any hand being near them.
+
+"There is a great world about you, little one," he said, "which you have
+never seen, though you can hear it and feel it and speak to it. Yes, it
+is true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen the mountains and the
+dangerous gullies on their rocky sides. You have never seen the mighty
+deep, and the storms that heave and swell in it. You have never seen man
+or woman or child. Is that very strange, little one? Listen: your mother
+died nine years ago, and you had never seen her. Your father is holding
+your head in his hands at this moment, but you have never seen his face.
+And if the dark curtains were to fall from your eyes, and you were to
+see him now, you would not know him from another man, or from woman, or
+from a tree. You are blind, Naomi, you are blind."
+
+Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested
+nervously on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn,
+and then filled with tears. Israel's throat swelled. To tell her of all
+this, though he must needs do it for her safety, was like reproaching
+her with her infirmity. But it was only the trouble in her father's
+voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber of Naomi's mind.
+The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later to her
+consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer and lighter hand.
+
+She had always loved little children, and since the coming of her
+hearing she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues, their
+pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts, all
+fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself,
+though grown to be a lovely maid. And of all children those she loved
+best were not the children of the Jews, nor yet the children of the
+Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged, barefoot, black and olive-skinned
+mites who came into Tetuan with the country Arabs and Berbers on market
+mornings. They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest, and
+they were most full of joy and wonder. So she would gather them up in
+twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays, from the mouths of
+their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home by the hand.
+
+And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope, suspended
+from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this Naomi would sport
+with her little ones. She would be swinging in the midst of them, with
+one tiny black maiden on the seat beside her, and one little black man
+with high stomach and shaven poll holding on to the rope behind her, and
+another mighty Moor in a diminutive white jellab pushing at their feet
+in front, and all laughing together, or the children singing as the
+swing rose, and she herself listening with head aslant and all her fair
+hair rip-rip-rippling down her back and over her neck, and her smiling
+white face resting on her shoulder.
+
+It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it came the
+first great shadow of the blind girl's life. For it chanced one day
+that one of the children--a tiny creature with a slice of the woman in
+her--brought a present for Naomi out of her mother's market-basket.
+It was a flower, but of a strange kind, that grew only in the distant
+mountains where lay the little black one's home. Naomi passed her
+fingers over it, and she did not know it.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"It's blue," said the child.
+
+"What is blue?" said Naomi
+
+"Blue--don't you know?--blue!" said the child.
+
+"But what is blue?" Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her
+restless fingers.
+
+"Why, dear me! can't you see?--blue--the flower, you know," said the
+child, in her artless way.
+
+Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's
+relief. "Blue is a colour," he said.
+
+"A colour?" said Naomi.
+
+"Yes, like--like the sea," he added.
+
+"The sea? Blue? How?" Naomi asked.
+
+Ali tried again. "Like the sky," he said simply.
+
+Naomi's face looked perplexed. "And what is the sky like?" she asked.
+
+At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face, and
+her great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes. The lad was
+pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer that leapt up to his
+tongue. "Like," he said--"like--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Like your own eyes, Naomi."
+
+By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes with her
+hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her what her other senses
+could not tell. But the solemn mystery had dawned on her mind at last:
+that she was unlike others; that she was lacking something that every
+one else possessed; that the little children who played with her knew
+what she could never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off; that
+there was a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying round about
+her, where every one else might sport and find delight, but that her
+spirit could not enter it, because she was shut off from it by the great
+hand of God.
+
+From that time forward everything seemed to remind her of her
+affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times. Even her
+dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices that told of
+them. If a bird sang in the air above her, she lifted her sightless
+eyes. If she walked in the town on market morning and heard the din of
+traffic--the cries of the dealers, the "Balak!" of the camel-men,
+the "Arrah!" of the muleteers, and the twanging ginbri of the
+story-tellers--she sighed and dropped her head into her breast.
+Listening to the wind, she asked if it had eyes or was sightless; and
+hearing of the mountains that their snowy heads rose into the clouds,
+she inquired if they were blind, and if they ever talked together in the
+sky.
+
+But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child,
+and became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more of the
+world than in all the years of her life before. She was no longer
+a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy, but a weak,
+patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity, humbled by it,
+and thinking shame of it.
+
+One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out with the
+children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered far down
+the banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced, the
+little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called to the cattle
+and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets that whistled to
+their young.
+
+Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening, the
+evening into twilight, the twilight into early night. Then the air grew
+empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell upon the children, and they
+crept to Naomi's side in fear, and took her hands and clung to her
+gown. She turned back towards the town, and as they walked in the double
+silence of their own hushed tongues and the songless and voiceless
+world, the fingers of the little ones closed tightly upon her own.
+
+Then the children cried in terror, "See!"
+
+"What is it?" said Naomi.
+
+The little ones could not tell her. It was only the noiseless summer
+lightning, but the children had never seen it before. With broad white
+flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the
+valley to the white peaks of the mountains. At every flash the little
+people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort
+them save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw.
+With helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the
+darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light,
+leading on, yet seeing nothing.
+
+But Israel saw Naomi's shame. The blindness which was a sense of
+humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him. He had asked
+God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied. "Give her
+speech, O Lord," he had cried, "speech that shall lift her above the
+creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know." But
+what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind? What was
+all the world to one who had never seen it? Only as Paradise is to Man,
+who can but idly dream of its glories.
+
+Israel took back his prayer. There were things to know that words could
+never tell. Now was Naomi blind for the first time, being no longer
+dumb. "Give her sight, O Lord," he cried; "open her eyes that she may
+see; let her look on Thy beautiful world and know it! Then shall her
+life be safe, and her heart be happy, and her soul be Thine, and Thy
+servant at last be satisfied!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE
+
+
+It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok,
+and no rain had yet fallen. The eggs of the locust might be hatched
+at any time. Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the
+earth like snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were
+coming green out of the ground would wither before them. The country
+people were in despair. They were all but stripped of their cattle; they
+had no milk; and they came afoot to the market. Death seemed to look
+them in the face. Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they
+offer petitions to God for rain. They had long ceased their prayers.
+Only in the Feddan at the mouths of their tents did they lift up their
+heavy eyes to the hot haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, "It is
+written!"
+
+Israel was busy with other matters. During these six-and-twenty days he
+had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.
+He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he
+held under the Kaid. No longer could he serve two masters. Too long had
+he held to the one, thinking that by recompense and restitution, by fair
+dealing and even-handed justice, he might atone to the other. Recompense
+was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was
+no longer possible--his own purse being empty--without robbery of the
+treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope
+in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan
+in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only as a
+human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of
+the man beneath him.
+
+To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible,
+and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina,
+was a waste of shame and spirit. Besides, and above all, Israel
+remembered that God had given him grace in the sacrifices which he had
+made already. Twice had God rewarded him, in the mercy He had shown to
+Naomi, for putting by the pomp and circumstance of the world. Would
+His great hand be idle now--now when he most needed its mighty and
+miraculous power when Naomi, being conscious of her blindness, was
+mourning and crying for sweet sight of the world and he himself was
+about to put under his feet the last of his possessions that separated
+him from other men--his office that he wrought for in the early days
+with sweat of brow and blood, and held on to in the later days through
+evil report and hatred, that he might conquer the fate that had first
+beaten him down!
+
+Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat
+of his desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan. He made his
+preparations, and they were few. His money was gone already, and so were
+his dead wife's jewels. He had determined that he would keep his house,
+if only as a shelter to Naomi (for he owed something to her material
+comfort as well as her spiritual welfare), but that its furniture and
+belongings were more luxurious than their necessity would require or
+altered state allow.
+
+So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and great
+chairs which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets
+from Rabat, the silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies from
+Morocco city. When these were gone, and nothing remained but the simple
+rugs and mattresses which are all that the house of a poor man needs in
+that land where the skies are kind, he called his servants to him as he
+sat in the patio--Ali as well as the two bondwomen--for he had decided
+that he must part with them also, and they must go their ways.
+
+"My good people," he said, "you have been true and faithful servants to
+me this many a year--you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah, since before
+the days when my wife came to me--and you too, Ali, my lad, since you
+grew to be big and helpful. Little I thought to part with you until my
+good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary is over already,
+and to-morrow I shall be less than the least of all men in Tetuan. So
+this is what I have concluded to do. You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah,
+being given to me as bondwomen by the Kaid in the old days when
+my power, which now is little and of no moment, was great and
+necessary--you belong to me. Well, I give you your liberty. Your papers
+are in the name of Ben Aboo, and I have sealed them with his seal--that
+is the last use but one that I shall put it to. Here they are, both of
+them. Take them to the Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will
+ratify your title. Then you will be free women for ever after."
+
+The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel's words with
+exclamations of surprise and consternation. "Allah!" "Bismillah!" "Holy
+Saints!" "By the beard of the Prophet!" And when at length he put the
+deeds of emancipation into their hands they fell into loud fits of
+hysterical weeping.
+
+"As for you, Ali, my son," Israel continued, "I cannot give you your
+freedom, for you are a freeman born. You have been a son to me these
+fourteen years. I have another task for you--a perilous task, a solemn
+duty--and when it is done I shall see you no more. My brave boy, you
+will go far, but I do not fear for you. When you are gone I shall think
+of you; and if you should sometimes think of your old master who could
+not keep you, we may not always be apart."
+
+The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment. That strange
+disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea that had
+forced itself upon his unwilling mind. But that Israel, the greatest,
+noblest, mightiest man in the world--let the dogs of rasping Jews and
+the scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark as they would--should fall to
+be less than the least in Tetuan, and, having fallen that he should
+send him away--him, Ali, his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi's old
+playfellow--Allah! Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did his
+master mean?
+
+Ali's big eyes began to fill, and great beads rolled down his black
+cheeks. Then, recovering his speech he blurted out that he would not go.
+He would follow his father and serve him until the end of his life. What
+did he want with wages? Who asked for any? No going his ways for him! A
+pretty thing, wasn't it, that he should go off, and never see his father
+again, no, nor Naomi--Naomi--that-that--but God would show! God would
+show!
+
+And, following Ali's lead, Fatimah stepped up to Israel and offered her
+paper back. "Take it," she said; "I don't want any liberty. I've got
+liberty enough as I am. And here--here," fumbling in her waistband and
+bringing out a knitted purse; "I would have offered it before, only I
+thought shame. My wages? Yes. You've paid us wages these nine years,
+haven't you; and what right had we to any, being slaves? You will not
+take it, my lord? Well, then, my dear master, if I must go, if I must
+leave you, take my papers and sell me to some one. I shall not care,
+and you have a right to do it. Perhaps I'll get another good master--who
+knows?"
+
+Her brows had been knitted, and she had tried to look stern and angry,
+but suddenly her cheeks were a flood of tears.
+
+"I'm a fool!" she cried. "I'll never get a good master again; but if I
+get a bad one, and he beats me, I'll not mind, for I'll think of
+you, and my precious jewel of gold and silver, my pretty gazelle,
+Naomi--Allah preserve her!--that you took my money, and I'm bearing it
+for both of you, as we might say--working for you--night and day--night
+and day--"
+
+Israel could endure no more. He rose up and fled out of the patio
+into his own room, to bury his swimming face. But his soul was big
+and triumphant. Let the world call him by what names it would--tyrant,
+traitor, outcast pariah--there were simple hearts that loved and
+honoured him--ay, honoured him--and they were the hearts that knew him
+best.
+
+The perilous task reserved for Ali was to go to Shawan and to liberate
+the followers of Absalam, who, less happy than their leader, whose
+strong soul was at rest, were still in prison without abatement of
+the miseries they lay under. He was to do this by power of a warrant
+addressed to the Kaid of Shawan and drawn under the seal of the Kaid of
+Tetuan. Israel had drawn it, and sealed it also, without the knowledge
+or sanction of Ben Aboo; for, knowing what manner of man Ben Aboo was,
+and knowing Katrina also, and the sway she held over him, and thinking
+it useless to attempt to move either to mercy, he had determined to make
+this last use of his office, at all risks and hazards.
+
+Ben Aboo might never hear that the people were at large, for Ali was to
+forbid them to return to Tetuan, and Shawan was sixty weary miles away.
+And if he ever did hear, Israel himself would be there to bear the brunt
+of his displeasure, but Ali the instrument of his design, must be
+far away. For when the gates of the prison had been opened, and the
+prisoners had gone free, Ali was neither to come back to Tetuan nor to
+remain in Morocco, but with the money that Israel gave him out of the
+last wreck of his fortune he was to make haste to Gibraltar by way
+of Ceuta, and not to consider his life safe until he had set foot in
+England.
+
+"England!" cried Ali. "But they are all white men there."
+
+"White-hearted men, my lad," said Israel; "and a Jewish man may find
+rest for the sole of his foot among them."
+
+That same day the black boy bade farewell to Israel and to Naomi. He was
+leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted. Israel was his father,
+Naomi was his sister, and never again should he set his eyes on either.
+But in the pride of his perilous mission he bore himself bravely.
+
+"Well, good-night," he said, taking Naomi's hand, but not looking into
+her blind face.
+
+"Good-night," she answered, and then, after a moment, she flung her arms
+about his neck and kissed him. He laughed lightly, and turned to Israel.
+
+"Good-night, father," he said in a shrill voice.
+
+"A safe journey to you, my son," said Israel; "and may you do all my
+errands."
+
+"God burn my great-grandfather if I do not!" said Ali stoutly.
+
+But with that word of his country his brave bearing at length broke
+down, and drawing Israel aside, that Naomi might not hear, he whispered,
+sobbing and stammering, "When--when I am gone, don't, don't tell her
+that I was black."
+
+Then in an instant he fled away.
+
+"In peace!" cried Israel after him. "In peace! my brave boy, simple,
+noble, loyal heart!"
+
+Next morning Israel, leaving Naomi at home, set off for the Kasbah, that
+he might carry out his great resolve to give up the office he held under
+the Kaid. And as he passed through the streets his head was held up, and
+he walked proudly. A great burden had fallen from him, and his spirit
+was light. The people bent their heads before him as he passed, and
+scowled at him when he was gone by. The beggars lying at the gate of the
+Mosque spat over their fingers behind his back, and muttered "Bismillah!
+In the name of God!" A negro farmer in the Feddan, who was bent double
+over a hoof as he was shoeing a bony and scabby mule, lifted his ugly
+face, bathed in sweat, and grinned at Israel as he went along. A
+group of Reefians, dirty and lean and hollow-eyed, feeding their
+gaunt donkeys, and glancing anxiously at the sky over the heads of the
+mountains, snarled like dogs as he strode through their midst. The sky
+was overcast, and the heads of the mountains were capped with mist.
+"Balak!" sounded in Israel's ears from every side. "Arrah!" came
+constantly at his heels. A sweet-seller with his wooden tray swung in
+front of him, crying, "Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Edrees, sweets,
+all sweets," changed the name of the patron saint of candies, and cried,
+"Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all sweets!" The girl
+selling clay peered up impudently into Israel's eyes, and the oven-boy,
+answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms thrust out at
+doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with a mocking
+echo of Israel's name.
+
+What matter? Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.
+Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave. This
+morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be one of themselves.
+
+When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air about it that
+brought back recollections of the day--now nearly four years past--of
+the children's gathering at Katrina's festival. The lusty-lunged Arabs
+squatting at the gates among soldiers in white selhams and peaked
+shasheeahs the women in blankets standing in the outer court, the dark
+passages smelling of damp, the gusts of heavy odour coming from the
+inner chambers, and the great patio with the fountain and fig-trees--the
+same voluptuous air was over everything. And as on that day so on this,
+in the alcove under the horseshoe arch sat Ben Aboo and his Spanish
+wife.
+
+Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face of the
+Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey and
+his hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise he was the
+same man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss of some teeth
+of the upper row, was the same woman. And if the children had risen up
+before Israel's eyes as he stood on the threshold of the patio, he could
+not have drawn his breath with more surprise than at the sight of the
+man who stood that morning in their place.
+
+It was Mohammed of Mequinez. He had come to ask for the release of
+the followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan. In defiance
+of courtesy his slippers were on his feet. He was clad in a piece of
+untanned camel-skin, which reached to his knees and was belted about his
+waist. His head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a
+flower, was held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing. He was not
+supplicating for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and
+taxing Ben Aboo as a tyrant to his throat.
+
+"Give me them up, Ben Aboo," he was saying as Israel came to the
+threshold, "or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you."
+
+"And pray what is that?" said Ben Aboo.
+
+"That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer."
+
+Ben Aboo's brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made
+pretence to laugh, and then said, "And pray, my lord, who shall the
+murderer be?"
+
+Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered,
+"Yourself."
+
+At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in
+his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.
+
+Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed. He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was
+master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of
+this man whom the people called a prophet. And partly out of this fear,
+and partly because he had more regard to Mohammed's courageous behaviour
+in thus bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than
+to the anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised
+him at that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.
+
+But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation
+against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had
+openly denounced her marriage.
+
+"Wait, Sidi," she said. "Is not this the fellow that has gone up and
+down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the
+law of Mohammed?"
+
+At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he
+made pretence to laugh again, and said, "Allah! so it is! Mohammed the
+Third, eh? Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You
+could never think how long I've waited that I might look face to face
+upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid."
+
+He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but
+Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant. "Wait no
+longer, O Ben Aboo," he cried, "but look upon him now, and know that
+what you have done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and
+die!"
+
+Then Ben Aboo's passion mastered him. He rose to his feet in his anger,
+and cried, "Prophet, you have destroyed yourself. Listen to me! The
+turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish
+of hunger and rot of their sores. By the beard of my father, I swear
+it!"
+
+Mohammed did not flinch. Throwing back his head, he answered, "If I am
+a prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy. Before that which you say shall
+come to pass, both you and your father's house will be destroyed. Never
+yet did a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it
+like a dog."
+
+Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of
+barefooted Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, "Take him! He will
+escape!"
+
+But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and
+Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.
+
+"In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt
+you had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought
+on our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you. And
+within this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest,
+your whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing
+and your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with
+you, for all else had forsaken you--all save one, and that was your
+enemy, and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you
+with his heart, because you were fallen and dead."
+
+Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again and reeled
+backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward at his feet where
+the eyes of Mohammed had rested. It was almost as if he saw the awful
+thing of which Mohammed had spoken, so strong was the power of the
+vision upon him.
+
+But recovering himself quickly, he cried, "Away! In the name of God,
+away!"
+
+"I will go," said Mohammed; "and beware what you do while I am gone."
+
+"Do you threaten me?" cried Ben Aboo. "Will you go to the Sultan? Will
+you appeal to Abd er-Rahman?"
+
+"No, Ben Aboo; but to God."
+
+So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place, for no man
+hindered him. Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat as one that was
+speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body availed him, or the
+silver on his breast, against that simple man in camel-skin, who owned
+nothing and asked nothing, and feared neither Kaid nor King.
+
+When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing at the
+doorway, and he beckoned to him with the downward motion, which is the
+Moorish manner. And rising on his quaking limbs he took him aside and
+said, "I know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and
+visions he has gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I
+dare not take him! Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas!
+Camel-skin coat? Allah! a fine disguise! Bismillah! Bismillah!"
+
+Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision saw his
+body lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and said,
+"Listen! You have my seal?"
+
+Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband,
+and drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.
+
+"Right! Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God. Do not liberate
+these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them so much as bread to
+eat or water to drink, but let such as own them feed them. And if ever
+the thing of which that fellow has spoken should come to pass--do you
+hear?--in the hour wherein it befalls--Allah preserve me!--in that hour
+draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan and seal it with my seal--are you
+listening?--a warrant to put every man, woman, and child to the sword.
+Ya Allah! Allah! We will deal with these spies of Abd er-Rahman!
+So shall there be mourning at my burial--Holy Saints! Holy
+Saints!--mourning, I say, among them that look for joy at my death."
+
+Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking into
+loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words into
+Israel's ear.
+
+Israel made no answer. His eyes had become dim--he scarcely saw the
+walls of the place wherein they stood. His ears had become dense--he
+scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo, though the Kaid's hot breath was
+beating upon his cheek. But through the haze he saw the shadow of one
+figure tramping furiously to and fro, and through the thick air the
+voice of another figure came muffled and harsh. For Katrina, having
+chased away with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel
+and was saying--
+
+"What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter--this Naomi of
+yours--that she has recovered her speech and hearing! When did that
+happen, pray? No answer? Ah, I see, you are tired of the deception. You
+kept it up well between you. But is she still blind? So? Dear me! Blind,
+poor child. Think of it!"
+
+Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless on the
+same place, holding the seal in his hand. And Ben Aboo, in his restless
+tramping up and down, came to him again, and said, "Why are you a Jew,
+Israel ben Oliel? The dogs of your people hate you. Witness to the
+Prophet! Resign yourself! Turn Muslim, man--what's to hinder you?"
+
+Still Israel made no reply. But Ben Aboo continued: "Listen! The people
+about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all you are the best
+servant I have ever had. Say the Kelmah, and I'll make you my Khaleefa.
+Do you hear?--my Khaleefa, with power equal to my own. Man, why don't
+you speak? Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
+
+
+"Basha," said Israel--he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced
+calmness--"Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that--this
+hand of mine shall never seal that warrant."
+
+"Tut, man!" whispered Ben Aboo. "Do your new measles break out
+everywhere? Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?"
+
+Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his
+great resolve.
+
+"Basha," he said again calmly and quietly, "if you were Sultan and could
+make me your Vizier, I would not do it."
+
+"Why?" cried Ben Aboo; "why? why?"
+
+"Because," said Israel, "I am here to deliver up your seal to you."
+
+"You? Grace of God!" cried Ben Aboo.
+
+"I am here," continued Israel, as calmly as before, "to resign my
+office."
+
+"Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?" cried Ben Aboo. "Man, man,
+are you mad?"
+
+"No, Basha, not to-day," said Israel quietly. "I must have been that
+when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago."
+
+Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his
+anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel
+with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and
+terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers
+under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and
+said, "There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let
+me think!"
+
+Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown
+white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct
+of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, "What
+does it mean? What does it mean?"
+
+In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. "Wait!" he
+cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people
+about him. "Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez?
+The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I
+knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought
+him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread
+should spy and pry on me?"
+
+Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for
+no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and
+protests. "O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.
+Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites--his thieves,
+his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib
+es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want
+to squeeze me of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings
+after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O
+Compassionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of
+my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I'm an old
+soldier--they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I'll
+stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?
+It's because I'm his brother--that's it, that's it! But I've never risen
+against him. Never, never! I've paid him all! All! I tell you I've paid
+everything. I've got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you
+know it."
+
+Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded
+and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary
+and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up
+at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if
+anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for
+ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful
+spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base
+disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.
+
+But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as
+slowly and calmly as at first, "Basha, have no fear; I have not sold
+myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez--but not to see
+the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing
+of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for
+myself alone."
+
+Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the
+other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made
+what poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he
+had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's
+steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn
+of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of
+braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a
+humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had
+truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again,
+and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once
+more, without disguise and without shame.
+
+"And pray, sir," said he, with a ghastly smile, "what riches have you
+gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?"
+
+"None," said Israel shortly.
+
+Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with
+Katrina.
+
+"And pray, again," he said, with a curl of the lip, "without office and
+without riches how may you hope to live?"
+
+"As a poor man among poor men," said Israel, "serving God and trusting
+to His mercy."
+
+Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel
+stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.
+
+"Serving God is hard bread," said Ben Aboo.
+
+"Serving the devil is crust!" said Israel.
+
+At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed
+it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.
+
+"Allah! What do you mean?" he cried. "Who are you that you dare wag your
+insolent tongue at me?"
+
+"I am your scapegoat, Basha," said Israel, with an awful calm--"your
+scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.
+Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them
+by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and
+have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets
+among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are
+up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and
+the mistaken love of all men."
+
+While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the
+opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy
+cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose
+and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his
+turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.
+
+But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face
+to face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke
+again and said, "Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your
+business nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is
+your seal. It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these
+five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it."
+
+In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as
+he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of
+the patio.
+
+"Fool!" he cried. "So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most
+merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A
+prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!"
+
+Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery
+his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and
+lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.
+
+"Who said it was the Sultan?" he cried again. "He was a fool. Abd
+er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That's it!
+That's it!"
+
+So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of
+Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side
+to side like a caged and angry beast.
+
+"And if I am a tyrant," he said in a thick voice, "who made me so? If
+I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain
+devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false
+judgments--what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver
+dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people
+that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head
+did all this? Why, yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the
+Prophet, I swear it!"
+
+Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he
+answered calmly and sadly, "God's ways are not our ways, neither are
+His thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His
+ministers. I thought God's justice had failed, but it has overtaken
+myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to
+oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering."
+
+All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with
+lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan
+restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And
+now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn
+in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said
+lightly, "Ah! I thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its
+teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?"
+
+"About the time that you were, madam," said Israel, lifting his heavy
+eyes upon her.
+
+At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. "Husband," she
+cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, "I hope
+you now see that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you
+from the first what would come of him. But no, you would have your own
+foolish way. It was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him. Yet
+you would not believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are,
+you are believing him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I
+tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh,
+trust him, he's got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it!
+He'll be master in Tetuan yet!"
+
+Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes
+laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry
+cry. And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers,
+who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, "Arabs, Berbers,
+Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may,
+you'll lie in the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!"
+
+A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile
+came back into the face of Ben Aboo.
+
+"You must be right," he said, "you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!
+This is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and
+I gave him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him
+place and rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could
+find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his
+enemies, and imprisoned those he hated. After his wife had died, and
+none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own
+hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them
+I set them free. All these years I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya
+Allah! His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of
+his finger. And all for what? For this! For this! For this! Ingrate!" he
+cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, "if you must
+give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool? Could you not come
+to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I
+have served you long and faithfully; let me rest'--why not? I say, why
+not?"
+
+Israel answered calmly, "Because it would have been a lie, Basha."
+
+"So it would," cried Ben Aboo sharply, "so it would: you are right--it
+would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and
+say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have
+sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it."
+
+"Because it is true, Basha," said Israel.
+
+At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and
+awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the
+patio, he said, "There is another thing that is true. It is true that on
+the other side of that wall there is a prison," and, lifting his voice
+to a shriek, he added, "you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel.
+One step more--"
+
+But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and
+the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling
+throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have
+had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn
+countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his
+passion, and a retort upon his words.
+
+And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his
+ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of
+rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin,
+shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was
+the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood.
+But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head
+wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the
+dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan's
+wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind's eye
+Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless, eyeless, hungry,
+gaunt. But no, he was still here--fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And
+good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death,
+lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose
+brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him
+there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back
+by his cubs.
+
+But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should
+he speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither
+read nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the
+Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should
+he do so? Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man's
+house; yet why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully?
+He had said his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage
+had been written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then
+courage! courage!
+
+"Husband," cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile
+to Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, "you must scour this vermin out of
+Tetuan!"
+
+"You are right," he answered. "By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I
+will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers."
+
+Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice
+of mockery, "Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?
+But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well,
+and all that's in it, and leave this town as a beggar."
+
+Israel stood unmoved. "As you will," he said quietly.
+
+"Where are the two women--the slaves?" asked Ben Aboo.
+
+"At home," said Israel.
+
+"They are mine, and I take them back," said Ben Aboo.
+
+Israel's face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he
+only drew a longer breath, and said again, "As you will, Basha."
+
+Ben Aboo's voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. "Where
+is your money?" he cried; "the money that you have made out of my
+service--out of me--_my_ money--where is it?"
+
+"Nowhere," said Israel.
+
+"It's a lie--another lie!" cried Ben Aboo. "Oh yes, I've heard of your
+charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they?
+Were they? Were they, I ask?"
+
+"So you say, Basha," said Israel.
+
+"So I know!" cried Ben Aboo; "but all you had is not gone that way.
+You're a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys--the keys
+of your house!"
+
+Israel hesitated, and then said, "Let me return for a minute--it is all
+I ask."
+
+At that the woman laughed hysterically. "Ah! he has something left after
+all!" she cried.
+
+Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, "Yes, madam, I _have_
+something left--after all."
+
+Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying,
+"El Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure
+there!"
+
+"It is true, madam," said Israel; "it is true that I have a treasure
+there. My daughter--my little blind Naomi."
+
+"Is that all?" cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.
+
+"It is all," said Israel, "but it is enough. Let me fetch her."
+
+"Don't allow it!" cried Katrina.
+
+Israel's face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. "Make
+me homeless if you will," he said, "turn me like a beggar out of your
+town, but let me fetch my daughter."
+
+"She'll not thank you," cried Katrina.
+
+"She loves me," said Israel, "I am growing old, I am numbering the steps
+of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.
+Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am
+yours, and no one save her father--"
+
+"Ah! Ah! Ah!"
+
+Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had
+been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. "Trust
+me," she cried, "I know what daughters are. Girls like better things.
+No, I'll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here
+with me."
+
+Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, "Madam, I would
+rather see her dead at my feet."
+
+Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, "Don't wag your tongue at your
+mistress, sir."
+
+"_Your_ mistress, Basha," said Israel; "not mine."
+
+At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down
+upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not
+flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood
+trickled over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.
+
+Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from
+behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.
+
+In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood
+in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered
+the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and
+how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets
+scarce any one--even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered
+thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate--could clearly tell. She
+stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly
+with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open
+iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up,
+her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare
+wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow
+that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father!
+It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking,
+reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and
+sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it
+all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must
+burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!
+
+At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
+has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into
+His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous
+flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which
+had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!
+
+They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
+girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips,
+her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair
+before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then
+but a blank. Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time.
+This, only this, was she!
+
+And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been
+newly born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face,
+eye to eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light,
+everything had entered at a blow--the white glare of the sun, the
+blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his
+soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the
+fringe of his eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know
+what vision was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone
+out from its dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. "Oh!
+oh!" she cried, and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The
+picture of the world seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her
+eyes with her hands, that she might abolish it altogether.
+
+Israel saw everything. "Naomi!" he cried in a choking voice, and
+stretched out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked,
+and paused and hesitated.
+
+"Naomi!" he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her
+eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and
+only listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into
+her father's arms. And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her to
+his breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, "Madam, we are
+in the hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His
+servant."
+
+Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God
+in the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his
+maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done
+before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object
+of his terror. "O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us!
+Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on
+them both! Allah! Allah!"
+
+The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled
+together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.
+
+"Brava!" she cried. "Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long
+ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well
+acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!"
+
+Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of
+his crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.
+
+Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of
+Naomi, a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the
+lowest hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and
+at the next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying--
+
+"Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk
+barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, 'So shall it be
+done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who
+is a play-actor and a cheat!' Thus let them pass through the streets and
+through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then
+cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+THE RAINBOW SIGN
+
+
+While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great
+blessing had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed
+for--the good and blessed rain--had come at last. In gentle drops like
+dew it had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had
+gathered over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of
+such moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring
+down like a flood.
+
+Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!
+The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and
+whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which
+had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome
+river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.
+
+And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the
+falling of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The
+streets and the marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they
+wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought
+of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their
+palms to the rain and drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of
+boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came
+without aim or direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering
+like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers
+cried "Balak" in tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers
+sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs
+stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their
+dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square
+capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long
+guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and
+sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were far
+away.
+
+Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that
+the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from
+the Kasbah. At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and
+gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah and crimson
+selham. Behind him were four black police, and on either side of the
+company were two criers of the street, each carrying a short staff
+festooned with strings of copper coin, which he rattled in the air for a
+bell. Between these came the victims of the Basha's order--Naomi first,
+barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all but the last garment that
+hid her nakedness, her head held down, her face hidden, and her eyes
+closed--and Israel afterwards, mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A
+further guard of black police walked at the back of all. Thus they came
+down the steep arcades into the market-square, where the greater body of
+the townspeople had gathered together.
+
+When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from
+every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent,
+and booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud
+exclamations of surprise.
+
+"Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!" cried the Moors.
+
+"God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!" cried the people of the
+Mellah.
+
+"What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?" they all asked
+together.
+
+"Balak!" cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to
+force a passage through the thronging multitude. "Attention! By your
+leave! Away! Out of the way!"
+
+And as they walked the criers chanted, "So shall it be done to every man
+who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and
+a cheat."
+
+When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to
+look black into each other's face, to mutter oaths between their teeth,
+and to say in voices of no pity or rush, "He deserved it!" "Ya Allah,
+but he's well served!" "Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!"
+"Look at him now!" "There he is at last!" "Brave end to all his great
+doings!" "Curse him! Curse him!"
+
+And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
+of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came
+still the cry of the crier, "So shall it be done to every man who is an
+enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat."
+
+Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter,
+and after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they
+derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now
+he seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an
+imposture. Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To
+think that they had ever been afraid of him!
+
+As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in
+a blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of
+the Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck
+Israel with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her
+husband and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel
+had succoured both when he went about on his secret excursions after
+nightfall in the disguise of a Moor.
+
+"Balak! Balak!" cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the
+crier rang out over all other noises.
+
+At every step the throng increased. The strong and lusty bore down the
+weak in the struggle to get near to the procession. Blind beggars and
+feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at
+Israel from the back of the crowd.
+
+As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came
+out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to
+the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house; the other was a
+company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and
+Judah ben Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized
+the people. They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal
+progress--the departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan. The soldier
+and police fell into the humour of the multitude. Salaams were made
+to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi.
+Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd, and walked backward, and cried,
+in his harsh, nasal croak--
+
+"Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him! Make way!
+make way!"
+
+Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the
+hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people's heads a
+huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and
+the black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over
+Israel's head.
+
+Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.
+
+"God bless our Lord!"
+
+"Saviour of his people!"
+
+"Benefactor! King of men!"
+
+And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.
+
+All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing
+humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned
+with a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked
+by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the
+Jews, spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed
+with bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and
+at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred. And, thinking that
+it was he who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to
+reach her side and whisper in her ear, and say, "Forgive me, my child,
+forgive me." But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered
+what God had that day done for her; and taking it for a sign of God's
+pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well, he raised his eyes on
+her with tears of bitter joy, and thought, in the wild fever of his
+soul, "She is sharing the triumph of my humiliation. She is walking
+through the mocking and jeering crowd, but see! God Himself is walking
+beside her!"
+
+The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
+going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow and the
+concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a
+stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and
+said, so that all might hear, "Look at the crowds that have come out to
+speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember
+this day!"
+
+"So you shall!" cried Israel. "Until your days of death you shall all
+remember it!"
+
+He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his
+answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts
+of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and
+followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice of a brother. They
+had been insulting calamity itself.
+
+"Balak!" shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the
+procession moved again.
+
+It was the hour of Israel's last temptation. Not a glance in his face
+disclosed passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed to be
+jarring at his ear, "Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you
+have come to this? Were they worth the sacrifice? You might have been
+rich and great, and riding on their heads. They would have honoured you
+then, but now they despise you. Fool! You have sold all and given to the
+poor, and this is the end of it." But in the throes and last gasp of his
+agony, hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted
+on the stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper,
+"Be strong. Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done,
+servant of God, well done!"
+
+He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted
+his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron
+of faces black and white. "O pity of men!" he thought. "What devil is
+tempting _them_?"
+
+By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near
+to the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no
+longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by
+sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately
+over the arch of the gate.
+
+Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand in the
+heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land
+beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged--God
+Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!
+
+What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life
+seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
+
+First the voice of the crier, "So shall it be done to every man who
+is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a
+cheat."
+
+Then the voice of the soldier, "Balak! Balak!"
+
+After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then
+to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.
+
+When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that
+was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi
+by the hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
+
+Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi were
+settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north of the
+town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak which
+lies on the road to Tangier. From the hour wherein the gates had closed
+behind them, everything had gone well with both. The country people who
+lay encamped on the heath outside had gathered around and shown them
+kindness. One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi's shame, had come behind
+without a word and cast a blanket over her head and shoulders. Then
+a girl of the Berber folk had brought slippers and drawn them on to
+Naomi's feet. The woman wore no blanket herself, and the feet of the
+girl were bare. Their own people were haggard and hollow-eyed and
+hungry, but the hearts of all were melted towards the great man in his
+dark hour. "Allah had written it," they muttered, but they were more
+merciful than they thought their God.
+
+Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer of kind
+words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered on
+through the country from village to village, until in the evening, an
+hour after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made their home.
+It was a poor, mean place--neither a round tent, such as the mountain
+Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone, with its garden in a
+court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears for his homestead, but an
+oblong shed, roofed with rushes and palmetto leaves in the manner of an
+Irish cabin. And, indeed, the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been,
+who, escaping at Gibraltar from the ship that was taking him to Sidney,
+had sailed in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the
+land until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa. Unlike the
+better part of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and
+gloomy temper, and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours,
+and when he died his house had been left alone. That was the chance
+whereby Israel and Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and
+unclaimed.
+
+Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and
+values, yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes
+only from the hand of God. Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses
+grew at the foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had
+first caught the eyes of Israel. For suddenly through the mazes of his
+mind, where every perception was indistinct at that time, there seemed
+to come back to him a vague and confused recollection of the abandoned
+house, as if the thing that his eyes then saw they had surely seen
+before. How this should be Israel could not tell, seeing that never
+before to his knowledge had he passed on his way to Tangier so near to
+Semsa. But when he questioned himself again, it came to him, like light
+beaming into a dark room, that not in any waking hour at all had he seen
+the little place before, but in a dream of the night when he slept on
+the ground in the poor fondak of the Jews at Wazzan.
+
+This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with
+Naomi; this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to
+hear and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which
+when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in
+his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.
+Israel's heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading
+of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without
+more ado than such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with
+Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.
+
+And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer
+until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,
+lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought
+to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.
+
+Israel was poor, but not penniless. Out of the wreck of his fortune,
+after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three
+hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was
+cast out of the town. These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen. He
+hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the
+hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan. The rains continued, the
+eggs of the locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the
+ground, and Israel found bread for both of them. With such simple
+husbandry, and in such a home, giving no thought to the morrow, he
+passed with cheer and comfort from day to day.
+
+And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the
+loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of
+his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always
+present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his
+hope. He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed
+the hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far
+away under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town
+lamps sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.
+
+"They are yonder," he would think, "wrangling, contending, fighting,
+praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from
+them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet
+odour of God's proper air."
+
+But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former
+life was the recollection of Naomi. God had given back all her gifts,
+and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing? They
+were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and
+riches of gold and silver had been without it. And higher than the joy
+of Israel's constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now
+see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was
+the solemn thought that all this was but the sign and symbol of God's
+pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had
+been lifted away.
+
+More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man was his
+delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life. She was like a creature
+born afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened into a world of
+strange sights.
+
+But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure. What had
+happened to her was, after all, a simple thing. Born with cataract on
+the pupils of her eyes, the emotion of the moment at the Kasbah, when
+her father's life seemed to be once more in danger, had--like a fall
+or a blow--luxated the lens and left the pupils clear. That was all.
+Throughout the day whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when
+they were cast out of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through
+the country until they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes
+steadfastly closed. The light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate
+lids, and gave her pain. When for a moment she lifted her lashes and saw
+the trees, she put out her hand as if to push them away; and when she
+saw the sky, she raised her arms as if to hold it off. Everything seemed
+to touch her eyes. The bars of sunlight seemed to smite them. Not until
+the falling of darkness did her fears subside and her spirits revive.
+Throughout the day that followed she sat constantly in the gloom of the
+blackest corner of their hut.
+
+But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world of
+darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air had been
+her baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence. Within three
+days afterwards her terror began to give place to joy; and from that
+time forward the world was full of wonder to her opened eyes. Then
+sweet and beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy, were her amazement and
+delight in every little thing that lay about her--the grass, the weeds,
+the poorest flower that blew, even the rude implements of the house and
+the common stones that worked up through the mould--all old and familiar
+to her fingers, but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an
+angel out of heaven had dropped them down to her.
+
+For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise
+everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life in
+the cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her on
+the eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up at him
+as he stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant, being still
+in the mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes again, and
+put out her hand to touch him, did her face brighten with recognition
+and her lips utter his name. "My father," she murmured, "my father."
+
+Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back
+to the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower in her
+hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it in her broken,
+lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her that there were flowers
+that could see? Here was one which while she looked upon it had opened
+its beautiful eye and laughed at her. "What is it?" she asked; "what is
+it?"
+
+"A daisy, my child," Israel answered.
+
+"A daisy!" she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and
+quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed her
+nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and
+then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, "Oh, yes, so it
+is; it is only a daisy."
+
+But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with
+what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a
+long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside the coast, but
+from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one
+day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly
+at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, "The sky! the sky!
+Look! It has fallen on to the land."
+
+"That is the sea, my child," said Israel.
+
+"The sea!" she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and
+then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed
+out and her beautiful face looked aside, "So it is--yes, it is the sea."
+
+Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her
+mind were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she
+mounted the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she
+walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields
+where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn
+by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun,
+until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast. Still
+the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized
+upon her sight. The gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless
+sea-birds. From high up in the rocks above, and from far down in the
+chasm below, from every cleft on every side, they flew out, with white
+wings and black ones and grey and blue, and sent their voices into the
+air, until the echoing place seemed to shriek and yell with a deafening
+clangour.
+
+It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long
+hour in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father, she
+told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea,
+and fought in the air and killed each other. "And see!" she cried; "look
+at this, and this, and this!"
+
+Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the
+devilish warfare that she had witnessed and "This," said he, lifting
+one of them, "is a sea-bird's feather; and this," lifting another, "is
+a sea-bird's egg; and this," lifting the third, "is a dead sea-bird
+itself."
+
+Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes
+and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.
+"Ah yes," she said meekly, looking into her father's eye, with a smile,
+"they are only that after all." And then she said very quietly, as if
+speaking to herself, "What a long time it is before you learn to see!"
+
+It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of
+Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took
+shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening, when she
+had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came
+back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the
+sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like
+fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes, and went down behind
+the world together, passing out of the earth through the gates of
+heaven.
+
+Israel listened to her and said, "That was the sunset my child. Every
+morning the sun rises and every night it sets."
+
+Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame at her sweet
+errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and
+Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, "After all, the eyes are
+deceitful." Vision was life's new language, and she had yet to learn it.
+
+But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world
+to be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part of
+it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself
+alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off
+with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still, the sea was smooth,
+the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky
+was blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little
+island, which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with
+heather and long stalks of seeding grass. Through whispering beds of
+rushes they glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming
+fishes were at play. Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger
+at their invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on
+the pebbles and great stones. It was a morning of God's own making, and,
+for joy of its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi
+rose in the boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it
+played with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and
+embrace it.
+
+At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden
+knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she
+knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of
+the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where
+they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun's reflected disc
+on the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and
+then saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.
+
+"Father," she cried with alarm, "a face in the water! Look! look!"
+
+"It is your own, my child," said Israel. "Mine!" she cried.
+
+"The reflection of your face," said Israel; "the light and the water
+make it."
+
+The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly in this
+thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at
+her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and
+asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had
+grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was
+like a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child
+in her unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at
+rest she leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.
+
+"How beautiful!" she cried, "how beautiful!"
+
+She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water
+was the wonder of her dancing eyes. "Oh! how very beautiful!" she cried
+without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke
+and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed
+again with a heart of glee.
+
+Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all
+his sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he
+could not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long
+the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny
+himself this choking rapture of her recovery. "Live on like a child
+always, little one," he thought; "be a child as long as you can, be a
+child for ever, my dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that
+I myself should be a child at all."
+
+The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly
+some new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the
+earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the
+flowers. Also she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with
+as little shame and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery
+dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and
+when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still.
+Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had
+seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of
+her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden
+no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of
+human sunlight gathering sunshine into her father's house.
+
+It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the
+better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length
+in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but
+voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so
+deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never
+heard before. Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete
+with sparkling life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart.
+All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was
+still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her,
+they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across
+the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their
+hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and
+only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.
+
+Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely
+from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her
+favourite song was still her mother's:--
+
+     Oh, come and claim thine own,
+     Oh, come and take thy throne,
+     Reign ever and alone
+     Reign glorious, golden Love.
+
+Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper
+fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was
+almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a
+maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think
+of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was
+even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she
+were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.
+
+Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like
+the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future
+would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the
+rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating
+joy. He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow.
+And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.
+
+In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and
+look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into
+Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young
+motherhood. Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride and
+joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red fingers
+fastening on her white bosom--oh, what a glimpse was there revealed to
+him!
+
+But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could
+not help but feel pain from them also. They had a perilous fascination
+for him, but he grudged them to Naomi. He thought he could have given
+his immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give. That was
+his poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty
+as a father. He dreaded the coming of that time when another--some other
+yet unseen--should come before him, and he should lose the daughter that
+was now his own.
+
+Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross
+like a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour it
+was gone. The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense
+but wonder. Once she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of
+something which she believed to have happened to her in the night. She
+had been carried away from him--she could not say when--and she knew
+no more until she found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed with
+tiles. Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing
+white kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that
+were of the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of
+bells, a curling silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags
+hung by yellow cords about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman
+of a laughing cruel face; and she herself, Naomi--alone her father being
+nowhere near--stood in the midst with all eyes upon her. What happened
+next she did not know, for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in
+that interval they who had taken her away must have brought her back.
+For when she opened her eyes she was in her own bed, and the things of
+their little home were about her, and her father's eyes were looking
+down at her, and his lips were kissing her, and the sun was shining
+outside, and the birds were singing, and the long grass was whispering
+in the breeze, and it was the same as if she had been asleep during the
+night and was just awakening in the morning.
+
+"It was a dream, my child," said Israel, thinking only with how vivid
+a sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight the
+picture of that day at the Kasbah.
+
+"A dream!" she cried; "no, no! I _saw_ it!"
+
+Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt of her own
+people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch of their hands
+or the sound of their voices. By one of these she had always known them,
+and sometimes it had been her mother's arms that had been about her, and
+sometimes her father's lips that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes
+Ali's voice that had rung in her ears.
+
+Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both of her
+dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart, "She is a child,
+a child born into life as a maid, and without the strength of a child's
+weakness. Oh! great is the wisdom which orders it so that we come into
+the world as babes."
+
+Thus realising Naomi's childishness, Israel kept close guard and watch
+upon her afterwards. But if she was a gleam of sunlight in his lonely
+dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found
+her near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a passing
+traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out
+of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was
+gazing full into the man's gross face, answering his evil questions with
+the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between
+them; and in a moment he had torn Naomi away. And that night, while she
+wept out her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown
+her, Israel himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out a new
+petition to God. "O Lord, my God," he cried, "when she was blind and
+dumb and deaf she was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril from
+herself for Thy hand did guide her, and in none from the world, for no
+man dared outrage her infirmity. But now she is a maid, and her dangers
+are many, for she is beautiful, and the heart of man is evil. Keep me
+with her always, O Lord, to guard and guide her! Let me not leave her,
+for she is without knowledge of good and evil. Spare me a little
+while longer, though I am stricken in years. For her sake spare me, Oh
+Lord--it is the last of my prayers--the last, O Lord, the last--for her
+sake spare me!"
+
+God did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers
+came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The
+release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had
+become known by the blind gratitude of one of them, who, hastening to
+Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before
+it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ISRAEL IN PRISON
+
+
+Short as the time was--some three months and odd days--since the prison
+at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had
+sealed without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied
+by other prisoners. The remoteness of the town in the territory of
+the Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis, had made the
+old fortress a favourite place of banishment to such Kaids of other
+provinces as looked for heavier ransoms from the relatives of victims,
+because the locality of their imprisonment was unknown or the danger
+of approaching it was terrible. And thus it happened that some fifty or
+more men and boys from near and far were already living in the dungeon
+from which Israel and Ali together had set the other prisoners free.
+
+This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from
+Naomi and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa.
+"Ya Allah! Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his
+pups!" said Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel to
+the Kaid of Shawan.
+
+Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning of
+the second day after his arrest. The sun was shining as he approached
+the rude old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down
+to the dungeon. In a little court at the door of the place the Kaid el
+habs, the jailer, was sitting on a mattress, which served him for chair
+by day and bed by night. He was amusing himself with a ginbri, playing
+loud and low according as the tumult was great or little which came from
+the other side of a barred and knotted doorway behind him, some four
+feet high, and having a round peephole in the upper part of it. On the
+wall above hung leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in
+the corner.
+
+At Israel's approach there were some facetious comments between the
+jailer and the guard. Why the ginbri? Was he practising for the fires
+of Jehinnum? Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon? Well, what was a man to do
+while the dogs inside were snarling? Were the thongs for the correction
+of persons lacking understanding? Why, yes; everybody knew their old
+saying, "A hint to the wise, a blow to the fool."
+
+A bunch of great keys rattled, the low doorway was thrown open, Israel
+stooped and went in, the door closed behind him, the footsteps of the
+guard died away, and the twang of the ginbri began again.
+
+The prison was dark and noisome, some sixty feet long by half as many
+broad, supported by arches resting on rotten pillars, lighted only by
+narrow clefts at either hand, exuding damp from its walls, dropping
+moisture from its roof, its air full of vermin, and its floor reeking of
+filth. And only less horrible than the prison itself was the condition
+of the prisoners. Nearly all wore iron fetters on their legs, and some
+were shackled to the pillars. At one side a little group of them--they
+were Shereefs from Wazzan--were conversing eagerly and gesticulating
+wildly; and at the other side a larger company--they were Jews from
+Fez--were languidly twisting palmetto leaves into the shape of baskets.
+Four Berbers at the farther end were playing cards, and two Arabs that
+were chained to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a
+battered old draughtboard between them. From both groups of players
+came loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation and
+of indignant and sarcastic comment. Down went the cards with triumphant
+bangs, and the moves of the "dogs" were like lightning. First a mocking
+voice: "_You_ call yourself a player! There!--there!--there!" Then a
+meek, piping tone: "So--so--verily, you are my master. Well, let us
+praise Allah for your wisdom." But soon a wild burst of irony: "You are
+like him who killed the dog and fell into the river. See! thus I teach
+you to boast over your betters! I shave your beard! There!--there!--and
+there!"
+
+In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of
+light from the clefts at the ends might fall on them--a barber-doctor
+was bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. "We're all having it done,"
+he was saying. "It's good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of
+pilgrims once." A wild-looking creature sat in a corner--he was a saint,
+a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa--rocking himself to and fro, and
+crying "Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!" Near to this person
+a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his
+prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa,
+brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled through the country with a lion
+by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn to a tune
+that he had heard on the coast.
+
+Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the
+companions that were to share it. There had been a moment's pause in
+the clamour of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The
+prisoners knew him, and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every
+mouth was agape. Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind
+him. He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer
+vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down
+helplessly by a pillar on the ground.
+
+A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of
+bread. "Hungry, brother? No?" said the youth. "Cheer up, Sidi! No good
+letting the donkey ride on your head!"
+
+This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless,
+facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing
+for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs
+on every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself--
+
+     El Arby was a black man
+     They called him "'Larby Kosk:"
+     He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+
+Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. "Stay
+here," he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was
+quelled; "never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will
+come back." After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither
+insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him.
+He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the
+faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of
+water by the way.
+
+At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by
+their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival a
+number of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was
+a wild and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of
+the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild
+shouts as each one found his own. "Blessed be God! She's here! here!"
+Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come.
+"My Ayesha! Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn't she here?"
+After that the shrieks of despair from such as learned that their
+breadwinners were dying off one by one. "Dead, you say?" "Dead!" "No,
+no!" "Yes, yes!" "No, no, I say!" "I say yes! God forgive me! died
+last week. But don't you die too. Here take this bag of zummetta." Then
+inquiries after absent children. "Little Selam, where is he?" "Begging
+in Tetuan." "Poor boy! poor boy! And pretty M'barka, what of her?"
+"Alas! M'barka's a public woman now in Hoolia's house at Marrakesh. No,
+don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven to it. What were we
+to do with the children crying for bread? And then there was nothing to
+fetch you this journey, Jellali." "I'll not eat it now it's brought. My
+boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah! May the Kaid that keeps me
+here roast alive in the fires of hell!" Then, apart in one quiet corner,
+a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the lap of his beautiful
+young wife. "You'll not be long coming again, dearest?" he whispers. She
+wipes her eyes and stammers, "No--that is--well--" "What's amiss?" "Ali,
+I must tell you--" "Well?" "Old Aaron Zaggoory says I must marry him, or
+he'll see that both of us starve." "Allah! And you--_you_?" "Don't look
+at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on me, and whatever happens I--I can
+love nobody else." "Curses on Aaron Zaggoory! Curses on you! Curses on
+everybody!"
+
+No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this 'Larby the negro
+swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of
+bread--
+
+     Rusks are good and kiks are sweet
+     And kesksoo is both meat and drink;
+     It's this for now, and that for then,
+     But khalia still for married men.
+
+"You're like me, Sidi," he said, "you want nothing," and he made an
+upward movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence.
+That was the gay rascal's way of saying that he stole from the bags of
+his comrades while they slept.
+
+"No? Fasting yet?" he said, and went off singing as he came--
+
+     It will make your ladies love you;
+     It will make them coo and kiss--
+
+"What?" he shouted to some one across the prison "eating khalia in the
+bird-cage? Bad, bad, bad!"
+
+All this came to Israel's mind through thick waves of
+half-consciousness, but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air
+of the place must have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he
+had first placed himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow
+eyes he gazed at everything, but nothing did he see. Sometimes he had
+the look of one who listens, but never did he hear. Thus in silence and
+languor he passed from day to day, and from night to night, scarcely
+sleeping, rarely eating, and seeming always to be waiting, waiting,
+waiting.
+
+Fresh prisoners came at short intervals, and then only was Israel's
+interest awakened. One question he asked of all. "Where from?" If they
+answered from Fez, from Wazzan, from Mequinez, or from Marrakesh, Israel
+turned aside and left them without more words. Then to his fellows they
+might pour out their woes in loud wails and curses, but Israel would
+hear no more.
+
+Strangers from Europe travelling through the country were allowed to
+look into the prison through the round peephole of the door kept by the
+Kaid el habs, who played the ginbri. The Jews who made baskets took this
+opportunity to offer their work for sale; and so that he might see the
+visitors and speak with them Israel would snatch up something and hang
+it out. Always his question was the same. "Where from last?" he would
+say in English, or Spanish, or French, or Moorish. Sometimes it chanced
+that the strangers knew him. But he showed no shame. Never did their
+answers satisfy him. He would turn back to his pillar with a sigh.
+
+Thus weeks went on, and Israel's face grew worn and tired. His fellow
+prisoners began to show him deference in their own rude way. When he
+came among them at the first they had grinned and laughed a little.
+To do that was always the impulse of the poor souls, so miserably
+imprisoned, when a new comrade joined him. But the majesty and the
+suffering in Israel's face told on their hearts at last. He was a great
+man fallen, he had nothing left to him; not even bread to eat or water
+to drink. So they gathered about him and hit on a way to make him share
+their food. Bringing their sacks to his pillar, they stacked them about
+it, and asked him to serve out provisions to all, day by day, share and
+share alike. He was honest, he was a master, no one would steal from
+him, it was best, the stuff would last longest. It was a touching sight.
+
+Still the old eagerness betrayed itself in Israel's weary manner as
+often as the door opened and fresh prisoners arrived. Once it happened
+that before he uttered his usual question he saw that the newcomers
+were from Tetuan, and then his restlessness was feverish. "When--were
+you--have you been of late--" he stammered, and seemed unable to go
+farther.
+
+But the Tetawanis knew and understood him. "No," said one in answer to
+the unspoken question; "Nor I," said another; "Nor I," said a third,
+"Nor I neither," said a fourth, as Israel's rapid eyes passed down the
+line of them.
+
+He turned away without a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked
+vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo
+was a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a
+harlot whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising
+the entire bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child in
+the streets was safe, and no woman, whether wife or daughter, whom God
+had made comely, dare show herself on the roofs. Their own women
+had been carried off to the palace at the Kasbah. That was why they
+themselves were there in prison.
+
+This was about a month after the coming of Israel to Shawan. Then his
+reason began to unsettle. It was pitiful to see that he was conscious of
+the change that was befalling him. He wrestled with madness with all the
+strength of a strong man. If it should fall upon him, where then would
+be his hope and outlook? His day would be done, his night would be
+closed in, he would be no more than a helpless log, rolling in an
+ice-bound sea, and when the thaw came--if it ever came--he would be
+only a broken, rudderless, sailless wreck. Sometimes he would swear at
+nothing and fling out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame
+hang down his head and mutter, "No, no, Israel; no, no, no!"
+
+Other prisoners arrived from Tetuan, and all told the same story. Israel
+listened to them with a stupid look, seeming hardly to hear the tale
+they told him. But one morning, as life began again for the day in that
+slimy eddy of life's ocean, every one became aware that an awful change
+had come to pass. Israel's face had been worn and tired before, but now
+it looked very old and faded. His black hair had been sprinkled with
+grey, and now it was white; and white also was his dark beard, which
+had grown long and ragged. But his eye glistened, and his teeth were
+aglitter in his open mouth. He was laughing at everything, yet not
+wildly, not recklessly, not without meaning or intention, but with the
+cheer of a happy and contented man.
+
+Israel was mad, and his madness was a moving thing to look upon. He
+thought he was back at home and a rich man still, as he had been in
+earlier days, but a generous man also, as he was in later ones. With
+liberal hand he was dispensing his charities.
+
+"Take what you need; eat, drink, do not stint; there is more where this
+has come from; it is not mine; God has lent it me for the good of all."
+
+With such words, graciously spoken, he served out the provisions
+according to his habit, and only departed from his daily custom in
+piling the measures higher, and in saluting the people by titles--Sid,
+Sidi, Mulai, and the like--in degree as their clothes were poor and
+ragged. It was a mad heart that spoke so, but also it was a big one.
+
+From that time forward he looked upon the prisoners as his guests, and
+when fresh prisoners came to the prison he always welcomed them as if
+he were host there and they were friends who visited him. "Welcome!" he
+would say; "you are very welcome. The place is your own. Take all. What
+you don't see, believe we have not got it. A thousand thousand welcomes
+home!" It was grim and painful irony.
+
+Israel's comrades began to lose sense of their own suffering in
+observing the depth of his, and they laid their heads together to
+discover the cause of his madness. The most part of them concluded
+that he was repining for the loss of his former state. And when one
+day another prisoner came from Tetuan with further tales of the Basha's
+tyranny, and of the people's shame at thought of how they had dealt by
+Israel, the prisoners led the man back to where Israel was standing in
+the accustomed act of dispensing bounty, that he might tell his story
+into the rightful ears.
+
+"They're always crying for you," said the Tetawani; "'Israel ben Oliel!
+Israel ben Oliel!' that's what you hear in the mosques and the streets
+everywhere.' Shame on us for casting him out, shame on us! He was our
+father!' Jews and Muslimeen, they're all saying so."
+
+It was useless. The glad tidings could not find their way. That black
+page of Israel's life which told of the people's ingratitude was sealed
+in the book of memory. Israel laughed. What could his good friend mean?
+Behold! was he not rich? Had he not troops of comrades and guests about
+him?
+
+The prisoners turned aside, baffled and done. At length one man--it was
+no other than 'Larby the wastrel--drew some of them apart and said, "You
+are all wrong. It's not his former state that he's thinking of. _I_ know
+what it is--who knows so well as I? Listen! you hear his laughter! Well,
+he must weep, or he will be mad for ever. He must be _made_ to weep.
+Yes, by Allah! and I must do it."
+
+That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the
+prisoners tied up their cotton headkerchiefs and lay down to sleep,
+'Larby sat beside Israel's place with sighs and moans and other symptoms
+of a dejected air.
+
+"Sidi, master," he faltered, "I had a little brother once, and he was
+blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother's son. But you wouldn't think how
+happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi he never missed anything, and
+so his little face was like laughing water! By Allah! I loved that boy
+better than all the world! Women? Why--well, never mind! He was six and
+I was eighteen, and he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over,
+Sidi, and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn't see.
+Well a bleeder came from Soos--curse his great-grandfather! Looked at
+little Hosain--'Scales!' said he--burn his father! Bleed him and he'll
+see! So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for a minute--half
+a minute! 'Oh, 'Larby,' he cried--I was holding him; then he--he--'
+'Larby,' he cried faint, like a lamb that's lost in the mountains--and
+then--and then--'Oh, oh, 'Larby,' he moaned Sidi, Sidi, I _paid_ that
+bleeder--there and then--_this_ way! That's why I'm here!"
+
+It was a lie, but 'Larby acted it so well that his voice broke in his
+throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel's hand.
+
+The effect on Israel himself was strange and even startling. While
+'Larby was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling: "Where?
+When? Naomi!" as if grappling for lost treasures in an ebbing sea.
+And when 'Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. "And you are
+weeping for that?" he cried. "You think it much that the sweet child is
+dead--God rest him! So it is to the like of you, but look at me!"
+
+His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries. "Look at me! Am
+I weeping? No; I would scorn to weep. But I have more cause a
+thousandfold. Listen! Once I was rich; but what were riches without
+children? Hard bread with no water for sop. I asked God for a child. He
+gave me a daughter; but she was born blind and dumb and deaf. I asked
+God to take my riches and give her hearing. He gave her hearing; but
+what was hearing without speech? I asked God to take all I had and give
+her speech. He gave her speech, but what was speech without sight?
+I asked God to take my place from me and give her sight. He gave her
+sight, and I was cast out of the town like a beggar. What matter? She
+had all, and I was forgiven. But when I was happy, when I was content,
+when she filled my heart with sunshine, God snatched me away from her.
+And where is she now? Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born into
+the world at the mercy of liars and libertines. And where am I? Here,
+like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless, stupid,
+powerless, mad. No, no, not mad, either! Tell me, boy, I am not mad!"
+
+In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling like a drowning
+man. "Yet I do not weep," he cried in a thick voice. "God has a right to
+do as He will. He gave her to me for seventeen years. If she dies she'll
+be mine again soon. Only if she lives--only if she falls into evil
+hands--Tell me, _have_ I been mad?"
+
+He gave no time for an answer. "Naomi!" he cried, and the name broke
+in his throat. "Where are you now? What has--who have--your father
+is thinking of you--he is--No, I will not weep. You see I have a good
+cause, but I tell you I will never weep. God has a right--Naomi!--Na--"
+
+The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly he rose
+and cried in an awful voice, "Oh, I'm a fool! God has done nothing for
+me. Why should I do anything for God? He has taken all I had. He has
+taken my child. I have nothing more to give Him but my life. Let Him
+take that too. Take it, I beseech Thee!" he cried--the vault of the
+prison rang--"Take it, and set me free!"
+
+But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place, and was sobbing
+like a little child. The other prisoners had risen in their amazement,
+and 'Larby, who was shedding hot tears over his cold ones, was capering
+down the floor, and singing, "El Arby was a black man."
+
+Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot
+into the dark place. The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier, who
+carried an order for Israel's release. Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, was to
+keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo, to celebrate the
+visit, had pardoned Israel.
+
+It was coals of fire on Israel's head. "God is good," he muttered. "I
+shall see her again. Yes, God has a right to do as He will. I shall see
+her soon. God is wise beyond all wisdom. I must lose no time. Jailer
+can I leave the town to-night? I wish to start on my journey.
+To-night?--yes, to-night! Are the gates open? No? You will open them?
+You are very good. Everybody is very good. God is good. God is mighty."
+
+Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late intemperate
+outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, "A man's
+a fool when he loses his only child. I don't mean by death. Time heals
+that. But the living child--oh, it's an unending pain! You would never
+think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her
+voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was
+very fond of the little one--I was quite miserable if I lost sight
+of her for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must
+hasten back. The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well
+she'll be looking out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in
+the morning. It's always the way of these tender creatures, is it not?
+So we must humour them. Yes, yes, that's so that's so."
+
+His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief
+knotted under his chin--gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light of
+the jailer's lantern.
+
+"Farewell, brothers!" he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and
+brought it to their breasts.
+
+"Farewell, master!" "Peace, Sidi!" "Farewell!" "Peace!" "Farewell!"
+
+The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps
+dying away outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then
+silence--empty and ghostly.
+
+In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a
+croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing--
+
+     El Arby was a black man,
+     They called him "'Larby Kosk;"
+     He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
+     And stole slippers in the Mosque.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
+
+
+What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel
+lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which
+she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them,
+she sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil
+which had befallen her, but with her father's warning voice and his last
+words in her ear: "Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say,
+stay here. I will come back."
+
+When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and
+fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she
+knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of
+this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she
+was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look
+to her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink beside
+her, but no skill to make and take them.
+
+Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother has been
+swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom. It was
+not so much love as loss. What to do, where to look, which way to turn
+first, she knew no longer, and could not think, for lack of the hand
+that had been wont to guide her.
+
+The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi, and some
+of the women among them came to see her. They were poor farming people,
+oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things they saw were
+the cattle and sheep, and the next thing was the simple girl with the
+child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways wherein a lonely woman must
+fend for herself.
+
+"You cannot live here alone, my daughter," they said; "you would perish.
+Then think of the danger--a child like you, with a face like a flower!
+No, no, you must come to us. We will look to you like one of our own,
+and protect you from evil men. And as for the creatures--"
+
+"But he said I was never to leave this place," said Naomi. "'Stay here,'
+he said; 'whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.'"
+
+The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and
+murdered. It was in vain. Naomi's answer was always the same: "He told
+me to stay here, and surely I must do so."
+
+Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger. "Tut!" they
+thought, "what should we want with the Jew child? Allah! Was there ever
+such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too! And as for her
+father, he'll never come back--never. Trust the Basha for that!"
+
+But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness,
+they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple
+offices--milking and churning, and baking and delving--in pity of the
+sweet girl with the great eyes who had been left to live alone. And
+Naomi, seeing her helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy
+it, so that in a little while she was able to do for herself nearly
+everything that her neighbours at first did for her. Then they would say
+among themselves, "Allah! she's not such a baby after all; and if
+she wasn't quite so beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn't so
+wicked--but then, God is great! God is great!"
+
+Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her
+father had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp
+alight by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under
+the dropping eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the
+radiance of the sun she had whispered to herself and said, "He will come
+back, Naomi; only wait, only wait; maybe it will be tonight, maybe it
+will be to-day; you will see, you will see."
+
+But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon
+her as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been
+there, her old content in her father's command that she should never
+leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.
+
+"Who's to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing. If the Kaid finds
+him in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom. That
+will come to the same thing in the end, or he'll die in prison."
+
+Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought
+she did not listen. And though it was little she understood of Kaids and
+ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father's peril, and at
+length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she
+should and must. With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind
+of a child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman,
+and her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and
+love were born in it. "He must be starving in prison," she thought, "and
+I will take him food."
+
+When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in
+consternation and horror. "God be gracious to my father!" they cried.
+"Shawan? You? Alone? Child, you'll be lost, lost--worse, a thousand
+times worse! Shoof! you're only a baby still."
+
+But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as
+their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it. "He must
+be starving in prison," she said, "and I will take him food."
+
+Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.
+
+"Allah!" they said, "who would have believed it, that the little
+pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!"
+
+Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey. She
+saved up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the
+country; also she churned some butter in the simple way which the women
+had taught her, and put the milk that was left in a goat's-skin. In
+three days she was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf
+panniers of a mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got
+up before them on the front of the burda, after the manner of the wives
+whom she had seen going past to market.
+
+When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild
+errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. "Keep to the
+track as far as Tetuan," they said to her, "and then ask for the road
+to Shawan." One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a
+way that it might cover her face. "Faces like yours are not for the
+daylight," the old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her
+journey. The women watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up
+to the fondak, and then sinks out of sight beyond it. "Poor mad little
+fool," they whimpered; "that's the end of her! She'll never come back.
+Too many men about for that. And now," they said, facing each other with
+looks of suspicion and envy, "what of the creatures?"
+
+While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was
+awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had
+thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do
+so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her,
+and she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing
+pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women
+trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the
+herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing
+barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this
+cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear
+which had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her
+neighbour had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as
+they passed her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood
+to tingle. They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning
+of shame.
+
+Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward.
+"He is starving in prison," she told herself; "I must lose no time." It
+was a weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything
+was terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she
+travelled she came upon men and women and children. It was so strange
+that all the world was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more
+people everywhere. That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no
+house in sight and never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener
+she wished that the people were not so many; and that was when the
+children mocked at her mule, or the women jeered at her as if she must
+needs be a base person because she was alone, or the men laughed and
+leered into her uncovered face.
+
+Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail. Everything was
+unlike what she expected. She had thought the world so good that she had
+but to say to any that asked her of her errand, "My father is in prison,
+they say that he is starving; I am taking him food," and every one would
+help her forward. Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had
+reckoned in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours. But no
+one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill, and
+fewer still with pity and cheer.
+
+The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast, had
+flattened the panniers that hung by its side, and made the round cakes
+of bread to protrude from the open mouth of one of them. Seeing this,
+a line of market-women going by, with bags of charcoal on their backs,
+snatched a cake each as they passed and munched them and laughed. Naomi
+tried to protest. "The bread is for my father," she faltered; "he is
+in prison; they say he--" But the expostulation that began thus timidly
+broke down of itself, for the women laughed again out of their mouths
+choked with the bread, and in another moment they were gone.
+
+Naomi's spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front
+still. To speak of her father again would be to shame him. The poor
+little illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which, in
+spite of vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled, since the
+coming of her sight, to build up in her fresh young soul, were now
+tumbling to pieces. After all, the world was very cruel. It was the same
+as if an angel out of the clouds had fallen on to the earth and found
+her feet mired with clay.
+
+Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a
+fondak which stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan on the
+south-western side. The darkness had closed in by this time, and she
+must needs rest there for the night, but never until then had she
+reflected that for such accommodation she would need money. Only a few
+coppers were necessary, only twenty moozoonahs, that she might lie in
+the shelter and safety of one of the pens that were built for the sleep
+of human creatures, and that her mule might be tethered and fed on
+the manure heap that constituted the square space within. At last she
+bethought her of her eggs, and, though it went to her heart to use for
+herself what was meant for her father, she parted with twelve of them,
+and some cakes of the bread besides, that she might be allowed to pass
+the gate, telling herself repeatedly, with big throbs of remorse between
+her protestations, that unless she did so her father might never get
+anything at all.
+
+The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go
+on to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden, and
+of countless dogs. It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal, and
+between the twilight and the coming of night certain of the men watched
+for the new moon, and when its thin bow appeared in the sky they
+signalled its advent after their usual manner by firing their flintlocks
+into the air, while their women, who were squatting around, kept up a
+cooing chorus. Then came eating and drinking, and laughing and singing,
+and playing the ginbri, and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and
+quarrelling and fighting, and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel
+wielded by the keeper of the fondak. With such exercises the night
+passed into morning.
+
+Naomi was sick. Her head ached. The smell of rotten fish, the stench of
+the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs,
+the grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her
+light-headed. She could neither eat nor sleep. Almost as soon as it
+was light she was up and out and on her way. "I must lose no time," she
+thought, trying not to realise that the blue sky was spinning round her,
+that noises were ringing in her head, and that her poor little heart,
+which had been so stout only yesterday, was sinking very low.
+
+"He must be starving," she told herself again, and that helped her to
+forget her own troubles and to struggle on. But oh, if the world were
+only not so cruel, oh, if there were anyone to give her a word of cheer,
+nay, a glance of pity! But nobody had looked at her except the women who
+stole her bread and the men who shamed her with their wicked eyes.
+
+That one day's experience did more than all her life before it to fill
+her with the bitter fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
+evil. Her illusions fell away from her, and her sweet childish faith was
+broken down. She saw herself as she was: a simple girl, a child ignorant
+of the ways of the world, going alone on a long journey unknown to her,
+thinking to succour her father in prison, and carrying a handful of eggs
+and a few poor cakes of bread. When at length the scales fell from the
+eyes of her mind, and as she trudged along on her bony mule, afraid to
+ask her way, she saw herself, with all her fine purposes shrivelled up,
+do what she would to be brave, she could not help but cry. It was all
+so vain, so foolish; she was such a weak little thing. Her father knew
+this, and that was why he told her to stay where he left her. What if he
+came home while she was absent! Should she go back?
+
+She had almost resolved to return, struggle as she might to push
+forward, when going close under the town walls, near to the very gate,
+the Bab Toot whereat she had been cast out with her father remembering
+this scene of their abasement with a new sense of its cruelty and shame
+born of her own simple troubles, she lit upon a woman who was coming
+out.
+
+It was Habeebah. She was now the slave of Ben Aboo, and was just then
+stealing away from the Kasbah in the early morning that she might go in
+search of Naomi, whose whereabouts and condition she had lately learned.
+
+The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled, but that
+Naomi had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In another moment the
+poor frightened girl, with all her brave bearing gone, was weeping on
+the black woman's breast.
+
+"Whither are you going?" said Habeebah.
+
+"To my father," Naomi began. "He is in prison; they say he is starving;
+I was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don't know my way; and
+besides--"
+
+"The very thing!" cried Habeebah.
+
+Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win emancipation at
+the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died. Naomi,
+who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima. That was all. Then her troubles
+would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her, and her father
+who was in prison would be set free.
+
+Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant.
+The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father was
+everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah's bold promises like a
+drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.
+
+"My father will be let out of prison? You are sure--quite sure?" she
+asked.
+
+"Quite sure," answered Habeebah stoutly.
+
+Naomi's hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and her
+poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born
+worldliness.
+
+"Very well," she said. "I will turn Muslima."
+
+A few minutes afterwards she was riding by Habeebah's side into the
+town, through the Bab Toot across the Feddan, and up to the courtyard
+of the Kasbah, which had witnessed the beginning of her own and her
+father's degradation. Then, tethering the beast in the open stables
+there, Habeebah took Naomi into her own little room and left her alone
+for some minutes, while she hastened to Ben Aboo in secret with her
+wondrous news.
+
+"Lord Basha," she said, "the beautiful Jewess Naomi, the daughter of
+Israel ben Oliel, will turn Muslima."
+
+"Where is she?" said Ben Aboo.
+
+"Sidi," said Habeebah, "I have promised that you will liberate her
+father."
+
+"Fetch her," said Ben Aboo, "and it shall be done."
+
+But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah's room and found Naomi there,
+and heard of the vain hope which had brought her.
+
+"My sweet jewel of gold and silver," the black woman cried, "you don't
+know what you are doing. Turn Muslima, and you will be parted from your
+father for ever. He is a Jew, and will have no right to you any more.
+You will never, never see him again. He will be lost to you--lost--I
+say--lost!"
+
+Habeebah, with two of the guard, came back to take Naomi to Ben Aboo.
+The poor girl was bewildered. She had seen nothing but her father
+in Fatimah's protest, just as she had seen nothing but her father in
+Habeebah's promises. She did not know what to do, she was such a poor
+weak little thing, and there was no strong hand to guide her.
+
+They led her through dark passages to an open place which she thought
+she had seen before. It was a great patio, paved and walled with tiles.
+Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white
+kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that were of
+the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells,
+a silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags, hung by yellow
+cords, about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing
+cruel face, and she herself, Naomi, stood in the midst, with every eye
+upon her. Where had she seen all this before?
+
+Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he
+committed her father to prison. He cherished schemes concerning her
+which he did not share with his wife Katrina. But he had hitherto been
+withheld by two considerations: the first being that he was beset with
+difficulties arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money
+than he could find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity that
+might perchance arise of recalling Israel to his post. Out of these
+grave bedevilments he had extricated himself at length by imposing
+dues on certain tribes of Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the
+Sultan's authority, and by calling on the Sultan's army to enforce them.
+The Sultan had come in answer to his summons, the Reefians had been
+routed, their villages burnt, and that morning at daybreak he had
+received a message saying that Abd er-Rahman intended to keep the feast
+of the Moolood at Tetuan. So this capture of Naomi was the luckiest
+chance that could have befallen him at such a moment. She should witness
+to the Prophet; her father, the Jew, would thereby lose his rights
+in her; and he himself, as her sole guardian, would present her as a
+peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing the boundary of his bashalic.
+
+Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing
+the news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to
+Katrina. But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid,
+so tired, yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the
+light of the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet
+mouth of a child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back
+to his former scheme.
+
+"So you wish to turn Muslima?" he said.
+
+Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear "No,
+no, no!"
+
+Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with
+protests and remonstrances. "She said so," Habeebah cried. "'I will turn
+Muslima,' she said. Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!"
+
+"Did you say so?" asked Ben Aboo.
+
+"Yes," said Naomi faintly.
+
+"Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now," said Ben Aboo; and he
+told her what was the penalty of apostasy. It was death. She must choose
+between them.
+
+Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead
+with her. Still she saw one thing only. "But what of my father?" she
+said.
+
+"He shall be liberated," said Ben Aboo.
+
+"But shall I see him again? Shall I go back to him?" said Naomi.
+
+"The girl is a simpleton!" said Katrina.
+
+"She is only a child," said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more at her
+flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments of
+his women.
+
+These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds,
+with a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room that was
+stifling from many perfumes, and certain smaller chambers. The garden
+was inhabited by a gazelle, whose great startled eyes looked out through
+the long grass; and the oblong room by a number of women of varying
+ages, among whom were a matronly Mooress, called Tarha, in a scarlet
+head-dress, and with a string of great keys swung from shoulder to
+waist; a Circassian, called Hoolia, in a gorgeous rida of red silk and
+gold brocade; a Frenchwoman, called Josephine, with embroidered red
+slippers and black stockings; and a Jewess, called Sol, with a band of
+silk handkerchiefs tied round her forehead above her coal-black curls,
+with her fingers pricked out with henna and her eyes darkened with kohl.
+
+Such were Ben Aboo's wives and concubines and captives, whom he had not
+divorced according to his promise; and when Naomi came among them they
+did their duty by their master faithfully. Being trapped themselves,
+they tried to entrap Naomi also. They overwhelmed her with caresses,
+they went into ecstasies over her beauty, and caused the future which
+awaited her to shine before her eyes. She would have a noble husband,
+magnificent dresses, a brilliant palace, and the world would be at her
+feet. "And what's the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?" said Sol;
+"look at me!" "Tut!" said Josephine, "there's nothing to choose between
+them." "For my part," said Tarha, "I don't see what it matters to us;
+they say Paradise is for the men!" "And think of the jewels, and the
+earrings as big as a bracelet," said Hoolia, "instead of this," and she
+drew away between her thumb and first finger the blanket which Naomi's
+neighbour had given her.
+
+It was all to no purpose. "But what of my father?" Naomi asked again and
+again.
+
+The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations,
+ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs. "Tut!" they
+said, "why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan? She would
+only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan."
+
+Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their
+tales, their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon
+Naomi at last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child.
+In this hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no
+occupation but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education
+but devising new means of pleasing the lust of their husband's eye, no
+delight than that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but
+jealousy, no diversion but sporting on the roofs, no end but death and
+the Kabar.
+
+Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi to the
+prison, and set Habeebah to guard her. The black woman was in terror at
+the turn that events had taken. There was nothing to do now but to
+go on, so she importuned Naomi with prayers. How could she be so
+hard-hearted? Could she keep her father famishing in prison when one
+word out of her lips would liberate him? Naomi had no answer but her
+tears. She remembered the hareem, and cried.
+
+Then Ben Aboo thought of a daring plan. He called the Grand Rabbi, and
+commanded him to go to Naomi and convert her to Islam. The Rabbi
+obeyed with trembling. After all, it was the same God that both peoples
+worshipped, only the Moors called Him Allah and the Jews Jehovah. Naomi
+knew little of either. It was not of God that she was thinking: it was
+only of her father. She was too innocent to see the trick, but the Rabbi
+failed. He kissed her, and went away wiping his eyes.
+
+Rumour of Naomi's plight had passed through the town, and one night a
+number of Moors came secretly to a lane at the back of the Kasbah, where
+a narrow window opened into her cell. They told her in whispers that
+what she held as tragical was a very simple matter. "Turn Muslima," they
+pleaded, "and save yourself. You are too young to die. Resign yourself,
+for God's sake." But no answer came back to them where they were
+gathered in the darkness, save low sobs from inside the wall.
+
+At last Ben Aboo made two announcements. The first, a public one, was
+that Abd er-Rahman would reach Tetuan within two days, on the opening
+of the feast of the Moolood, and the other, a private one, that if
+Naomi had not said the Kelmah by first prayers the following morning she
+should die and her father be cut off as the penalty of her apostasy.
+
+That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was
+occupied by a group of Jews. "Sister," they whispered, "sister of our
+people, listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has robbed us of
+all we had that he may pay for the Sultan's visit. Listen! We have heard
+something. We want Israel ben Oliel back among us. He was our father,
+he was our brother. Save his life for the sake of our children, for the
+Basha has taken their bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we
+pray."
+
+Naomi broke down at last. Next morning at dawn, kneeling among men in
+the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, she repeated the Word after the Iman:
+"I testify that there is no God but God, and that our Lord Mohammed is
+the messenger of God; I am truly resigned."
+
+Then she was taken back to the women's apartments, and clad gorgeously.
+Her child face was wet with tears. She was only a poor weak little
+thing, she knew nothing of religion, she loved her father better than
+God, and all the world was against her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON
+
+
+Such was the method of Israel's release. But, knowing nothing of the
+price which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy.
+Nay, his happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness
+which hung over his life been lifted away. Any one who had seen him in
+prison would have been puzzled by the change as he came away from it.
+He laughed with the courier who walked with him to the town gate, and
+jested with the gate porter as with an old acquaintance. His voice was
+merry, his eye gleamed in the rays of the lantern, his face was flushed,
+and his step was light. "Afraid to travel in the night? No, no, I'll
+meet nothing worse than myself. Others _may_ who meet me? Ha, ha!
+Perhaps so, perhaps so!" "No evil with you, brother?" "No evil, praise
+be God." "Well, peace be to you!" "On you be peace!" "May your morning
+be blessed! Good-night!" "Good-night!" Then with a wave of the hand he
+was gone into the darkness.
+
+It was a wonderful night. The moon, which was in its first quarter,
+was still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead, making a
+silvery dome that almost obliterated the blue. Rivers were rumbling on
+the hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance, kine that could not be
+seen were chewing audibly near at hand, and sheep like patches of white
+in the gloom were scuttling through the grass before Israel's footsteps.
+Israel walked quickly, tracing his course between the two arms of the
+Jebel Sheshawan, whose summits were visible against the sky. The air was
+cool and moist, and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Oh! the
+joy of it to him who had lain long months in prison! Israel drank in the
+night air as a young colt drinks in the wind.
+
+And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel's heart.
+"I am going to be happy," he told himself, "yes, very happy, very
+happy." He raised his eyes to heaven, and a star, bigger and brighter
+than the rest, hung over the path before him. "It is leading me to
+Naomi," he thought. He knew that was folly, but he could not restrain
+his mind from foolishness. And at least she had the same moon and stars
+above her sleep, for she would be sleeping now. "I am coming," he cried.
+He fixed his eye on the bright star in front and pushed forward, never
+resting, never pausing.
+
+The morning dawned. Long rippling waves of morning air came down the
+mountains, cool, chill, and moist. The grey light became tinged with
+red. Then the sun rose somewhere. It had not yet appeared, but the peak
+of the western hill was flushed and a raven flew out and perched on the
+point of light. Israel's breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer
+step. "She will be waking soon," he told himself.
+
+The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing--the wheatear
+in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the
+rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth
+below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like
+vast spiders' webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat, dogs to bark,
+kine to low, horses to cross each other's necks, and over the freshness
+of the air came the smell of peat and of green boughs burning. Israel
+did not stop, but pushed on with new eagerness. "She will have risen
+now," he told himself. He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door
+and looking out for him in the sunlight.
+
+"Poor little thing," he thought, "how she misses me! But I am coming, I
+am coming!"
+
+The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed since he saw
+it last. Then it had been like a dead man's face; now it was like a face
+that was always smiling. And though the year was so old it seemed to
+be quite young. No tired look of autumn, no warning of winter; only the
+freshness and vigour of spring. "I am going to see my child, and I shall
+be happy yet," thought Israel. The dust of life seemed to hang on him no
+longer.
+
+He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer--"the house of the poor
+one." The place did not even justify its name, for it was a cinereous
+wreck. Not a living creature was to be seen anywhere. The village had
+been sacked by the Sultan's army, and its inhabitants had fled to the
+mountains. Israel paused a moment, and looked into one of the ruined
+houses. He knew it must have been the house of a Jew, for he could
+recognise it by its smell. The floor was strewn over with rubbish--cans,
+kettles, water-bottles, a woman's handkerchief, and a dainty red
+slipper. On the ragged grass in the court within there were some little
+stones built up into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the
+ground in lines. A young girl had lived in that house; children had
+played there; the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits
+still. "Poor souls!" thought Israel, but the troubles of others could
+not really touch him. At that very moment his heart was joyful.
+
+The day was warm, but not too hot for walking. Israel did not feel
+weary, and so he went on without resting. He reckoned how far it was
+from Shawan to his home near Semsa. It was nearly seventy miles. That
+distance would take two days and two nights to cover on foot. He had
+left the prison on Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset
+before he reached Naomi. It was now Thursday morning. He must lose
+no time. "You see, the poor little thing will be waiting, waiting,
+waiting," he told himself. "These sweet creatures are all so impatient;
+yes, yes, so foolishly impatient. God bless them!"
+
+He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They
+answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their
+trouble. Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred
+dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he
+had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his
+twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel
+hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their
+story. He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi
+he was to leave Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty,
+noble, beautiful England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little
+white island of the sea! His mother's home! England! Yes, he would go
+back to it. True, he had no friends there now; but what matter of that?
+Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful
+gaps. His mother! Ruth! But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name
+aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on
+her hair. Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be
+so childish.
+
+Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.
+It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were
+picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the
+voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning
+under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel
+that he had not eaten since the previous day. "I must have food," he
+thought, "though I do not feel hungry." So he stopped, and the wandering
+Arabs hailed him. "Markababikum!" they cried from where they sat within.
+
+"You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!" Their land was the
+world.
+
+Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled
+beans and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a
+woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while
+she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles.
+Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young
+girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and
+baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three
+stones. All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.
+
+"On a long journey, brother?" said the man.
+
+"No, oh no, no," said Israel. "Only to Semsa, no farther."
+
+"Well, you must sleep here to-night," said the Arab.
+
+"Ah, I cannot do that," said Israel.
+
+"No?"
+
+"You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor
+child, and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of
+a man to stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient,
+you know. And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I
+suppose we must humour them--that's what I always say."
+
+"But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!" said the woman.
+
+"Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister," said Israel. "Well, peace!
+Farewell all, farewell!"
+
+Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the
+darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense
+black cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness
+ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on
+every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort.
+The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses.
+He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke
+out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from
+somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no
+choice but to stop. "After all, it is better," he thought. "Strange, how
+things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I
+will get no sleep at all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and
+to ask and to hear."
+
+Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept
+upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense
+night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in
+a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart. "Yes, I must
+sleep--sleep--to-morrow _she_ must sleep and I must watch by her--watch
+by her as I used to do--used to do--how soft and beautiful--how
+beautiful--sleeping--sleep--Ah!"
+
+When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance,
+the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the
+borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river,
+which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was
+now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his
+home near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white
+walls, and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with
+the snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange
+orchards.
+
+But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
+Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown
+dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could
+see now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi's
+eyes! Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world
+was new to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far
+sweeter youth.
+
+Naomi--Naomi--always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as she had
+appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.
+But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two
+months and a half--it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown from
+a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big,
+slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.
+Nevertheless, he was her father still--her old, tired, dim-eyed father;
+and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He could
+see and hear it all. First Naomi's voice: "A bow in the sky--red, blue,
+crimson--oh!" Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness: "A
+rainbow, child!" Ah! the dreams were beautiful!
+
+He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice--the voice of his
+poor dead Ruth--and to remember the song that she used to sing--the song
+she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he
+was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the
+street--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice.
+
+He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he
+sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was
+making was Naomi's voice and not his own.
+
+Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the
+Sultan's gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping
+sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation
+that had come out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his
+face they were shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true,
+but strong and firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had
+passed, and he was coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering,
+infirm old man of eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but
+after a pause one of them--Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name
+was Solomon Laredo--stepped up and said, "Israel ben Oliel, our poor
+Tetuan is in trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God
+has punished us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of
+you; for we have heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!"
+
+Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of
+Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also
+something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel,
+who was to bombard Marteel. But Israel heard very little. "I think my
+hearing must be failing me," he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if
+that did not greatly matter. "And to tell you the truth, though I pity
+my poor brethren, I can no longer help them. God will raise up a better
+minister."
+
+"Never!" cried the Jews in many voices.
+
+"Anyhow," said Israel, "my life among you is ended. I set no store by
+place and power. What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand of
+God I stand.' Shakespeare--oh, a mighty creature--one who knew where
+the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you've not lived in England. Do
+you know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You
+remember her--Naomi--a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and
+speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am
+going to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one
+will be waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!"
+
+Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was
+on every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation
+stood and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.
+
+And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him
+of some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began
+to think of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His
+absence had been so long, and so many things might have happened since
+he went away. In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain
+shamble. At nearly every step the body lurched for poise and balance.
+
+At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the
+little rush-covered house ought to be seen. "It's yonder," he cried, and
+pointed it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and
+its strong rays were in his face. "She's there, I see her!" he shouted.
+A few minutes later he was near the door. "No, my eyes deceived me,"
+he said in a damp voice. "Or perhaps she has gone in--perhaps she's
+hiding--the sweet rogue!"
+
+The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. "Naomi!" he
+called in a voice like a caress. "Naomi!" His voice trembled now. "Come
+to me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!" He listened.
+There was not a sound, not a movement. "Naomi!" The name was like a
+gurgle in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly
+and simply, "She's not here."
+
+He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a
+slipper covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his
+face. Dead? Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before--for himself,
+for others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him.
+Death! Oh, oh!
+
+With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the
+floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He
+flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi--it must be she!
+
+It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had
+been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too
+suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. "Where is she laid?" he
+said in a voice of awe.
+
+Fatimah saw his error instantly. "Naomi is alive," she said, and, seeing
+how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, "and well, very
+well."
+
+That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a
+cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what
+she had done.
+
+"Where is she?" he cried. "Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she
+not here? Lead me to her, lead me!"
+
+Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. "Alas!" she said, weeping, "that
+cannot be."
+
+Israel steadied himself and waited. "She cannot come to you, and neither
+can you go to her." said Fatimah. "But she is well, oh! very well.
+Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--oh no, she
+is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed, she is at the
+palace--the women's palace--but set your mind easy--she--"
+
+With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
+and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
+lived a lifetime in that moment.
+
+"The palace!" he said in a bewildered way. "The women's palace--the
+women's--" and then broke off shortly. "Fatimah, I want to go to Naomi,"
+he said.
+
+And Fatimah stammered, "Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--"
+
+"Fatimah," said Israel, with an awful calm. "Can't you see, woman,
+I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not
+understand?--I want to go to my daughter."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Fatimah; "but you can never go to her any more. She is
+in the women's apartments--"
+
+Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.
+
+"Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen," said Fatimah; "only listen."
+
+But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
+everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. "Silence!"
+he cried. "What need is there for words? She is in the palace!--that's
+enough. The women's palace--the hareem--what more is there to say?"
+
+Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in
+all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. "O
+God!" he cried, "my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
+starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home
+to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy.
+Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not
+that, whatever happens! But the palace--the women's palace. Naomi! My
+little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn
+that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to
+see that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell, and Ben Aboo--that
+libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled
+with God for it--"
+
+He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
+his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven,
+and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, "Kill her, O God!
+Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!"
+
+At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of
+tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned
+the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way
+while sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look.
+Sometimes he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own
+condition: "I am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed
+my heart in vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh
+slipped. . . . I am as one whom his mother comforteth."
+
+Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple
+foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly
+and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared
+to think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer--always
+the same--that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he
+seemed to hear a voice that cried, "Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!"
+"Here! Israel is here!" he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling
+him. The Kaid was the King. "Yes, I will go back to the King," he said.
+Then he looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt,
+and tried to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged
+threads of it. At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he
+were a master still, "Bring me robes--clean robes--white robes; I am
+going back to the King!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
+
+
+Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,
+the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away,
+encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment
+of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed
+for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were
+everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and
+nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of
+the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.
+
+Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,
+and crying in a hoarse voice, "Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord!
+Awake! Awake!"
+
+In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.
+The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel
+of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange
+orchards lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red
+rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above
+them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself the small red
+flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets
+of various colours swung on many walls.
+
+The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It
+was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment
+of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their
+heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They
+poured into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and
+squeezed their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the
+air, and shouting as they went, "Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is
+coming! Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!"
+
+Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
+perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
+through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
+that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
+himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
+there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
+spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file,
+not hand to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a
+hundred miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,
+or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping
+blood; the faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines
+of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight
+of God's own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the
+many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah beyond the market-place.
+They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had just stripped, whose
+villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children he had just driven
+into the mountains. And they were going to die in his dungeons.
+
+It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's
+train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
+human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
+Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the
+streets were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban
+within range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the
+principal thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their
+haiks, had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next,
+a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the
+walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was
+coming. Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from
+their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish
+people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and
+children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at
+tambourines and crying in wild discords, "God bless our Lord!" "God give
+victory to our Lord the Sultan!"
+
+The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the
+Caliphs of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them
+with exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar
+crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.
+
+"Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your
+slippers--Abd er-Rahman is coming!"
+
+Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed,
+jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners
+were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their
+voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back into their Mellah
+and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan
+even from their roofs.
+
+And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
+having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
+themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
+and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the
+Sultan's train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls,
+donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified
+old camel. It was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces
+thrust into white ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and
+clenched fists uplifted. Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like
+hyenas, shrill and guttural, piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings,
+quarrellings, cursings.
+
+"Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!"
+
+"O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!"
+
+"Curses on your grandfather!"
+
+"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
+
+"Balak! Balak! Balak!"
+
+But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of
+the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by
+the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were
+thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the
+street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western
+gate.
+
+By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen
+who had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused
+and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they
+came up to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs
+could see them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river,
+none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.
+
+When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
+camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
+himself was at hand.
+
+First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
+their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
+four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
+outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And
+then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him,
+came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks,
+his rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father
+of Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in
+gorgeous trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold.
+Solomon's seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar--a
+safeguard against the evil eye--was suspended from its neck. Its saddle
+was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were
+of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of
+his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
+girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
+transparent.
+
+As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the
+Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his
+stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.
+
+"God bless our Lord!"
+
+"Sultan Abd er-Rahman!"
+
+"God prolong the life of our Lord!"
+
+He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
+Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to
+the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless
+the people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening
+acclamations.
+
+"All's well, all's well," they told each other, and pointed to the white
+horse--the sign of peace--which the Sultan rode, and to the riderless
+black horse--the sign of strife--that pranced behind him.
+
+The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
+Sultan with a shrill ululation: "Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!"
+
+Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some
+of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
+coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
+articulate cries.
+
+He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
+Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
+cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
+State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
+head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
+greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem.
+The ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.
+
+Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their
+heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they
+knew that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their
+taxes. Not a man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he
+saved from dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his
+messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed
+only for himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues.
+And yet his people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.
+
+Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,
+whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind
+beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he
+dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.
+
+But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet
+streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses
+tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk
+unheard and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold
+significance passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And
+this was the way and the word of it:
+
+"She is back in the Kasbah!"
+
+"The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?"
+
+"She has fallen sick."
+
+"And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?"
+
+"He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest."
+
+"Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is
+saved from the Sultan."
+
+"For the present, only for the-present."
+
+"For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
+news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him."
+
+"Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?"
+
+"Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes
+the--"
+
+"Ya Allah! well?"
+
+"Hark! A footstep on the street--some one is near--"
+
+"But quick. Behind the Mahdi--what?"
+
+"God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!"
+
+"In peace!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
+
+
+The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
+before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
+state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
+bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
+him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all
+his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had
+entered Tetuan that day.
+
+He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like
+a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
+come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under
+the walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the
+rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load
+of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each
+man. Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of
+the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades.
+Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and
+story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous
+ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and
+their women. But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of
+them.
+
+"Away!" he had cried. "Away with your uncleanness and deception."
+
+And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the
+indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk
+off like a pariah dog.
+
+As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan
+were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of
+excited spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in
+line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some
+standing. Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at
+full gallop, firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length,
+throwing their barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping
+back, amid deafening shouts of "Allah! Allah! Allah!"
+
+"Allah indeed!" cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without
+fear. "That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and
+bloodshed. Away, away!"
+
+The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he
+approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for
+the mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out
+in all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked
+men, and one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the
+Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark
+flowing robes and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive
+and eaten raw; while women and children; crouching in the gathering
+darkness overhead looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the
+frenzy increased among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each
+fanatic turned upon himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head
+against the stones until blood ran like water.
+
+"Fools and blind guides!" cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like
+sheep. "Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the
+abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but
+forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away!
+Away!"
+
+At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after
+various parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding
+ways of the gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha's presence.
+The Basha received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his
+face. Ben Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog
+with his muzzle on his forepaws.
+
+"Welcome," he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious
+posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.
+
+The Mahdi did not sit. "Ben Aboo," he said in a voice that was half
+choked with anger, "I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to
+you if you send me away unsatisfied."
+
+Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,
+"What is it now?"
+
+"Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?" said the Mahdi.
+
+With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which
+his dusky muzzle had rested.
+
+"Ah, do not lie to me," cried the Mahdi. "I know where she is--she is in
+prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime
+but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the
+other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free."
+
+The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some
+half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled
+about in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and
+said with an air of mock inquiry, "Ya Allah! who is this infidel?"
+
+Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, "Sir, I know who you are!
+You come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your
+purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you
+were a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here--my guest and protector.
+You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin
+our religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by
+Allah you shall die!"
+
+Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his
+superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half
+deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi
+took a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said--
+
+"Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to
+death. You dare not and you cannot do it."
+
+"Why not?" cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a
+swagger. "What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man
+need know."
+
+"Basha," said the Mahdi, "do you think you are talking to a child? Do
+you think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than
+ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for
+my return? And do you think, too," he cried, lifting one hand and his
+voice together, "that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on
+an errand of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I
+say; you are a fool."
+
+The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage. But he was
+cowed. He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of
+braggadocio--
+
+"And what if I do not liberate the girl?"
+
+"Then," said the Mahdi, "if any evil befalls her the consequences shall
+be on your head."
+
+"What consequences?" said the Basha.
+
+"Worse consequences than you expect or dream," said the Mahdi.
+
+"What consequences?" said the Basha again.
+
+"No matter," said the Mahdi. "You are walking in darkness, and do not
+know where you are going."
+
+"What consequences?" the Basha cried once more.
+
+"That is God's secret," said the Mahdi.
+
+Ben Aboo began to laugh. "Light the infidel out of the Kasbah," he
+shouted to his people.
+
+"Enough!" cried the Mahdi. "I have delivered my message. Now woe to you,
+Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come
+no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison.
+Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward
+awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword
+will reach to your soul."
+
+Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where
+he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, "This is the last
+word that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben
+Aboo--I to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt,
+and death and hell."
+
+Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place
+where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks
+under a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.
+
+But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed
+through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the
+stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, "Abd
+er-Rahman! Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the
+sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me
+for my country, but the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd
+er-Rahman! You have filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you,
+slave of the Compassionate!"
+
+The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of
+the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But
+his voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly
+thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.
+
+"The Mahdi," they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.
+
+The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers
+of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms,
+were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from
+these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos
+and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.
+
+The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the
+M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret.
+It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had
+visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also
+of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as
+well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in
+gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he
+listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before
+him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of
+night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was
+imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father,
+who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy
+while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.
+These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of
+Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled. Let come what would, the
+man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.
+
+The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
+and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet,
+the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's
+following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a
+wonderful night. The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter,
+but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the
+town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf.
+Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white
+walls and minarets. Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as
+in an Eastern city. Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white
+roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing
+through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of
+quarried chalk. Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself
+homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin
+darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone. Sometimes a
+clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place,
+and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.
+
+"O Tetuan," thought the Mahdi, "how soon will your streets be uprooted
+and your sanctuaries destroyed!"
+
+The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
+gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the
+dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the
+bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to
+be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the
+circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled
+and still saddled, were up and feeding.
+
+The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
+had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
+were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
+which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
+right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected
+air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was
+one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare.
+But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not
+until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on
+him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man
+who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled
+with God.
+
+With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside
+Israel at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way,
+telling him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came,
+and whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a
+brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen
+clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves
+of his fingers were also frozen.
+
+Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the
+head. He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to
+prison, and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he
+described the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how
+she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face
+that the affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully.
+At last he recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had
+yielded at length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child,
+seeing her father in everything and thinking to save his life, though
+she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from
+Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers
+trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his
+cheeks.
+
+"My poor darling!" he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he
+asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.
+
+The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against
+the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine of the
+Sultan.
+
+"My brave girl!" he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
+that was both pride and pain.
+
+He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she
+could hear: "Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old
+father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!"
+
+This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
+and said in almost a childish tone, "I suppose there is no help for
+it now, sir. I meant to take her to England--to my poor mother's home,
+but--"
+
+"And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives," said the Mahdi, rising to
+his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he
+had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
+clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
+impulse, should at length be carried into effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN
+
+
+The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali's, for the black
+lad was back in Tetuan. After he had fulfilled his errand of mercy at
+Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there, with a spirit afire for the
+wrongs of his master, from whom he was so cruelly parted, he had set
+himself with shrewdness and daring to incite the Spanish powers to
+vengeance upon his master's enemies. This had been a task very easy of
+execution, for just at that time intelligence had come from the Reef, of
+barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo upon mountain tribes that had hitherto
+offered allegiance to the Spanish crown. A mission had gone up to Fez,
+and returned unsatisfied. War was to be declared, Marteel was to be
+bombarded, the army of Marshal O'Donnel was to come up the valley of the
+river, and Tetuan was to be taken.
+
+Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely
+revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was
+the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the
+eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to
+give a "gathering of delight," to the Sultan, his Ministers, his Kaids,
+his Kadis, his Khaleefas, his Umana, and great rascals generally. Ali's
+stout heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the Spaniards brought up
+to the gates of the town, on the very night when the whole majesty and
+iniquity of Barbary would be gathered in one room; then, locking the
+entire kennel of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and
+burning it to the ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like
+rats in a trap.
+
+One danger attended his bold adventure, for Naomi's person was within
+the Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to find his way
+into the dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate, and deliver up to
+another the key that should serve as a signal for the beginning of the
+great night's work.
+
+Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah
+there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment for
+the siege--no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely not to
+lead them blindfold into a trap. To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in
+search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help
+in the downfall of his master's enemies by leading the Spaniards at the
+right moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.
+
+Hearing Ali's story, the Mahdi had been aflame with tender thoughts
+of Naomi's trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo's tyrannies, and pity of
+Israel's miseries. But at first his humanity had withheld him from
+sympathy with Ali's dark purpose, so full, as it seemed, of barbarity
+and treachery.
+
+"Ali," he had said, "is it not all you wish for to get Naomi out of
+prison and take her back to her father?"
+
+"Yes, Sidi," Ali had answered promptly.
+
+"And you don't want to torture these tyrants if you can do what you
+desire without it?"
+
+"No-o, Sidi," Ali had said doubtfully.
+
+"Then," the Mahdi had said, "let us try."
+
+But when the Mahdi was gone to Tetuan on his errand of warning that
+proved so vain, Ali had crept back behind him, so that secretly and
+independently he might carry out his fell design. The towns-people were
+ready to receive him, for the air was full of rebellion, and many had
+waited long for the opportunity of revenge. To certain of the Jews, his
+master's people, who were also in effect his own, he went first with his
+mission, and they listened with eagerness to what he had come to say.
+When their own time came to speak they spoke cautiously, after the
+manner of their race, and nervously, like men who knew too well what
+it was to be crushed and kept under; but they gave their help
+notwithstanding, and Ali's scheme progressed.
+
+In less than three days the entire town, Moorish and Jewish, was
+honeycombed with subterranean revolt. Even the civil guard, the soldiers
+of the Kasbah, the black police that kept the gates, and the slaves that
+stood before the Basha's table were waiting for the downfall to come.
+
+The Mahdi had gone again by this time, and the people had resumed their
+mock rejoicings over the Sultan's visit. These were the last kindlings
+of their burnt-out loyalty, a poor smouldering pretence of fire. Every
+morning the town was awakened by the deafening crackle of flintlocks,
+which the mountaineers discharged in the Feddan by way of signal that
+the Sultan was going to say his prayers at the door of some saint's
+house. Beside the firing of long guns and the twanging of the ginbri the
+chief business of the day seemed to be begging. One bow-legged rascal
+in a ragged jellab went about constantly with a little loaf of bread,
+crying, "An ounce of butter for God's sake!" and when some one gave him
+the alms he asked he stuck the white sprawling mess on the top of the
+loaf and changed his cry to "An ounce of cheese for God's sake!" A pert
+little vagabond--street Arab in a double sense--promenaded the town
+barefoot, carrying an odd slipper in his hand, and calling on all men
+by the love of God and the face of God and the sake of God to give him a
+moozoonah towards the cost of its fellow. Every morning the Sultan went
+to mosque under his red umbrella, and every evening he sat in the hall
+of the court of justice, pretending to hear the petitions of the poor,
+but actually dispensing charms in return for presents. First an old
+wrinkled reprobate with no life left in him but the life of lust: "A
+charm to make my young wife love me!" Then an ill-favoured hag behind
+a blanket: "A charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has
+taken instead of me!" Again, a young wife with a tearful voice: "A charm
+to make me bear children!" A greasy smile from the fat Sultan, a scrap
+of writing to every supplicant, chinking coins dropped into the bag of
+the attendant from the treasury, and then up and away. It was a nauseous
+draught from the bitterest waters of Islam.
+
+But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived by the outward
+marks of devotion. At the corners of the streets, on the Feddan, by the
+fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard, there they stood
+in little groups, crossing their forefingers, the sign of strife,
+or rubbing them side by side, the sign of amity. It was clear that,
+notwithstanding the hubbub of their loyalty to the sultan, they knew
+that the Spaniard was coming and were glad of it.
+
+Meantime Ali waited with impatience for the day that was to see the end
+of his enterprise. To beguile himself of his nervousness in the night,
+during the dark hours that trailed on to morning, he would venture out
+of the lodging where he lay in hiding throughout the day, and pick
+his steps in the silence up the winding streets, until he came under a
+narrow opening in an alley which was the only window to Naomi's prison.
+And there he would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought
+that besides the comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi, the
+tramp, tramp, tramp of his footsteps, which once or twice provoked the
+challenge of the night-guard on his lonely round, would be company to
+her in her solitude. And sometimes, watching his opportunity that he
+might be unseen and unheard, he would creep in the darkness under the
+window and cry up the wall in an underbreath, "Naomi! Naomi! It is I,
+Ali! I have come back! All will be well yet!"
+
+Then if he heard nothing from within he would torture himself with
+a hundred fears lest Naomi should be no longer there, but in a worse
+place; and if he heard a sob he would slink away like a dog with his
+muzzle to the dust, and if he heard his own name echoed in the softer
+voice he knew so well he would go off with head erect, feeling like a
+man who walked on the stars rather than the stones of the street. But,
+whatever befell, before the day dawned he went back to his lodging less
+sore at heart for his lonely vigil, but not less wrathful or resolute.
+
+The day of the feast came at length, and then Ali's impatience rose
+to fever. All day he longed for the night, that the thing he had to do
+could be done. At last the sunset came and the darkness fell, and from
+his place of concealment Ali saw the soldiers of the assaseen going
+through the streets with lanterns to lead honoured guests to the
+banquet. Then he set out on his errand. His foresight and wit had
+arranged everything. The negro at the gate of the Kasbah pretended to
+recognise him as a messenger of the Vizier's, and passed him through. He
+pushed his way as one with authority along the winding passages to the
+garden where the Mahdi had called on Abd er-Rahman and foretold his
+fate. The garden opened upon the great hall, and a number of guests were
+standing there, cooling themselves in the night air while they waited
+for the arrival of the Sultan. His Shereefian Majesty came at length,
+and then, amid salaams and peace-blessings, the company passed in to
+the banquet. "Peace on you!" "And on you the peace!" "God make your
+evening!" "May your evening be blessed!"
+
+Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment? No, a thousand times no!
+While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen and
+scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup and to laugh
+and to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel broken and alone
+in the poor hut which had been described to him, and Naomi lying in her
+damp cell beyond the wall.
+
+Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests
+entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop
+in after them with great dishes under huge covers. Then he held a short
+parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him, and in
+another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi's prison.
+
+Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down
+to the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he
+had never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of
+all--the fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by
+the gift of sight, and would now first look upon _him_. That he would
+be the same as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was;
+that she would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to
+belie the evidence of the newborn sense--this was the least of Ali's
+trouble. By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had
+haunted him in the days before he left her with her father on his errand
+to Shawan. He was black, and she would see him.
+
+With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,
+flashed upon his mind. His shame was abject. It cut him to the quick.
+On the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him
+since times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood. She had
+played with him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face.
+And she was fair as the morning, and he was black as the night! He had
+come to deliver her. Would she recoil from him?
+
+Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything.
+But his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose. "What
+matter?" he thought. "What matter about me?" he asked himself aloud in
+a shrill voice and with a brave roll of his round head. Then he found
+himself inside the cell.
+
+The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief. Naomi must
+have been lying at the farther end of it. She spoke when the door was
+opened. As though by habit, she framed the name of her jailer Habeebah,
+and then stopped with a little nervous cry and seemed to rise to her
+feet. In his confusion Ali said simply, "It is I," as though that meant
+everything. Recovering himself in a moment he spoke again, and then she
+knew his voice: "Naomi!"
+
+"It's Ali," she whispered to herself. After that she cried in a
+trembling undertone "Ali! Ali! Ali!" and came straight in the accustomed
+darkness to the spot where he stood.
+
+Then, gathering courage and voice together, Ali told her hurriedly why
+he was there. When he said that her father was no longer in prison, but
+at their home near Semsa and waiting to receive her, she seemed almost
+overcome by her joy. Half laughing, half weeping, clutching at her
+breast as if to ease the wild heaving of her bosom she was transformed
+by his story.
+
+"Hush!" said Ali; "not a sound until we are outside the town," and Naomi
+knitted her fingers in his palm, and they passed out of the place.
+
+The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors
+where they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by, and coming
+into the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle of laughter from the
+great hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals feasted together. They
+reached the quiet alley outside the Kasbah (for the negro was gone from
+his post), and drew a lone breath, and thanked Heaven that this much was
+over. There had been no group of beggars at the gate, and the streets
+around it were deserted; but in the distance, far across the town in the
+direction of the Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel, they
+heard a low hum as of vast droves of sheep. The Spaniard was coming, and
+the townsmen were going out to meet him. Casual passers-by challenged
+them, and though Ali knew that even if recognised they had nothing to
+fear from the people, yet more than once his voice trembled when he
+answered, and sometimes with a feeling of dread he turned to see that no
+one was following.
+
+As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame
+of that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door of
+Naomi's prison. By the light of the lamps in the hands of the passers-by
+Naomi was looking at him. Again and again, as the glare fell for an
+instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face. At such moments he
+thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them
+seemed wider. But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head
+aside, and hastened on.
+
+"What matter about me?" he whispered again. But the brave word brought
+him no comfort. "Now she's looking at my hand," he told himself, but
+he could not draw it away. "She is doubting if I am Ali after all," he
+thought. "Naomi!" he tried to say with averted head, so that once again
+the sound of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and
+he could not speak. Still he pushed on.
+
+The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has
+been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a
+loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to
+move and pass.
+
+Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of
+Israel's humiliation and Naomi's shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,
+came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people. It was
+the Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the
+town on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the
+gates were coming in on the east. The Mahdi himself was locking the
+synagogues and the sanctuaries.
+
+"Lock them up," he was saying. "It is enough that the foreigner must
+burn down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our
+God."
+
+Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.
+
+"I have brought her," he said breathlessly; "Naomi, Israel's daughter,
+this is she." And then there was a moment of surprise and joy, and pain
+and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look of the
+eyes of the three.
+
+The Mahdi looked at Naomi, and his face lightened. Naomi looked at Ali,
+and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair
+across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break from
+her mouth. Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted and her
+eyes shone. Ali looked at both, and his face twitched and fell.
+
+This was only the work of an instant, but it was enough. Enough for
+the Mahdi, for it told him a secret that the wisdom of life had not yet
+revealed; enough for Naomi, for a new sense, a sixth sense, had surely
+come to her; enough for Ali also, for his big little heart was broken.
+
+"What matter about me?" thought Ali again. "Take her, Mahdi," he said
+aloud in a shrill voice. "Her father is waiting for her--take her to
+him."
+
+"Lady," said the Mahdi, "can you trust me?"
+
+And then without a word she went to him; like the needle to the magnet
+she went to the Mahdi--a stranger to her, when all strangers were as
+enemies--and laid her hand in his.
+
+Ali began to laugh, "I'm a fool," he cried. "Who could have believed
+it? Why, I've forgotten to lock the Kasbah! The villains will escape. No
+matter, I'll go back."
+
+"Stop!" cried the Mahdi.
+
+But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear. "I'll see to it yet," he
+cried, turning on his heel. "Good night, Sidi! God bless you! My love to
+my father! Farewell!"
+
+And in another moment he was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
+
+
+The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the
+doom that was impending. Squatting on the floor in little circles,
+around little tables covered with steaming dishes, wherein each plunged
+his fingers, they began the feast with ceremonious wishes, pious
+exclamations, cant phrases, and downcast eyes. First, "God lengthen your
+age," "God cover you," and "God give you strength." Then a dish of dates,
+served with abject apologies from Ben Aboo: "You would treat us better
+in Fez, but Tetuan is poor; the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!"
+Then fish in garlic, eaten with loud "Bismillah's." Then kesksoo covered
+with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned
+fowls, and fowls and olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters, each
+eaten in its turn amid a chorus of "La Ilah illa Allah's." Finally three
+cups of green tea, as thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many "Do me
+the favour's," and countless "Good luck's." Last of all, the washing
+of hands, and the fumigating of garments and beard and hair by the
+live embers of scented wood burning in a brass censer, with incessant
+exchanges of "The Prophet--God rest him--loved sweet odours almost as
+much as sweet women."
+
+But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed
+down to a warm and flowing brotherhood. Lolling at ease on their rugs,
+trifling with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries for
+idleness more than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling on the
+pavement the carved ends of their silver knife-shields, they laughed and
+jested, and told dubious stories, and held doubtful discourse generally.
+The talk turned on the distinction between great sins and little ones.
+In the circle of the Sultan it was agreed that the great sins were two:
+unbelief in the Prophet, whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking
+keef and tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and
+unquestionable Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five
+prayers a day, thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the
+Koran, and as many inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and
+as for murder and adultery, and bearing false witness--well, God was
+Merciful, God was Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak children.
+
+This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors of the great
+sins. These were terrible. Putting on a profound air, the Vizier, a fat
+man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco and denied the Prophet
+had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned in his grave with
+his face from Mecca. Then the Kaid of Fez, head of the Mosque and
+general Grand Mufti, led away with stories of the little sins. These
+were delightful. They pictured the shifts of pretty wives, married
+to worn out old men, to get at their youthful lovers in the dark by
+clambering in their dainty slippers from roof to roof. Also of the
+discomfiture of pious old husbands and the wicked triumph of rompish
+little ladies, under pretences of outraged innocence.
+
+Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told, was the
+conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah. At every
+fresh story the laughter became louder, and soon the reserve and dignity
+of the Moor were left behind him and forgotten. At length Ben Aboo,
+encouraged by the Sultan's good fellowship, broke into loud praises of
+Naomi, and yet louder wails over the doom that must be the penalty of
+her apostasy; and thereupon Abd er-Rahman, protesting that for his
+part he wanted nothing with such a vixen, called on him to uncover her
+boasted charms to them. "Bring her here, Basha," he said; "let us see
+her," and this command was received with tumultuous acclamations.
+
+It was the beginning of the end. In less than a minute more, while the
+rascals lolled over the floor in half a hundred different postures, with
+the hazy lights from the brass lamps and the glass candelabras on their
+dusky faces, their gleaming teeth, and dancing eyes, the messenger who
+had been sent for Naomi came back with the news that she was gone. Then
+Ben Aboo rose in silent consternation, but his guests only laughed the
+louder, until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running
+with more startling news. Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards;
+the army of Marshall O'Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan, and their
+own people were opening the gates to him.
+
+The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not
+need to be detailed. Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to
+the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of
+horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark
+corridors of men carrying torches and flares. There was no attempt at
+resistance. That was seen to be useless. Both the civil guard and the
+soldiery had deserted. The Kasbah was betrayed. Terror spread like fire.
+In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and
+eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of
+their disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on
+the southern side of it.
+
+Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman. He remembered that he had
+treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it. There
+were fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people.
+No one knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he
+had killed the mason who built it. In the dark he found the place, and
+taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his
+selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen.
+
+It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and
+Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground,
+near the wall of the Kasbah gate. From that dark cell, crouching on the
+grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds
+of the night. First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead;
+then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of
+the crowd. "Damn it--they've given us the slip." "Yes; they've crawled
+off like rats from a sinking ship." "Curse it all, it's only a bungle."
+This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country
+Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people: "Sidi, try the
+palace." "Try the apartments of his women, Sidi." "Abd er-Rahman's gone,
+but Ben Aboo's hiding." "Death to the tyrant!" "Down with the Basha!"
+"Ben Aboo! Ben Aboo!" Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence.
+"Silence, you shrieking hell-babies, silence!"
+
+Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to
+hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.
+So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked
+the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for
+the women's apartments, and rattled at their door. It was folly, it was
+lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone. He could
+hear the sounds of voices within--wailing and weeping of the women--but
+no one answered his knocking. Again and again he knocked with his elbows
+(still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw
+through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood. Still the door
+remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for
+company, fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that
+led to the alley behind the Kasbah.
+
+Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers who were
+helping her flight. "We are safe," she whispered--"they've gone back into
+the Feddan--come;" and by the light of a lamp which she carried she made
+for the winding corridor that led past the bath and the sanctuary to the
+Kasbah gate. But Ben Aboo only cursed her, and fumbled at the low
+door of the passage that went out from the alcove to the alley. He was
+lumbering through with his armless roll, intending to clash the door
+back in Katrina's face, when there was a fierce shout behind him, and
+for some minutes Ben Aboo knew no more.
+
+The shout was Ali's. After leaving the Mahdi on the heath outside the
+Bab Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha. When the Spanish
+soldiers abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search. Up and down he
+had traversed the place in the darkness; and finding Ben Aboo at last,
+on the spot where he had first seen him, he rushed in upon him and
+brought him to the ground. Seeing Ben Aboo down, the black soldiers
+fell upon Ali. The brave lad died with a shout of triumph. "Israel ben
+Oliel," he cried, as if he thought that name enough to save his soul and
+damn the soul of Ben Aboo.
+
+But Ben Aboo was not yet done with his own. The blow that had been aimed
+at his heart had no more than grazed his shoulder. "Get up," whispered
+Katrina, half in wrath; and while she stooped to look for his wounds,
+her face and hands as seen in the dim light of the lantern were bedaubed
+with his blood. At that moment the guards were crying that the Kasbah
+was afire, and at the next they were gone, leaving Katrina alone with
+the unconscious man. "Get up," she cried again, and tugging at Ben
+Aboo's unconscious body she struck it in her terror and frenzy. It was
+every one for himself in that bad hour. Katrina followed the guards, and
+was never afterwards heard of.
+
+When Ben Aboo came to himself the patio was aglow with flames. He
+staggered to his feet, still grappling to his breast the money-bags
+hidden under his selham. Then, bleeding from his shoulder and with
+blood upon his beard, he made afresh for the passage leading to the back
+alley. The passage was narrow and dark. There were three winding steps
+at the end of it. Ben Aboo was dizzy and he stumbled.
+
+But the passage was silent, it was safe, and out in the alley a sea of
+voices burst upon him. He could hear the tramp of countless footsteps,
+the cries of multitudes of voices, and the rattle of flintlocks.
+Lanterns, torches, flares and flashes of gunpowder came and went at both
+ends of the long dark tunnel. In the light of these he saw a struggling
+current of angry faces. The living sea encircled him. He knew what had
+happened. At the first certainty that his power was gone and that there
+was nothing to fear from his vengeance, his own people had gathered
+together to destroy him.
+
+There were two small mean houses on the opposite side of the alley, and
+Ben Aboo tried to take refuge in the first of them. But the woman who
+came with uncovered face to the door was the widow of the mason who had
+built his strong-room. "Murderer and dog!" she cried, and shut the door
+against him. He tried the other house. It was the house of the mason's
+son. "Forgive me," he cried. "I am corrected by Allah! Yes, yes, it is
+true I did wrong by your father, but forgive me and save me." Thus he
+pleaded, throwing himself on the ground and crawling there. "Dog and
+coward," the young man shouted, and beat him back into the street.
+
+Ben Aboo's terror was now appalling to look upon. His face was that of
+a snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick
+breath, he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where
+he thought he might find a friend. "Alee, don't you know me?" "Mohammed,
+it is I, Ben Aboo." "See, El Arby, here's money, money; it's yours,
+only save me, save me!" With such frantic cries he raced about in
+the darkness like a hunted wolf. But not a house would shelter him.
+Everywhere he met relatives of men who had died through his means, and
+he was driven away with curses.
+
+Meantime, a rumour that Ben Aboo was in the streets had been bruited
+abroad among the people, and their lust of blood was thereby raised to
+madness. Screaming and spitting and raving, and firing their flintlocks,
+they poured from street into street, watching for their victim and
+seeing him in every shadow. "He's here!" "He's there!" "No, he's
+yonder!" "He's scaling the high wall like a cat!"
+
+Ben Aboo heard them. Their inarticulate cries came to him laden with
+one message only--death. He could see their faces, their snarling teeth.
+Sometimes he would rave and blaspheme. Then he would make another effort
+for his life. But the whirlpool was closing in upon him; and at last,
+like one who flings himself over a precipice from dizziness, fears,
+and irresistible fascination, he flung himself into the middle of the
+infuriated throng as they scurried across the open Feddan.
+
+From that moment Ben Aboo's doom was sealed. The people received him
+with a long furious roar, a cry of triumphant execration, as if their
+own astuteness at length had entrapped him. He stood with his back to
+the high wall; the bellowing crowd was before him on either side. By the
+torches that many carried all could see him. Turban and shasheeah had
+fallen off, and the bald crown of his head was bare. His face retained
+no human expression but fear. He was seen to draw his arms from beneath
+his selham, to hold both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a
+hand into the necks of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people.
+"Silver," he cried; "silver, silver for everybody."
+
+The despairing appeal was useless. Nobody touched the money. It flashed
+white through the air, and fell unheard. "Death to the Kaid!" was
+shouted on every side. Nevertheless, though half the men carried guns,
+no man fired. By unspoken consent it seemed to be understood that the
+death of Ben Aboo was not to be the act of one, but of all. "Stones,"
+cried somebody out of the crowd, and in another moment everybody was
+picking stones, and piling them at his feet or gathering them in the
+skirt of his jellab.
+
+Ben Aboo knew his awful fate. Gesticulating wildly, having flung the
+money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was
+seen to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips
+working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant
+the stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he
+reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself
+like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that
+came from his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and
+fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue
+lolling out. Faster and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered
+upon him, darting out of the darkness like swallows of the night. His
+clothes were rent, his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast
+staggers in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up, and
+he fell in a round heap like a ball.
+
+The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of
+Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower
+upon his body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it.
+Then they left it with curses of content and went their ways. When the
+Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside while the work was done, came up
+with their lanterns to look at this monument of Eastern justice, the
+heap of stones was still moving with the terrific convulsions of death.
+
+Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+"ALLAH-U-KABAR"
+
+
+Travelling through the night,--Naomi laughing and singing snatches in
+her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals at the huge
+outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,--they came to the
+hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day. But they had come too
+late. Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England. He
+was going on a longer journey. His lonely hour had come to him, his dark
+hour wherein none could bear him company. On a mattress by the wall he
+lay outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end. Two neighbours
+from the village were with him, and but for these he must have been
+alone--the mighty man in his downfall deserted by all save the great
+Judge and God.
+
+What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her,
+what she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task to
+tell. Oh, the irony of fate! Ay, the irony of God! That scene, and what
+followed it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest--none the less cruel
+because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.
+
+It was useless to go out in search of a doctor. The country was as
+innocent of leechcraft as the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham. All
+they could do was to submit, absolutely and unconditionally. They were
+in God's hands.
+
+The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves
+as Israel awoke to consciousness. He opened his eyes as if from sleep,
+and saw Naomi beside him. No surprise did he show at this, and neither
+did he at first betray pleasure. Dimly and softly he looked upon her,
+and then something that might have been a smile but for lack of strength
+passed like sunshine out of a cloud across his wasted face. Naomi
+pressed a pillow-under his loins, and another under his head,
+thinking to ease the one and raise the other. But the iron hand of
+unconsciousness fell upon him again, and through many hours thereafter
+Naomi and the Mahdi sat together in silence with the multitudinous
+company of invisible things.
+
+During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of
+Tetuan. The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of
+his Ministers had escaped. Ben Aboo had tried to follow them, but he
+had been killed in the alcove of the patio. Ali had killed him. He had
+rushed in upon him through a line of his guards. One of the guards had
+killed Ali. The brave black lad had fallen with the name of Israel on
+his lips and with a dauntless shout of triumph. The Kasbah was afire; it
+had been burning since the banquet of the night before.
+
+Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that
+the end was very near. Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and
+the Mahdi was standing at his left. Israel looked at the girl with a
+world of tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening
+his noble face. More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he
+wished to say something, and yet could not do so, because the power of
+life was low; but at last his voice found strength.
+
+"I have left it too late," he said. "I cannot go to England."
+
+Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words, and it
+was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.
+
+"Think no more of that," he said, and then he stopped, as if the word
+that he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.
+
+"It is hard to leave her," said Israel, "for she is alone; and who will
+protect her when I am gone?"
+
+"God lives," said the Mahdi, "and He is Father to the fatherless."
+
+"But what Jew," said Israel, "would not repeat for her her father's
+troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?"
+
+"Who that trusts in God," said the Mahdi, "need fear the Kaid?"
+
+"But what man can save her?" cried Israel again.
+
+And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi's tears as well as her father's
+importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said--
+
+"Peace, peace! If there is no one else to take her, from this day
+forward she shall go with me."
+
+Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes
+as he has often since, but had never before seen there, and Israel ben
+Oliel who had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly at his wrist.
+
+"God bless you!" he said, as well as he could for the two angels, the
+angel of love and the angel of death, were struggling at his throat.
+
+Israel looked steadily at the Mahdi for a moment more, and then said
+very softly--
+
+"Death may come to me now; I am ready. Farewell, my father! I tried to
+do your bidding. Do you remember your watchword? But God _has_ given me
+rewards for repentance--see," and he turned his eyes towards the eyes of
+Naomi with a wasting yet sunny smile.
+
+"God is good," said the Mahdi; "lie still, lie still," and he laid his
+cool hand on Israel's forehead.
+
+"I am leaving her to you," said Israel; "and you alone can protect her
+of all men living in this land accursed of God, for God's right arm is
+round you. Yes, God is good. As long as you live you will cherish her.
+Never was she so dear to me as now, so sweet, so lovable, so gentle. But
+you will be good to her. God is very good to me. Guard her as the apple
+of your eye. It will reward you. And let her think of me sometimes--only
+sometimes. Ah! how nearly I shipwrecked all this! Remember! Remember!"
+
+"Hush, hush! Do not increase your pains," said the Mahdi. "Are you
+feeling better now?"
+
+"I am feeling well," said Israel, "and happy--so happy."
+
+The sun had set, and the swift twilight was passing into night, when
+another messenger arrived from Tetuan. It was Ali's old Taleb, shedding
+tears for his boy, but boasting loudly of his brave death. He had
+heard of it from the black guards themselves. After Ali fell he lived
+a moment, though only in unconsciousness. The boy must have thought
+himself back at Israel's side, "I've done it, father," he said; "he'll
+never hurt you again. You won't drive me away from you any more; will
+you, father?"
+
+They could see that Israel had heard the story. The eyes of the dying
+are dry, but well they knew that the heart of the man was weeping.
+
+The Taleb came with the idea that Israel also was gone, for a rumour to
+that effect had passed through the town. "El hamdu l'Illah!" he
+cried, when he saw that Israel was still alive. But then he remembered
+something, and whispered in the Mahdi's farther ear that a vast
+concourse of Moors and Jews including his own vast fellowship was even
+then coming out to bury Israel, thinking he was dead.
+
+Israel overheard him and smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little
+also. "It will soon be true," he muttered under his breath, that came
+so quick. And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the
+distance. It was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.
+
+Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear. First a mighty
+bass voice: "Allah Akbar!" Again another and another voice:
+"Allah Akbar!" and then the long roar of a vast multitude:
+"Al--l--lah-u-kabar!" Finally a slow melancholy wail, rising and falling
+on the darkening air: "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the
+Prophet of God."
+
+It was a solemn sound--nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive to
+hear it.
+
+O gratitude that is only a death-song! O fame that is only a funeral!
+
+Israel listened and smiled again. "Ah, God is great!" he whispered; "God
+is great!"
+
+To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to
+the door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession
+approaching--a moving black shadow against the sky. Also over their
+billowy heads he could see a red glow far away in the clouds. It was the
+last smouldering of the fire of the modern Sodom.
+
+While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice
+behind him. It was Israel's voice. He was speaking to Naomi. "Yes," he
+was saying, "it is hard to part. We were going to be very happy. . . .
+But you must not cry. Listen! When I am there--eh? you know, _there_--I
+will want to say, 'Father, you did well to hear my prayer. My little
+daughter--she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.'
+So you must not weep. Never, never, never! Remember! . . . . Ah! that's
+right, that's right. My simple-hearted darling! My sunny, merry, happy
+girl!"
+
+Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father's will. She
+was combing his white beard with her fingers--it was knotted and
+tangled--and he was labouring hard to speak again.
+
+"Naomi, do you remember?" he said; and then he tried to sing, and even
+to lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done. "Do
+you remember--
+
+     Within my heart a voice
+     Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
+     Sings 'Love'--"
+
+But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.
+
+"Sing it," he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure.
+And then the brave girl--all courage and strength, a quivering bow of
+steel--took up the song where he had left it, though her voice trembled
+and the tears started to her eyes.
+
+As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her,
+though once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast. When
+she had done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her, and
+smiled, as if he and she and the song were one to him.
+
+But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again, now
+nearer than before, and louder. Israel heard it. "Hark! They are coming.
+Keep close," he muttered.
+
+He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan. The
+Mahdi thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct of
+help that a woman has in scenes like these, understood him better. In
+the disarray of his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself
+that he might listen the easier to the song outside. The girl slid her
+arm under his neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest. "Ah! closer.
+'God is great'!" he murmured again. "'God--is--great'!" With that word
+on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back. It was now quite dark.
+
+When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel's feet the dying man
+seemed to have been feeling for his hand. Taking it now, he brought it
+to his breast, where Naomi's hand lay under his own trembling one. With
+that last effort, and a look into the girl's face that must have pursued
+him home, his grand eyes closed for ever.
+
+In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell
+of the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air: "Allah Akbar!
+Al-lah-u-kabar!"
+
+In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had
+come out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.
+
+"He has gone," said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes
+towards heaven, he added, "TO THE KING!"
+
+
+
+
+Notes: 1. Italic text starts and ends with an underscore. 2. Where
+spelling inconsistencies in the printed text appear to be unintentional,
+they have been made consistent in this Etext version, either by adopting
+the dictionary spelling or the spelling most frequently used in the
+printed text. 3. In the printed text, many representations of Arabic
+words use accented characters; in this Etext version, the accents have
+been removed to allow transmission by email using the 7-bit character
+set.
+
+
+
+
+
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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine**

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+

+THE SCAPEGOAT

+BY

+HALL CAINE

+

+

+

+

+

+CONTENTS

+

+

+CHAPTER                                                 PAGE

+    PREFACE

+ 1. ISRAEL BEN OLIEL

+ 2. THE BIRTH OF NAOMI

+ 3. THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI

+ 4. THE DEATH OF RUTH

+ 5. RUTH'S BURIAL

+ 6. THE SPIRIT-MAID

+ 7. THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE

+ 8. THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT

+ 9. ISRAEL'S JOURNEY

+10. THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI

+11. ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING

+12. THE BAPTISM OF SOUND

+13. NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT

+14. ISRAEL AT SHAWAN

+15. THE MEETING ON THE SOK

+16. NAOMI'S BLINDNESS

+17. ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE

+18. THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER

+19. THE RAINBOW SIGN

+20. LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE

+21. ISRAEL IN PRISON

+22. HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA

+23. ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON

+24. THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN

+25. THE COMING OF THE MAHDI

+26. ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN

+27. THE FALL OF BEN ABOO

+28. "AT ALLAH-U-KABAR"

+

+

+

+PREFACE

+

+

+_Within sight of an English port, and within hail of English ships

+as they pass on to our empire in the East, there is a land where the ways

+of life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago;

+a land wherein government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny,

+wherein justice is bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich

+and a danger to be poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man,

+and women is no more than a creature of lust--a reproach to Europe,

+a disgrace to the century, an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion!

+That land is Morocco!

+

+This is a story of Morocco in the last years of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman.

+The ashes of that tyrant are cold, and his grandson sits in his place;

+but men who earned his displeasure linger yet in his noisome dungeons,

+and women who won his embraces are starving at this hour

+in the prison-palaces in which he immured them. His reign is a story

+of yesterday; he is gone, he is forgotten; no man so meek

+and none so mean but he might spit upon his tomb.  Yet the evil work

+which he did in his evil time is done to-day, if not by his grandson,

+then in his grandson's name--the degradation of man's honour,

+the cruel wrong of woman's, the shame of base usury, and the iniquity

+of justice that may be bought!  Of such corruption this story will tell,

+for it is a tale of tyranny that is every day repeated,

+a voice of suffering going up hourly to the powers of the world,

+calling on them to forget the secret hopes and petty jealousies

+whereof Morocco is a cause, to think no more of any scramble

+for territory when the fated day of that doomed land has come,

+and only to look to it and see that he who fills the throne

+of Abd er-Rahman shall be the last to sit there.

+

+Yet it is the grandeur of human nature that when it is trodden down

+it waits for no decree of nations, but finds its own solace

+amid the baffled struggle against inimical power in the hopes

+of an exalted faith. That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage

+of the narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest

+and yearning of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression

+than where humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt.

+On the one hand, the hard experience of daily existence;

+on the other hand, the soul crying out that the things of this world

+are not the true realities.  Savage vices make savage virtues.

+God and man are brought face to face.

+

+In the heart of Morocco there is one man who lives a life

+that is like a hymn, appealing to God against tyranny and corruption

+and shame. This great soul is the leader of a vast following

+which has come to him from every scoured and beaten corner of the land.

+His voice sounds throughout Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken

+they go to him, and wheresoever women are fallen and wrecked

+they seek the mercy and the shelter of his face. He is poor,

+and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but that is

+the best thing of all--it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope in death,

+the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him.

+Man that veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter,

+and science that reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God,

+have no place with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty;

+the miracle is all in all to him; he throngs the air with marvels;

+God speaks to him in dreams when he sleeps, and warns and directs him

+by signs when he is awake.

+

+With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief

+and the joyous child, there is another, a woman, his wife.

+She is beautiful with a beauty rarely seen in other women,

+and her senses are subtle beyond the wonders of enchantment.

+Together these two, with their ragged fellowship of the poor behind them,

+having no homes and no possessions, pass from place to place,

+unharmed and unhindered, through that land of intolerance and iniquity,

+being protected and reverenced by virtue of the superstition

+which accepts them for Saints.  Who are they?  What have they been?_

+

+

+

+CHAPTER I

+

+ISRAEL BEN OLIEL

+

+

+Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier.  His mother was

+the daughter of a banker in London.  The father's name was Oliel;

+the mother's was Sara.  Oliel had held business connections with

+the house of Sara's father, and he came over to England

+that he might have a personal meeting with his correspondent.

+The English banker lived over his office, near Holborn Bars,

+and Oliel met with his family.  It consisted of one daughter

+by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a second wife,

+still living.  They were not altogether a happy household,

+and the chief apparent cause of discord was the child of the first wife

+in the home of the second.  Oliel was a man of quick perception,

+and he saw the difficulty.  That was how it came about that

+he was married to Sara.  When he returned to Morocco he was

+some thousand pounds richer than when he left it, and he had

+a capable and personable wife into his bargain.

+

+Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and spending,

+always taking care to have much of the one, and no more than he could help

+of the other.  Sara was a nervous and sensitive little woman,

+hungering for communion and for sympathy.  She got little of either

+from her husband, and grew to be as silent as he.  With the people

+of the country of her adoption, whether Jews or Moors,

+she made no headway.  She never even learnt their language.

+

+Two years passed, and then a child was born to her.  This was Israel,

+and for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely woman.

+His coming made no apparent difference to his father.  He grew to be

+a tall and comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be

+ of a sweet and cheerful disposition.  But the school of his upbringing

+was a hard one.  A Jewish child in Morocco might know from his cradle

+that he was not born a Moor and a Mohammedan.

+

+When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife,

+his first wife being still alive.  This was lawful, though unusual

+in Tangier.  The new marriage, which was only another business

+transaction to Oliel, was a shock and a terror to Sara.

+Nevertheless, she supported its penalties through three weary years,

+sinking visibly under them day after day.  By that time a second family

+had begun to share her husband's house, the rivalry of the mothers

+had threatened to extend to the children, the domesticity of home was

+destroyed and its harmony was no longer possible.  Then she left Oliel,

+and fled back to England, taking Israel with her.

+

+Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers

+was not warm.  They had no sympathy with her rebellion against

+her husband's second marriage.  If she had married into a foreign country,

+she should abide by the ways of it.  Sara was heartbroken.

+Her health had long been poor, and now it failed her utterly.

+In less than a month she died.  On her deathbed she committed her boy

+to the care of her brothers, and implored them not to send him back

+to Morocco.

+

+For years thereafter Israel's life in London was a stern one.

+If he had no longer to submit to the open contempt of the Moors,

+the kicks and insults of the streets, he had to learn how bitter is

+the bread that one is forced to eat at another's table.

+When he should have been still at school he was set to some

+menial occupation in the bank at Holborn Bars, and when he ought

+to have risen at his desk he was required to teach the sons

+of prosperous men the way to go above him.  Life was playing

+an evil game with him, and, though he won, it must be at a bitter price.

+

+Thus twelve years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty,

+was a tall, silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects,

+and a master of figures.  Never once during that time had his father

+written to him, or otherwise recognised his existence,

+though knowing of his whereabouts from the first by the zealous

+importunities of his uncles.  Then one day a letter came

+written in distant tone and formal manner, announcing that the writer

+had been some time confined to his bed, and did not expect to leave it;

+that the children of his second wife had died in infancy;

+that he was alone, and had no one of his own flesh and blood

+to look to his business, which was therefore in the hands of strangers,

+who robbed him; and finally, that if Israel felt any duty

+towards his father, or, failing that, if he had any wish

+to consult his own interest, he would lose no time in leaving England

+for Morocco.

+

+Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection;

+but, nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons.  A fortnight later

+he landed at Tangier.  He had come too late.  His father had died

+the day before.  The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore

+was heavy, and thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet

+on which he sailed lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of

+being dashed on to the ruins of the mole, his father's body

+was being buried in the little Jewish cemetery outside the eastern walls,

+and his cousins, and cousins' cousins, to the fifth degree,

+without loss of time or waste of sentiment, were busily dividing

+his inheritance among them.

+

+Next day, as his father's heir, he claimed from the Moorish court

+the restitution of his father's substance.  But his cousins made the Kadi,

+the judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared

+to be an impostor, who could not establish his identity.

+Producing his father's letter which had summoned him from London,

+he appealed from the Kadi to the Aolama, men wise in the law,

+who acted as referees in disputed cases; but it was decided

+that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan law to offer evidence

+in a civil court.  He laid his case before the British Consul,

+but was found to have no claim to English intervention,

+being a subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage.

+Meantime, his dispute with his cousins was set at rest for ever

+by the Governor of the town, who, concluding that his father had left

+neither will nor heirs, confiscated everything he had possessed

+to the public treasury--that is to say, to the Kaid's own uses.

+

+Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco,

+whether as a Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger

+in his father's country, and openly branded as a cheat.

+That he did not return to England promptly was because he was already

+a man of indomitable spirit.  Besides that, the treatment he was having

+now was but of a piece with what he had received at all times.

+Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing ever does avail

+to crush a man of character.  But the obstacles and torments

+which make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make

+a very sensible impression on his heart; the mind triumphs,

+it is the heart that suffers; the mind strengthens and expands

+after every besetting plague of life, but the heart withers

+and wears away.

+

+So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together

+to beat him down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means

+of settling there.

+

+His opportunity came early.  The Governor, either by qualm of conscience

+or further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the Oomana,

+the three Administrators of Customs at Tangier.  He held the post

+six months only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid,

+but amid the muttered discontent of the merchants and tradesmen.

+Then the Governor of Tetuan, a bigger town lying a long day's journey

+to the east, hearing of Israel that as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled

+the custom revenues in half a year, invited him to fill an informal,

+unofficial, and irregular position as assessor of tributes.

+

+Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did

+in his new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and

+appointed a Mut'hasseb, a clerk of the market, to collect them--

+so many moozoonahs for every camel sold, so many for every horse,

+mule, and ass, so many floos for every fowl, and so many metkals

+for the purchase and sale of every slave; how he numbered the houses

+and made lists of the trades, assessing their tribute by the value

+of their businesses--so much for gun-making, so much for weaving,

+so much for tanning, and so on through the line of them, great and small,

+good and bad, even from the trades of the Jewish silversmiths

+and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the callings

+of the Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.

+

+All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran,

+which entitled the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever;

+but it would not wrong the truth to say that he did it also

+by the impulse of a sour and saddened heart.  The world had shown

+no mercy to him, and he need show no mercy to the world.

+Why talk of pity?  It was only a name, an idea a mocking thought.

+In the actual reckoning of life there was no such name as pity.

+Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings, whatever

+their severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.

+

+And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed it.

+

+"Ya Allah!  Allah!" the Moors would cry.  "Who is this Jew--this son of

+the English--that he should be made our master?"

+

+They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him,

+and at length they insulted him openly.  Since his return from England

+he had resumed the dress of his race in his country--

+the long dark gabardine or kaftan, with a scarf for girdle,

+the black slippers, and the black skull-cap.  And, going one day

+by the Grand Mosque, a group of the beggars; who lay always by the gate,

+called on him to uncover his feet.

+

+"Jew!  Dog!" they cried, "there is no god but God!  Curses on

+your relations!  Off with your slippers!"

+

+He paid no heed to their commands, but made straight onward.

+Then one blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and

+struck off his cap with a crutch.  He picked it up again without a look

+or a word, and strode away.  But next morning, at early prayers,

+there was a place empty at the door of the mosque.  Its accustomed

+occupant lay in the prison at the Kasbah.

+

+And if the Muslimeen hated Israel for what he was doing

+for their Governor, the Jews hated him yet more because it was being done

+for a Moor.

+

+"He has sold himself to our enemy," they said, "against the welfare

+of his own nation."

+

+At the synagogue they ignored him, and in taking the votes of their people

+they counted others and passed him by.  He showed no malice.

+Only his strong face twitched at each fresh insult and his head was held

+higher.  Only this, and one other sign of suffering in that secret place

+of his withering heart, which God's eye alone could see.

+

+Thus far he had done no more to Moor and Jew than exact that tenth part

+of their substance which the faiths of both required that they should pay.

+But now his work went further.  A little group of old Jews,

+all held in honour among their people--Abraham Ohana, nicknamed Pigman,

+son of a former rabbi; Judah ben Lolo, an elder of his synagogue;

+and Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor-box--were seized and cast

+into the Kasbah for gross and base usury.

+

+At this the Jewish quarter was thrown into wild hubbub.

+The hand that was on their people was a daring and terrible one.

+None doubted whose hand it was--it was the hand of young Israel the Jew.

+

+When the three old usurers had bought themselves out of the Kasbah,

+they put their heads together and said, "Let us drive this fellow out

+of the Mellah, and so shall he be driven out of the town."

+Then the owner of the house which Israel rented for his lodging

+evicted him by a poor excuse, and all other Jewish owners

+refused him as tenant.  But the conspiracy failed.By command of

+the Governor, or by his influence, Israel was lodged by the Nadir,

+the administrator of mosque property, in one of the houses belonging

+to the mosque on the Moorish side of the Mellah walls.

+

+Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said,

+"Let us see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life

+be a burden."  Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him,

+and when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not

+obey the unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes

+out of the Soudan he was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave.

+But the conspiracy failed again.  Two black female slaves from Soos,

+named Fatimah and Habeebah, were bought in the name of the Governor

+and assigned to Israel's service.

+

+And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb

+Israel's material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads

+together yet again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears,

+and they said, "He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman

+who is named the prophetess put her curse upon him."  Then she who was

+so called, one Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect,

+seventy years of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box

+which Reuben Maliki kept, crossed Israel in the streets,

+and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub predicting that, even as he had made

+the walls of the Kasbah to echo with the groans of God's elect,

+so should his own spirit be broken within them and his forehead humbled

+to the earth.  He stood while he heard her out, and his strong lip

+trembled at he words; but he only smiled coldly, and passed on in silence.

+

+"The clouds are not hurt," he thought, "by the bark of dogs."

+

+Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture him;

+yet there was one among them who did neither.  This was the daughter

+of their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana.  Her name was Ruth.

+She was young, and God had given her grace and she was beautiful,

+and many young Jewish men, of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain

+for he favour.  Of Israel's duty she knew little, save what report

+had said of it, that it was evil; and of the act which had made him

+an outcast among his own people, and an Ishmael among the sons of Ishmael

+she could form no judgment.  But what a woman's eyes might see in him,

+without help of other knowledge, that she saw.

+

+She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble

+and his manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one

+who had been cheated of his youth and had missed his early manhood,

+the when he was ignored he ignored his insult, and when he was reviled

+he answered not again; in a word, the he was silent and strong and alone,

+and, above all that he was sad.

+

+These were credentials enough to the true girl's favour,

+and Israel soon learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him.

+There the lonely man first found himself.  The cold eyes of

+his little world had seen him as his father's son, but the light

+and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw him as the son of his mother also.

+The Rabbi himself was old, very old--ninety years of age--and

+length of days had taught him charity.  And so it was that when,

+in due time, Israel came with many excuses and asked for Ruth in marriage,

+the Rabbi gave her to him.

+

+The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses

+stood beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief;

+and, when the marriage came in its course, few stood beside

+the Chief Rabbi.  Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and

+all the Moors of Tetuan were alive to what was happening,

+and on the night of the marriage a great company of both peoples,

+though chiefly of the rabble among them, gathered in front of

+the Rabbi's house that they might hiss and jeer.

+

+The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio,

+and when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him above

+the tumult, crying, "Woe to her that has married the enemy of her nation,

+and woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people!

+They shall taste death.  He shall see them fall from his side and die,"

+then the old man listened and trembled visibly.  In confusion and

+fierce anger he rose up and stumbled through the crooked passage

+to the door, and flinging it wide, he stood in the doorway facing them

+that stood without.

+

+"Peace!  Peace!" he cried, "and shame!  shame!  Remember the doom

+of him that shall curse the high priest of the Lord."

+

+This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath.  Then suddenly,

+his voice failing him, he said in a broken whisper, "My good people,

+what is this?  Your servant is grown old in your service.

+Sixty and odd years he has shared your sorrows and your burdens.

+What has he done this day that your women should lift up their voices

+against him?"

+

+But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood

+in the darkness were silent and made no answer.  Then he staggered back,

+and Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could

+to compose him.  But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.

+

+When the Rabbi's death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered,

+"It is the first-fruits!" and the Moors touched their foreheads

+and murmured "It is written!"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II

+

+THE BIRTH OF NAOMI

+

+

+Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about

+the building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live

+in comfort many years together.  In the south-east corner of the Mellah

+he placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly

+in the English fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars,

+and a marble staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings

+of stalactites, but also with windows and with doors.  And when his house

+was raised he put no haities into it, and spread no mattresses

+on the floors, but sent for tables and chairs and couches out of England;

+and everything he did in this wise cut him off the more from the people

+about him, both Moors and Jews.

+

+And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling,

+out of the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets,

+suddenly it occurred to him for the first time that whereas

+the house he had built was a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be

+little better than a prison for his wife.  In marrying Ruth he had

+enlarged the circle of his intimates by one faithful and loving soul,

+but in marrying him she had reduced even her friends to that number.

+Her father was dead; if she was the daughter of a Chief Rabbi

+she was also the wife of an outcast, the companion of a pariah,

+and save for him, she must be for ever alone.  Even their bondwomen

+still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with them was mainly by signs.

+

+Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself

+on Israel's mind, one hope on his heart--that Ruth might soon

+bear a child.  Then would her solitude be broken by the dearest company

+that a woman might know on earth.  And, if he had wronged her,

+his child would make amends.

+

+Israel thought of this again and again.  The delicious hope pursued him.

+It was his secret, and he never gave it speech.  But time passed,

+and no child was born.  And Ruth herself saw that she was barren,

+and she began to cast down her head before her husband.

+Israel's hope was of longer life, but the truth dawned upon him at last.

+Then, when he perceived that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness

+came over him.  He had been thinking of her; that a child would bring

+her solace, and meanwhile she had thought only of him,

+that a child would be his pride.  After that he never went abroad

+but he came home with stories of women wailing at the cemetery

+over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss

+of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given

+no children.

+

+This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,

+half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely.  But one day

+the woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house,

+and she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried,

+"Israel ben Oliel, the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not

+suffer you to raise up children to be a reproach and a curse among

+your people!"

+

+"Out upon you, woman!"  cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium

+of his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her.  Her other predictions

+had passed him by, but this one had smitten him.  He went home and

+shut himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come

+near to him.

+

+Israel knew his own heart at last.  At his wife's barrenness he was now

+angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased.

+What was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate

+that had first beaten him down?  What did it come to that the world was

+at his feet?  Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah

+who was the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.

+

+That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched

+and his spirit bitter.  And sometimes he reproached himself

+with a thousand offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures,

+that he might persuade himself that he had walked blameless

+before the Lord in the ordinances and commandments of God.

+

+Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years

+since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws,

+both of their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren

+might straightway be divorced by her husband.

+

+Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa,

+but Israel would not answer it.  Then came an order to him

+from the Governor, but still he paid no heed.  At length he heard

+a feeble knock at the door of his room.  It was Ruth, his wife,

+and he opened to her and she entered.

+

+"Send me away from you!" she cried.  "Send me away!"

+

+"Not for the place of the Kaid," he answered stoutly; "no, nor the throne

+of the Sultan!"

+

+At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled

+their tears together.  But he comforted her at length, and said,

+"Look up, my dearest!  look up!  I am a proud man among men,

+but it is even as the Lord may deal with me.  And which of us shall murmur

+against God?"

+

+At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full

+of a sudden thought.

+

+"Then let us ask of the Lord," she whispered hotly, "and surely

+He will hear our prayer."

+

+"It is the voice of the Lord Himself!" cried Israel; "and this day

+it shall be done!"

+

+At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand

+together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki.

+And Ruth knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating

+and the candles that hung above it, and she prayed: "O Lord, have pity

+on this Thy servant, and take away her reproach among women.

+Give her grace in Thine eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed.

+Grant her a child of Thy mercy, that his eye may smile upon her.

+Yet not as she willeth, but as Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant

+will be satisfied."

+

+But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart

+and his eyes to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not

+be appeased, saying: How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?

+My enemies triumph over me and foretell Thy doom upon me.

+They sit in the lurking-places of the streets to deride me.

+Confound my enemies, O Lord, and rebuke their counsels.  Remember Ruth,

+I beseech Thee, that she is patient and her heart is humbled.

+Give her children of Thy servant, and her first-born shall be sanctified

+unto Thee.  Give her one child, and it shall be Thine--if it is a son,

+to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues.  Hear me, O Lord, and give heed

+to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee.  One child, but one,

+only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is before Thee.

+How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?"

+

+The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble

+was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come

+without delay to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues.

+This request the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef

+was a prince of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces

+the believers paid him tribute.  So in three days' time Israel was ready

+to set out on his journey, with men and mules at his door,

+and camels packed with tents.  He was likely to be some months absent

+from Tetuan, and it was impossible that Ruth should go with him.

+They had never been separated before, and Ruth's concern was

+that they should be so long parted, but Israel's was a deeper matter.

+

+"Ruth," he said when his time came, "I am going away from you,

+but my enemies remain.  They see evil in all my doings,

+and in this act also they will find offence.  Promise me that if

+they make a mock at you for your husband's sake you will not see them;

+if they taunt you that you will not hear them; and if they ask anything

+concerning me that you will answer them not at all."

+

+And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her

+she should be as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that

+was deaf, and if they questioned her concerning her husband as one that

+was dumb.  Then they parted with many tears and embraces.

+

+Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,

+having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan

+loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers

+and attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him

+to the door of his own house.

+

+And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with tears

+of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great news

+on her tongue.

+

+"Listen," she whispered; "I have something to tell you--"

+

+"Ah, I know it," he cried; "I know it already.  I see it in your eyes."

+

+"Only listen," she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck

+of his kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.

+

+Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child

+they had asked for was to come.

+

+Israel was like a man beside himself with joy.  He burst in upon

+the message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again,

+and kissed her.  Long they stood together so, while he told her

+of the chances which had befallen him during his absence from her,

+and she told him of her solitude of six long months, unbroken save

+for the poor company of Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind

+and deaf and dumb to all the world.

+

+During the months thereafter until Ruth's time was full Israel sat

+with her constantly.  He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company.

+He covered her chamber with fruits and flowers.  There was no desire

+of her heart but he fulfilled it.  And they talked together lovingly

+of how they would name the child when the time came to name it.

+Israel concluded that if it was a son it should be called David,

+and Ruth decided that if it was a daughter it should be called Naomi.

+And Ruth delighted to tell of how when it was weaned she should take

+it up to the synagogue and say, "O Lord: I am the woman that knelt

+before Thee praying.  For this child I prayed, and Thou hast heard

+my prayer."  And Israel told of how his son should grow up to be a Rabbi

+to minister before God, and how in those days it should come to pass

+that the children of his father's enemies should crouch to him

+for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread.  Thus they built themselves

+castles in the air for the future of the child that was to come.

+

+Ruth's time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast

+of the Passover, being in the month of Nisan.  This was a cause of joy

+to Israel, for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face,

+and he could not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision.

+So he set a supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep

+and the fore-leg of an ox, the egg roasted in ashes, the balls

+of Charoseth, the three Mitzvoth, and the wine, And by the time

+the supper was ready the midwife had been summoned, and it was the day

+of the night of the Seder.

+

+Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests.

+Only his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers,

+and among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman,

+Judah ben Lolo, and Reuben Maliki.  "They cursed me," he thought,

+"and I shall look on their confusion."  His heart thirsted

+to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also, but well he knew that her dainty masters

+would not sit at meat with her.

+

+And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves

+and refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man

+should sit save in his own house and at his own table.

+But Israel was not to be gainsaid.  He went out to them himself,

+and said, "Come, let bygones be bygones.  It is the feast of our nation.

+Let us eat and drink together."  So, partly by his importunity,

+but mainly in their bewilderment, yet against all rule and custom,

+they suffered themselves to go with him.

+

+And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table

+in the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine

+and blessed it, and passed it to all, and they had drunk together,

+he could not keep back his tongue from taunting them.  Then when he had

+washed again and dipped the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk

+of the wine once more, he taunted them afresh and laughed.

+But nothing yet had they understood of his meaning, and they looked

+into each other's faces and asked, "What is it?"

+

+"Wait! Only wait!" Israel answered.  "You shall see!"

+

+At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.

+

+"I am a sorrowful woman," she said.  "Some evil is about to befall--

+I know it, I feel it."

+

+But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy

+on the morrow.  Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes

+had been broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat

+and drink as much as their hearts desired.

+

+They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight

+of Israel's frenzy.  The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben,

+rose to go, but Israel cried, "Stay!  Stay, and see what is come!"

+and under the very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.

+

+Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them.  In the wild torrent

+of his madness he called them by names they knew and by names

+they did not know-- Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu--and

+at every new name he laughed again.  And while he carried himself so

+in the outer court the slave woman Fatimah came from the inner room

+with word that the child was born.

+

+At that Israel was like a man distraught.  He leapt up from the table

+and faced full upon his guests, and cried, "Now you know what it is; and

+now you know why you are bidden to this supper!  You are here to rejoice

+with me over my enemies!  Drink!  drink!  Confusion to all of them!"

+And he lifted a winecup and drank himself.

+

+They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio

+into the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.

+

+"You will not drink?" he said.  "Then listen to me."  He dashed

+the winecup out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor.

+His laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose

+to a shrill cry.  "You foretold the doom of God upon me,

+you brought me low, you made me ashamed: but behold how the Lord

+has lifted me up!  You set your women to prophesy that God

+would not suffer me to raise up children to be a reproach and

+a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a son like the best

+of you.  More than that--more than that-- my son shall yet see--"

+

+The slave woman was touching his arm.  "It is a girl," she said; "a girl!"

+

+For a moment Israel stammered and paused.  Then he cried, "No matter!

+She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none

+to show them mercy!  She shall see the iniquity of their fathers

+remembered against them!  She shall see them beg their bread,

+and seek it in desolate places!  And now you can go!  Go!  go!"

+

+He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm

+he was driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded

+and with their eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry

+from the inner room.

+

+It was Ruth calling for her husband.  Israel wheeled about and went

+in to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct,

+followed him and listened from the threshold.

+

+Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came

+from them.

+

+And Israel said, "How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and

+pride of my pride?"

+

+Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said "The Lord has counted

+my prayer to me as sin--look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!"

+

+At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered

+out of his dry throat, "No, no, never believe it!"

+

+"True, true, it is true," she moaned; "the child has not uttered a cry,

+and its eyelids have not blinked at the light."

+

+"Never believe it, I say!" Israel growled, and he lifted the babe

+in his arms to try it.

+

+But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened

+upon the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him,

+the eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish.

+Then his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe

+out of his arms and laid it again on its mother's bosom.

+

+And Ruth wept over it, saying, "Even if it were a son never could it serve

+in the synagogue!  Never!  Never!"

+

+At that Israel began to curse and to swear.  His enemies had now

+pushed themselves into the chamber, and they cried, "Peace!  Peace!"

+And old Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said,

+"Is it not written that no one afflicted of God shall minister

+in His temples?"

+

+Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him,

+first into the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies

+whom he had bidden.  Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying,

+"What matter?  Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!"

+But after that he staggered, his knees gave way, he pitched half forward

+and half aside, like a falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell

+with his face to the floor.

+

+The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with water;

+but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves,

+"The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up,

+and into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot

+to slip."

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III

+

+THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI

+

+

+Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object

+of contempt.  God had declared against him, God had brought him low,

+God Himself had filled him with confusion.  Then why should man

+show him mercy?

+

+But if he was despised he was still powerful.  None dare openly

+insult him.  And, between their fear and their scorn of him,

+the shifts of the rabble to give vent to their contempt were often

+ludicrous enough.  Thus, they would call their dogs and their asses

+by his name, and the dogs would be the scabbiest in the streets,

+and the asses the laziest in the market.

+

+He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or

+at the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of

+pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily,

+"Accursed old Israel!  Get on home to your mother!"  Then,

+turning quickly round, he would find that close at his heels

+a negro of most innocent countenance was cudgelling his donkey

+by that title.

+

+He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound

+of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under

+the white walls crying "Allah!  Allah!  Allah!" would suddenly change

+their cry to "Arrah!  Arrah!  Arrah!" "Go on!  Go on!  Go on!"

+

+He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and

+peals of laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth

+turned in his direction, and he would know that the story-tellers

+were mimicking his voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.

+

+His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand

+of God's displeasure.  The veriest muck-worm in the market-place

+spat out at sight of him.  Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber--they

+all despised him!

+

+Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not

+crushed him.  It had brought out every fibre of his being,

+every muscle of his soul.  He had quarrelled with God by reason of it,

+and his quarrel with God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man

+the fiercer.

+

+There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form

+of warfare.  The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other,

+the better for his person.

+

+It was the Governor of Tetuan.  His name was El Arby, but he was known

+as Ben Aboo, the son of his father.  That father had been

+none other than the late Sultan.  Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother

+of Abd er-Rahman, though by another mother, a negro slave.

+To be a Sultan's brother in Morocco is not to be a Sultan's favourite,

+but a possible aspirant to his throne.  Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been

+made a Kaid, a chief, in the Sultan's army, and eventually

+a commander-in-chief of his cavalry.  In that capacity he had led

+a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni Hasan, the Beni Idar, and

+the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit the country near to Tetuan,

+and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been first directed to that town.

+When he had returned from his expedition he offered the Sultan

+fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha or Governor,

+and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.

+The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise.  There was a Basha

+at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty.

+The good man was summoned to the Sultan's presence, accused of

+appropriating the Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had,

+and cast into prison.

+

+That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story

+of how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is

+no less curious.  At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by

+his dubious transaction.  His new function was partly military

+and partly civil.  He was a valiant soldier--the black blood of

+his slave-mother had counted for so much; but he was a bad

+administrator--he could neither read nor write nor reckon figures.

+In this dilemma his natural colleague would have been his Khaleefa,

+his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this man had been

+the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him.

+He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery

+and his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell

+the letters of his name.  Then there was his Taleb the Adel,

+his scribe the notary, Hosain ben Hashem, styled Haj, because he

+had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but he was also the Imam,

+or head of the Mosque, and the wily Ben Aboo foresaw the danger

+of some day coming into collision with the religious sentiment

+of his people.  Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed ben Arby,

+but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction,

+and he wanted a man who should be under his hand.  That was

+the combination of circumstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan.

+

+Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master

+entirely.  He had carried the Basha's seal and acted for him in all

+affairs of money.  The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars,

+so that the Basha had twenty thousand to the good.  Then Ben Aboo's

+ambition began to override itself.  He started an oil-mill,

+and wanted Israel to select a hundred houses owned by rich men,

+that he might compel each house to take ten kollahs of oil--an extravagant

+quantity, at seven dollars for each kollah--an exorbitant price.

+Israel had refused.  "It is not just," he had said.

+

+Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested,

+but Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them.  Sometimes the Governor

+had pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose

+a gross and wicked tax, but Israel's answer had been the same.

+"There is no evil in the world but injustice," he had said.  "Do justice,

+and you do all that God can ask or man expect."

+

+For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would

+have been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun

+by day.  Israel was still necessary.  So Ben Aboo merely longed

+for the dawn of that day whereon he should need him no more.

+

+But since the disaster which had befallen Israel's house everything

+had undergone a change.  It was now Israel himself who suggested

+dubious means of revenue.  There was no device of a crafty brain

+for turning the very air itself into money--ransoms, promissory notes,

+and false judgments--but Israel thought of it.  Thus he persuaded

+the Governor to send his small currency to the Jewish shops to be changed

+into silver dollars at the rate of nine ducats to the dollar,

+when a dollar was worth ten in currency.  And after certain of

+the shopkeepers, having changed fifty thousand dollars at that rate,

+fled to the Sultan to complain, Israel advised that their debtors

+should be called together, their debts purchased, and bonds drawn up

+and certified for ten times the amounts of them.  Thus a few were banished

+from their homes in fear of imprisonment, many were sorely harassed,

+and some were entirely ruined.

+

+It was a strange spectacle.  He whom the rabble gibed at in the public

+streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand.  Their dogs and

+their asses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty

+must answer to it.

+

+Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching

+at his indignities nor glorying in his power.  He beheld the wreck

+of families without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry

+of children without a qualm.  Neither did he delight in the sufferings

+of them that had derided him.  His evil impulse was a higher matter--his

+faith in justice had been broken up.  He had been wrong.  There was no

+such thing as justice in the world, and there could, therefore,

+be no such thing as injustice.  There was no thing but the blind swirl

+of chance, and the wild scramble for life.  The man had quarrelled with God.

+

+But Israel's heart was not yet dead.  There was one place, where

+he who bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man

+of great tenderness.  That place was his own home.  What he saw there was

+enough to stir the fountains of his being--nay, to exhaust them,

+and to send him abroad as a river-bed that is dry.

+

+In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded

+before the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought

+of himself, but Ruth's unselfish heart had even then thought only

+of the babe.

+

+The child was born blind and dumb and deaf.  At the feast of life

+there was no place left for it.  So Ruth turned her face from it

+to the wall, and called on God to take it.

+

+"Take it!" she cried--"take it!  Make haste, O God, make haste

+and take it!"

+

+But the child did not die.  It lived and grew strong.  Ruth herself

+suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned

+over it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it.

+So, little by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day

+her soul deceived her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven

+seemed to come to her side and whisper "Take heart of hope, O Ruth!

+God does not afflict willingly.  Perhaps the child is not blind,

+perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is not dumb.  Who shall ye say?

+Wait and see!"

+

+And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see

+no difference in her child from the children of other women.

+Sometimes she would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup

+of its eye, an the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing

+to say that the little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark.

+And sometimes she would look at the pretty shell of its ear,

+and the ear was round and full as a shell on the shore,

+and nothing told her that the voice of the sea was not heard in it,

+and that all within was silence.

+

+So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,

+"It is well, all is well with the child.  She will look upon my face

+and see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue

+will yet speak to me, and make me very glad."  And then

+an ineffable serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.

+

+But when the time was come that a child's eyes, having grown familiar

+with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at

+its little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about

+in a peaceful perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth's child

+did not open in seeing, but lay idle and empty.  And when the time

+was ripe that a child's ears should hear from hour to hour

+the sweet babble of a mother's love, and its tongue begin to give back

+the words in lisping sounds, the ear of Ruth's child heard nothing,

+and its tongue was mute.

+

+Then Ruth's spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed

+to come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say,

+"Wait, Ruth; only wait, only a little longer."

+

+So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again,

+and watched for its smile that should answer to her smile,

+and listened for the prattle of its little lips.  But never a sound

+as of speech seemed to break the silence between the words that trembled

+from her own tongue, and never once across her baby's face passed

+the light of her tearful smile.  It was a pitiful thing to see her

+wasted pains, and most pitiful of all for the pains she was at

+to conceal them.  Thus, every day at midday she would carry

+her little one into the patio, and watch if its eyes should blink

+in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon her then,

+she would drop her head and say, "How sweet the air is to-day,

+and how pleasant to sit in the sun!"

+

+"So it is," he would answer, "so it is."

+

+Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew

+in the court, she would catch up her child and carry it close,

+and watch if its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her,

+she would laugh--a little shrill laugh like a cry--and cover her face

+in confusion.

+

+"How merry you are, sweetheart," he would say, and then pass

+into the house.

+

+For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw,

+and pretending not to hear what he heard.  But every day his heart bled

+at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer,

+for his very soul had sickened, and he cried, "Have done,

+Ruth!--for mercy's sake, have done!  The child is a soul in chains,

+and a spirit in prison.  Her eyes are darkness, like the tomb's,

+and her ears are silence, like the grave's.  Never will she smile

+to her mother's smile, or answer to her father's speech.

+The first sound she will hear will be the last trump, and the first face

+she will see will be the face of God."

+

+At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.

+The hope that she had cherished was dead.  Israel could comfort her

+no longer.  The fountain of his own heart was dry.  He drew

+a long breath, and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.

+

+The child lived and thrived.  They had called her Naomi,

+as they had agreed to do before she was born, though no name she knew

+of herself, and a mockery it seemed to name her.  At four years of age

+she was a creature of the most delicate beauty.  Notwithstanding her

+Jewish parentage, she was fair as the day and fresh as the dawn.

+And if her eyes were darkness, there was light within her soul;

+and if her ears were silence, there was music within her heart.

+She was brighter than the sun which she could not see, and sweeter

+than the songs which she could not hear.  She was joyous as a bird

+in its narrow cage, and never did she fret at the bars which bound her.

+And, like the bird that sings at midnight, her cheery soul sang

+in its darkness.

+

+Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was

+the sound of laughter.  With this she lay down to sleep at night,

+and rose again in the morning.  She laughed as she combed her hair,

+and laughed again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.

+

+She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was

+the sense of touch and feeling.  With this she seemed to know the day

+from the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark.

+She knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father

+by the brushing of his beard.  She knew the flowers that grew

+in the fields outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them

+in her lap, as other children did, and bring them home with her

+in her hands.  She seemed almost to know their colours also,

+for the flowers which she would twine in her hair were red,

+and the white were those which she would lay on her bosom.

+And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto the wind alone

+could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.

+

+Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling

+to them that were about her.  Thus her heart was the heart of a child,

+and she knew no delight like to that of playing with other children.

+But her father's house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour

+in Tetuan was allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children

+whom she met in the fields when she walked there by her mother's hand,

+no child did she ever meet.

+

+Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious

+of the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel.

+She herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but

+her little Naomi was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child

+that is the only child of her parents; again, alone as a child

+whose parents are cut off from the parents of other children;

+and yet again, once more, alone as a child that is blind and dumb.

+

+But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him

+from the Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and

+big innocent white eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel.

+The boy's name was Ali, and he was four years old.  His father had

+killed his mother for infidelity and neglect of their child, and,

+having no one to buy him out of prison, he had that day been executed.

+Then little Ali had been left alone in the world, and so Israel

+had taken him.

+

+Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him.  He had been born a Mohammedan,

+but secretly she brought him up as a Jew.  And for some years thereafter

+no difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes

+could see.  They ate together, they walked abroad together,

+they played together, they slept together, and the little black head

+of the boy lay with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.

+

+Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles

+of humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them.

+First, on Ali's part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi,

+"Come!" she did not hear, when he asked "Why?" she did not answer;

+and when he said "Look!" she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed

+to gaze full into his face.  Then, a sort of amused bewilderment

+that her little nervous fingers were always touching his arms

+and his hands, and his neck and his throat.  But long before he had come

+to know that Naomi was not as he was, that Nature had not given her eyes

+to see as he saw, and ears to hear as he heard, and a tongue to speak

+as he spoke, Nature herself had overstepped the barriers that divided

+her from him.  He found that Naomi had come to understand him,

+whatever in his little way he did, and almost whatever in his little way

+he said.  So he played with her as he would have played with

+any other playmate, laughing with her, calling to her,

+and going through his foolish little boyish antics before her.

+Nevertheless, by some mysterious knowledge of Nature's own teaching,

+he seemed to realise that it was his duty to take care of her.

+And when the spirit and the mischief in his little manly heart

+would prompt him to steal out of the house, and adventure

+into the streets with Naomi by his side, he would be found in the thick

+of the throng perhaps at the heels of the mules and asses,

+with Naomi's hand locked in his hand, trying to push the great creatures

+of the crowd from before her, and crying in his brave little treble,

+"Arrah!"  "Ar-rah!"  "Ar-r-rah!"

+

+As for Naomi, the coming of little black Ali was a wild delight to her.

+Whatever Ali did, that would she do also.  If he ran she would run;

+if he sat she would sit; and meanwhile she would laugh with a heart

+of glee, though she heard not what he said, and saw not what he did,

+and knew not what he meant.  At the time of the harvest,

+when Ruth took them out into the fields, she would ride on Ali's back,

+and snatch at the ears of barley and leap in her seat and laugh,

+yet nothing would she see of the yellow corn, and nothing would she hear

+of the song of the reapers, and nothing would she know of the cries

+of Ali, who shouted to her while he ran, forgetting in his playing

+that she heard him not.  And at night, when Ruth put them to bed

+in their little chamber, and Ali knelt with his face towards Jerusalem,

+Naomi would kneel beside him with a reverent air, and all her laughter

+would be gone.  Then, as he prayed his prayer, her little lips

+would move as if she were praying too, and her little hands would be

+clasped together, and her little eyes would be upraised.

+

+"God bless father, and mother, and Naomi, and everybody," the black boy

+would say.

+

+And the little maid would touch his hands and hi throat, and pass

+her fingers over his face from his eyelids to his lips, and then do

+as he did, and in her silence seem to echo him.

+

+Pretty and piteous sights!  Who could look on them without tears?

+One thing at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison,

+nevertheless it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it

+could not die, but was immortal and unmaimed and waited only

+for the hour when it should be linked to other souls, soul to soul

+in the chains of speech.  But the years went on, and Naomi grew in beauty

+and increased in sweetness, but no angel came down to open

+the darkened windows of her eyes, and draw aside the heavy curtains

+of her ears.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV

+

+THE DEATH OF RUTH

+

+

+For all her joy and all her prettiness, Naomi was a burden

+which only love could bear.  To think of the girl by day,

+and to dream of her by night, never to sit by her without pity

+of her helplessness, and never to leave her without dread

+of the mischances that might so easily befall, to see for her,

+to hear for her, to speak for her, truly the tyranny of the burden

+was terrible.

+

+Ruth sank under it.  Through seven years she was eyes of the child's eyes,

+and ears of her ears, and tongue of her tongue.  After that her own sight

+became dim, and her hearing faint.  It was almost as if she had spent them

+on Naomi in the yearning of dove and pity.  Soon afterwards

+her bodily strength failed her also, and then she knew that her time

+had come, and that she was to lay down her burden for ever.

+But her burden had become dear, and she clung to it.  She could not look

+upon the child and think it, that she, who had spent her strength

+for her from the first, must leave her now to other love and tending.

+So she betook herself to an upper room, and gave strict orders

+to Fatimah and Habeebah that Naomi was to be kept from her altogether,

+that sight of the child's helpless happy face might tempt her soul no more.

+

+And there in her death-chamber Israel sat with her constantly,

+settling his countenance steadfastly, and coming and going softly.

+He was more constant than a slave, and more tender than a woman.

+His love was great, but also he was eating out his big heart with remorse.

+The root of his trouble was the child.  He never talked of her,

+and neither did Ruth dwell upon her name.  Yet they thought of little else

+while they sat together.

+

+And even if they had been minded to talk of the child, what had they

+to say of her?  They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings,

+no simple broken speech, no pretty lisp--they had nothing to bring back

+out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth

+that lies stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents.

+That way everything was a waste.  Always, as Israel entered her room,

+Ruth would say, "How is the child?"  And always Israel would answer,

+"She is well."  But, if at that moment Naomi's laughter came up to them

+from the patio, where she played with Ali, they would cover their faces

+and be silent.

+

+It was a melancholy parting.  No one came near them--neither Moor nor Jew,

+neither Rabbi nor elder.  The idle women of the Mellah would sometimes

+stand outside in the street and look up at their house,

+knowing that the black camel of death was kneeling at their gate.

+Other company they had none.  In such solitude they passed four weeks,

+and when the time of the end seemed near, Israel himself read aloud

+the prayer for the dying, the prayer Shema' Yisrael, and Ruth repeated

+the words of it after him.

+

+Meantime, while Ruth lay in the upper chamber little Naomi sported

+and played in the patio with Ali, but she missed her mother constantly.

+This she made plain by many silent acts of helpless love that knew no way

+to speak aloud.  Thus she would lay flowers on the seats where her mother

+had used to sit, and, if at night she found them untouched

+where she had left them, her little face would fall,

+and her laughter die off her lips; but if they had withered

+and some one had cast them into the oven, she would laugh again

+and fetch other flowers from the fields, until the house would be

+full of the odour of the meadow and the scent of the hill.

+

+And well they knew, who looked upon her then, whom she missed, and what

+the question was that halted on her tongue; yet how could they answer her?

+There was no way to do that until she herself knew how to ask.

+

+But this she did on a day near to the end.  It was evening,

+and she was being put to bed by Habeebah, and had just risen

+from her innocent pantomime of prayer beside Ali, when Israel,

+coming from Ruth's chamber, entered the children's room.  Then,

+touching with her hand the seat whereon Ruth had used to sit,

+Naomi laid down her head on the pillow, and then rose and lay down again,

+and rose yet again and rose yet again lay down, and then came

+to where Israel was and stood before him.  And at that Israel knew

+that the soul of his helpless child had asked him, as plainly as words

+of the tongue can speak, how often she should lie to sleep at night

+and rise to play in the morning before her mother came to her again.

+

+The tears gushed into his eyes, and he left the children and

+returned to his wife's chamber.

+

+"Ruth," he cried, "call the child to you, I beseech you!"

+

+"No, no, no!" cried Ruth.

+

+"Let her come to you and touch you and kiss you, and be with you

+before it is too late," said Israel.  "She misses you, and fills the house

+with flowers for you.  It breaks my heart to see her."

+

+"It will break mine also," said Ruth.

+

+But she consented that Naomi should be called, and Fatimah was sent

+to fetch her.

+

+The sun was setting, and through the window which looked out to the west,

+over the river and the orange orchards and the palpitating plains beyond,

+its dying rays came into the room in a bar of golden light.

+It fell at that instant on Ruth's face, and she was white and wasted.

+And through the other window of the room, which looked out

+over the Mellah into the town, and across the market-place to the mosque

+and to the battery on the hill, there came up from the darkening streets

+below the shuffle of the feet of a crowd and the sound of many voices.

+The Jews of Tetuan were trooping back to their own little quarter,

+that their Moorish masters might lock them into it for the night.

+

+Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her nightdress.

+She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she laughed

+as Fatimah held her by the hand, and danced as she was led

+to her mother's chamber.  But when she was come to the door of it,

+suddenly her laughter ceased, and her little face sobered,

+as if something in the close abode of pain had troubled the senses

+that were left to her.

+

+It is, perhaps, the most touching experience of the deaf and blind

+that no greeting can ever welcome them.  When Naomi stood like

+a little white vision at the threshold of the room, Israel took her hand

+in silence, and drew her up to the pillow of the bed

+where her mother rested, and in silence Ruth brought the child

+to her bosom.

+

+For a moment Naomi seemed to be perplexed.  She touched

+her mother's fingers, and they were changed, for they had grown thin

+and long.  Then she felt her face, and that was changed also,

+for it was become withered and cold.  And, missing the grasp

+of one and the smile of the other, she first turned her little head aside

+as one that listens closely, and then gently withdrew herself

+from the arms that held her.

+

+Ruth had watched her with eyes that overflowed, and now she burst

+into sobs outright.

+

+"The child does not know me!" she cried.  "Did I not tell you

+it would break my heart?"

+

+"Try her again," said Israel; "try her again."

+

+Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back

+to her side.  Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck,

+she bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were

+on her wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child.

+This she did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind

+to her always.  But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only

+to know, by the quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely,

+and giving no thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp

+of recognition and the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again

+from her mother's arms, and bounded into the middle of the room,

+and suddenly began to laugh and to dance.

+

+The sun's dying light, which had rested on Ruth's wasted face,

+now glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed

+on her blind eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened

+her white nightdress, while she danced and laughed to her mother's death.

+Nothing did the child know of death, any more than Adam himself

+before Abel was slain, and it was almost as if a devil out of hell had

+entered into her innocent heart and possessed it, that she might make

+a mock of the dying of the dearest friend she had known on earth.

+

+On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child's

+uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down

+at speech, but wildly and deliriously.  The room was darkening fast,

+but still across the nether end, by the foot of the bed,

+streamed the dull red bar of sunlight with the little red figure leaping

+and prancing and laughing in the midst of it.

+

+With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes

+to the wall.  The black woman dropped her head that she might not see.

+And Israel covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony,

+"O Lord God, long hast Thou chastised me with whips,

+and now I am chastised with scorpions!"

+

+Ruth recovered herself quickly.  "Bring her to me again!" she faltered;

+and once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside.

+Then, embracing and kissing the child, and seeming to forget

+in the torment of her trouble that Naomi could not hear her,

+she cried, "It's your mother, Naomi! your mother, darling, though so sick

+and changed!  Don't you know her, Naomi?  Your mother, your own mother,

+sweet one, your dear mother who loves you so, and must leave you now

+and see you no more!"

+

+Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness

+of the child at last, only God Himself can say.  But first Naomi's cheeks

+grew pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they

+reddened, and then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth's hands

+again, and then her little lips trembled, and then, at length,

+she flung herself along Ruth's bosom and nestled close in her embrace.

+

+Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman stood

+and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any longer

+was melted and unmanned.  The sun had gone down, and the room was

+darkening rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short;

+the streets were quiet, and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret

+was chanting in the silence, "God is great, God is great!"

+

+After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother's bosom, and,

+seeing this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back

+to her own bed; but Ruth said, "No; leave her, let me have her with me

+while I may."

+

+"No one shall take her from you," said Israel.

+

+Then she gazed down at the child's face and said, "It is hard to leave her

+and never once to have heard her voice."

+

+"That is the bitterest cup of all," said Israel.

+

+"I shall not return to her," said Ruth, "but she shall come to me, and

+then, perhaps--who knows?--perhaps in the resurrection I shall hear it."

+

+Israel made no answer.

+

+Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, "My helpless darling!

+Who will care for you when I am gone?"

+

+"Rest, rest, and sleep!" said Israel.

+

+"Ah, yes, I know," said Ruth.  "How foolish of me!  You are her father,

+and you love her also.  Yet promise me--promise--"

+

+"For love and tending she shall never lack," said Israel.

+"And now lie you still, my dearest; lie still and sleep."

+

+She stretched out her hand to him.  "Yes, that was what I meant,"

+she said, and smiled.  Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom.

+"But when I am gone," she said, "will Naomi ever know that her mother

+who is dead had wronged her?"

+

+"You have never wronged her," said Israel.  "Have done, oh, have done!"

+

+"God punished us for our prayer, my husband," said Ruth.

+

+"Peace, peace!" said Israel.

+

+"But God is good," said Ruth, "and surely He will not afflict our child

+much longer."

+

+"Hush!  Hush!  You will awaken her," said Israel, not thinking what he said.  "Now lie still and

+sleep, dearest.  You are tired also."

+

+She lay quiet for a time, gazing, while the light remained,

+into the face of the sleeping child, and listening, when the light failed,

+to her gentle breathing.  Then she babbled and crooned over her

+with a childish joy.  "Yes, yes, father is right, and mother must

+lie quiet--very quiet, and so her little Naomi will sleep long--very long,

+and wake happy and well in the morning.  How bonny she will look!

+How fresh and rosy!"

+

+She paused a moment.  Her laboured breathing came quick and fast.

+"But shall I be here to see her? shall I?"

+

+She paused again, and then, as though to banish thought, she began to sing

+in a low voice that was like a moan.  Presently her singing ceased,

+and she spoke again, but this time in broken whispers.

+

+"How soft and glossy her hair is!  I wonder if Fatimah will remember

+to wash it every day.  She should twist it around her fingers to keep it

+in pretty curls. . . .  Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . .

+Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves,

+it's a chance if Habeebah has seen to it.  Then there's

+her underclothing. . . . Will she be deaf and blind and dumb always?

+I wonder if I shall see her when I. . . .  They say that angels are

+sent. . . .  Yes, yes, that's it, when I am there--there--I will go

+to God and say, 'O Lord! my little girl whom I have left behind,

+she is. . . .  You would never think, O Lord, how many things may happen

+to one like her.  Let me go--only let me watch over her--O Lord,

+let me be her guar--'"

+

+Her weakness had conquered her, and she was quiet at last.  Israel sat

+in silence by the post of the bed.  His heart was surging itself

+out of his choking breast.  The black woman stood somewhere by the wall.

+After a time Ruth seemed to awake as from sleep.  She was

+in great excitement.

+

+"Israel, Israel!" she cried in a voice of joy, "I have seen a vision.

+It was Naomi.  She was no longer deaf and blind and dumb.

+She was grown to be a woman, but I knew her instantly.

+Not a woman either, but a young maiden, and so beautiful, so beautiful!

+Yes, and she could see and hear and speak."

+

+Israel thought Ruth had become delirious, and he tried to soothe her,

+but her agitation was not to be overcome.  "The Lord hath seen our tears

+at last," she cried.  "He has put our sin beneath His feet.

+We are forgiven.  It will be well with the child yet."

+

+Israel did not try to gainsay her, and at sight and sound of her joy,

+seeing it so beautiful, yet thinking it so vain, he could not help

+at last but weep.  Presently she became quiet again, and then again,

+after a little while, she woke as from a sleep.

+

+"I am ready now," she said in a whisper, "quite ready, sweet Heaven,

+quite, quite ready now."

+

+Then with her one free hand she felt in the darkness for Israel,

+where he sat beside her, and touching his forehead she smoothed it,

+and said very softly, "Farewell, my husband!"

+

+And Israel answered her, "Farewell!"

+

+"Good-night!" she whispered.

+

+And Israel drew down her hand from his forehead to his lips and sobbed,

+and said, "Good-night, beloved!"

+

+Then she put her white lips to the child's blind eyes, and at that moment

+the spirit of the Lord came to her, and the Lord took her, and she died.

+

+When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw

+that the end had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth's bosom,

+but the child awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers

+about the dead mother's neck and covered the mouth with kisses.

+And when she felt that the lips did not answer to her lips, and

+that the arms which had held her did not hold her any longer, but

+fell away useless, she clung the closer, and tears started to her eyes.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V

+

+RUTH'S BURIAL

+

+

+The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth

+of his sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him.

+By noon of the day following the night of Ruth's death,

+Israel knew that he was to be left alone.  It was a rule of the Mellah

+that on notice being given of a death in their quarter,

+the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the first service

+thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra Kadisha

+of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make

+arrangements for burial.  Early prayers had been held in the synagogue

+at eight o'clock that morning, and no one had yet come near

+to Israel's house.  The men of the Hebra were going about their

+ordinary occupations.  They knew nothing of Ruth's death

+by official announcement.  The clerk had not published it.

+Israel remembered with bitterness that notice of it had not been sent.

+Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout Tetuan.

+There was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken it

+to each house he called at, and passed it to every man he met.

+Little groups of idle Jewish women had been many hours congregated

+in the streets outside, talking of it in whispers and looking up

+at the darkened windows with awe.  But the synagogue knew nothing of it.

+Israel had omitted the customary ceremony, and in that omission lay

+the advantage of his enemies.  He must humble himself and send to them.

+Until he did so they would leave him alone.

+

+Israel did not send.  Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed

+the threshold of the synagogue.  He would not cross it now,

+whether in body or in spirit.  But he was still a Jew,

+with Jewish customs, if he had lost the Jewish faith, and it was one

+of the customs of the Jews that a body should be buried

+within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from the time of death.

+He must do something immediately.  Some help must be summoned.

+What help could it be?

+

+It was useless to think of the Muslimeen.  No believer would lend a hand

+to dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead.

+It was just as idle to think of the Jews.  If the synagogue knew nothing

+of this burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that

+he would have need to know more.  And of Christians of any sort

+or condition there were none in all Tetuan.

+

+The gall of Israel's heart rose to his throat.  Was he to be left alone

+with his dead wife?  Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave

+with his own hands?  Or did they expect him to come to them

+with bowed forehead and bended knee?  Either way their reckoning was

+a mistake.  They might leave him terribly and awfully alone--alone

+in his hour of mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour

+of rejoicing, when he had married the dear soul who was dead.

+But his strength and energy they should not crush: his vital and

+intellectual force they should not wither away.  Only one thing

+they could do to touch him--they could shrivel up his last impulse

+of sweet human sympathy.  They were doing it now.

+

+When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message

+to the Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer,

+six State prisoners, fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.

+

+The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed

+by Jewish custom.  It was twilight when the body was brought down

+from the upper room to the patio.  There stood the coffin on a trestle

+that had been raised for it on chairs standing back to back.

+And there, too, sat Israel, with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.

+

+Israel's manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock,

+and his dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.

+Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself,

+down to the least or poorest detail.  But there was nothing poor about it

+in the larger sense.  Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value

+on his riches except to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down

+and to abash the enemies who still menaced him.  Nothing was lacking

+that money could buy in Tetuan to make this burial an imposing ceremony.

+Only one thing it wanted--it wanted mourners, and it had but one.

+

+Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited.  She ran to and fro,

+clutched at Israel's clothes and seemed to look into his face,

+clasped the hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear.

+Whether she knew what work was afoot, and, if she knew it,

+by what channel of soul or sense she learnt it, no man can say.

+That she was conscious of the presence of many strangers is certain,

+and when the men from the Kasbah brought the roll of white linen

+down the stairway, with the two black women clinging to it,

+kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke away from Israel

+and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her little white arms

+upraised.  But whatever her impulse, there was no need to check her.

+The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in dread

+to her father's side.

+

+"God be gracious to my father, look at that," whispered Fatimah.

+

+"My child, my poor child," said Israel, "is there but one thing in life

+that speaks to you?  And is that death?  Oh, little one, little one!"

+

+It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio.

+Four of the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders,

+walking in pairs according to their fetters.  They were gaunt

+and bony creatures.  Hunger had wasted their sallow cheeks,

+and the air of noisome dungeons had sunken their rheumy eyes.

+Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them, and concealing them down

+to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep, rich, velvet pall,

+with its long silk fringes.  In front walked the two remaining prisoners,

+each bearing a great plume in his left hand--the right arm,

+as well as the right leg, being chained.  On either side was a soldier,

+carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the twilight,

+and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone.

+Thus they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated

+at the door, through the streets of the Mellah and out

+into the marketplace, and up the narrow lane that leads

+to the chief town gate.

+

+There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage,

+and the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel.  As the procession

+went through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent

+until it had gone.  Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing

+fowls and taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work

+and fell back as the procession approached.  A blind beggar crouching

+at the other side of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran,

+and two Arabs close at his elbow were wrangling over a game

+at draughts which they were playing by the light of a flare,

+but both curses and Koran ceased as the procession passed under the arch.

+In the market-place a Soosi juggler was performing before a throng

+of laughing people, and a story-teller was shrieking to the twang

+of his ginbri; but the audience of the juggler broke up

+as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the storyteller was

+no more heard.  The hammering in the shops of the gunsmiths was stopped,

+and the tinkling of the bells of the water-carriers was silenced.

+Mules bringing wood from the country were dragged out of the path,

+and the town asses, with their panniers full of street-filth,

+were drawn up by the wall.  From the market-place and out of the shops,

+out of the houses and out of the mosque itself, the people came trooping

+in crowds, and they made a long close line on either side of the course

+which the procession must take.  And through this avenue of onlookers

+the strange company made its way--the two prisoners bearing the plumes,

+the four others bearing the coffin, the two soldiers carrying the lanterns,

+and Israel last of all, unsupported and alone.  Nothing was heard

+in the silence of the people but the tramp of the feet of the six men,

+and the clank of their chains.

+

+The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them,

+and every one knew them for what they were.  It was on the face

+of Israel also, yet he did not flinch.  His head was held steadily upward;

+he looked neither to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.

+

+The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the procession

+came to it the darkness had closed in.  Its flat white tombstones,

+all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock of sheep

+asleep among the grass.  It had no gate but a gap in the fence,

+and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.

+

+Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi

+her father.  He had asked no man's permission to do so,

+but if no one had helped at that day's business, neither had any one

+dared to hinder.  And when the coffin was set down by the grave-side

+no ceremony did Israel forget and none did he omit.

+He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch in his kaftan;

+he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white earth

+of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a padlock

+and flung away the key.  Last of all, when the body had been taken out

+of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in after it,

+and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern.  And then,

+kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both his hands,

+and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down at her

+where she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the synagogue,

+and speaking to her as though she heard: "Ruth, my wife, my dearest,

+for the cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered you

+to marry me, being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people,

+forgive me now, my beloved, and ask God to forgive me also."

+

+The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons,

+the two soldiers with their lanterns the open grave,

+and this strong-hearted man kneeling within it, that he might do

+his last duty, according to the custom of his race and faith,

+to her whom he had wronged and should meet no more

+until the resurrection itself reunited them!  The traffic of the streets

+had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel

+had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.

+

+The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts,

+for each carried with him a paper which procured his freedom

+on the day following.  But Israel returned to his home with a soured

+and darkened mind.  As he had plucked his last handful of the grass,

+and flung it over his shoulder, saying, "They shall spring in the cities

+as the grass in the earth," he had asked himself what it mattered

+to him though all the world were peopled, now that she,

+who had been all the world to him, was dead.  God had left him

+as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert.  Only one glimpse

+of human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken

+from him for ever.

+

+And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again.

+She was a helpless exile among men, a creature banished

+from all human intercourse, a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh.

+Was it a good God who had taken the mother from such a child--the child

+from such a mother?  Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed.

+It was not God but the devil that ruled the world.  It was not justice

+but evil that governed it.

+

+Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's loss

+and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet

+to be saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein

+this sweet flower, fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart

+to redeem it were very strange and beautiful.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VI

+

+THE SPIRIT-MAID

+

+

+The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi

+should not lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled.

+From that time forward he became as father and mother both to the child.

+

+At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition,

+and found it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think

+or words of the tongue express.  It was easy to say that she was deaf

+and dumb and blind, but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction

+implied.  It implied that she was a little human sister standing close

+to the rest of the family of man, yet very far away from them.

+She was as much apart as if she had inhabited a different sphere.

+No human sympathy could reach her in joy or pain and sorrow.

+She had no part to play in life.  In the midst of a world of light

+she was in a land of darkness, and she was in a world of silence

+in the midst of a land of sweet sounds.  She was a living and buried soul.

+

+And of that soul itself what did Israel know?  He knew that it had memory,

+for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had love,

+for she had pined for Ruth, and clung to her.  But what were love

+and memory without sight and speech?  They were no more than a magnet

+locked in a casket--idle and useless to any purposes of man or the world.

+

+Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was

+the affliction of his motherless girl.  To be blind was to be afflicted

+once, but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice,

+but twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb

+was not merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings

+of human speech.

+

+For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing,

+her father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows

+he must have soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them,

+and in this beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon

+and to love, he must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see.

+On the other hand, though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had

+sight her father might have held intercourse with her by the light

+of her eyes, and if she felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had

+found pleasure he must have known it, and what man is, and what woman is,

+and what the world and what the sea and what the sky, would have been

+as an open book for her to read.  But, being blind and deaf together,

+and, by fault of being deaf, being dumb as well, what word was to describe

+the desolation of her state, the blank void of her isolation--cut off,

+apart, aloof, shut in, imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion

+with other souls: alive, and yet dead?

+

+Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,

+Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and

+silent soul.  And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left

+to her, that he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them

+to his own great comfort and joy.  Yet no gift whatever could he find

+in her but the one gift only whereof he had known from the beginning--

+the gift of touch and feeling.  With this he must make her to see,

+or else her light should always be darkness, and with this he must make

+her to hear, or silence should be her speech for ever.

+

+Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard

+strange stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though

+they could not hear, and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer.

+So he sent to England for many books written on the treatment

+of these children of affliction, and when they were come he pondered

+them closely and was thrilled by the marvellous works they described.

+But when he came to practise the precepts they had given him,

+his spirits flagged, for the impediments were great.  Time after time

+he tried, and failed always, to touch by so much as one shaft of light

+the hidden soul of the child through its tenement of flesh and blood.

+Neither the simplest thought nor the poorest element of an idea found

+any way to her mind, so dense were the walls of the prison

+that encompassed it.  "Yes" was a mystery that could not at first

+be revealed to her, and "No" was a problem beyond her power to apprehend.

+Smiles and frowns were useless to teach her.  No discipline could

+be addressed to her mind or heart.  Except mere bodily restraint, no

+control could be imposed upon her.  She was swayed by her impulses alone.

+

+Israel did not despair.  If he was broken down today he strengthened

+his hands for tomorrow.  At length he had got so far, after a world

+of toil and thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was

+for approval, and when he touched her hand it was for assent.

+Then he stopped very suddenly.  His hope had not drooped, and neither

+had his energy failed, but the conviction had fastened upon him

+that such effort in his case must be an offence against Heaven.

+Naomi was not merely an infirm creature from the left hand of Nature;

+she was an afflicted being from the right hand of God.

+She was a living monument of sin that was not her own.

+It was useless to go farther.  The child must be left where God had

+placed her.

+

+But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human kind,

+she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they possessed.

+It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her,

+and from that source alone could she have imbibed her power.

+To tell of all she could do to guide her steps, and to minister to

+her pleasures, and to cherish her affections, would be to go beyond

+the limit of belief.  Truly it seemed as if Naomi, being blind

+with her bodily eyes, could yet look upon a light that no one else

+could see, and, being deaf with her bodily ears, could yet listen

+to voices that no one else could hear.

+

+Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio,

+she knew when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands

+and stop.  Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes

+or ears had taught her; for always, if it was her father,

+she reached out her hands to take his left hand in both of hers,

+and then she pressed it against her cheek; and always,

+if it was little Ali, she curved her arms to encircle his neck;

+and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to her bosom; and always,

+if it was Habeebah, she passed her by.  Did she go with Ali

+into the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of the town,

+and the narrow lanes from the open Sok.  Did she pass the lofty mosque

+in the market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled

+under and behind and around.  Did a troop of mules and camels come

+near her, she knew them from a crowd of people; and did she pass

+where two streets crossed, she would stand and face both ways.

+

+And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around Tetuan,

+the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah and

+the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river

+under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley,

+and even some of their rocky gorges.  She could find her way among

+them all without help or guidance, and no control could any one impose

+upon her to keep her out of the way of harm.  While Ali was

+a little fellow he was her constant companion, always ready

+for any adventure that her unquiet heart suggested; but when he grew

+to be a boy, and was sent to school every day early and late,

+she would fare forth alone save for a tiny white goat which her father

+had bought to be another playfellow.

+

+And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and

+the crown of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles

+of her feet felt the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded

+whether the sun was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also,

+from the rising of the morning until the coming of the stars.

+So, casting off her slippers and the great straw hat which

+a Jewish maiden wears, and clad in her white woollen shawl,

+wrapped loosely about her in folds of airy grace, and with the little goat

+going before her, though she could neither see nor hear it,

+she would climb the hill beyond the battery, and stand on the summit,

+like a spirit poised in air.  She could see nothing of the green valley

+then stretched before her, or of the white town lying below,

+with its domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult in her lofty place,

+and to drink new life from the rush of mighty winds about her.

+Then coming back to the dale, she would seem, to those who looked

+up at her, with fear and with awe, to leap as the goat leapt

+in the rocky places; and as a bird sweeps over the grass

+with wings outstretched, so with her arms spread out,

+and her long fair hair flying loose, she would sweep down the hill,

+as though her very tiptoes did not touch it.

+

+By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were

+the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind,

+which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child

+into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness.  Thus, in the spring,

+when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were

+abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and

+the thunder thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused

+to sympathetic tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her

+she would run and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter,

+and laughter would be on her lips.  Then Israel himself would go out

+to find her, and, having found her in the pelting storm without covering

+on her head or shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand,

+and as they passed through the streets together his forehead would be

+bowed and his eyes bent down.

+

+But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed.

+More often her joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else

+she was a creature of joy.  A circle of joy seemed to surround her always.

+Her heart in its darkness was full of radiance.  As she grew

+her comeliness increased, though this was strange and touching

+in her beauty, that her face did not become older with her years,

+but was still the face of a child, with a child's expression

+of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early maidenhood.

+Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell seemed

+to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant flowers

+in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars

+of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars

+that stood in it.  And with the girl's expanding nature her love

+of dress increased as well; but it was not a young maid's love

+of lovely things; it was a wild passion for light, loose garments

+that swayed and swirled in native grace about her.  Truly she was

+a spirit of joy and gladness.  She was happy as a day in summer,

+and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.  The ripple of her laughter was

+like sunshine.  A flood of sunshine seemed to follow in the air

+wheresoever she went.  And certainly for Israel, her father,

+she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.

+

+Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel

+in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished

+that the little playfellow of the angels which had come down

+to his dwelling could only be his simple human child, he sometimes

+had his wish, and many throbs of anguish with it.  For often it happened,

+and especially at seasons when no winds were stirring, and blank peace

+and a doleful silence haunted the air, that Naomi would seem to fall

+into a sick longing from causes that were beyond Israel's power

+to fathom.  Then her sweet face would sadden, and her beautiful blind eyes

+would fill, and her pretty laughter would echo no more through the house.

+And sometimes, in the dead of the night, she would rise from her bed

+and go through the dark corridors, for darkness and light were as one

+to her, until she came to Israel's room, and he would awake

+from his sleep to find her, like a little white vision, standing

+by his bedside.  What she wanted there he could never know,

+for neither had he power to ask nor she to answer, whether she were sick

+or in pain, or whether in her sleep she had seen a face

+from the invisible world, and heard a voice that called her away,

+or whether her mother's arms had seemed to be about her once again

+and then to be torn from her afresh, and she had come to him

+on awakening in her trouble, not knowing what it is to dream,

+but thinking all evil dreams to be true fact and new sorrow.

+So, with a sigh, he would arise and light his lamp and lead her back

+to her bed, and more scalding than the tears that would be standing

+in Naomi's eyes would be the hot drops that would gush into his own.

+

+"My poor darling," he would say, "can you not tell me your trouble,

+that I may comfort you?  No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot

+comfort her.  My darling, my darling."

+

+Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle

+out of heaven to find a way to the little maiden's mind that she might

+ask and answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it,

+for still greater than his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath

+of God.  And out of this fear there came to him at length an awful

+and terrible thought: though so severed on earth, his child and he,

+yet before the bar of judgment they would one day be brought together,

+and then how should it stand with her soul?

+

+Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man.

+Would God condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever?  No, no, no!

+God would not ask her for good works in the land of silence,

+and for labour in the land of night.  She had no eyes to see

+God's beautiful world, and no ears to hear His holy word.

+God had created her so, and He would not destroy what He had made.

+Far rather would He look with love and pity on His little one,

+so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to be

+a blessed saint in heaven.

+

+Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain.

+He was a Jew to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself

+out of his own mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God's will,

+that had sent Naomi into the world as she was.  Then, on the day

+of the great account, how should he answer to her for her soul?

+

+Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul

+that knew not God.  These were the most awful terrors

+of his sleepless nights, but at length peace came to him,

+for he saw his path of duty.  It was his duty to Naomi

+that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the Lord to her!

+What matter if she could not hear?  Though she had senses as the sands

+of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could lead her.

+What matter though she could not see?  The soul was the eye that saw God,

+and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.

+

+So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and

+led her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and,

+fetching from a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her

+of the commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets,

+and of the Kings.  And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet,

+with his one free hand in both of her hands, clasped close

+against her cheek.

+

+What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom,

+what mystery it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks

+into darkness could see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun

+had set--for she knew when the sun was gone--Naomi herself would take

+her father by the hand, and lead him to the upper room,

+and fetch the book to his knees.

+

+And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,

+and make a mock at him, and say, "The child is deaf and hears not--go

+read your book in the tombs!"  But he only hardened his neck and

+laughed proudly.  And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say,

+"Why waste yourself in this misspent desire?  The child is buried

+while she is still alive, and who shall roll away the stone?"

+But Israel only answered, "It is for the Lord to do miracles,

+and the Lord is mighty."

+

+So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night,

+and when his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice

+would be hoarse, and he would read the law which says,

+"_Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block

+before the blind._"  But when his heart was at peace his voice

+would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel sanctified

+to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he answered--

+

+"_And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,

+and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp

+of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was,

+and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel,

+and he answered, Here am I.  And he ran unto Eli and said,

+Here am I, for thou calledst me.  And he said, I called not;

+lie down again.  And he went and lay down.  And the Lord called

+yet again, Samuel.  And Samuel rose and went to Eli and said,

+Here am I for thou didst call me.  And he answered, I called not my son;

+lie down again.  Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord,

+neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him._"

+

+And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book,

+and sing out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says,

+"It is good for me that I have been in trouble, that I may learn

+Thy statutes."

+

+Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read

+of the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter,

+who was both blind and deaf.  And though Naomi heard not,

+and neither did she see, yet in their silent hour together there was

+another in their chamber always with them--there was a third,

+for there was God.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII

+

+THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL'S HOUSE

+

+

+When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then

+fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife.

+The woman's name was Katrina.  She was a Spaniard by birth,

+and had first come to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy,

+which travelled through Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez.

+What her belongings were, and what her antecedents had been,

+no one appeared to know, nor did Ben Aboo himself seem to care.

+She answered all his present needs in her own person, which was ample

+in its proportions and abundant in its charms.

+

+In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions.

+The first was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement

+of four Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as

+the many concubines that he had annexed in his way through life,

+and now kept lodged in one unquiet nest in the women's hidden quarter

+of the Palace.  The second condition was, that she herself should never

+be banished to such seclusion, but, like the wife of any

+European governor, should openly share the state of her husband.

+

+Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan,

+and he accepted both of her conditions.  The first he never meant

+to abide by, but the second she took care he should observe, and,

+as a prelude to that public life which she intended to live by his side,

+she insisted on a public marriage.

+

+They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church

+by a Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival

+lasted six days.  Great was the display, and lavish the outlay.

+Every morning the cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill,

+every evening the tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats

+of powder-play in the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa

+from Mequinez yelled and shrieked in the enclosure called the M'salla,

+near the Bab er-Remoosh.  Feasts were spread in the Kasbah,

+and relays of guests from among the chief men of the town were

+invited daily to partake of them.

+

+No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute

+of a present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light

+of their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though

+it galled the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage

+of a Christian and a Muslim--no man except Israel, and he excused himself

+with what grace he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick

+with sorrow of the heart.

+

+The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid.  She had taken her measure

+of the man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel

+should pay her court and tribute before all.  Therefore she caused him

+to be invited again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman,

+and with some lack of courtesy he excused himself afresh.

+

+Katrina was not yet done.  She was a creature of resource, and

+having heard of Naomi with strange stories concerning her,

+she devised a children's feast for the last day of the marriage festival,

+and caused Ben Aboo to write to Israel a formal letter, beginning

+"To our well-beloved the excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise

+to the one God," and setting forth that on the morrow,

+when the "Sun of the world" should "place his foot in the stirrup

+of speed," and gallop "from the kingdom of shades," the Governor would

+"hold a gathering of delight" for all the children of Tetuan and he,

+Israel, was besought to "lighten it with the rays of his face,

+rivalled only by the sun," and to bring with him his little daughter

+Naomi, whose arrival "similar to a spring breeze," should

+"dissipate the dark night of solitude and isolation."  This despatch

+written in the common cant of the people, concluded with quotations

+from the Prophet on brotherly love and a significant and more sincere

+assurance that the Basha would not admit of excuses "of the thickness

+of a hair."

+

+When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious.

+He leapt to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi,

+the Spanish woman, who must know of the child's condition desired only

+to make a show of it.  But, after a fume, he put that thought from him

+as uncharitable and unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.

+

+And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi's

+own eagerness must have driven it away.  The little maid seemed

+to know that something unusual was going on.  Troops of poor villagers

+from every miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day,

+beating drums, firing long guns, driving their presents

+before them--bullocks, cows, and sheep--and trying to make believe

+that they rejoiced and were glad.  Naomi appeared to be conscious

+of many tents pitched in the marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets,

+and of much bustle everywhere.

+

+Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali's excitement.

+The children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish,

+had been summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was

+to be dancing and singing and playing on musical instruments and

+Ali himself, who had lately practised the kanoon--the lute,

+the harp--under his teacher, was to show his skill before the Governor.

+Therefore, great was the little black man's excitement, and,

+in the fever of it, he would talk to every one of the event

+forthcoming--to Fatima, to Habeebah, and often to Naomi also,

+until the memory of her infirmity would come to him, or perhaps

+the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him, and then,

+thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them

+like a fury, and they would scamper away.

+

+When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school

+and Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs.

+Every child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat,

+then a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen,

+all cuddling them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking

+radiantly happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain

+from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

+

+Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them,

+and followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars,

+the lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate,

+through the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups

+of women stood together closely covered in their blankets--the mothers

+and sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass

+into the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther--then down the

+crooked passage, past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath,

+like a dungeon, and finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled

+with tiles.

+

+This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already

+with a great company of children, their fathers and their teachers.

+Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes

+of white and blue and black and red--they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous,

+and, perhaps, a beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.

+

+As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious

+that every eye was on them, and as they passed through the way that

+was made for them, he heard the whispered exclamations of the people.

+"Shoof!" muttered a Moor.  "See!"  "It's himself," said a Jew.

+"And the child," said another Jew.  "Allah has smitten her," said an Arab

+"Blind and dumb and deaf," said another Moor "God be gracious

+to my father!" said another Arab.

+

+Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court,

+and from the flat roof above it the women of the Governor's hareem,

+not yet dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines,

+were gazing furtively down from behind their haiks.  There was a fountain

+in the middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an alcove

+that opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with stalactites,

+against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat rugs of many colours,

+sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.

+

+It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and

+at the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold.

+She was a handsome woman, but plainly a heartless one--selfish, vain,

+and vulgar.

+

+Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and

+Katrina drew Naomi to her side.

+

+"So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?"

+said Katrina.

+

+Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman's feet.

+

+"The darling is as fair as an angel," said Katrina, and she kissed Naomi.

+

+The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.

+

+Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a pretty

+and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the black shadows

+of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people massed around

+the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going in the middle of it.  First, a line of

+Moorish girls in their embroidered hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising,

+twisting and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly.  Then, a line of Jewish

+girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish manner tripping on their slippered toes,

+whirling and turning around with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above

+their heads by their shapely arms and hands.  Then passages of the Koran chanted by a group of

+Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. 

+Then a psalm by a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song of Zion sung by

+silvery young voices in an alien land.  Finally, little black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his

+diminutive Moorish harp in his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy's shy looks of

+pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting, and his face aglow.

+

+Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been agitated

+and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes playing

+with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.

+It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going

+forward, and knew that they were children who were making it.

+Perhaps the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks,

+or perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted

+to her sensitive body.  Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came

+to her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face,

+which was full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew

+too well.

+

+But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,

+his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi's excitement.

+The girl leaped up from her place at the woman's feet, and

+with the utmost rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light

+across the patio to the boy's side.  And, being there, she touched

+the harp as he played it, and then a low cry came from her lips.

+Again she touched it, and her eyes, though blind, seemed

+for an instant to flame like fire.  Then, with both her hands

+she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she kissed it,

+while her whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.

+

+Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight

+with wild thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope.

+As well as he could in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward

+to draw the little maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him

+to leave her.

+

+"Leave her!" she cried.  "Let us see what the child will do!"

+

+At that moment Ali's playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp

+pass to Naomi's clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling

+on the ground beside it, the girl took it to herself.  She caressed it,

+she patted it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then

+a faint smile crossed her rosy lips.  She laid her cheek against it

+and touched its strings again, and then she laughed aloud.

+She flung off her slippers and the garment that covered her beautiful arms,

+and laid her pure flesh against the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling,

+and touched its strings once more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh

+with delight.

+

+Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious

+saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds

+so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet

+heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes

+of a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds

+such as no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.

+

+It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but

+only motion to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are

+sometimes found to take pleasure in all forms of percussion,

+and to derive from them some of the sensations of sound--the trembling

+of the air after thunder, the quivering of the earth after cannon,

+and the quaking of vast walls after the ringing of mighty bells--so Naomi,

+who was blind as well and had no sense save touch, found in her fingers,

+which had gathered up the force of all the other senses, the power

+to reproduce on this instrument of music the movement of things

+that moved about her--the patter of the leaves of the fig-tree

+in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great winds on the hill-top,

+the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling of the levanter in her hair.

+

+This was all the witchery of Naomi's playing, yet, because every emotion

+in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort

+in the music that was struck by the girl's fingers out of the strings

+of the harp.  But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody

+of sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it.

+She lifted her head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved,

+and as she played, she laughed again and again.

+

+There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle

+of the beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs

+(visible through the robes) clinging to the sides of the harp,

+and the delicate white fingers flying across the strings.

+There was something gruesome and awful, as well, for the face

+of the girl was blind, and her ears heard nothing of the sounds

+that her fingers were making.

+

+Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was agape.

+And when those who looked on and listened had recovered

+from their first surprise, very strange and various were

+the whispered words they passed between them.  "Where has she learnt it?"

+asked a Moor.  "From her master himself," muttered a Jew.

+"Who is it?" asked the Moor.  "Beelzebub," growled the Jew.

+"God pity me, the evil eye is on her," said an Arab.  "God will show,"

+said a Shereef from Wazzan.  "They say her mother was a childless woman,

+and offered petitions for Hannah's blessing at the tomb of Rabbi Amran."

+"No," said the Arab; "she sent her girdle."  "Anyhow, the child

+is a saint," whispered the Shereef.  "No, but a devil," snorted the Jew.

+

+"Brava, brava, brava!" cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered

+and laughed as the girl played.  "What did I tell you?" she said,

+looking toward her husband.  "The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either.

+Oh, it's a brave imposture!  Brava, brave!"

+

+Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded,

+her head dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp

+and sighed audibly.

+

+"Good again!" cried the woman.  "Very good!" and she clapped her hands,

+whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread,

+felt constrained to follow her example, and they cheered

+in their wilder way, but the Jews continued to mutter, "Beelzebub,

+Beelzebub!"

+

+Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind

+and the confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight

+of what Naomi did.  Had God opened a gateway to her soul?

+Were the poor wings of her spirit to spread themselves out at last?

+Was this, then, the way of speech that Heaven had given her?

+But hardly had Israel overflowed with the tenderness of such thoughts

+when the bleating and barking of the faces about him awakened his anger.

+Then, like blows on his brain, came the cries of the wife of the Governor,

+who cheered this awakening of the girl's soul as it were no better

+than a vulgar show; and at that Israel's wrath rose to his throat.

+

+"Brava, brava!" cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel,

+she said, "You shall leave the child with me.  I must have her

+with me always."

+

+Israel's throat seemed to choke him at that word.  He looked

+at Katrina, and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and

+vain of heart, who had married Ben Aboo because he was rich.

+Then he looked at Naomi, and remembered that her heart was clear

+as the water, and sweet as the morning, and pure as the snow.

+

+And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again

+the people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold

+to take up her cry with their cooing ululation.  The playing had ceased,

+the spell had dissolved, Naomi's fingers had fallen from the harp,

+her head had dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk

+forward on to her face.

+

+"Take her in!" said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped

+up to where the little maiden lay.  But before they had touched her

+Israel strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.

+

+"Stop!" he cried.

+

+The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.

+

+"Do as you are bidden--take her in!" said Ben Aboo.

+

+"Stop!" cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.

+Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up

+the unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.

+

+"Madam," he cried, "I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor,

+but my child belongs to me."

+

+So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms,

+and in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed

+to know what he had done until he was gone.

+

+Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event

+he found courage in his heart to begin his task again.  Let his enemies

+bleat and bark "Beelzebub," yet the child was an angel, though suffering

+for his sin, and her soul was with God.  She was a spirit, and the songs

+she had played were the airs of paradise.  But, comforting himself so,

+Israel remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered

+her powers.  He had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death,

+but would the Lord yet bring it to pass?  Would God in His mercy

+some day take the angel out of his house, though so strangely gifted,

+so radiant and beautiful and joyful, and give him instead for the hunger

+of his heart as a man this sweet human child, his little,

+fair-haired Naomi, though helpless and simple and weak?

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII

+

+THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT

+

+

+Israel's instinct had been sure: the coming of Katrina proved

+to be the beginning of his end.  He kept his office, but he lost his power.

+No longer did he work his own will in Tetuan; he was required

+to work the will of the woman.  Katrina's will was an evil one,

+and Israel got the blame of it, for still he seemed to stand

+in all matters of tribute and taxation between the people and the Governor.

+It galled him to take the woman's wages, but it vexed him yet more

+to do her work.  Her work was to burden the people with taxes

+beyond all their power of paying; her wages was to be hated as the bane

+of the bashalic, to be clamoured against as the tyrant of Tetuan,

+and to be ridiculed by the very offal of the streets.

+

+One day a gang of dirty Arabs in the market-place dressed

+up a blind beggar in clothes such as Israel wore, and sent him abroad

+through the town to beg as one that was destitute and

+in a miserable condition.  But nothing seemed to move Israel to pity.

+Men were cast into prison for no reason save that they were rich,

+and the relations of such as were there already were allowed

+to redeem them for money, so that no felon suffered punishment

+except such as could pay nothing.  People took fright and fled

+to other cities.  Israel's name became a curse and a reproach

+throughout Barbary.

+

+Yet all this time the man's soul was yearning with pity for the people.

+Since the death of Ruth his heart had grown merciful.  The care

+of the child had softened him.  It had brought him to look

+on other children with tenderness, and looking tenderly on other children

+had led him to think of other fathers with compassion.

+Young or old, powerful or weak, mighty or mean, they were all

+as little children--helpless children who would sleep together

+in the same bed soon.

+

+Thinking so, Israel would have undone the evil work of earlier years;

+but that was impossible now.  Many of them that had suffered were dead;

+some that had been cast into prison had got their last and long discharge.

+At least Israel would have relaxed the rigour whereby his master ruled,

+but that was impossible also.  Katrina had come, and she was a vain woman

+and a lover of all luxury, and she commanded Israel to tax the people

+afresh.  He obeyed her through three bad years; but many a time

+his heart reproached him that he dealt corruptly by the poor people,

+and when he saw them borrowing money for the Governor's tributes

+on their lands and houses, and when he stood by while they

+and their sons were cast into prison for the bonds which they

+could not pay to the usurers Abraham or Judah or Reuben,

+then his soul cried out against him that he ate the bread

+of such a mistress.

+

+But out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong

+came forth sweetness, and out of this coming of the Spanish wife

+of Ben Aboo came deliverance for Israel from the torment

+of his false position.

+

+There was an aged and pious Moor in Tetuan, called Abd Allah,

+who was rumoured to have made savings from his business as a gunsmith.

+Going to mosque one evening, with fifteen dollars in his waistband,

+he unstrapped his belt and laid it on the edge of the fountain

+while he washed his feet before entering, for his back was

+no longer supple.  Then a younger Moor, coming to pray at the same time,

+saw the dollars, and snatched them up and ran.  Abd Allah could not follow

+the thief, so he went to the Kasbah and told his story to the Governor.

+

+Just at that time Ben Aboo had the Kaid of Fez on a visit to him.

+"Ask him how much more he has got," whispered the brother Kaid

+to Ben Aboo.

+

+Abd Allah answered that he did not know.

+

+"I'll give you two hundred dollars for the chance of all he has,"

+the Kaid whispered again.

+

+"Five bees are better than a pannier of flies--done!" said Ben Aboo.

+

+So Abd Allah was sold like a sheep and carried to Fez, and there cast

+into prison on a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars imposed

+upon him on the pretence of a false accusation.

+

+Israel sat by the Governor that day at the gate of the hall of justice,

+and many poor people of the town stood huddled together in the court

+outside while the evil work was done.  No one heard the Kaid of Fez

+when he whispered to Ben Aboo, but every one saw when Israel drew

+the warrant that consigned the gunsmith to prison, and when he sealed it

+with the Governor's seal.

+

+Abd Allah had made no savings, and, being too old for work, he had lived

+on the earnings of his son.  The son's name was Absalam (Abd es-Salem),

+and he had a wife whom he loved very tenderly, and one child,

+a boy of six years of age.  Absalam followed his father to Fez,

+and visited him in prison.  The old man had been ordered a hundred lashes,

+and the flesh was hanging from his limbs.  Absalam was great of heart,

+and, in pity of his father's miserable condition he went to the Governor

+and begged that the old man might be liberated, and that he might

+be imprisoned instead.  His petition was heard.  Abd Allah was set free,

+Absalam was cast into prison, and the penalty was raised from two hundred

+and fifty dollars to three hundred.

+

+Israel heard of what had happened, and he hastened to Ben Aboo,

+in great agitation, intending to say "Pay back this man's ransom,

+in God's name, and his children and his children's children will live

+to bless you."  But when he got to the Kasbah, Katrina was sitting

+with her husband, and at sight of the woman's face Israel's tongue

+was frozen.

+

+Absalam had been the favourite of his neighbours among all the gunsmiths

+of the market-place, and after he had been three months at Fez

+they made common cause of his calamities, sold their goods at a sacrifice,

+collected the three hundred dollars of his fine, bought him out of prison,

+and went in a body through the gate to meet him upon his return to Tetuan.

+But his wife had died in the meantime of fear and privation,

+and only his aged father and his little son were there to welcome him.

+

+"Friends," he said to his neighbours standing outside the walls,

+"what is the use of sowing if you know not who will reap?"

+

+"No use, no use!" answered several voices.

+

+"If God gives you anything, this man Israel takes it away," said Absalam.

+

+"True, true!  Curse him!  Curse his relations!" cried the others.

+

+"Then why go back into Tetuan?" said Absalam.

+

+"Tangier is no better," said one.  "Fez is worse," said another.

+"Where is there to go?" said a third.

+

+"Into the plains," said Absalam--"into the plains and into the mountains,

+for they belong to God alone."

+

+That word was like the flint to the tinder.

+

+"They who have least are richest, and they that have nothing are best off

+of all," said Absalam, and his neighbours shouted that it was so.

+

+"God will clothe us as He clothes the fields," said Absalam,

+"and feed our children as He feeds the birds."

+

+In three days' time ten shops in the market-place, on the side

+of the Mosque, were sold up and closed, and the men who had kept them

+were gone away with their wives and children to live in tents

+with Absalam on the barren plains beyond the town.

+

+When Israel heard of what had been done he secretly rejoiced;

+but Ben Aboo was in a commotion of fear, and Katrina was fierce

+with anger, for the doctrine which Absalam had preached to his neighbours

+outside the walls was not his own doctrine merely, but that of a great man

+lately risen among the people, called Mohammed of Mequinez,

+nicknamed by his enemies Mohammed the Third.

+

+"This madness is spreading," said Ben Aboo.

+

+"Yes," said Katrina; "and if all men follow where these men lead,

+who will supply the tables of Kaids and Sultans?"

+

+"What can I do with them?" said Ben Aboo.

+

+"Eat them up," said Katrina.

+

+Ben Aboo proceeded to put a literal interpretation upon his wife's counsel.

+With a company of cavalry he prepared to follow Absalam

+and his little fellowship, taking Israel along with him

+to reckon their taxes, that he might compel them to return to Tetuan,

+and be town-dwellers and house-dwellers and buy and sell and pay tribute

+as before, or else deliver themselves to prison.

+

+But Absalam and his people had secret word that the Governor was coming

+after them, and Israel with him.  So they rolled their tents,

+and fled to the mountains that are midway between Tetuan

+and the Reef country, and took refuge in the gullies of that rugged land,

+living in caves of the rock, with only the table-land of mountain

+behind them, and nothing but a rugged precipice in front.

+This place they selected for its safety, intending to push forward,

+as occasion offered, to the sanctuaries of Shawan, trusting rather

+to the humanity of the wild people, called the Shawanis, than to the mercy

+of their late cruel masters.  But the valley wherein they had hidden

+is thick with trees, and Ben Aboo tracked them and came up with them

+before they were aware.  Then, sending soldiers to the mountain

+at the back of the caves, with instructions that they should come down

+to the precipice steadily, and kill none that they could take alive,

+Ben Aboo himself drew up at the foot of it, and Israel with him,

+and there called on the people to come out and deliver themselves

+to his will.

+

+When the poor people came from their hiding-places and saw

+that they were surrounded, and that escape was not left to them

+on any side, they thought their death was sure.  But without a shout

+or a cry they knelt, as with one accord, at the mouth of the precipice,

+with their backs to it, men and women and children, knee to knee

+in a line, and joined hands, and looked towards the soldiers,

+who were coming steadily down on them.  On and on the soldiers came,

+eye to eye with the people, and their swords were drawn.

+

+Israel gasped for his breath, and waited to see the people cut

+in pieces at the next instant, when suddenly they began to sing

+where they knelt at the edge of the precipice, "God is our refuge

+and our strength, a very present help in trouble."

+

+In another moment the soldiers had drawn up as if swords from heaven

+had fallen on them, and Israel was crying out of his dry throat,

+"Fear nothing!  Only deliver your bodies to the Governor,

+and none shall harm you."

+

+Absalam rose up from his knees and called to his father and his son.

+And standing between them to be seen by all, and first looking upon both

+with eyes of pity, he drew from the folds of his selham a long knife

+such as the Reefians wear, and taking his father by his white hair

+he slew him and cast his body down the rocks.  After that he turned

+towards his son, and the boy was golden-haired and his face was like

+the morning, and Israel's heart bled to see him.

+

+"Absalam!" he cried in a moving voice; "Absalam, wait, wait!"

+

+But Absalam killed his son also, and cast him down after his father.

+Then, looking around on his people with eyes of compassion,

+as seeming to pity them that they must fall again into the hands

+of Israel and his master, he stretched out his knife and sheathed it

+in his own breast, and fell towards the precipice.

+

+Israel covered his face and groaned in his heart, and said,

+"It is the end, O Lord God, it is the end--polluted wretch that I am,

+with the blood of these people upon me!"

+

+The companions of Absalam delivered themselves to the soldiers,

+who committed them to the prison at Shawan, and Ben Aboo went home

+in content.

+

+Rumour of what had come to pass was not long in reaching Tetuan,

+and Israel was charged with the guilt of it.  In passing through

+the streets the next day on his way to his house the people hissed him

+openly.  "Allah had not written it!" a Moor shouted as he passed.

+"Take care!" cried an Arab, "Mohammed of Mequinez is coming!"

+

+It chanced that night, after sundown, when Naomi, according to her wont,

+led her father to the upper room, and fetched the Book of the Law

+from the cupboard of the wall and laid it upon his knees,

+that he read the passage whereon the page opened of itself,

+scarce knowing what he read when he began to read it, for his spirit

+was heavy with the bad doings of those days.  And the passage

+whereon the book opened was this--

+

+"_Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord,

+and the other lot for the scapegoat. . . .  Then shall he kill the goat

+of the sin-offering that is for the people, and bring his blood

+within the vail.  And he shall make an atonement for the holy place,

+because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because

+of their transgressions in all their sins. . . .  And when he hath,

+made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle

+of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat:

+and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat,

+and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel,

+and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head

+of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man

+into the wilderness.  And the goat shall bear upon him

+all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited._"

+

+That same night Israel dreamt a dream.  He had been asleep,

+and had awakened in a place which he did not know.

+It was a great arid wilderness.  Ashen sand lay on every side;

+a scorching sun beat down on it, and nowhere was there a glint of water.

+Israel gazed, and slowly through the blazing sunlight he discerned

+white roofless walls like the ruins of little sheepfolds.

+"They are tombs," he told himself, "and this is a Mukabar--

+an Arab graveyard--the most desolate place in the world of God."

+But, looking again, he saw that the roofless walls covered the ground

+as far as the eye could see, and the thought came to him

+that this ashen desert was the earth itself, and that all the world

+of life and man was dead.  Then, suddenly, in the motionless wilderness,

+a solitary creature moved.  It was a goat, and it toiled

+over the hot sand with its head hung down and its tongue lolled out.

+"Water!" it seemed to cry, though it made no voice, and its eyes

+traversed the plain as if they would pierce the ground for a spring.

+Fever and delirium fell upon Israel.  The goat came near to him

+and lifted up its eyes, and he saw its face.  Then he shrieked and awoke.

+The face of the goat had been the face of Naomi.

+

+Now Israel knew that this was no more than a dream, coming of the passage

+which he had read out of the book at sundown, but so vivid was the sense

+of it that he could not rest in his bed until he had first seen Naomi

+with his waking eyes, that he might laugh in his heart to think

+how the eye of his sleep had fooled him.  So he lit his lamp,

+and walked through the silent house to where Naomi's room was

+on the lower floor of it.

+

+There she lay, sleeping so peacefully, with her sunny hair flowing

+over the pillow on either side of her beautiful face, and rippling

+in little curls about her neck.  How sweet she looked!  How like

+a dear bud of womanhood just opening to the eye!

+

+Israel sat down beside her for a moment.  Many a time before,

+at such hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways,

+and she had known nothing of it.  She was like any other maiden now.

+Her eyes were closed, and who should see that they were blind?

+Her breath came gently, and who should say that it gave forth no speech?

+Her face was quiet, and who should think that it was not the face

+of a homely-hearted girl?  Israel loved these moments when he was alone

+with Naomi while she slept, for then only did she seem to be entirely

+his own, and he was not so lonely while he was sitting there.

+Though men thought he was strong, yet he was very weak.  He had no one

+in the world to talk to save Naomi, and she was dumb in the daytime,

+but in the night he could hold little conversations with her.

+His love! his dove! his darling!  How easily he could trick

+and deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and speak to me!

+Yes; her eyes will open and see me here again, and I shall hear her voice,

+for I love it!  "Father!" she will say.  "Father--father--"

+

+Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!

+

+Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her.  As he went back to his bed,

+through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him

+that made his hair to rise.  It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.

+

+Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream

+to be a vision.  It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream

+would be to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything.

+The vision as he thought he saw it was this, and these were the words

+of it as he thought he heard them--

+

+It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room,

+when a dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed,

+and a voice that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it,

+crying "Israel!"

+

+And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, "Speak, Lord,

+Thy servant heareth."

+

+Then the Lord said, "Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest

+cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat."

+

+And Israel answered trembling, "I have read."

+

+Then the Lord said to Israel, "Look now upon Naomi, thy child,

+for she is as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement

+for thy transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore

+she is dumb to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight,

+a soul in chains and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot

+that is cast for justice and for the Lord."

+

+And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, "Would that the lot had fallen

+upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou speakest,

+and be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before Thee."

+

+Then said the Lord to Israel, "On thee, also, hath the lot fallen,

+even the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of God."

+

+And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said,

+"Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people,

+so cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo,

+and of his wife, Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins

+of the people into the wilderness, so, in the resurrection,

+shalt thou bear the sins of this man and of this woman into a land

+that no man knoweth."

+

+Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were drops

+of blood, and cried, "What shall I do, O Lord?"

+

+And the Lord said, "Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee

+to the country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard

+tidings, and he shall show thee what thou shalt do."

+

+Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, "Shall my soul live?

+Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?"

+

+But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed,

+and all around was darkness.

+

+Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath

+on the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice,

+not in his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight

+of all common things about him--his room and his bed; and the canopy

+that covered it.  And on rising in the morning, at daydawn,

+so actual was the sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful

+the impression of it, that he straightway set himself to carry out

+the injunction it had made, without question of its reality or doubt

+of its authority.

+

+Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now grown

+to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate,

+Israel first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent

+from Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide,

+and to the market-place for mules.

+

+Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan

+was waiting at the door.  Then Israel remembered Naomi.

+Where was the girl, that he had not seen her that morning?

+They answered him that she had not yet left her room, and he sent

+the black woman Fatimah to fetch her.  And when she came

+and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in silence,

+his heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his foot

+to the stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio

+with the two bondwomen beside her.

+

+"Is she well?" he asked.

+

+"Oh yes, well--very well," said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.

+Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language

+of her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face,

+which had used to be cheerful, was now sad.  At that he almost repented

+of his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone

+no farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick,

+nothing could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must

+let him go his ways without warning.

+

+He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last,

+with many words of tender protest which she did not hear,

+he had to break away from the beautiful arms that held him.

+

+Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier

+and guide and muleteers and tentmen were already mounted,

+amid a chattering throng of idle people looking on.

+

+"Ali, my lad," said Israel, "if anything should befall Naomi

+while I am away, will you watch over her and guard her

+with all your strength?"

+

+"With all my life," said Ali stoutly.  He was Naomi's playfellow

+no longer, but her devoted slave.

+

+Then Israel set off on his journey.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IX

+

+ISRAEL'S JOURNEY

+

+

+MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek,

+had been a Kadi and the son of a Kadi.  While he was still a child

+his father died, and he was brought up by two uncles, his father's

+brothers, both men of yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan,

+or Foreign Minister, at Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan

+at Morocco.  Thus in a land where there is one noble only,

+the Sultan himself, where ascent and descent are as free as in a republic,

+though the ways of both are mired with crime and corruption,

+Mohammed was come as from the highest nobility.  Nevertheless,

+he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth that went along with it

+at the call of duty and the cry of misery.

+

+He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out

+into the plains.  The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people,

+the shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns

+and followed him.  He established a sect.  They were to be despisers

+of riches and lovers of poverty.  No man among them was to have more

+than another.  They were never to buy or sell among themselves,

+but every one was to give what he had to him that wanted it.

+They were to avoid swearing, yet whatever they said was to be firmer

+than an oath.  They were to be ministers of peace, and if any man did

+them violence they were never to resist him.  Nevertheless they were

+not to lack for courage, but to laugh to scorn the enemies

+that tormented them, and smile in their pains and shed no tear.

+And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to esteem it

+more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible,

+but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released

+from the bondage of the flesh.  Not dissenters from the Koran,

+but stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews,

+yet followers of Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.

+

+And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews,

+heard the cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all.

+From the streets, from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons,

+from the service of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself,

+they arose in hundreds and trooped after him.  They needed no badge

+but the badge of poverty, and no voice of pleading but the voice

+of misery.  Most of them brought nothing with them in their hands,

+and some brought little on their backs save the stripes

+of their tormentors.  A few had flocks and herds, which they drove

+before them.  A few had tents, which they shared with their fellows;

+and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for their food

+and the hyena for their safety.  Thus, possessing little and

+desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering

+themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company

+of battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded,

+passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country

+about Mequinez.  And he, being as poor as they were, though he might

+have been so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured

+against him, as Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan:

+"God will feed us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe

+our little ones as He clothes the fields."

+

+Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek.  But Israel knew

+his people too well to make known his errand.  His besetting difficulties

+were enough already.  The year was young, but the days were hot;

+a palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and

+the broom had the dusty and tired look of autumn.  It was also the month

+of the fast of Ramadhan, and Israel's men were Muslims.

+So, to save himself the double vexation of oppressive days

+and the constant bickerings of his famished people, Israel found

+it necessary at length to travel in the night.  In this way his journey

+was the shorter for the absence of some obstacles, but his time was long.

+

+And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan,

+so he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed through,

+and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes

+very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it.

+While he was passing through his own province of Tetuan,

+nothing did the poor people think but that he had come to make

+a new assessment of their lands and holdings, their cattle and

+belongings, that he might tax them afresh and more fully.

+So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of their houses

+as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse,

+and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot

+in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord),

+a title never before given to a Jew, and offered him presents

+out of their meagre substance.

+

+"A gift for my lord," they would say, "of the little that God

+has given us, praise His merciful name for ever!"

+

+Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens

+tied by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps,

+at the two trembling hands of an old woman living alone

+on a hungry scratch of land in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.

+

+Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no feeling.

+

+"Keep them," he would answer; "keep them until I come again,"

+intending to tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts

+altogether.

+

+And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic

+of El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos

+hastened before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks

+and palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion

+of his errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him

+on his approach in the early morning.

+

+"Peace be with you!" said the Kaid.  "So my lord is going again

+to the Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!"

+

+Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze

+of crooked lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him

+near the market-place, and the same night he left the town

+(laden with the presents of the Kaid) through a line of famished

+and half-naked beggars who looked on with feverish eyes.

+

+Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city

+of Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks

+that grow at the foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal,

+and there the young grand Shereef himself, at the gate

+of his odorous orange-gardens, stood waiting to give audience

+with yet another conjecture as to the intention of his journey.

+

+"Welcome! welcome!" said the Shereef; "all you see is yours

+until Allah shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission

+to our lord the Sultan at Fez--may God prolong his life and bless him!"

+

+"God make you happy!" said Israel, but he offered no answer

+to the question that was implied.

+

+"It is twenty and odd years, my lord," the Shereef continued,

+"since my father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups

+and downs that time has wrought since then, under Allah's will;

+but none in the past have been so grateful as the elevation

+of Israel ben Oliel, and none in the future can be so joyful

+as the favours which the Sultan (God keep our lord Abd er-Rahman!)

+has still in store for him."

+

+"God will show," said Israel.

+

+No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef

+alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took

+Israel's horse instead and together they rode through the market-place,

+and past the old Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks

+and the other mosque of the Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks

+wherein the Jews live like cattle. A swarm of Arabs followed

+at their heels in tattered greasy rags, a group of Jews went

+by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled renegades leaning

+against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from their

+dishevelled heads and bowed.

+

+That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according

+to the ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel's little company

+of Muslimeen--guests in the house of the descendants of the Prophet--were,

+by special Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers

+to eat and drink at their pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge

+of it, Israel and his men started on their journey afresh,

+going out of the town, with the Shereef's black bodyguard riding

+before them for guide and badge of honour, through the dense and

+noisome market-place, where (like a clock that is warning to strike)

+a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with fierce and dirty faces,

+under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid clouds of hot dust,

+were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should proclaim the end

+of that day's fast. Water-carriers at the fountains stood ready

+to fill their empty goats' skins, women and children sat on the ground

+with dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain rolled

+in their fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef,

+and flint and tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself

+in the minaret stood looking abroad (unless he were blind)

+to where the red sun was lazily sinking under the plain.

+

+Israel's soul sickened within him, for well he knew that,

+lavish as were the honours that were shown him, they were offered

+by the rich out of their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear.

+While they thought the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot

+who desired no homage, and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts.

+But one word out of his mouth, only one little word, one other name,

+and what then of this lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!

+

+Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn

+the snake-like ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls.  And toiling

+in the darkness over the barren plain and the belt of carrion

+that lies in front of the town, through the heat and fumes

+of the fetid place, and amid the furious barks of the scavenger dogs

+which prowl in the night around it, they came in the grey of morning

+to the city gate over the stream called the Father of Tortoises.

+The gate was closed, and the night police that kept it were snoring

+in their rags under the arch of the wall within.

+

+"Selam!  M'barak!  Abd el Kader!  Abd el Kareem!" shouted

+the Shereef's black guard to the sleepy gate-keepers.  They had come

+thus far in Israel's honour, and would not return to Wazzan until

+they had seen him housed within.

+

+From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom,

+came yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses.

+"Burn your father!  Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!"

+

+"Selam!" shouted one of the black guard.  "You dog of dogs!

+Your father was bewitched by a hyena!  I'll teach you to curse

+your betters.  Quick! get up,--or I'll shave your beard.  Open!

+or I'll ride the donkey on your head!  There!--and there!--and

+there again!" and at every word the butt of his long gun rang

+on the old oaken gate.

+

+"Hamed el Wazzani!" muttered several voices within.

+

+"Yes," shouted the Shereef's man.  "And my Lord Israel of Tetuan

+on his way to the Sultan, God grant him victory.  Do you hear,

+you dogs? Sidi Israel el Tetawani sitting here in the dark,

+while you are sleeping and snoring in your dirt."

+

+There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys,

+and then the gate groaned back on its hinges.  At the next moment two

+of the four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel's horse,

+asking forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet.  In the meantime,

+the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had ridden

+far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his class

+and country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing

+but selham and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.

+

+"I heard you were coming," he panted--"sent for by the Sultan--Allah

+preserve him!--but had I known you were to be here so soon--I--that is--"

+

+"Peace be with you!" interrupted Israel.

+

+"God grant you peace.  The Sultan--praise the merciful Allah!"

+the Kaid continued, bowing low over Israel's stirrup--" he reached Fez

+from Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him."

+

+"God will show," said Israel, and he pushed forward.

+

+"Ah, true--yes--certainly--my lord is tired," puffed the Kaid,

+bowing again most profoundly.  "Well, your lodging is ready--the best

+in Mequinez--and your mona is cooking--all the dainties of Barbary--and

+when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand Vizier--"

+

+Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word,

+until they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were

+to rest until sunset; and always the burden of his words

+was the same--the Sultan, the Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman,

+Abd er-Rahman!

+

+Israel could bear no more.  "Basha," he said "it is a mistake;

+the Sultan has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him."

+

+"Not going to him?" the Kaid echoed vacantly.

+

+"No, but to another," said Israel; "and you of all men

+can best tell me where that other is to be found.  A great man,

+newly risen--yet a poor man--the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez."

+

+Then there was a long silence.

+

+Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day.

+Soon after sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had

+so lately entered, and no man showed him honour.  The black guard

+of the Shereef of Wazzan had gone off before him, chuckling and

+grinning in their disgust, and behind him his own little company

+of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen, who, like himself,

+had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in dudgeon.

+The Kaid had turned them out of the town.

+

+Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering

+within their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar,

+near the tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge,

+there passed them in the fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah

+of the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez,

+and shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had

+to pass over.  They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters

+to the Kaid of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace

+without delay, that he might give good account of his stewardship,

+or else deliver up his substance and be cast into prison

+for the defalcations with which rumour had charged him.

+

+Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people,

+who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at Fez;

+and great was the glee of Israel's men on hearing it, for they remembered

+with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last

+in his false loyalty and hypocrisy.  But Israel himself was

+too nearly touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice

+at this new freak of its whim, though the victim of it had so lately

+turned him from his door.  Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure

+in money-bags and built his happiness on the favour of princes!

+When the one was taken from him and the other failed him,

+where then was the hope of that man's salvation, whether in this world

+or the next? The dungeon, the chain, the lash, the wooden jellab--what

+else was left to him? Only the wail of the poor whom he has made poorer,

+the curse of the orphan whom he has made fatherless, and the execration

+of the down-trodden whom he has oppressed.  These followed him

+into his prison, and mingled their cries with the clank of his irons,

+for they were voices which had never yet deserted the man that made them,

+but clamoured loud at the last when his end had come,

+above the death-rattle in his throat.  One dim hour waited

+for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace--one

+lonely hour wherein none could bear him company--and what was wealth

+and treasure to man's soul beyond it? Was it power on earth?

+Was it glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth--what could it be

+but a will-o'-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night!

+Oh! riches of gold and silver--what had they ever been but marsh-fire

+gathered in the dusk!  The empire of the world was evil,

+and evil was the service of the prince of it!

+

+Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure--so far away.

+Though all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers,

+yet if by God's good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted

+away from his child, he would be content and happy!  Naomi!  His love!

+His darling!  His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression.

+Oh! let him lose anything, everything, all that the world and

+all that the devil had given him; but let the curse be lifted

+from his helpless child!  For what was gold without gladness,

+and what was plenty without peace?

+

+Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena

+and the musk that lies outside the walls of Fez.  The prophet was

+a young man of unusual stature, but no great strength of body,

+with a head that drooped like a flower and with the wild eyes

+of an enthusiast.  His people were a vast concourse that covered

+the plain a furlong square, and included multitudes of women and children.

+Israel had come upon them at an evil moment.  The people were

+murmuring against their leader.  Six months ago they had abandoned

+their houses and followed him They had passed from Mequinez to Rabat,

+from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from Mogador

+to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous

+Beni Magild to Fez.  At every step their numbers had increased

+but their substance had diminished, for only the destitute had

+joined them.  Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds

+they had borne their privations patiently--the weary journeys,

+the exposure, the long rains of the spring and the scorching

+heat of summer.  But the soldiers of the Kaids whose provinces

+they had passed through had stripped them of both in the name

+of tribute.  The last raid on their poverty had been made that very day

+by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or sheep or oxen,

+or even the guns with which they had killed the wild bear,

+and their children were crying to them for bread.

+

+So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes

+in their impotent rage.  Why had they been brought out of the cities

+to starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish!

+What of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would

+feed them as He fed the birds!  God was witness to all their calamities;

+He was seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish

+hour by hour, He was seeing them die.  They had been fooled!

+A vain man had thought to plough his way to power.  Through their bodies

+he was now ploughing it.  "The hunger is on us!"  "Our children are

+perishing!"  "Find us food!"  "Food!"  "Food!"

+

+With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude

+in their madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and

+his company came up with them.  And Israel heard their cries,

+and also the voice of their leader when he answered them.

+

+First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes

+and quivering nostrils.  "Do you think I am Moses," he cried,

+"that I should smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving,

+am I full? If you are naked, am I clothed?"

+

+But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face,

+and he was saying in a very moving voice, "My good people,

+who have followed me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens

+are heavier than you can bear, and that your lives are scarce

+to be endured, and that death itself would be a relief.  Nevertheless,

+who shall say but that Allah sees a way to avert these trials

+of His poor servants, and that, unknown to us all, He is even

+at this moment bringing His mercy to pass!  Patience, I beg of you;

+patience, my poor people--patience and trust!"

+

+At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed.  Then Israel remembered

+the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan

+had burdened him.  They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes

+worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings

+and earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon's seal to hang

+on the breast as safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much

+gold filagree of the kind that men give to their women.  Israel had packed

+them in a box and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule,

+and then given no further thought to them; but, calling now

+to the muleteer who had charge of them, he said, "Take them quickly

+to the good man yonder, and say, 'A present to the man of God and

+to his people in their trouble.'"

+

+And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver

+open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him,

+it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky

+had opened and rained manna on their heads.

+

+"It is an answer to your prayer," he cried; "an angel from heaven

+has sent it."

+

+Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened

+to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own

+parched throats--

+

+"Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world's end!"

+

+And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse

+of men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and

+glee together, and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children,

+and sent up a great broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them

+succour, that they might not die.  At last, when they had risen

+to their feet again, every man looked into the eyes of his fellow

+and said, as if ashamed, I could have borne it myself,

+but when the children called to me for bread.  I was a fool."

+

+

+

+CHAPTER X

+

+THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI

+

+

+Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word

+of the new prophet for his guide and motto: "Exact no more than is just;

+do violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and

+give to the poor."  That was all the answer he got out of his journey,

+and if any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story,

+it must have been an idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar,

+after Wazzan, after Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum

+of all wisdom.  "I'll do it," he said; "at all risks and all costs,

+I'll do it."

+

+And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant

+to bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him,

+emptied his pockets of all that he should not need on his journey,

+and prepared to return to his own country on foot and alone.

+The men had first gaped in amazement, and then laughed in derision;

+and finally they had gone their ways by themselves, telling all

+who encountered them that the Sultan at Fez had stripped their master

+of everything, and that he was coming behind them penniless.

+

+But, knowing nothing of this graceless service.  Israel began

+his homeward journey with a happy heart.  He had less than thirty dollars

+in his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set

+out from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town,

+or five long days' travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk

+in the daytime.  Surely the Lord would see it that never before had

+any man done so much to wipe out God's displeasure as he was now doing

+and yet would do.  He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when

+he told him of his vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child.

+The lot of the sin-offering must be gone from her now, and

+in the resurrection he would meet her without shame.  If he had brought

+fruits meet to repentance, then must her debt also be wiped away.

+Surely never before had any child been so smitten of God,

+and never had any father of an afflicted child bought God's mercy

+at so dear a price!

+

+Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly,

+though he dared not to utter them, lest he should seem to be

+bribing God out of his love of the child.  And thus if his heart

+was glad as he turned towards home, it was proud also,

+and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity and pride

+were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through

+the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding),

+by three sights which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon

+occurrence in that town and province.

+

+First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east

+of the new town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner,

+going by the high walls of the Sultan's hareem, where there is room

+for a thousand women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is

+the greatest in Morocco and rests on eight hundred pillars,

+he came upon two slaveholders selling twelve or fourteen slaves.

+The slaves were all girls, and all black, and of varying ages,

+ranging from ten years to about thirty.  They had lately arrived

+in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and the Wargha,

+and some of them looked worn from the desert passage.  Others were fresh

+and cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were adorned,

+after their doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters,

+with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers

+pricked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl.

+Thus they were drawn up in a line for public auction;

+but before the sale of them could begin among the buyers

+that had gathered about them in the street, the overseers

+of the Sultan's hareem had to come and make a selection

+for their master.  This the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them

+nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces

+of evil old women and the hoarse voices of ravens--had picked out

+three fat black maidens, the business of the auction began by the sale

+of a negro girl of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and

+passed around.

+

+"Now, brothers," said the slave-master, "look see; sound of wind

+and limb--how much?"

+

+"Eighty dollars," said a voice from the crowd.

+

+"Eighty?  Well, eighty to start with.  Look at her--rosy lips,

+fit for the kisses of a king, eh?  How much?"

+

+"A hundred dollars."

+

+"A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred.  It's giving the girl away.

+Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound."

+

+The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl's mouth and walked her

+round the crowd again.

+

+"Breath like new-mown hay, brothers.  Now's the chance for true believers.

+How much?"

+

+"A hundred and ten."

+

+"A hundred and ten--thanks, Sidi!  A hundred and ten for this jewel

+of a girl.  Dirt cheap yet, brothers.  Try her muscles.

+Look at her flesh.  Not a flaw anywhere.  Pass her round, test her,

+try her, talk to her--she speaks good Arabic.  Isn't she fit for a Sultan?

+She's the best thing I'll offer to-day, and by the Prophet,

+if you are not quick I'll keep her for myself.  Now, for the third

+and last time--seventeen years of age, sound, strong, plump, sweet,

+and intact--how much?"

+

+Israel's blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl,

+and to hear what shameless questions they asked of her,

+and with a long sigh he was turning away from the crowd,

+when another man came up to it.  The man was black and old

+and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white selham.

+But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him,

+he made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people,

+pushed his way to the girl's side, and opened his arms to her,

+and she fell into them with a cry of joy and pain together.

+

+It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before,

+had been brought from the Soos through the country

+of Sidi Hosain ben Hashem, having been torn away from his wife,

+who was since dead, and from his only child, who thus strangely

+rejoined him.  This story he told, in broken Arabic; to those

+that stood around, and, hard as were the faces of the bidders,

+and brutal as was their trade; there was not an eye among them all

+but was melted at his story.

+

+Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, "I will give

+twenty dollars to buy him the girl's liberty," and straightway another

+and another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount

+of the last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it,

+and the girl was free.

+

+Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand,

+came to Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks,

+and said in his broken way: "The blessing of Allah upon you,

+white brother, and if you have a child of your own may you never lose her,

+but may Allah favour her and let you keep her with you always!"

+

+That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear,

+and, facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned

+down the dark arcade that descends into the old town as into a vault,

+and having crossed the markets, he came upon the second

+of the three sights that were to smite out of his heart

+his pride towards God.  A man in a blue tunic girded with a red sash,

+and with a red cotton handkerchief tied about his head,

+was driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees cut

+into short lengths to lie over its panniers.  He was clearly

+a Spanish woodseller and he had the weary, averted, and

+downcast look of a race that is despised and kept under.

+His donkey was a bony creature, with raw places on its flank

+and shoulders where its hide had been worn by the friction

+of its burdens.  He drove it slowly; crying "Arrah!" to it

+in the tongue of its own country, and not beating it cruelly.

+At the bottom of the arcade there was an open place where a foul ditch

+was crossed by a rickety bridge.  Coming to this the man hesitated

+a moment, as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey over it

+or to make the beast trudge through the water.  Concluding to cross

+the bridge, he cried "Arrah!" again, and drove the donkey forward

+with one blow of his stick.  But when the donkey was in the middle of it,

+the rotten thing gave way, and the beast and its burden fell

+into the ditch.  The donkey's legs were broken, and when a throng

+of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard's cry, had cut away its panniers

+and dragged it out of the water on to the paving-stones of the street,

+the film covered its eyes, and in a moment it was dead.

+

+At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck,

+and called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.

+And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed

+to pity him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding

+down the arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood

+where the dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it.

+Then she fell on the man with bitter reproaches.  "Allah blot out

+your name, you thief!" she cried.  "You've killed the creature,

+and may you starve and die yourself, you dog of a Nazarene!"

+

+This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl

+to hold her peace.  "Silence, you young wanton!" he cried, in a voice

+of indignation.  "Who are you, that you dare trample on the man

+in his trouble?"

+

+It turned out that the girl was the man's daughter, and he was a renegade

+from Ceuta.  And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his father

+and his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel's face,

+and said, "You are very kind, my father.  God bless you!  I may not be

+a good man, sir, and I've not lived a right life, but it's hard

+when your own children are taught to despise you.  Better to lose them

+in their cradles, before they can speak to you to curse you."

+

+Israel's hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word,

+and he turned about and hurried away.  Oh no, no, no!  He was not,

+of all men, the most sorely tried.  Worse to be a slave, torn

+from the arms he loves!  Worse to be a father whose children join

+with his enemies to curse him!

+

+He had been wrong.  What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice

+to part with it?  Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell,

+and that was all.  But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost

+everything.  And love was his, and would be his always,

+for he loved Naomi, and she clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall.

+Let him walk humbly before God, for God was great.

+

+Now these sights, though they reduced Israel's pride, increased

+his cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet

+lighter spirit, when he came upon a saint's house under the shadow

+of the town walls.  It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted

+by a white flag; and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out

+to the entrance.  He was a poor, miserable creature--ragged, dirty,

+and with dishevelled hair--and, seeing Israel's eyes upon him,

+he began to talk in some wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only

+a fierce jabber of sounds that had no words in them, and of words

+that had no meaning.  The poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught

+he was counted a holy man among his people, and put to live in this place,

+which was the tomb of a dead saint--though not more dead to the ways

+of life was he who lay under the floor than he who lived above it.

+The man continued his wild jabber as long as Israel's eyes were on him,

+and Israel dropped two coins into his hand and passed on.

+

+Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God's creatures.

+And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type

+and sign of how her soul was smitten.

+

+On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company

+of his people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey.

+And then, while they walked some paces together before parting,

+and the prophet talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying

+in the prison at Shawan (for he had heard of them from Israel),

+Israel himself mentioned Naomi.

+

+"My father," he said, "there is something that I  have not told you."

+

+"Tell it now, my son," said the Mahdi.

+

+"I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.

+You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,

+for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone,

+and so she is very near and dear to me.  But she is in the land

+of silence and in the land of night.  Nothing can she see,

+and nothing hear, and never has her voice opened the curtains of the air,

+for she is blind and dumb and deaf."

+

+"Merciful Allah!" cried the Mahdi.

+

+"Ah! is her state so terrible?  I thought you would think it so.

+Yes, for all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature

+of the fields that knows not God."

+

+"Allah preserve her!" cried the Mahdi.

+

+"And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me

+in the vision, and my soul trembles for her soul.  But if God has

+washed me with water should not she also be clean?"

+

+"God knows," said the Mahdi.  "He gives no rewards for repentance."

+

+"But listen!" said Israel.  "In a vision of death her mother saw her,

+and she was afflicted no more.  No, for she could see, and hear,

+and speak.  Man of God, will it come to pass?"

+

+"God is good," said the Mahdi.  "He needs that no man should teach

+Him pity."

+

+"But I love her," cried Israel, "and I vowed to her mother to guard her.

+She is joy of my joy and life of my life.  Without her the morning has

+no freshness and the night no rest.  Surely the Lord sees this,

+and will have mercy?"

+

+The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, "The Lord sees all.

+Go your way in trust.  Farewell!"

+

+"Farewell!"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XI

+

+ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING

+

+

+ISRAEL'S return home was an experience at all points the reverse

+of his going abroad.  He had seven dollars in the pocket

+of his waistband on setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred

+and more with which he had started from Tetuan.  His men had gone

+on before him and told their story.  So the people whom he came upon

+by the way either ignored him or jeered at him, and not one that

+on his coming had run to do him honour now stepped aside

+that he might pass.

+

+Two days after leaving Fez he came again to Wazzan.

+Women were going home from market by the side of their camels,

+and charcoal-burners were riding back to the country

+on the empty burdas of their mules.  It was nigh upon sunset

+when Israel entered the town, and so exactly was everything the same

+that he could almost have tricked himself and believed

+that scarce two minutes had passed since he had left it.

+There at the fountains were the water-carriers waiting

+with their water-skins, and there in the market-place sat the women

+and children with their dishes of soup; there were the men

+by the booths with their pipes ready charged with keef,

+and there was the mooddin in the minaret, looking out over the plain.

+Everything was the same save one thing, and that concerned Israel himself.

+No Grand Shereef stood waiting to exchange horses with him,

+and no black guard led him through the town.  Footsore and dirty,

+covered with dust, and tired, he walked through the streets alone.

+And when presently the voice rang out overhead, and the breathless town

+broke instantly into bubbles of sounds--the tinkling of the bells

+of the water-carriers, the shouts of the children, and the calls

+of the men--only one man seemed to see him and know him.

+This was an Arab, wearing scarcely enough rags to cover his nakedness,

+who was bathing his hot cheeks in water which a water-carrier was pouring

+into his hands, and he lifted his glistening face as Israel passed,

+and called him "Dog!" and "Jew!" and commanded him to uncover his feet.

+

+Israel slept that night in one of the three squalid fondaks of Wazzan

+inhabited by the Jews.  His room was a sort of narrow box,

+in a square court of many such boxes, with a handful of straw

+shaken over the earth floor for a bed.  On the doorpost the figure

+of a hand was painted in red, and over the lintel there was a rude drawing

+of a scorpion, with an imprecation written under it that purported

+to be from the mouth of the Prophet Joshua, son of Nun.

+If the charm kept evil spirits from the place of Israel's rest,

+it did not banish good ones.  Israel slept in that poor bed

+as he had never slept under the purple canopy of his own chamber,

+and all night long one angel form seemed to hover over him.  It was Naomi.

+He could see her clearly.  They were together in a little cottage

+somewhere.  The house was a mean one, but jasmine and marjoram and pinks

+and roses grew outside of it, and love grew inside.  And Naomi!

+How bright were her eyes, for they could see!  Yes, and her ears

+could hear, and her tongue could speak!

+

+Two days after Israel left Wazzan he was back in the bashalic of Tetuan.

+Each night he had dreamt the same dream, and though he knew

+each morning when he awoke with a sigh that his dream was only

+a reflection of his dead wife's vision, yet he could not help

+but think of it the long day through.  He tried to remember

+if he had ever seen the cottage with his waking eyes, and where he had

+seen it, and to recall the voice of Naomi as he had heard it

+in his dream, that he might know if it was the same as he used

+to think he heard when he sat by her in his stolen watches of the night

+while she lay asleep.  Sometimes when he reflected he thought

+he must be growing childish, so foolish was his joy in looking forward

+to the night--for he had almost grown in love with it--that he might

+dream his dream again.

+

+But it was a dear, delicious folly, for it helped him to bear

+the troubles of his journey, and they were neither light nor few.

+After passing through El Kasar he had been robbed and stripped both

+of his small remaining moneys and the better part of his clothes

+by a gang of ruffians who had followed him out of the town.

+Then a good woman--the old wife, turned into the servant of a Moor

+who had married a young one--had taken pity on his condition

+and given him a disused Moorish jellab.  His misfortune had not been

+without its advantage.  Being forced to travel the rest of his way

+home in the disguise of a Moor, he had heard himself discussed

+by his own people when they knew nothing of his presence.

+Every evil that had befallen them had been attributed to him.

+Ben Aboo, their Basha, was a good, humane man, who was often driven

+to do that which his soul abhorred.  It was Israel ben Oliel

+who was their cruel taxmaster.

+

+When Israel was within a day's journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge

+fell upon the country.  A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud

+from the direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade

+of grass that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain

+over which it had passed was as black and barren as a lava stream.

+The farmers were impoverished, and the poorer people made beggars.

+Even this last disaster they charged in their despair to Israel,

+for Allah was now cursing them for Israel's sake.  They were

+the same people that had thrust their presents upon him

+when he was setting out.

+

+At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl

+of buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water.

+She gave him a dish of zummetta--barley roasted like coffee--and

+inquired if he was going on to Tetuan.  He told her yes, and she asked

+if his home was there.  And when he answered that it was, she looked

+at him again, and said in a moving way, "Then Allah help you, brother."

+

+"Why me more than another, sister?" said Israel.

+

+"Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man," said the old woman.

+"And that is the sort he is hardest upon."

+

+Israel faltered and said, "He?  Who, mother?  Ah, you mean--"

+

+"Who else but Israel the Jew?" said she, and then added, as

+by a sudden afterthought, "But they say he is gone at last,

+and the Sultan has stripped him.  Well, Allah send us some one else

+soon to set right this poor Gharb of ours!  And what a man for poor men

+he might have been--so wise and powerful!"

+

+Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame,

+he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him.

+"They tell me," he said, "that Allah has cursed him with a daughter

+that has devils."

+

+"Blind and dumb, poor soul," said the old woman; "but Allah has pity

+for the afflicted--he is taking her away."

+

+Israel rose.  "Away?"

+

+"She is ill since her father went to Fez."

+

+"Ill?"

+

+"Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying."

+

+Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered,

+and fled out of the hut.  Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying

+with dreams--billing and cooing with his own fancies--fondling

+and nuzzling and coddling them?  Let all dreams henceforth be dead

+and damned for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them

+that poor men's souls might be staked and lost!  Oh, why had he not

+remembered the pale face of Naomi when he left her, and the silence

+of her tongue that had used to laugh?  Fool, fool!  Why had he ever left

+her at all?

+

+With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running

+at his utmost velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting

+his imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist

+against the sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering

+to himself in awe.

+

+Would God not hear his prayer?  God knew the child was very near

+and dear to him, and also that he was a lonely man.  "Have pity

+on a lonely man, O God!" he whispered.  "Let me keep my child;

+take all else that I have, everything, no matter what!

+Only let me keep her--yes, just as she is, let me have her still!

+Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I am humble,

+and ask that alone."

+

+On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down

+on his uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust,

+he prayed this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.

+

+When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening

+under the setting sun. Then he thought of his Moorish jellab,

+and looked at himself, and saw that he was returning home like a beggar;

+and he remembered with what splendour he had started out.

+Should he wait for the darkness, and creep into his house

+under the cover of it?  If the thought had occurred an hour before

+he must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of every face

+in Tetuan than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now that he was

+so near he was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon

+to learn the truth he dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro

+on the heath outside the town, paltering with himself,

+struggling with himself, eating out his heart with eagerness,

+trying to believe that he was waiting for the night.

+

+The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening

+with thick stars, Israel passed unknown through the Moorish gate,

+which was still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square.

+At the gate of the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked,

+and demanded entrance in the name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards

+who kept it fell back at sight of him with looks of consternation.

+

+"Israel!" cried one. and dropped his lantern.

+

+Israel whispered, "Keep your tongue between your teeth!" and hurried on.

+

+At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again,

+but more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and,

+seeing his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.

+

+"Habeebah!" he cried, and he knocked once more.

+

+Then Ali came to the door. "What Moorish man are you?" cried Ali,

+pushing him back as he pressed forward.

+

+"Ali!  Hush!  It is I--Israel."

+

+Then Ali knew him and cried, "God save us!  What has happened?"

+

+"What has happened here?" said Israel. "Naomi," he faltered,

+"what of her?"

+

+"Then you have heard?" said Ali. "Thank God, she is now well."

+

+Israel laughed--his laugh was like a scream.

+

+"More than that--a strange thing has befallen her since you went away,"

+said Ali.

+

+"What?"

+

+"She can hear"

+

+"It's a lie!" cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali

+to the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing

+and saying, "Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son;

+I did not know what I was doing. But do not torture me.

+If what you tell me is true, there is no man so happy under heaven;

+but if it is false, there is no fiend in hell need envy me."

+

+And Ali answered through his tears, "It is true, my father--come and see."

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XII

+

+THE BAPTISM OF SOUND

+

+

+WHAT had happened at Israel's house during Israel's absence is a story

+that may be quickly told.  On the day of his departure Naomi wandered

+from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find,

+and in the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber

+where her father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling

+by his chair and the book was in her hands.

+

+"Look at her, poor child," said Fatimah.  "See, she thinks he will come

+as usual.  God bless her sweet innocent face!"

+

+On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and

+made her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments

+of the wife of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed

+to ramble aimlessly through the courtyard from the Treasury

+to the Hall of Justice, and from there to the gate of the prison.

+

+The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad,

+and neither did she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat

+constantly, and seemed to be waiting patiently.  She was pale and quiet

+and silent; she did not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look

+of submission that was very touching to see.

+

+"Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel," said Fatimah.

+"How long will she wait, poor darling?"

+

+On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place

+to restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face.

+Her hands were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes

+were bloodshot.

+

+It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel's fears

+on setting out from home had been right after all.  And making his own

+reckoning with Naomi's condition, Ali went off for the only doctor

+living in Tetuan--a Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading

+to the western gate.  This good man came to look at Naomi,

+felt her pulse, touched her throbbing forehead, with difficulty

+examined her tongue, and pronounced her illness to be fever.

+He gave some homely directions as to her treatment--for he despaired

+of administering drugs to such a one as she was--and promised

+to return the next day.

+

+About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious.

+Fatimah stood constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead

+with vinegar and water; Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet;

+and Ali crouched in a corner outside the door of her room.

+

+The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise;

+but there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head

+very solemnly, and said, "I will come again after two days more,

+when the fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech

+out of Tangier along with me!"

+

+Meantime, Naomi's delirium continued.  It was gentle as

+her own spirit tent there.  was this that was strange and eerie

+about her unconsciousness--that whereas she had been dumb

+while her mind in its dark cell must have been mistress of itself

+and of her soul, she spoke without ceasing throughout the time

+of her reason's vanquishment.  Not that her poor tongue in its trouble

+uttered speech such as those that heard could follow and understand,

+but only a restless babble of empty sounds, yet with tones

+of varying feeling, sometimes of gladness, sometimes of sorrow,

+sometimes of remonstrance, and sometimes of entreaty.

+

+All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat together

+by her bedside, holding each other's hands like little children

+in great fear.  Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness

+outside the door, listening in terror to the silvery young voice

+that had never echoed in that house before.  This was the night

+when Israel, sleeping at the squalid inn of the Jews of Wazzan,

+was hearing Naomi's voice in his dreams.

+

+At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone,

+and away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as

+to the fondak, which stands on the hill above it, that he might

+strain his wet eyes in the pitiless sunlight for Israel's caravan

+that should soon come.  On the first morning he saw nothing,

+but on the second morning he came upon Israel's men returning

+without him, and telling their lying story that he had been stripped

+of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and was coming behind them penniless.

+

+Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.

+That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say

+he had fallen was an affront and an outrage.  So, stripling as he was,

+the lad faced the rascals with the courage of a lion.

+"Liars and thieves!" he cried; "tell that story to another soul in Tetuan,

+and I will go straight to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have

+every black dog of you all whipped through the streets

+for plundering my master."

+

+The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks

+as a mock salute.  But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale

+no more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them

+concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence

+that sits by right of nature on the tongues of Moors--they said and

+knew nothing.

+

+While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor

+out of Tangier came to Naomi.  The girl was still unconscious,

+and the wise leech shook his head over her.  Her case was hopeless;

+she was sinking--in plain words, she was dying--and if her father

+did not come before the morrow he would come too late to find her alive.

+

+Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that

+to spiritual conflict.  Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had

+secretly become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead.

+She was, therefore, for sending for the Chacham.  But Habeebah had

+remained a Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam.  "The Imam is good,

+the Imam is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?"

+"Nay, but our Sidi holds not with the Imam, for our lord is a Jew,and

+our lord is our master, our lord is our sultan, our lord is our king."

+"Shoof!  What is Sidi against paradise?  And paradise is for her

+who makes a follower of Moosa into a follower of Mohammed.

+Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her lips, and we are all three

+blest for ever--otherwise we will burn everlastingly in the fires

+of Jehinnum."  "But, alack! how can the poor girl say the Kelmah,

+being as dumb as the grave?"  "Then how can she say the Shemang either?"

+

+Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste

+and silenced both the bondwomen: "The Imam is a villain, and

+the Chacham is a thief."  There was only one good man left in Tetuan,

+and that was his own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him

+the harp in the days of the Governor's marriage.  This person was

+an old negro, bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf,

+and still partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise,

+a liberated slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and

+the Torah, and willing to teach either impartially, according

+to his knowledge, for he was neither a Jew nor a Muslim,

+but a little of both, as he used to say, and not too much of either.

+For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance there must have been no place

+save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that this good nondescript

+was a privileged pet of everbody.  In his dark cellar,

+down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar,

+he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out,

+through thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive

+generations of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither

+and thither among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words,

+and often meat and drink of his meagre substance.

+

+Such was Ali's hero after Israel, and now, in Israel's absence

+and his own great trouble, he tried away for him.

+

+"Father," cried the lad," does it not say in the good book

+that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much?"

+

+"It does, my son," said the Taleb "You have truth.  What then?"

+

+"Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover," said Ali.

+

+It was a sweet instance of simple faith.  The old black Taleb dismissed

+his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock,

+hobbled to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down

+at her through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose,

+and then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes,

+and a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor

+and prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.

+

+The negro's prayer was simple to childishness.  It told God everything;

+it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away

+and might not know.  The maiden was sick unto death.  She had been

+three days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing.

+She was blind and dumb and deaf.  Her father loved her and was wrapped up

+in her.  She was his only child, and his wife  was dead, and he was

+a lonely man.  He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned,

+the girl were gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart

+would be broken and his very soul in peril.

+

+Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb angel

+of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole

+of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her,

+eager and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips,

+calling down mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen

+by the soul alone.

+

+And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare

+to tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees

+by the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly

+and Naomi lay still on her pillow.  The hot flush faded from her cheeks;

+her features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands,

+which had been restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.

+

+The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted

+"El hamdu l'Illah!" (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed

+down the deep furrows of his streaming face.  And then, as if

+to complete the miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it,

+a strange and wondrous thing befell.  First, a thin watery humour

+flowed from one of Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself

+on her elbow.  Her eyes were open as if they saw; her lips were parted

+as though they were breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh

+like one who has slept softly through the night and has just awakened

+in the morning.

+

+Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment

+of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound.

+It was a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter.

+And then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound,

+and while the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue,

+she lifted her idle hand and covered her ear, and over her face

+there passed a look of dread.

+

+So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it,

+and they were shouting "Hallelujah!" with one voice, thinking only

+that she who had been dead to them was alive again.  But the old Taleb

+cried eagerly, "Hush! my children, hush!  What is coming is

+a marvellous thing!  I know what it is--who knows so well as I?

+Once I was deaf, my children, but now I hear.  Listen!

+The maiden has had fever--fever of the brain.  Listen!

+A watery humour had gathered in her head.  It has gone,

+it has flowed away.  Now she will hear.  Listen, for it is I

+that know it--who knows it so well as I?  Yes; she will be no longer deaf.

+Her ears will be opened.  She will hear.  Once she was living

+in a land of silence; now she is coming into the land of sound.

+Blessed be God, for He has wrought this wondrous work.  God is great!

+God is mighty!  Praise the merciful God for ever!  El hamdu l'Illah!"

+

+And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb's story seemed to be,

+it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning

+in a slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath,

+Naomi turned her face full upon him; and when the black women

+in their ready faith, joined in his shouts of praise, she turned her face

+towards them also; and wherever a voice sounded in the room

+she inclined her head towards it as one who knew the direction

+of the sounds, and also as one who was in fear of them.

+

+But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing

+but one thing only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change

+that she who had been deaf could now hear, that she who had never

+before heard speech now heard their voices as they spoke around her,

+Ali, in his frantic delight laughing and crying together,

+his white teeth aglitter, and his round black face shining with tears,

+began to shout and to sing, and to dance around the bed in wild joy

+at the miracle which God had wrought in answer to his old Taleb's prayer.

+No heed did he pay to the Taleb's cries of warning, but danced on and on,

+and neither did the bondwomen see the old man's uplifted arms

+or his big lips pursed out in hushes, so overpowered were they

+with their delight, so startled and so joy drunken.  But over their tumult

+there came a wild outburst of piercing shrieks.  They were the cries

+of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror at the first sounds

+that had reached her of human voices.  Her face was blanched,

+her eyelids were trembling, her lips were restless, her nostrils quivered,

+her whole being seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of dread, and,

+in the horrible disarray of all her sensations her brain,

+on its wakening from its dolorous sleep of three delirious days,

+was tottering and reeling at its welcome in this world of noise.

+

+Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their peace

+in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the clamour

+of tongues.

+

+It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey

+in the jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door.

+When he entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man,

+too eager to remove the sorry garments which had been given to him

+on the way, Naomi was resting against the pillar of the bed.

+He saw that her countenance was changed, and that every feature

+of her face seemed to listen.  No longer was it as the face of a lamb

+that is simple and content, neither was it as the face of a child

+that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot and perplexed.  Fear sat

+on her face, and wonder and questioning; and as Fatimah stood

+by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no cheer did she seem

+to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away from her

+when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears

+with terror of trouble.  All this Israel saw on the instant,

+and then his sight grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him,

+a thick mist seemed to cover everything, and through the dense waves

+of semi-consciousness he heard the dull hum of Fatimah's muffled voice

+coming to him as from far away.

+

+"My pretty Naomi!  My little heart!  My sweet jewel of gold and silver!

+It is nothing!  Nothing!  Look!  See!  Her father has come back!

+Her dear father has come back to her!"

+

+Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew

+that Naomi's arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her,

+and that her head was pressed hard against his bosom.  Yes, it was she!

+It was Naomi!  Ali had told him truth.  She lived!  She was well!

+She could hear!  The old hope that had chirped in his soul was justified,

+and the dear delicious dream was come true.  Oh!  God was great,

+God was good, God had given him more than he had asked or deserved!

+

+Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob,

+yet uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech,

+only holding Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face.

+And the black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb

+in that great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he

+to whose house had come the wonderful work that God had wrought.

+

+No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi's face,

+in joy over such as were joyful.  When he had taken her in his arms

+she had known him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise.

+But when she continued to lie on his bosom it was not only because

+he was her father and she loved him, and because he had been lost

+to her and was found, it was also because he alone was silent

+of all that were about her.

+

+When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears,

+that, coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice

+of man was never heard, where the air was songless as the air

+of dreams and darkling as the air of a tomb, her soul misgave her,

+and her spirit trembled in a new world of strange sounds.

+For what was the ear but a little dark chamber, a vault, a dungeon

+in a castle, wherein the soul was ever passing to and fro, asking

+for news of the world without?  Through seventeen dark and silent years

+the soul of Naomi had been passing and repassing within

+its beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying daily and hourly,

+"Watchman, what of the world?"  At length it had found an answer,

+and it was terrified.  The world had spoken to her soul and its voice

+was like the reverberations of a subterranean cavern, strange and deep

+and awful.

+

+In that first moment of Israel's consciousness after he entered the room,

+all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.

+

+Ali was saying, "Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers

+returned yesterday, and said--"

+

+And the bondwomen were crying, "Sidi, you were right when you went away!"

+"Yes, the dear child was ill!"  "Oh, how she missed you

+when you were gone."  "She has been delirious, and the doctor,

+the son of Tetuan--"

+

+And the old Taleb was muttering, "Master, it is all by God's mercy.

+We prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo!  He has given us

+this gateway to her spirit as well."

+

+Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault

+of Naomi's ears they startled and distressed her.  So, to pacify her,

+he motioned them out of the chamber.  They went away without a word.

+The reason of Naomi's fears began to dawn upon them.  An awe seemed

+to be cast over her by the solemnity of that great moment.  It was like

+to the birth-moment of a soul.

+

+And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the door

+of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women were

+calling to their children without, and the children were still shouting

+in their play.  This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested her head

+against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put her arms

+about his neck and clung to him.  And while he did so his heart yearned

+to speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear.

+Let it be but one word, only one, that she might know her father's

+voice--for she had never once heard it--and answer it with a smile.

+

+"Daughter!  My dearest!  My darling."

+

+Only this, nothing more!  Only one sweet word of all the unspoken

+tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been

+seventeen years dammed up in his breast.  But no, it could not be.

+He must not speak lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away.

+To see that would break his heart.  Nevertheless, he wrestled

+with the temptation.  It was terrible.  He dared not risk it.

+So he sat on the bed in silence, hardly moving, scarcely

+breathing--a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab, holding Naomi

+in his arms.

+

+It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.

+In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors,

+who had fasted through the day, were feasting and carousing.

+Over the walls of the Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn

+at the entrance to the little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers,

+there came at intervals a hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts

+and cries.  The day was Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and

+on the open space called the Feddan many fires were lighted

+at the mouths of tents, and men and women and children--country Arabs

+and Barbers--were squatting around the charcoal embers eating

+and drinking and talking and laughing, while the ruddy glow lit up

+their swarthy faces in the darkness.  But presently the wing of night

+fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the streets

+came to an end; the "Balak" of the ass-driver was no more heard,

+the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement,

+the fires on the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and

+the wild shouts of the shoemakers' quarter were hushed,

+and quieter and more quiet grew the air until all was still.

+

+At the coming of peace Naomi's fears seemed to abate.  Her clinging arms

+released their hold of her father's neck, and with a trembling sigh

+she dropped back on to the pillow.  And in this hour of stillness

+she would have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart

+in thankfulness to God, that He was making the way of her great journey

+easy out of the land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke

+over the town.  Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering

+in the air, which had the echoing hollowness of a vault.  It was loud

+and long and terrible.  First from the direction of Marteel,

+over the four miles which divide Tetuan from the coast, came the warning

+which the sea sends before trouble comes to the land--a deep moan

+as of waters falling from the sky.  Next came the moan of the wind

+down the valley that opens on the gate called the Bab el Marsa,

+and along the river that flows to the port.  Then came the roll

+of thunder, like a million cannons, down the gorges of the Reef mountains

+and across the plain that stretches far away to Kitan.  Last of all,

+the black clouds of the sky emptied themselves over the town,

+and the rain fell in floods on the roof of the house and on the pavement

+of the patio, and leapt up again in great loud drops, making a noise

+to the ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a hidden multitude.

+Thus sound after sound broke over the darkness of the night

+in a thousand awful voices, now near, now far, now loud,

+now low, now long, now short, now rising, now falling, now rushing,

+now running--a mighty tumult and a fearsome anarchy.

+

+At last Naomi's terror was redoubled.  Every sound seemed

+to smite her body as a blow.  Hitherto she had known one sense only,

+the sense of touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also,

+she continued to refer all sensations to feeling.  At the sound

+of the sea she put out her arms before her; at the sound of the wind

+she buried her face in her palms; and at the sound of the thunder

+she lifted her hands as if to protect her head.

+

+Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom.

+He yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer,

+tender words of love, gentle words of hope.

+

+"Be not afraid, my daughter!  It is only the wind, it is only the rain;

+it is only the thunder.  Once you loved to run and race in them.

+They shall not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe.

+There, there, my little heart!  See, your father is with you.

+He will guard you.  Fear not, my child, fear not!"

+

+Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi's ears,

+but, alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind

+which moaned about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead?

+And again and again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink

+from the solace of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult

+of the voices of the storm.

+

+Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken.  He began to see in its fulness

+the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise it,

+so sudden and so numbing was the stroke.  He began to know that

+with the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed--the blessing

+of a pathway to his daughter's soul--a misfortune had come as well.

+What was it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not

+understand?  And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born

+out of the land of silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind

+and dumb, but a circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned

+and cried and shrieked and moved around her?

+

+Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi's terror,

+and smooth her forehead and chafe her hands.  And this he did,

+until at length, in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault

+of the heavens seemed rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her,

+and she fell into a long unconsciousness.  Then Israel held back

+his heart no longer, but wept above her, and called to her,

+and cried aloud upon her name--

+

+"Naomi!  Naomi!  My poor child!  My dearest!  Hear me!  It is nothing!

+nothing!  Listen!  It is gone!  Gone!"

+

+With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent

+to his soul in its trouble.  And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness,

+he knew not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was

+in a great turmoil.  Desolate! desolate!  All was desolate!

+His high-built hopes were in ashes!

+

+Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow,

+and when grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun

+which she could not see and sweeter than the songs which she

+could not hear, when she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage

+and fretted not at the bars which bound her, when she laughed

+as she braided her hair and came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.

+And remembering this, he looked down at her knitted face,

+and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his voice through the tumult

+of the storm, and cried again on the God of Jacob, and rebuked Him

+for the marvellous work which He had wrought.

+

+If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after,

+and foresaw what must come to pass.  And, foreseeing and knowing all,

+why had God answered his prayer?  He himself had been a fool.

+Why had he craved God's pity?  Once his poor child was blither

+than the panther of the wilderness and happier than the young lamb

+that sports in springtime.  If she was blind, she knew not what it was

+to see; and if she was deaf, she knew not what it was to hear;

+and if she was dumb, she knew not what it was to speak.

+Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more than

+of the wings of the eagle or the dove.  Yet he would not be content;

+he would not be appeased.  Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought

+this evil upon him!

+

+But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked

+in this manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm

+lapsed to a breathless quiet.

+

+And when the tempest was gone Naomi's delirium passed away.

+She seemed to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen,

+and nothing could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father

+that lay over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.

+

+"Ah!"

+

+It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought

+that she was back in the land of great silence once again,

+and that the voices which had startled her, and the storm

+which had terrified her, had been nothing but an evil dream.

+

+In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches

+with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,

+and said within himself, "It was her baptism.  Now she will walk

+the world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid.

+Truly the Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise

+beyond all wisdom!"

+

+Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out

+of the room on tiptoe.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XIII

+

+NAOMI'S GREAT GIFT

+

+

+With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts

+with which Naomi had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces

+with which she had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her

+as a garment when she disrobed.

+

+It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused

+by her new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father's house,

+and though she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know

+who approached.  They led her into the street, into the Feddan,

+into the walled lane to the great gate, into the steep arcades leading

+to the Kasbah; and no more as of old did she thread her way

+through the people, seeming to see them through the flesh of her face

+and to salute them with the laugh on her lips, but only followed on and on

+with helpless footsteps.  They took her to the hill above the battery,

+and her breath came quick as she trod the familiar ways;

+but when she was come to the summit, no longer did she exult

+in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty winds

+about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the world

+unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it,

+and heard the breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming

+in her ears.  They gave Ali's harp into her hands, the same

+that she had played so strangely at the Kasbah on the marriage

+of Ben Aboo; but never again as on that day did she sweep the strings

+to wild rhapsodies of sound such as none had heard before

+and none could follow, but only touched and fumbled them

+with deftless fingers that knew no music.

+

+She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister

+to her pleasures and to cherish her affections.  No longer did she seem

+to communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest

+of the human kind.  She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more,

+but only a beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak

+and faint.

+

+Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy

+at the loss of those powers over which his enemies throughout

+seventeen evil years had bleated and barked "Beelzebub!"  And if God

+in His mercy had taken the angel out of his house, so strangely gifted,

+so strangely joyful, He had given him instead, for the hunger

+of his heart as a man, a sweet human daughter, however helpless and frail.

+

+Thus in the first days of Naomi's great change Israel was content.

+But day by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted

+by strange sinkings of the heart.  Naomi's frailty appeared

+to be not only of the body but also of the spirit.  It seemed as if

+her soul had suddenly fallen asleep.  She betrayed neither joy nor sorrow.

+No sound escaped her lips; no thought for herself or for others seemed

+to animate her.  She neither laughed nor wept.  When Israel kissed

+her pale brow, she did not stretch out her arms as she had done before

+to draw down his head to her lips.  Calmly, silently, sadly, gracefully,

+she passed from day to day, without feeling and without

+thought--a beautiful statue of flesh and blood.

+

+What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself knows;

+but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first delight

+in the new gift with which God had gifted her.

+

+To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her

+to walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play

+in her childhood--the wild places covered with the peppermint

+and the pink, the thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom,

+where she had gathered flowers in the old times, when God had taught her.

+The day was sweet, for it was the cool of the morning, the air was soft,

+and the wind was gentle, and under the shady trees the covert

+of the reeds lay quiet.  And whither Naomi would, thither they

+had wandered, without object and without direction.

+

+On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths

+of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and

+the sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream,

+a tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights

+of the Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed.

+And there--but by what impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had

+withdrawn her hand from his hand; and at the next moment,

+in scarcely more time than it took him to stoop to the ground and

+rise again, suddenly as if she had sunk into the earth, or been lifted

+into the sky, Naomi disappeared from his sight.

+

+Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,

+but she was nowhere near.  He called her by her name, thinking she would

+answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her laugh.

+

+"Naomi!  Naomi!  Come, come, my child, where are you?"

+

+But no sound came back to him.

+

+Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but

+with a voice of fear.

+

+"Naomi, Naomi!  Where are you? where? where?"

+

+Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh

+nor the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.

+

+Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot

+where she had left him, without waywardness or thought of evil,

+only missing his hand and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid

+and walking rapidly, until the dense foliage between them had hidden her

+from sight and deadened the sound of his voice.

+

+Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her

+at length in the place whereto she had wandered.  It was a short bend

+of the brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water

+with forest gloom.  She was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak,

+and it seemed as if she had sat herself down to weep in her dumb trouble,

+for her blind eyes were still wet with tears.  The river was murmuring

+at her feet; an old olive-tree over her head was pattering

+with its multitudinous tongues; the little family of a squirrel was

+chirping by her side, and one tiny creature of the brood was squirling

+up her dress; a thrush was swinging itself on the low bough of the olive

+and singing as it swung, and a sheep of solemn face--gaunt and grim

+and ancient--was standing and palpitating before her.  Bees were humming,

+grasshoppers were buzzing, the light wind was whispering, and cattle were

+lowing in the distance.  The air of that sweet spot in that sweet hour was

+musical with every sweet sound of the earth and sky, and fragrant

+with all the wild odours of the wood.

+

+"My darling," cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief,

+and then he paused and looked at her again.

+

+The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the light

+that shone in them.  A tender smile played about her mouth;

+her head was held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks

+were flushed.  She had pushed her hat back from her head,

+and her yellow hair had fallen over her neck and breast.

+One of her hands covered one ear, and the other strayed among the plants

+that grew on the bank beside her.  She seemed to be listening intently,

+eagerly, rapturously.  A rare and radiant joy, a pure and tender delight,

+appeared to gush out of her beautiful face.  It was almost as though

+she believed that everything she heard with the great new gift

+which God had given her was speaking to her, and bidding her welcome

+and offering her love; as if the garrulous old olive over her head were

+stretching down his arms to sport with her hair, and pattering;

+"Kiss me, little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss me! kiss me!"--as if

+the rippling river at her feet were laughing and crying,

+"Catch me, naked feet! catch me, catch me!" as if the thrush

+on the bough were singing, "Where from, sunny locks? where from?

+where from?--as if the young squirrel were chirping, "I'm not afraid,

+not afraid, not afraid!" and as if the grey old sheep were

+breathing slowly, "Pat me, little maiden! you may, you may!"

+

+"God bless her beautiful face!" cried Israel.  "She listens

+with every feature and every line of it."

+

+It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and

+from that day forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds

+whatsoever--in the voices of children at play--in the bleat

+of the goat--in the footsteps of them she loved--in the hiss and whirr

+of her mother's old spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work--and

+in Ali's harp, when he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.

+

+But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown

+in the ground first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell

+what change was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism

+of sound, the sweet voices of earth first entered it.  Neither she herself

+nor any one else ever fully realised what that change was,

+for it was a beautiful and holy mystery.  It was also a great joy,

+and she seemed to give herself up to it.  No music ever escaped her,

+and of all human music she took most pleasure in the singing

+of love songs.  These she listened to with a simple and rapt delight;

+their joy seemed to answer to her joy, and the joyousness of a song

+of love seemed to gather in the air wheresoever she went.

+

+There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were

+beautiful, and none were beautifully sung.  Fatimah's homely ditties

+were all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her

+a thousand times when she had not heard.  Most of these were songs

+of the desert and the caravan, telling of musk and ambergris,

+and odorous locks and dancing cypress, and liquid ruby,

+and lips like wine; and some were warm tales which the good soul herself

+hardly understood, of enchanting beauties whose silence was the door

+of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love tore the veil

+of their chastity.

+

+But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be

+the yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call down

+love out of the skies, or else be carried up to it.  This had been

+a favourite song of Naomi's mother, and it was from Ruth

+that Fatimah had learned it in those anxious watches of the early

+uncertain days when she sang it over the cradle to her babe

+that was deaf after all and did not hear.  Naomi knew nothing of this,

+but she heard her mother's song at last, though silent were the lips

+that first sang it, and it was her chief and dear delight.

+

+        O, where is Love?

+            Where, where is Love?

+        Is it of heavenly birth?

+        Is it a thing of earth?

+            Where, where is Love?

+

+In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song,

+when Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it,

+and the simple silent arts she used, being mute and blind,

+to show her pleasure while it lasted, and to ask for it again

+when it was done, were very sweet and touching.

+

+And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves

+that child most among many children that most is helpless,

+so the earth-mother of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes

+were blind.  Thus she seemed to hear many things that are unheard

+by the rest of the human family.  It is only a dim echo of the outer world

+that the ears of men are allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow

+of the outer world that the eyes of men are allowed to see;

+but the ears of Naomi seemed to hear all.

+

+There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts,

+and a third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another

+in keenness even as one sight differs from another in strength.

+And all the earth is full of voices, and everything that moves

+upon the face of it has its sound; but the bird hears that

+which is unheard of the beast, and the beast hears that which is unheard

+of men.  But Naomi appeared to hear all that is heard of each.

+

+Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only,

+with nothing that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground

+but she dropped her face, and nothing flew in the sky

+but she lifted her eyes.  And whereas before the coming

+of her great gift her face had been all feeling, and she seemed to feel

+the sunset, and to feel the sky, and to feel the thunder and the light,

+now her face was all hearing, and her whole body seemed to hear,

+for she was like a living soul floating always in a sea of sound.

+

+Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,

+building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with

+which God had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was

+to her then, what the sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was

+with its roar, and what the face of man was, and the eyes of woman,

+none could know, and neither could she tell, for her soul

+was not linked to other souls--soul to soul, in the chains of speech.

+

+And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,

+beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words,

+and that words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill,

+made their mark on the soul that listened to them.  So he continued

+to read to her out of the Book of the Law, day after day at sunset,

+according to his wont and custom.  And when an evil spirit seemed

+to make a mock at him, and to say, "Fool! she hears,

+but does she understand?" he remembered how he had read to her

+in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself,

+"Shall I have less faith now that she can hear?"

+

+But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi's soul

+at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to her

+it seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern

+and gets back no answer but the sound of his own voice.  If he told her

+of the sky, that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see

+of the great deeps to measure them?  And if he told her of the sea,

+that it was green as the fields, what could she see of the grass

+to know its colour?  And sometimes as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly

+that the words themselves which he used to speak with were no more

+to Naomi than the notes which Ali struck from his dead harp,

+or the bleat of the goat at her feet.

+

+Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart,

+"Let the Lord find His own way to her spirit."  So he continued to speak

+with her as often as he was near her, telling her of the little things

+that concerned their household, as well as of the greater things

+it was good for her soul to know.

+

+It was a touching sight--the lonely man, the outcast among his people,

+talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb,

+telling her of God, of heaven, of death and resurrection,

+strong in his faith that his words would not fail, but that the casket

+of her soul would be opened to receive them, and that they would lie

+within until the great day of judgment, when the Lord Himself would call

+for them.

+

+Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead

+on her ear like birds on a dead sea?  In her darkness and her silence

+was she putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them,

+pondering them, imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them,

+and solace for her spirit?  Israel did not know; and, watch her face

+as he would, he could never learn.  Hope!  Faith!  Trust!

+What else was left to him?  He clung to all three, he grappled them to him;

+they were his sheet-anchor and his pole-star.  But one day

+they seemed to be his calenture also--the false picture of green fields

+and sweet female faces that rises before the eye of the sailor becalmed

+at sea.

+

+It was some three weeks after his return from his journey,

+and the fierce blaze of the sun continued.  The storm that had broken

+over the town had left no results of coolness or moisture,

+for the ground had been baked hard, and the rain had been too short

+and swift to penetrate it.  And what the withering heat had spared

+of green leaf and shrub a deadlier blight had swept away.

+The locusts had lately come up from the south and the east,

+in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on millions,

+making the air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue sky.

+They had swept the country of its verdure, and left a trail

+of desolation behind them.  The grass was gone, the bark

+of the olives and almonds was stripped away, and the bare trees

+had the look of winter.

+

+The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.

+Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds.

+A Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls

+of the town.  It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one

+of the town's six gates.  The dead creatures were not buried there,

+but merely cast on the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun

+and the heated wind.  It was a horrible place.

+

+The skinny dogs of the town soon found it.  And after these scavengers

+of the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude

+of bones, they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out,

+in search of water.  By this time there was none that they could come

+at nearer than the sea, and that was salt.  Nevertheless, they lapped it,

+so burning was their thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town.

+Then the people hunted them and killed them.

+

+Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to death

+on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult

+of the streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat,

+that went before her.  The goat was grown old, but it was still

+her constant companion and also it was now her guide and guardian,

+for the little dumb creature seemed to know that she was frail

+and helpless.  And so it was that she was crossing the Sok el Foki,

+a market of the town, and hearkening only to the patter of the feet

+of the goat going in front, when suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps

+hurrying towards her, with shouts and curses that were loud and deep.

+She stood in fear on the spot where she was, and no eyes had she to see

+what happened next, and she had none save the goat to tell her.

+

+But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward

+from the hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude

+of men and boys.  And flying in its despair, it bit out wildly

+at whatever lay in its way, and Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight

+in front of it.  Then she must have fallen before it, but instantly

+the goat flung itself across the dog's open jaws, and butted

+at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill cries of terror.

+

+The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if

+the madness of the monster shrank before it.  But the people came down

+with their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat

+and felled it, and fled away.  The people followed it, and then Naomi

+was alone in the market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.

+

+Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father's house

+in the Mellah, and her dying champion with her.  And out

+of this hard chance, and not out of Israel's teaching, Naomi was first

+to learn what life is and what is death.  She felt the goat

+with her hands, and as she did so her fingers shook.  Then she lifted it

+to its feet, and when they slipped from under it she raised

+her white face in wonder.  Again she lifted it, and made strange noises

+at its ear; but when it did not answer with its bleat her lips

+began to tremble.  Then she listened for its breathing, and felt

+for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor the other

+to her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast.  At length she fondled it

+in her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave back no sign

+of motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose at her heart.

+At last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat opened

+its heavy eyes upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her hand.

+With that last farewell the brave heart of the little creature broke,

+and it stretched itself and died.

+

+Israel saw it all.  His heart bled to see the parting in silence

+between those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead

+than the human soul that was left alive.  He tried to put the goat

+from Naomi's arms, saying, "It was only a goat, my child;

+think of it no more," though it smote him with pain to say it,

+for had not the creature given its life for her life?  And where, O God,

+was the difference between them?  But Naomi clung to the goat,

+and her throat swelled and her bosom fluttered, and her whole body panted,

+and it was almost as if her soul were struggling to burst

+through the bonds that bound it, that she might speak and ask and know.

+

+"Oh, what does it mean?  Why is it?  Why?  Why?"

+

+Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue.

+And, thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, "It is dead, my child--the goat is

+dead."

+

+But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash

+of light in a dark place, that, often as he had told her of death,

+never until that hour had she known what it was.  Then,

+if the words that he had spoken of death had carried no meaning,

+what could he hope of the words that he had spoken of life,

+and of the little things which concerned their household?

+And if Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these--if she had not

+pondered and interpreted them--if they had fallen on her ear

+only as voices in a dark cavern--only as dead birds on a dead sea--what

+of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law

+and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God ?

+

+Had the hope of his heart been vanity?  Did Naomi know nothing?

+Was her great gift a mockery?

+

+Israel's feet were set in a slippery place.  Why had he boasted himself

+of God's mercy?  What were ears to hear to her that could not understand?

+Only a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation!

+When Naomi had heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had

+her spirit asked and cried in vain.  Now she was dumb for the first time,

+being no longer deaf.  Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard

+his supplication and why had He received his prayer?

+

+But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy

+that Naomi's new gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech

+as well.

+

+"Give her speech, O Lord!" he cried, "speech that shall lift her

+above the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask

+and know!  Give her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant

+will be satisfied!"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XIV

+

+ISRAEL AT SHAWAN

+

+

+AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts

+of the young Mahdi of Mequinez.  Taking a view of his situation,

+that by his hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission

+to the will of Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones,

+he had filled the land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore

+what he had unjustly extorted.  So to him that had paid double

+in the taxings he had returned double--once for the tax and once

+for the excess; and if any man, having been unjustly taxed

+for the Kaid's tribute, had given bond on his lands for his debt

+and been cast into the Kasbah and died, without ransoming them,

+then to his children he had returned fourfold--double for the lands

+and double for the death.  Israel had done this continually,

+and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out of his own purse,

+so that from being a rich man he had fallen within a month

+to the condition of a poor one, for what was one man's wealth

+among so many?  Yet no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity

+and contempt, for the people that had taken his money had thanked

+the Kaid for it, who, according to their supposals, had called on him

+to correct what he had done amiss.  And with Ben Aboo himself

+he had fared no better, for the Basha was provoked to anger with him

+when he heard from Katrina of the good money that he had been casting away

+in pity for the poor.

+

+"What have I told you a score of times?" said the woman.

+"That man has mints of money."

+

+"My money, burn his grandfather," said Ben Aboo.

+

+Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world's reckoning.

+When he lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done

+the devil's work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before

+he had made more powerful.  People who had showed him lip-service

+when he was thought to be rich did not conceal the joy they had

+that he was brought down so near to be a beggar.  Upstarts,

+who owed their promotion to his intercession, found in his charities

+an easy handle given them to be insolent, for, by carrying to Katrina

+their secret messages of his mercy to the people, they brought things

+at length to such a pass between him and the Kaid that Ben Aboo

+openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not once or twice

+but many times.

+

+"And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?"

+said Ben Aboo.  "Ah, do not look surprised.  There are little birds enough

+to twitter of such follies.  So you are throwing away silver like bones

+to the dogs!  Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel;

+pity you've got too much of it, I say."

+

+"The people are poor, Lord Basha," said Israel; "they are famishing,

+and they have no refuge save with God and with us."

+

+"Tut!" cried Ben Aboo.  "A famine in my bashalic!  Let no man dare

+to say so.  The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness,

+mistress Israel.  You poor old grandmother!  I always suspected,"

+he added, facing about upon his attendants, "I always suspected

+that I was served by a woman.  Now I am sure of it."

+

+Israel felt the indignity.  He had given good proof of his manhood

+in the past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo

+between him and his people, making him rich by his extortions,

+keeping him safe in his seat, and thereby saving him

+from the wooden jellab which Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan,

+kept for Kaids that could not pay.  But Israel mastered his anger

+and held his peace.

+

+Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour

+of the Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him

+in the streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor,

+thinking himself accountable to God for their sufferings.

+He could have crushed the better part of his insulters to death

+in his brawny arms, but he was slow to anger and long-suffering.

+All the heed he paid to their insults was to do his good work

+with more secrecy.

+

+Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised him

+on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this difficulty.

+When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well down

+over his black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his face.

+In this innocent disguise he went out night after night for many nights

+among the poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters

+of the grain markets near the Bab Ramooz.  How he bore himself

+being there, with what harmless deceptions he unburdened his soul

+by stealth, what guileless pretences he made that he might restore

+to the poor the money that had been stolen from them,

+would be a long story to tell.

+

+"Who are you?" he was asked a hundred times.

+

+"A friend," he answered

+

+"Who told you of our trouble?"

+

+"Allah has angels," he would reply.

+

+Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw

+the very children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention

+of his name.  And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people

+whisper together and say, "He is a saint.  He comes from the Kabar

+at nightfall.  Allah sends him to help poor men who have been

+in the clutches of Israel the Jew."

+

+Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret.  What did the word of man avail

+for good or evil?  It would count for nothing at the last.

+Do justice and ask nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind,

+nor gratitude, for it was the breath of angels.

+

+One day, about a month after his return from his journey,

+when he was near to the end of his substance, a message came to him

+that the followers of Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison

+at Shawan.  Their relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now,

+but the plague of the locust had fallen on the bread-winners,

+and they had no more bread to send.  Israel concluded that it was

+his duty to succour them.  From a just view of his responsibilities

+he had gone on to a morbid one.  If in the Judgment the blood

+of the people of Absalam cried to God against him, he himself,

+and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into hell.

+

+Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began

+to take a view of his condition.  Then he saw, to his dismay,

+that little as he had thought he possessed, even less remained to him

+out of the wreck of his riches.  Only one thing he had still,

+but that was a thing so dear to his heart that he had never looked

+to part with it.  It was the casket of his dead wife's jewels.

+Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to sell it now, and,

+taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept it--a closet

+that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart for ever,

+but in his house no more.

+

+Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the doorpost,

+and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour came out

+to them of a chamber long shut up.  It was just as if the buried air itself

+had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay on everything.

+But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate shawls

+and gauzy haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red slippers,

+and many dainty things such as women love.  And to him that came again

+after ten heavy years they were as a dream of her that had worn them

+when she was young that now was dead when she was beautiful

+that now was in the grave.

+

+"Ah me, ah me!  Ruth!  My Ruth!" he murmured.  "This was her shawl.

+I brought it from Wazzan. . . .  And these slippers--they came from Rabat.

+Poor girl, poor girl! . . . .  This sash, too, it used to be

+yellow and white.  How well I remember the first time she wore it!

+She had put it over her head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman.

+But her brown curls fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them.

+And then she laughed.  My poor dear girl.  How happy we were once

+in spite of everything!  It is all like yesterday.  When I think Ah no,

+I must think no more, I must think no more."

+

+Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket

+of the jewels where it stood by the wall.  With trembling hands

+he took it and opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets,

+and rings and earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering

+of dust.  He lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers,

+and looked at them while his eyes grew wet.

+

+"Not for myself," he murmured, "not for myself would I have sold them,

+not for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of worlds!"

+

+All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood

+by his side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks

+and looked serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed,

+and now at the jingling of the jewels she stretched out her hand

+and took one of them from her father's fingers, and feeling it,

+and finding it to be a necklace, she clasped it about her neck

+and laughed.

+

+At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed.  It brought back

+the memory of the day when she danced to her mother's death,

+decked in that same necklace and those same ornaments.

+More on this head Israel could not think and hold to his purpose,

+so he took the jewels from Naomi's neck and returned them to the casket,

+and hastened away with it to a man to whom he designed to sell it.

+

+This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the Jews;

+for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop

+in the Sok el Foki.  Israel was moved to go to this person

+by the remembrance of two things, of which either seemed enough

+for his preference--first, that he had bought the jewels of Reuben

+in the beginning, and next, the Reuben had never since ceased to speak

+of them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the gems of Ethiopia and the gold

+of Ophir.

+

+But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy,

+he eyed both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear

+to his covetous and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself

+in his need, and bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction

+that could come to it.

+

+"And what is this that you bring me?" said Reuben languidly.

+

+"A case of jewels," said Israel, with a downward look.

+

+"Jewels? umph! what jewels?"

+

+"My poor wife's.  You know them, Reuben See!"

+

+Israel opened the casket.

+

+"Ah, your wife's.  Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere."

+

+"You have seen them here, Reuben."

+

+"Here?--do you say here?"

+

+"Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago."

+

+"Sold them to you?  Never.  I don't remember it.  Surely you must be

+mistaken.  I can never have dealt in things like these."

+

+Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips

+in expressions of contempt.

+

+Israel watched him closely.  "Give them back to me," he said;

+"I can go elsewhere.  I have no time for wrangling."

+

+Reuben's lip straightened instantly.  "Wrangling?  Who is wrangling,

+brother?  You are too impatient, Sidi"

+

+"I am in haste," said Israel.

+

+"Ah!"

+

+There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said,

+"The things are well enough in their way.  What do you wish me to do

+with them?"

+

+"To buy them," said Israel.

+

+"_Buy_ them?"

+

+"Yes."

+

+"But I don't want them."

+

+"Are they worth your money?--you don't want that either."

+

+"Umph!"

+

+A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded

+to examine the casket.  One by one he trifled with the gems--the rich onyx,

+the sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the topaz,

+and first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back again.

+And seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers,

+the precious jewels which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist

+and her white neck, Israel could scarcely hold back his hand

+from snatching them away.  But how can he that is poor answer him

+that is rich?  So Israel put his twitching hands behind him,

+remembering Naomi and the poor people of Absalam, and when at length

+Reuben tendered him for the casket one half what he had paid for it,

+he took the money in silence and went his way.

+

+"Five hundred dollars--I can give no more," Reuben had said.

+

+"Do you say five hundred--five?"

+

+"Five--take it or leave it."

+

+It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through

+was a busy and noisy place.  The grocers squatted within their narrow

+wooden boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up

+as a shelter from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter,

+whereon lay raisins and figs, and melons and dates.  On the unpaved ground

+the bakers crouched in irregular lines.  They were women enveloped

+in monstrous straw hats, with big round cakes of bread exposed

+for sale on rush mats at their feet.  Under arcades of dried leaves--made,

+like desert graves, of upright poles and dry branches

+thrown across--the butchers lay at their ease, flicking the flies

+from their discoloured meat.  "Buy! buy! buy!" they all shouted together.

+A dense throng of the poor passed between them in torn jellabs

+and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought.  Asses and mules

+crushed through amid shouts of "Arrah!" "Arrah!" and "Balak!" "Ba-lak!"

+It was a lively scene, with more than enough of bustle and swearing

+and vociferation.

+

+There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised

+with subtle and half-conscious humour.  Inside a booth for the sale

+of sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers

+for penance.  "God forgive me," he muttered, "_God forgive me,

+God forgive me,_" and at every repetition he passed a bead.

+A customer approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, "How much?"

+The merchant continued his prayers and did his business at a breath.

+"(_God forgive me_) How much?  (_God forgive me_) Four pesetas

+(_God forgive me_)," and round went the restless rosary.

+"Too much," said the buyer; "I'll give three."  The merchant went on

+with his prayers, and answered, "(_God forgive me_) Couldn't take it

+for as much as you might put in your tooth (_God forgive me_);

+gave four myself (_God forgive me_)."  "Then I'll leave it,

+old sweet-tooth," said the buyer, as he moved away.  "Here! take it

+for nothing (_God forgive me_)," cried the merchant

+after the retreating figure.  "(_God forgive me_) I'm giving it away

+(_God forgive me_); I'll starve, but no matter (_God forgive me_),

+you are my brother (_God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me_)."

+

+Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs

+which the prisoners needed--enough for the present and for many days

+to come.  Then he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan,

+and a man two days to lead them.  Also he hired mules for himself and Ali,

+for he knew full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers

+of Absalam receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days

+of famine, that it would ever reach them.  And, all being ready

+for his short journey, he set out in the middle of the day,

+when the sun was highest, hoping that the town would then be at rest,

+and thinking to escape observation.

+

+His expectation was so far justified that the market-place,

+when he came to it again, with his little caravan going before him,

+was silent and deserted.  But, coming into the walled lane

+to the Bab Toot, the gate at which the Shawan road enters,

+he encountered a great throng and a strange procession.

+It was a procession of penance and petition, asking God to wipe out

+the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and eating up the bread

+of its children.  A venerable Jew, with long white beard,

+walked side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in the folds

+of his snow-white haik.  These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews

+and the Imam of the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors

+walked abreast in the burning sun.  All were barefooted,

+and such as were Berbers were bareheaded also.

+

+"In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!" the Imam cried,

+and the Muslims echoed him.

+

+"By the God of Jacob!" the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words

+after him.

+

+"Spare us!  Spare the land!" they all cried together.  "Send rain

+to destroy the eggs of the locust!" cried the Rabbi.  "Else will they rise

+on the ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor;

+and neither fire nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them;

+and we ourselves will die, and our children with us!"

+

+And the Jews cried, "God of Jacob, be our refuge."

+

+And the Muslims shouted, "Allah, save us!"

+

+It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance--

+the haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds

+sunk out of sight and forgotten in the grip of the death

+that threatened both alike, walking and praying in the public streets

+together.

+

+Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved.  And being come

+into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view

+of the motives that had brought him away from his home again.

+Then he saw that, if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben,

+no credit could he give himself for what he was doing,

+and if he was poor who had before been rich, no merit could he make

+of his poverty.

+

+"Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her," he thought.  Naomi was his hope

+and his salvation.  His faith in God was his love of the child.

+He was only bribing God to give her grace.  And well he knew it,

+while he journeyed towards the prison behind his six mules laden

+with bread for them that lay there, that, much as he owed them,

+being a cause of their miseries, the mercy he was about to show them

+was but as mercy shown to himself.  So the nearer he came to it

+the lower his head sank into his breast, as if the sun itself

+that beat down so fiercely upon his head had eyes to peer

+into his deceiving soul.

+

+The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half

+of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set

+when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms

+of the mountain called Jebel Sheshawan.  Going through the orchards

+and vineyards that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews;

+tanners and pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled

+from Tetuan and his heavy taxings.

+

+"It's Israel ben Oliel," whispered one.

+

+"God of Jacob, save us!" whispered another.

+

+"He has followed us for the arrears of taxes."

+

+"We must fly."

+

+"Let us go home first."

+

+"No time for that."

+

+"There is Rachel--"

+

+"She's a woman."

+

+"But I must warn my son--he has children."

+

+"Then you are lost.  Come on."

+

+Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress

+and was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within,

+had heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild disorder

+of all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his visit,

+as if they were to be cut to pieces instantly.  Men and women

+and young children, gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt,

+some with faces that were hard and stony, some with faces that were weak

+and simple, some with eyes that were red as blood, all weary with waiting

+and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom

+of the foul place where they were immured together.  Shedding tears,

+beating their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour,

+these unhappy creatures of God, who had been great of soul when they sang

+their death-song with the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front,

+now quaked for the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger

+and cherished in bitterness.

+

+By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried,

+Israel found his way into the courtyard of the prison.  The prisoners,

+who had been gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps,

+and by one impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them,

+they fell to their knees about the door whereby he must enter,

+men behind and women in front, and mothers holding out their babes

+before their breasts so that he might see them first, and have mercy

+upon them if he had a heart made for pity.

+

+Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered.

+His head was bowed down, and his feet were bare.  The people drew

+their breath in wonder.

+

+"Arise," he said; "I mean you no harm.!  See!  Here is bread!  Take it,

+and God bless you!"

+

+So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali

+and the muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.

+

+And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he

+whom they had looked for as their judge had come as their saviour,

+their hearts surged within them.  Their hunger left them,

+and only the children could eat.  For a moment they stood in silence

+about Israel, and their tears stained their wasted faces.  And Israel,

+in their midst, tasted a new joy in his new poverty such as his riches

+had never brought him--no, not once in all the days of his old prosperity.

+

+At length an old man--he was a Muslim--looked steadily

+into Israel's face and said, "May the God of Jacob bless thee also,

+brother!"

+

+After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him

+out of their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet

+as before, yet with hearts so different.

+

+"May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!"

+

+"May the child of thy wife be blessed!"

+

+"Stop," he cried; "stop! you don't know what you are saying."

+

+He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words

+had stung him.  They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips;

+they pushed their children under his hands for his blessing.

+

+"No, no," he cried; "no, no, no!"

+

+Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town

+like one who was ashamed.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XV

+

+THE MEETING ON THE SOK

+

+

+Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart

+he would have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man

+could have peered into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi

+had dwelt seventeen years in silence, he would have seen that,

+dear as the child was to the father, still dearer and more needful

+was the father to the child.  Since her mother left her he had been eyes

+of her eyes and ears of her ears, touching her hand for assent,

+patting her head for approval, and guiding her fingers to teach them signs.

+

+Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter,

+more to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred;

+for he was her sole gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley

+whereby her spirit gazed upon it, the key that opened the closed doors

+of her soul; and without him neither could the world come in to her,

+nor could she go out to the world.  Soft and beautiful was the commerce

+between them, mute on one side of all language save tears and kisses,

+like the commerce of a mother with her first-born child, as holy in love,

+as sweet in mystery as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness.

+While her father was with her, then only did Naomi seem to live,

+and her happy heart to be full of wonder at the strange new things

+that flowed in upon it.  And when he was gone from her, she was merely

+a spirit barred and  shut within her body's close abode,

+waiting to be born anew.

+

+When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder him,

+as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez,

+and connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence;

+or as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways

+of the world, what was to befall him before he returned.

+He put her from him with many tender words, and smoothed her hair

+and kissed her forehead, as though to chide her while he blessed her

+for so much love.  But her dread increased, and she held to him like

+a child to its mother's robe.  And at last, when he unloosed her hands

+and pushed them away as if in anger, and after that laughed lightly

+as if to tell her that he knew her meaning yet had no fear,

+her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a fit of weeping.

+

+"Tut! tut! what is this?" he said.  "I will be back to-morrow.

+Do you hear, my child?--tomorrow!  At sunset to-morrow."

+

+When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her

+seemed to increase.  Her face was red, her mouth was dry,

+her eyelids quivered, and her hands were restless.  If she sat she rose

+quickly; if she stood she walked again more fast.  Sometimes she listened

+with head aside, sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright,

+and sometimes she muttered to herself in noises such as none had heard

+from her lips before.

+

+The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her.  Indeed, the trouble

+of her heart took hold of them.  When she plucked Fatimah by the gown,

+and with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly

+into the black woman's face, as if asking for her father, like a dog

+for its master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity

+of her fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come

+which God Himself might have revealed to her.

+

+"Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?" cried Fatimah.

+

+"Alack! girl," said Habeebah, "the maid is sickening again."

+

+And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless agitation.

+She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic slumber,

+apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams.  When she awoke

+in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin,

+the evil dreams seemed to be with her still.  She appeared to be moving

+along in them like one spell-bound by a great dread that she could

+not utter, as if she were living through a nightmare of the day.

+Then long hour followed long hour, but the inquietude of her mood

+did not abate.  Her bosom heaved, her throat throbbed,

+her excitement became hysterical.  Sometimes she broke into wild,

+inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the black women could have believed,

+in spite of knowledge and reason, that she was muttering

+and speaking words, though with a wild disorder of utterance.

+

+At last the day waned and the sun went down.  Naomi seemed to know

+when this occurred, for she could scent the cool air.  Then,

+with a fresh intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and,

+having listened, her trouble increased.  What did Naomi hear?

+The black women could hear nothing save the common sounds

+of the streets--the shouts of children at play, the calls of women,

+the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and again the piercing shrieks

+of a black story-teller from the town of the Moors--only this varied flow

+of voices, and under it the indistinct murmur of multitudinous life

+coming and going on every side.

+

+Did other sounds come to Naomi's ears?  Was her spiritual power,

+which was unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing,

+conscious of some terrible undertone of impending trouble?

+Or was her disquietude no more than recollection of her father's promise

+to be back at sunset, and mere anxiety for his return?

+Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw nothing.  All that they could do

+was to wring their hands.

+

+Meantime, Naomi's agitation became yet more restless, and nothing

+would serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets.

+And the black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected

+by her fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three

+went out together.

+

+"Where are we going?" said Habeebah.

+

+"Nay, how should I know?" said Fatimah.

+

+"We are fools," said Habeebah.

+

+It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic

+was sinking down.  Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary

+to custom, had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense.

+A group of Jews stood under it in earnest and passionate talk.

+There was a strange and bodeful silence on every side.  The coffee-house

+of the Moors beyond the gate was already lit up, and the door was open,

+but the floor was empty.  No snake-charmers, no jugglers,

+no story-tellers, with their circles of squatting spectators,

+were to be seen or heard.  These professors of science and magic

+and jocularity had never before been absent.  Even the blind beggars,

+crouching under the town walls, were silent.  But out of the mosques

+there came a deep low chant as of many voices, from great numbers

+gathered within.

+

+"The girl was right," said Fatimah; "something has happened."

+

+"What is it?" said Habeebah.

+

+"Nay, how should I know that either?" said Fatimah.

+

+"I tell you we are a pair of fools," said Habeebah.

+

+Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow

+where she led.  Her body was between them; they were borne along

+by her feeble frame as by an irresistible force.  And pitiful

+it would have seemed, and perhaps foolish also, if any human eye had seen

+them then, these helpless children of God, going whither they knew not

+and wherefore they knew not, save that a fear that was like to madness

+drew them on.

+

+"Listen!  I hear something," said Fatimah.

+

+"Where?" said Habeebah.

+

+"The way we are going," said Fatimah.

+

+On and on Naomi passed from street to street.  They were the same streets

+whereby she had returned to her father's house on the day that her goat

+was slain.  Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither

+altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made

+straight forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place

+where the goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog

+from the Mukabar.  Then she could go no farther.

+

+"Holy saints, what is this?" cried Habeebah.

+

+"Didn't I tell you- the girl heard something?" said Fatimah.

+

+"God's face shine on us," said Habeebah.  "What is all this crowd?"

+

+An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square,

+and overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah.

+It was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered

+on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving mass

+of haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and

+there a bare shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd

+of dark figures in black gowns and skull-caps.  The assemblage was of Jews

+only--Jews of every age and class and condition, from the comely

+young Jewish butcher in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old

+Jewish banker with gold braid on his new kaftan.

+

+They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs

+in regard to the plague of locusts.  Hence the Moorish officials

+had suffered them to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset.

+Some of the Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance,

+leaving a vacant space to denote the distinction between them.

+The scribes sat in their open booths, pretending to read their Koran

+or to write with their reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors;

+and the country Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground

+on the Sok, squatted on the vacant spots adjacent.  All looked on eagerly,

+but apparently impassively, at the vast company of Jews.

+

+And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild

+their commotion,  that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken

+by tempestuous winds.  The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds

+of their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings,

+their entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats.

+And out of their loud uproar one name above all other names rose

+in the air on every side.  It was the name of Israel ben Oliel.

+Against him they were breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers

+from the hand of man, and predicting fresh judgments from God.

+There was no evil which had befallen him early or late

+but they were remembering it, and reckoning it up and rejoicing in it.

+And there was no evil which had befallen themselves but they were laying

+it to his charge.

+

+Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession

+of penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,

+that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust,

+they had expected the heavens to open over their heads,

+and to feel the rain fall instantly.  The heavens had not opened,

+the rain had not fallen, the thick hot cake as of baked air had continued

+to hang and to palpitate in the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down

+as before on the parched and scorching earth.  Seeing this,

+as their petitions ended, while the Muslims went back to their houses,

+disappointed but resigned, and muttering to themselves,

+"It is written" they had returned to their synagogues,

+convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved,

+like the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and

+to know for whose cause the evil was upon them.

+

+They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought

+they were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin.  This was in defiance

+of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation

+of a Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been

+forbidden.  But they were face to face with death, and hence

+the anachronism had been adopted, and they had fallen back on the custom

+of their fathers.  So three-and-twenty judges they had appointed,

+without usurers, or slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men

+or childless ones.

+

+The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment

+had been unanimous.  The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel.

+He had sold himself to their masters and enemies, the Moors,

+against the hope and interest of his own people; he had driven some

+of the sons of his race and nation into exile in distant cities;

+he had brought others to the Kasbah, and yet others to death:

+he was a man at open enmity with God, and God had given him,

+as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was cursed with devils,

+a daughter who had been born blind and dumb and deaf,

+and was still without sight and speech.

+

+Could the hand of God's anger be more plain if it were printed

+in fire upon the sky?  Israel was the evil one for whose sin

+they suffered this devastating plague.  The Lord was rebuking them

+for sparing him, even as He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king

+and cattle of the Amalekites.  Seventeen years and more he had been among

+them without being of them, never entering a synagogue,

+never observing a fast, never joining in a feast.  Not until

+their judgment went out against him would God's anger be appeased.

+Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the blessed rain

+would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink it,

+and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed.  But let them put off

+any longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the people,

+and their evil time would soon come.  Within eight-and-twenty days

+the eggs would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other days

+the young locust would have wings.  Before the end of those

+seventy-and-six days the harvest of wheat and barley would be yellow

+to the scythe and ripe for the granary, but the locust would cover

+the face of the earth, and there would be no grain to gather.

+The scythe would be idle, the granaries would be empty,

+the tillers of the ground would come hungry into the markets,

+and they themselves that were town-dwellers and tradesmen would be

+perishing for bread, both they and their children with them.

+

+Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan,

+the three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan

+had--contrary to Jewish custom--tried and convicted him.

+God would not let them perish for this man's life, and neither would

+He charge them with his blood.

+

+Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him.

+They could only appeal against him to the Kaid.  And what could they say?

+That the Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment

+of Israel's sin?  Ben Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them,

+"It is written." That to appease God's wrath it was expedient

+that this Jew should die?  Convince the Muslim that a Jew

+had brought this desolation upon the land of the Shereefs,

+and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the whole community

+of the Jewish people would be destroyed.

+

+The judges had laid their heads together.  It was idle to appeal

+to Ben Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief.  Nay, it was more

+than idle, for it was dangerous.  There was nothing in common

+between his faith and their own.  His God was not their God,

+save in name only.  The one was Allah, great, stern, relentless,

+inexorable, not to be moved striding on to an inevitable end,

+heedless of man and trampling upon him--though sometimes mocked

+with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful.  But the other

+was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for them,

+upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them;

+but visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.

+

+The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue

+up the narrow lane of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night,

+with the light of the oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed

+and ashen faces.  Some other ground of appeal against Israel

+had to be found, and they could not find it.  At length

+they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the trial

+of an Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset.

+Also they had been reminded that the day that heard the evidence

+in a capital case must not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced.

+So they had broken up and returned home.  And, going out at the gate,

+they had told the crowds that waited there that judgment had fallen

+upon Israel ben Oliel, but that his doom could not be made known

+until sunset on the following day.

+

+That time was now come.  In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood

+and anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday.

+The Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning.

+They had not broken bread since yesterday, for the day

+that condemned a son of Israel to death must be a fast-day to his judges.

+

+As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open.

+The sentence was not ready yet, but the: judges in council were near

+to their decision.  At the open door the reader of the synagogue

+had stationed himself, holding a flag in his hand.  Under the gate

+of the Mellah a second messenger was standing, so placed

+that he could see the movement of the flag.  If the flag fell,

+the sentence would be "death," and the man under the gate would carry

+the tidings to the people gathered in the market-place.

+Then the three-and-twenty judges would come in procession and tell

+what steps had been taken that the doom pronounced might be carried

+into effect.

+

+Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger

+which seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals

+of a few minutes to glance back towards the Mellah gate.

+

+If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight--

+these children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs

+and vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking

+and acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years

+before; again judging it expedient that one man should die

+rather than the whole people be brought to destruction;

+again probing their crafty heads, if not their hearts,

+for an artifice whereby their scapegoat might be killed by the hand

+of their enemy; children indeed, for all that some of their heads

+were bald, and some of their beards were grizzled, and some

+of their faces were wrinkled and hard and fierce; little children

+of God writhing in the grip of their great trouble

+

+Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings

+of the town since the hour when her father left her.  What hand

+had led her?  What power had taught her?  Was it merely

+that her far-reaching ears had heard the tumult?  Had some unknown sense,

+groping in darkness, filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite

+to be called a thought, of great and impending evil?  Or was it

+some other influence, some higher leading?  Was it that the Lord was

+in His heaven that night as always, and that when the two black bondwomen

+in their helpless fear were following the blind maiden

+through the darkening streets she in her turn was following God?

+

+When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,

+though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,

+and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour

+had infected them.  And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel,

+and they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe

+from danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about

+as a reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were

+heaped upon him found a way to Naomi's mind, they were for turning again

+and going back to the house.

+

+"Come," said Habeebah; "let us go--we are not safe."

+

+"Yes," said Fatimah; "let us take the poor child back."

+

+"Come along, then," said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi's hand.

+

+"Naomi, Naomi," whispered Fatimah in the girl's ear, "we are going home.

+Come, dearest, come."

+

+But Naomi was not to be moved.  No gentle voice availed to stir her.

+She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,

+motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent

+save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips,

+yet listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.

+

+And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in

+on her dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen

+must have been terrible.  For, though no one knew it as a certainty,

+yet in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing

+she had been learning speech and the different voices of men.

+All that was spoken in that crowd she understood, and never a word

+escaped her, and what others saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible,

+because wrapped in the darkness outside her eyes that were blind.

+

+First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then

+a coarse, jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air.  Naomi knew

+whose voice it was--it was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.

+

+"Brothers of Tetuan," the old man cried, "what are we waiting for?

+For the verdict of the judges?  Who wants their verdict?

+There is only one thing to do.  Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man.

+The Kaid is a humane master.  If he has sometimes worked wrong by us,

+he has been driven to do that which in his soul he abhors.

+Let us go to him and say: 'Lord Basha, through five-and-twenty years

+this man of our people has stood over us to oppress us,

+and your servants have suffered and been silent.  In that time

+we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the houses of their fathers

+where they have lived since their birth.  We have seen them buffeted

+and smitten, without a resting-place for the soles of their feet,

+and perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and the want

+of all things.  Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your profit?'"

+

+The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once

+more silent, the thick voice went on: "And not the seed of Israel only,

+but the sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of misery.

+Under a Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice,

+in a land that breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God,

+our brethren the Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is

+no standing.  Every day brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow.

+At this moment a plague is upon us.  The country is bare;

+the town is overflowing; every man stumbles over his fellow

+our lives hang in doubt; in the morning we say 'Would it were evening';

+in the evening we say, 'Would it were morning'; stretch out your hand

+and help us!"

+

+Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice

+continued: "Let us say to him 'Lord Basha, there is no way of help

+but one.  Pluck down this man that is set over us.  He belongs

+to our own race and nation; but give us a master of any other race

+and nation; any Moor, any Arab, any Berber, any negro;

+only take back this man of our own people, and your servants

+will bless you.'"

+

+The old man's voice was drowned in great shouts of "Ben Aboo!"

+"To Ben Aboo!"  "Why wait for the judges?"  "To the Kasbah!"

+"The Kasbah!"

+

+But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash

+of those waves of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry

+of a pea-hen.  Naomi knew this voice also--it was the voice

+of Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, who would have been sitting

+among the three-and-twenty-judges but that he was a usurer also.

+

+"Why go to the Kaid?" said the voice like a peahen.  "Does the Basha

+love this Israel ben Oliel?  Has he of late given many signs

+of such affection?  Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely!

+Would not Ben Aboo be glad to have done with this servant

+who has been so long his master?  Then why trouble him

+with your grievance?  Act for yourselves, and the Kaid will thank you!

+And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord and worship Him,

+that He has not put it into the hearts of His people to play the game

+of breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the races around them,

+the Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more warm by nature,

+must long ago have done, and that not unjustly either,

+or altogether to the displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane

+and merciful, and has never loved that his poor people

+should be oppressed."

+

+At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance

+of the crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before.

+"Away with the man!"  "Away with him!" rang out on every side

+in countless voices, husky and clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep.

+Not a voice of them all called for mercy or for patience.

+

+While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air,

+a third voice came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it,

+for it was the harsh voice of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper

+of the poor-box.

+

+"And does God," said Reuben, "any more than Ben Aboo--blessings

+on his life!--love that His people should be oppressed?

+How has He dealt with this Israel ben Oliel?  Does He stand steadfastly

+beside him, or has His hand gone out against him?  Since the day

+he came here, five-and-twenty years ago, has God saved him or smitten him?

+Remember Ruth, his wife, how she died young!  Remember her father,

+our old Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana, how the hand of the Lord

+fell upon him on the night of the day whereon his daughter was married!

+Remember this girl Naomi, this offspring of sin, this accursed

+and afflicted one, still blind and speechless!"

+

+Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh

+of a breathless horse.  Fatimah had laid hold of her gown

+and was whispering.  "Come!  Let us away!"  But Naomi only clutched

+her hand and trembled.

+

+The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again.

+"Do you say that the Lord gave him riches?  Behold him!--he swallowed

+them down, but has he not vomited them up?  Examine him!--that

+which he took by extortions has he not been made to restore?

+Does God's anger smoke against him?  Answer me, yes or no!"

+

+Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of "Yes!"

+And instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came

+a fourth voice, a peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman.

+Naomi knew it--it was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott,

+ninety-and-odd years of age, and still deaf as a stone.

+

+"Tut!  What is all this talking about?" she snapped and grunted.

+"Reuben Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don't give them

+too much of it.  And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags.

+I am an old fool, am I?  Well, I've the more right to speak plain.

+What are we waiting here for?  The  judges?  Pooh!  The sentence?

+Fiddle-faddle!  It is Israel ben Oliel, isn't it?  Then stone him!

+What are you afraid of?  The Kaid?  He'll laugh in your faces.

+A blood-feud?  Who is to wage it?  A ransom?  Who is to ask for it?

+Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her a miracle

+and find her a tongue first.  Out on you!  Men?  Pshaw!

+You are children!"

+

+The people laughed--it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh

+that sets the teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it.

+Instantly the voices of the crowd broke up into a discordant clangour,

+like to the counter-currents of an angry sea.  "She's right,"

+said a shrill voice.  "He deserves it," snuffled a nasal one.

+"At least let us drive him out of the town," said a third gruff voice.

+"To his house!" cried a fourth voice, that pealed over all.

+"To his house!" came then from countless hungry throats.

+

+"Come, let us go," whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold

+of her arm to force her away.  But Naomi shook off her hand,

+and muttered strange sounds to herself.

+

+"To his house!  Sack it!  Drive the tyrant out!" the people howled

+in a hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred,

+a man riding a mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.

+

+It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate.  In their new frenzy

+the people had forgotten him.  He had come to make known the decision

+of the Synhedrin.  The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.

+

+Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait

+for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means

+whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry

+the sentence into effect.  The procession was even then forming.

+It was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate

+of the Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki.  The Rabbis walked

+in front of it.  At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks.

+They were the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired

+when he set out on his pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas,

+Mohammed of Mequinez.  By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.

+

+But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors.  The people were twisting

+and turning like worms on an upturned turf.  "Why sack his house?"

+cried some.  "Why drive him out?" cried others.  "A poor revenge!"

+"Kill him!"  "Kill him!"

+

+At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear

+had waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness.

+But suddenly in the midst of the wild vociferations there was

+a shrill cry of "He is there!" and then there was a great silence.

+

+It was Israel himself.  He was coming afoot down the lane

+under the town walls from the gate called the Bab Toot,

+where the road comes in from Shawan.  At fifty paces behind him Ali,

+the black boy, was riding one mule and leading another.

+

+He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers

+of Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him

+out of their dry throats, saying, "May the God of Jacob bless you also,

+brother!" and "May the child of your wife be blessed!"

+Ah! those blessings, he could hear them still!  They followed him

+as he walked.  He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang

+in his ears and were like music in his melted soul.  Once before

+he had heard such music.  It was in England.  The organ swelled

+and the voices rose, and he was a lonely boy, for his mother lay

+in her grave at his feet.  His mother!  How strangely his heart

+was softened towards himself and-all the world  And  Ruth!

+He could think of nothing without tenderness.  And Naomi!

+Ah! the sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be waiting

+for him at home, for she was as one that had no life without his presence.

+What would befall if he were taken from her?  That thought was like

+the sweeping of a dead hand across his face.  So his body stooped

+as he walked with his staff, and his head was held down,

+and his step was heavy.

+

+Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people

+were gathered together as wolves to devour him.  On he came,

+seeing nothing and hearing nothing and fearing nothing,

+and in the silence of the first surprise at sight of him his footsteps

+were heard on the stones.

+

+Naomi heard them.

+

+Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were,

+out of the air, crying, "God has given him into our hands!"

+After that all sounds seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come

+to her muffled and stifled by the distance.

+

+But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great throat,

+the crowd encompassed Israel crying, "Kill him!"  Israel stopped,

+and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out

+nor make any struggle for his life.  He stood erect and silent

+in their midst, and massive and square.  His brave bearing

+did not break their fury.  They fell upon him, a hundred hands together.

+One struck at his face, another tore at his long grey hair,

+and a third thrust him down on to his knees.

+

+No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl

+that stood there--blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly

+beautiful--a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea.

+Through the thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming

+to her ugly and terrible.  Her father was there!  They were tearing him

+to pieces!

+

+Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women.

+Like a flash of light she had passed through the bellowing throng.

+She had thrust herself between the people and her father,

+who was on the ground: she was standing over him with both arms upraised,

+and at that instant God loosed her tongue, for she was crying,

+"Mercy!  Mercy!"

+

+Then the crowd fell back in great fear.  The dumb had spoken.

+No man dared to touch Israel any more.  The hands that had been lifted

+against him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him.

+In the midst of it stood Naomi.  Her blind face quivered;

+she seemed to glow like a spirit.  And like a spirit she had driven back

+the people from their deed of blood as with the voice of God--she,

+the blind, the frail, the helpless.

+

+Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again,

+and the procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent.

+And, seeing how it was that in the hour of his great need the gift

+of speech had come upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him,

+and he tried to triumph over his enemies and say, "You thought

+God's arm was against me, but behold how God has saved me

+out of your hands."

+

+But he could not speak.  The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter

+seemed to have dropped upon him.

+

+At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, "Father!"

+

+Then the cup of Israel's heart was full.  His throat choked him.

+So he took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley

+of the people they passed through the Mellah gate and went home

+to their house.  Her eyes were to the earth, and she wept as she walked;

+but his face was lifted up, and his tears and his blood ran

+down his cheeks together.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XVI

+

+NAOMI'S BLINDNESS

+

+

+Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming

+of her gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand

+the different tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words

+for herself, and to put out her own voice in the use of them,

+she was no more than a child untaught in the ways of speech.

+She tripped and stammered and broke down, and had to learn to speak

+as any helpless little one must do, only quicker, because her need

+was greater, and better, because she was a girl and not a babe.

+And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and thinking shame of it,

+and being abashed by the patient waiting of her father when she halted

+in her talk with him, and still more humbled by Ali's impetuous help

+when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back again on silence.

+

+Hardly could she be got to speak at all.  For some days after the night

+when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies

+on the Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond "Yes" and "No,"

+notwithstanding Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings,

+and Habeebah's breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding

+the hunger and thirst of the heart of her father, who, remembering

+with many throbs of joy the voice that he heard with his dreaming ears

+when he slept on the straw bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan,

+would have given worlds of gold, if he had possessed them still,

+to hear it constantly with his waking ears.

+

+"Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,"

+Israel would say.

+

+His appeals were useless.  Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head,

+and lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.

+

+But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred.

+Israel was returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions

+in the poor quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder

+of the money which old Reuben had paid him for the casket

+of his wife's jewels.  The night was warm, the moon shone

+with steady lustre, and the stars were almost obliterated

+as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze.  It was late, very late,

+and far and near the town was still.

+

+With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm,

+Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed

+to cross it after sunset.  He was feeling happy as he walked home

+through the sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front.

+The magic of the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.

+

+All his misgivings had fallen away.  The coming to Naomi of the gift

+of speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past.

+He had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill him.

+Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing

+had not come to pass.  Man's extremity had indeed been God's opportunity

+and Ruth's vision was all but realised.

+

+Ah, Ruth!  Ruth!  It had escaped Israel's notice until then

+that he had been thinking of his dead wife the whole night through.

+When he put it to himself so, he saw the reason of it at once.

+It was because there was a sort of secret charm in the certainty

+that where she was she must surely know that her dream was come true.

+There was also a kind of bitter pathos in the regret that she was only

+an angel now and not a woman; therefore she could not be with him

+to share his human joy.

+

+As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again:

+how she had sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear.

+Sung?  Yes, he could almost fancy that he heard her singing yet.

+That voice so soft, so clear even in its whispers--there had been nothing

+like it in all the world.  And her songs!  Israel could also fancy

+that he heard her favourite one.  It was a song of love, a pure

+but passionate melody wherein his own delicious happiness

+in the earlier days, before the death of the old Grand Rabbi,

+had seemed to speak and sing.

+

+Israel began to laugh at himself as he walked.  To think that the warmth

+and softness of the night, the sweet caressing night, the light and beauty

+of the moon and the stillness and slumber of the town,

+could betray an old fellow into forgotten dreams like these!

+

+He had taken out of his pocket the big key of the clamped door

+to his house, and was crossing the shadowed lane in front of it,

+when suddenly he thought he heard music coating in the air above him.

+He stopped and listened.  Then he had no longer any doubt.

+It was music, it was singing; he knew the song, and he knew the voice.

+The song was the song he had been thinking of, and the voice was

+the voice of Ruth.

+

+

+            O where is Love?

+            Where, where is Love?

+        Is it of heavenly birth ?

+        Is it a thing of earth?

+            Where, where is Love?

+

+Israel felt himself rooted to the spot, and he stood some time

+without stirring.  He looked around.  All else was still.

+The night was as silent as death.  He listened attentively.

+The singing seemed to come from his own house.  Then he thought

+he must be dreaming still, and he took a step forward.

+But he stopped again and covered both his ears.  That was of no avail,

+for when he removed his hands the voice was there as before.

+

+A shiver ran over his limbs, yet he could not believe what his soul

+was saying.  The key dropped out of his hand and rang on the stone.

+When the clangour was done the voice continued.  Israel bethought him

+then that his household must be asleep, and it flashed on his mind

+that if this were a human voice the singing ought to awaken them.

+Just at that moment the night guard went by and saluted him.

+"God bless your morning!" the guard cried; and Israel answered,

+"Your morning be blessed!"  That was all.  The guard seemed

+to have heard nothing.  His footsteps were dying away,

+but the voice went on.

+

+Then a strange emotion filled Israel's heart, and he reflected

+that even if it were Ruth she could have come on no evil errand.

+That thought gave him courage, and he pushed forward to the door.

+As he fumbled the key into the lock he saw that a beggar was crouching

+by the doorway in the shadow cast by the moonlight.  The man was asleep.

+Israel could hear his breathing, and smell his rags.  Also he could hear

+the thud of his own temples like the beating of a drum in his brain.

+

+At length, as he was groping feebly through the crooked passage,

+a new thought came to him.  "Naomi," he told himself in a whisper of awe.

+It was she.  By the full flood of the moonlight in the patio he saw her.

+She was on the balcony.  Her beautiful white-robed figure was half sitting

+on the rail, half leaning against the pillar.  The whole lustre

+of the moon was upon her.  A look of joy beamed on her face.

+She was singing her mother's song with her mother's voice,

+and all the air, and the sky, and the quiet white town seemed to listen:--

+

+        Within my heart a voice

+        Bids earth and heaven rejoice

+        Sings--"Love, great Love

+        O come and claim shine own,

+        O come and take thy throne

+        Reign ever and alone,

+           Reign, glorious golden Love."

+

+Then Israel's fear was turned to rapture.  Why had he not thought

+of this before?  Yet how could he have thought of it?  He had never once

+heard Naomi's voice save in the utterance of single words.

+But again, why had he not remembered that before the tongues

+of children can speak words of their own they sing the words of others?

+

+The singing ended, and then Israel, struggling with his dry throat,

+stepped a pace forward--his foot grated on the pavement--and he called

+to the singer--

+

+"Naomi!"

+

+The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below,

+but Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind.

+

+"My father!" she whispered.

+

+"Where did you learn it?" said Israel.

+

+"Fatimah, she taught me," Naomi answered; and then she added quickly,

+as if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean,

+"Oh yes, it was I!  Was I not beautiful?"

+

+After that night Naomi's shyness of speech dropped away from her,

+and what was left was only a sweet maidenly unconsciousness

+of all faults and failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran

+in and out among the simple words that fell from her red lips

+like a young squirrel among the fallen leaves of autumn.

+It would be a long task to tell how her lisping tongue turned everything

+then to favour and to prettiness.  On the coming of the gift of hearing,

+the world had first spoken to her; and now, on the coming

+of the gift of speech, she herself was first speaking to the world.

+What did she tell it at that first sweet greeting?  She told it

+what she had been thinking of it in those mute days that were gone,

+when she had neither hearing nor speech, but was in the land of silence

+as well as in the land of night.

+

+The fancies of the blind maid so long shut up within the beautiful casket

+of her body were strange and touching ones.  Israel took delight in them

+at the beginning.  He loved to probe the dark places of the mind

+they came from, thinking God Himself must surely have illumined it

+at some time with a light that no man knew, so startling were some

+of Naomi's replies, so tender and so beautiful.

+

+One evening, not long after she had first spoken, he was sitting

+with her on the roof of their house as the sun was going down

+over the palpitating plains towards Arzila and Laraiche and

+the great sea beyond.  Twilight was gathering in the Feddan

+under the Mosque, and the last light of day, which had parleyed longest

+with the snowy heights of the Reef Mountains, was glowing only

+on the sky above them.

+

+"Sweetheart," said Israel, "what is the sun?"

+

+"The sun is a fire in the sky," Naomi answered; "my Father lights it

+every morning."

+

+"Truly, little one, thy Father lights it," said Israel; "thy Father

+which is in heaven."

+

+"Sweetheart," he said again, "what is darkness?"

+

+"Oh, darkness is cold," said Naomi promptly, and she seemed to shiver.

+

+"Then the light must be warmth, little one?" said Israel.

+

+"Yes, and noise," she answered; and then she added quickly,

+"Light is alive."

+

+Saying this, she crept closer to his side, and knelt there,

+and by her old trick of love she took his hand in both of hers,

+and pressed it against her cheek, and then, lifting her sweet face

+with its motionless eyes she began to tell him in her broken words

+and pretty lisp what she thought of night.  In the night the world,

+and everything in it, was cold and quiet.  That was death.

+The angels of God came to the world in the day.  But God Himself came

+in the night, because He loved silence, and because all the world

+was dead.  Then He kissed things, and in the morning all

+that God had kissed came to life again.  If you were to get up early

+you would feel God's kiss on the flowers and on the grass.

+And that was why the birds were singing then.  God had kissed them

+in the night, and they were glad.

+

+One day Israel took Naomi to the mearrah of the Jews, the little cemetery

+outside the town walls where he had buried Ruth.  And there he told her

+of her mother once more; that she was in the grave, but also with God;

+that she was dead, but still alive; that Naomi must not expect

+to find her in that place, but, nevertheless, that she would see her

+yet again.

+

+"Do you remember her, Naomi?" he said.  "Do you remember her

+in the old days, the old dark and silent days?  Not Fatimah,

+and not Habeebah, but some one who was nearer to you than either,

+and loved you better than both; some one who had soft hands,

+and smooth cheeks, and long, silken, wavy hair--do you remember,

+little one?"

+

+"Y-es, I think--I _think_ I remember," said Naomi.

+

+"That was your mother, my darling."

+

+"My mother?"

+

+"Ah, you don't know what a mother is, sweetheart.  How should you?

+And how shall I tell you?  Listen.  She is the one who loves you first

+and last and always.  When you are a babe she suckles you

+and nourishes you and fondles you, and watches for the first light

+of your smile, and listens for the first accent of your tongue.

+When you are a young child she plays with you, and sings to you,

+and tells you little stories, and teaches you to speak.

+Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine, and your childish lisp

+more sweet than music.  If you are sick she is beside you constantly,

+and when you are well she is behind you still.  Though you sin

+and fall and all men spurn you, yet she clings to you;

+and if you do well and God prospers you, there is no joy like her joy.

+Her love never changes, for it is a fount which the cold winds

+of the world cannot freeze. . . .  And if you are a little

+helpless girl--blind and deaf and dumb maybe--then she loves you

+best of all.  She cannot tell you stories, and she cannot sing to you,

+because you cannot hear; she cannot smile into your eyes,

+because you cannot see; she cannot talk to you, because you cannot speak;

+but she can watch your quiet face, and feel the touch

+of your little fingers and hear the sound of your merry laughter."

+

+"My mother! my mother!" whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.

+

+"Yes," said Israel, "your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago,

+in the days before your great gifts came to you.  But she is gone,

+she has left us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only

+from the blue mountains of memory can she smile back upon us now."

+

+Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears,

+and she said abruptly, "People who die are deceitful.  They want to go

+out in the night to be with God.  That is where they are

+when they go away.  They are wandering about the world when it is dead."

+

+The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours

+no search availed to find her.  She was not in the Mellah,

+and therefore she must have passed into the Moorish town

+before the gates closed at sunset.  Neither was she to be seen

+in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or among the Arabs who sat

+in the red glow of the fires that burnt before their tents.

+At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there he found her.

+It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent.  The reflection

+of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the distant hum

+of voices came over the black town walls.  And there, within

+the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones

+that lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness,

+the darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro,

+and crying, "Mother!  Mother!"

+

+Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath

+of the sea might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened

+by the heat and fumes of the town.  The day was soft and beautiful,

+the water was quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it.

+But Naomi listened to every sound with eager intentness--the light plash

+of the blue wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests

+when the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars

+of the boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay,

+and the fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists

+to unload the cargoes.

+

+And when she came home, and took her old place at her father's knees,

+with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek,

+she told him another sweet and startling story.  There was only one thing

+in the world that did not die at night, and it was water.

+That was because water was the way from heaven to earth.

+It went up into the mountains and over them into the air

+until it was lost in the clouds.  And God and His angels came

+and went on the water between heaven and earth.  That was why

+it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.

+And the angels were always singing.  That was why the waters

+were always making a noise, and were never silent like the grass.

+Sometimes their song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad,

+and sometimes the evil spirits were struggling with the angels,

+and that was when the waters were terrible.  Every time the sea

+made a little noise on the shore, an angel had stepped on to the earth.

+The angel was glad.

+

+Israel had begun to listen to Naomi's fancies with a doubting heart.

+Where had they come from?  Was it his duty to wipe out

+these beautiful dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come

+upon the joy of hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was

+and what life was, and death and heaven?  The question was soon decided

+for him.

+

+Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.

+Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her.

+Alone, without help, she had found a boat on the beach

+and had pushed off on to the water.  It was a double-pronged boat,

+light as a nutshell, made of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin,

+and lined with bark.  In this frail craft she was afloat,

+and already far out in the bay not rowing, but sitting quietly,

+and drifting away with the ebbing tide.  The wind was rising,

+and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with breakers.

+Israel put off after her and rescued her.  The motionless eyes

+began to fill when she heard his voice.

+

+"My darling, my darling!" cried Israel; "where did you think

+you were going?"

+

+"To heaven," she answered.

+

+And truly she had all but gone there.

+

+Israel had no choice left to him now.  He must sadden the heart

+of this creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril.

+Naomi was no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone,

+but in more danger from herself than any child before her,

+because deprived of two of her senses until she had grown to be a maid,

+and no control could be imposed upon her.

+

+At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening

+while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting,

+and there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people

+shuffling back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind.

+The word made no impression upon her mind at first.  She had heard

+it before, and it had passed her by like a sound that she did not know.

+She had been born blind, and therefore could not realise

+what it was to see.  To open a way for the awful truth was difficult,

+and Israel's heart smote him while he persisted.  Naomi laughed

+as he put his fingers over her eyes that he might show her.

+She laughed again when he asked if she could see the people

+whom she could only hear.  And once more she laughed when the sun

+had gone down, and the mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque

+in the Metamar, and he asked if she could see the old blind man

+in the minaret, where he was crying, "God is great!  God is great!"

+

+"Can you see him, little one?" said Israel.

+

+"See him?" said Naomi; "why yes, you dear old father, of course I can

+see him.  Listen," she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger,

+and holding her head aslant, "listen: God is great!  God is great!

+There--I saw him then."

+

+"That is only hearing him, Naomi--hearing him with your ears--

+with this ear and with this.  But can you see him, sweetheart?"

+

+Did her father mean to ask her if she could _feel_ the mooddin

+in his minaret far above them?  Once more she laid her head aslant.

+There was a pause, and then she cried impulsively--

+

+"Oh, _I_ know.  But, you foolish old father, how _can_ I?

+He is too far away."

+

+Then she flung her arms about Israel's neck and kissed him.

+

+"There," she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences,

+"I have seen my _father_ anyway."

+

+It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it.

+He told her, with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like

+other maidens--not like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah;

+that she was a being afflicted of God; that there was something

+she had not got, something she could not do, a world she did not know,

+and had never yet so much as dreamt of.  Darkness was more than

+cold and quiet, and light was more than warmth and noise.

+The one was day--day ruled by the fiery sun in the sky--and the other

+was night, lit by the pale moon and the bright stars in heaven.

+And the face of man and the eyes of woman were more than features

+to feel--they were spirit and soul, to watch and to follow and to love

+without any hand being near them.

+

+"There is a great world about you, little one," he said,

+"which you have never seen, though you can hear it and feel it

+and speak to it.  Yes, it is true, Naomi, it is true.  You have never seen

+the mountains and the dangerous gullies on their rocky sides.

+You have never seen the mighty deep, and the storms that heave and swell

+in it.  You have never seen man or woman or child.  Is that very strange,

+little one?  Listen: your mother died nine years ago, and you had never

+seen her.  Your father is holding your head in his hands at this moment,

+but you have never seen his face.  And if the dark curtains were to fall

+from your eyes, and you were to see him now, you would not know him

+from another man, or from woman, or from a tree.  You are blind, Naomi,

+you are blind."

+

+Naomi listened intently.  Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested nervously

+on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn,

+and then filled with tears.  Israel's throat swelled.  To tell her

+of all this, though he must needs do it for her safety,

+was like reproaching her with her infirmity.  But it was only the trouble

+in her father's voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber

+of Naomi's mind.  The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later

+to her consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer

+and lighter hand.

+

+She had always loved little children, and since the: coming

+of her hearing she had loved them more than ever.  Their lisping tongues,

+their pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts,

+all fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself,

+though grown to be a lovely maid.  And of all children

+those she loved best were not the children of the Jews,

+nor yet the children of the Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged,

+barefoot, black and olive-skinned mites who came into Tetuan

+with the country Arabs and Berbers on market mornings.

+They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest,

+and they were most full of joy and wonder.  So she would gather them up

+in twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays,

+from the mouths of their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home

+by the hand.

+

+And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope,

+suspended from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this

+Naomi would sport with her little ones.  She would be swinging

+in the midst of them, with one tiny black maiden on the seat beside her,

+and one little black man with high stomach and shaven poll holding

+on to the rope behind her, and another mighty Moor in a diminutive

+white jellab pushing at their feet in front, and all laughing together,

+or the children singing as the swing rose, and she herself listening

+with head aslant and all her fair hair rip-rip-rippling down her back

+and over her neck, and her smiling white face resting on her shoulder.

+

+It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it

+came the first great shadow of the blind girl's life.  For it chanced

+one day that one of the children--a tiny creature with a slice

+of the woman in her--brought a present for Naomi out of her mother's

+market-basket.  It was a flower, but of a strange kind, that grew

+only in the distant mountains where lay the little black one's home.

+Naomi passed her fingers over it, and she did not know it.

+

+"What is it?" she asked.

+

+"It's blue," said the child.

+

+"What is blue?" said Naomi

+

+"Blue--don't you know?--blue!" said the child.

+

+"But what is blue?" Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her restless fingers.

+

+"Why, dear me! can't you see?--blue--the flower, you know," said the child, in her artless way.

+

+Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi's relief.  "Blue is a colour," he

+said.

+

+"A colour?" said Naomi.

+

+"Yes, like--like the sea," he added.

+

+"The sea?  Blue?  How?" Naomi asked.

+

+Ali tried again.  "Like the sky," he said simply.

+

+Naomi's face looked perplexed.  "And what is the sky like?" she asked.

+

+At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali's face,

+and her great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes.

+The lad was pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer

+that leapt up to his tongue.  "Like," he said--"like--"

+

+"Well?"

+

+"Like your own eyes, Naomi."

+

+By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes

+with her hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her

+what her other senses could not tell.  But the solemn mystery

+had dawned on her mind at last: that she was unlike others;

+that she was lacking something that every one else possessed;

+that the little children who played with her knew what she could

+never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off;

+that there was a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying

+round about her, where every one else might sport and find delight,

+but that her spirit could not enter it, because she was shut off

+from it by the great hand of God.

+

+From that time forward everything seemed to remind her

+of her affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times.

+Even her dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices

+that told of them.  If a bird sang in the air above her,

+she lifted her sightless eyes.  If she walked in the town

+on market morning and heard the din of traffic--the cries of the dealers,

+the "Balak!" of the camel-men, the "Arrah!" of the muleteers,

+and the twanging ginbri of the story-tellers--she sighed

+and dropped her head into her breast.  Listening to the wind,

+she asked if it had eyes or was sightless; and hearing of the mountains

+that their snowy heads rose into the clouds, she inquired

+if they were blind, and if they ever talked together in the sky.

+

+But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child,

+and became a woman.  In the week thereafter she had learned more

+of the world than in all the years of her life before.

+She was no longer a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy,

+but a weak, patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity,

+humbled by it, and thinking shame of it.

+

+One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out

+with the children into the fields.  The day was hot, and they wandered

+far down the banks and dry bed of the Marteel.  And as they ran and raced,

+the little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called

+to the cattle and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets

+that whistled to their young.

+

+Thus the hours went on unheeded.  The afternoon passed into evening,

+the evening into twilight, the twilight into early night.

+Then the air grew empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell

+upon the children, and they crept to Naomi's side in fear,

+and took her hands and clung to her gown.  She turned back

+towards the town, and as they walked in the double silence

+of their own hushed tongues and the songless and voiceless world,

+the fingers of the little ones closed tightly upon her own.

+

+Then the children cried in terror, "See!"

+

+"What is it?" said Naomi.

+

+The little ones could not tell her.  It was only the noiseless summer

+lightning, but the children had never seen it before.

+With broad white flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed

+of the river in the valley to the white peaks of the mountains.

+At every flash the little people shrieked in their fear,

+and there was no one there to comfort them save Naomi only,

+and she was blind and could not see what they saw.  With helpless hands

+she held to their hands and hurried home, over the darkening fields,

+through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light, leading on,

+yet seeing nothing.

+

+But Israel saw Naomi's shame.  The blindness which was a sense

+of humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him.

+He had asked God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied.

+"Give her speech, O Lord," he had cried, "speech that shall lift her

+above the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask

+and know." But what was speech without sight to her who had always

+been blind?  What was all the world to one who had never seen it?

+Only as Paradise is to Man, who can but idly dream of its glories.

+

+Israel took back his prayer.  There were things to know

+that words could never tell.  Now was Naomi blind for the first time,

+being no longer dumb.  "Give her sight, O Lord," he cried;

+"open her eyes that she may see; let her look on Thy beautiful world

+and know it!  Then shall her life be safe, and her heart be happy,

+and her soul be Thine, and Thy servant at last be satisfied!"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XVII

+

+ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE

+

+

+It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok,

+and no rain had yet fallen.  The eggs of the locust might be hatched

+at any time.  Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face

+of the earth like snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley

+that were coming green out of the ground would wither before them.

+The country people were in despair.  They were all but stripped

+of their cattle; they had no milk; and they came afoot to the market.

+Death seemed to look them in the face.  Neither in the mosques

+nor in the synagogues did they offer petitions to God for rain.

+They had long ceased their prayers.  Only in the Feddan at the mouths

+of their tents did they lift up their heavy eyes to the hot haze

+of the pitiless sky and mutter, "It is written!"

+

+Israel was busy with other matters.  During these six-and-twenty days

+he had been asking himself what it was right and needful

+that he should do.  He had concluded at length that it was his duty

+to give up the office he held under the Kaid.  No longer could he serve

+two masters.  Too long had he held to the one, thinking that

+by recompense and restitution, by fair dealing and even-handed justice,

+he might atone to the other.  Recompense was a mockery

+of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was no longer

+possible--his own purse being empty--without robbery of the treasury

+of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope in Barbary,

+where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan

+in his hareem to the pert Mut'hasseb in the market, must be only

+as a human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood

+out of the man beneath him.

+

+To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible,

+and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina,

+was a waste of shame and spirit.  Besides, and above all,

+Israel remembered that God had given him grace in the sacrifices

+which he had made already.  Twice had God rewarded him,

+in the mercy He had shown to Naomi, for putting by the pomp

+and circumstance of the world.  Would His great hand be idle now--now

+when he most needed its mighty and miraculous power when Naomi,

+being conscious of her blindness, was mourning and crying for sweet sight

+of the world and he himself was about to put under his feet the last

+of his possessions that separated him from other men--his office

+that he wrought for in the early days with sweat of brow and blood,

+and held on to in the later days through evil report and hatred,

+that he might conquer the fate that had first beaten him down!

+

+Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat

+of his desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan.  He made

+his preparations, and they were few.  His money was gone already,

+and so were his dead wife's jewels.  He had determined that he would keep

+his house, if only as a shelter to Naomi (for he owed something

+to her material comfort as well as her spiritual welfare),

+but that its furniture and belongings were more luxurious than

+their necessity would require or altered state allow.

+

+So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and

+great chairs which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets

+from Rabat, the silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies

+from Morocco city.  When these were gone, and nothing remained

+but the simple rugs and mattresses which are all that the house

+of a poor man needs in that land where the skies are kind,

+he called his servants to him as he sat in the patio--Ali as well as

+the two bondwomen--for he had decided that he must part with them also,

+and they must go their ways.

+

+"My good people," he said, "you have been true and faithful servants

+to me this many a year--you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah,

+since before the days when my wife came to me--and you too, Ali, my lad,

+since you grew to be big and helpful.  Little I thought to part

+with you until my good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary

+is over already, and to-morrow I shall be less than the least

+of all men in Tetuan.  So this is what I have concluded to do.

+You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah, being given to me as bondwomen

+by the Kaid in the old days when my power, which now is little

+and of no moment, was great and necessary--you belong to me.

+Well, I give you your liberty.  Your papers are in the name of Ben Aboo,

+and I have sealed them with his seal--that is the last use but one

+that I shall put it to.  Here they are, both of them.  Take them

+to the Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will ratify your title.

+Then you will be free women for ever after."

+

+The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel's words

+with exclamations of surprise and consternation.  "Allah!"

+"Bismillah!"  "Holy Saints!"  "By the beard of the Prophet!"

+And when at length he put the deeds of emancipation into their hands

+they fell into loud fits of hysterical weeping.

+

+"As for you, Ali, my son," Israel continued, "I cannot give you

+your freedom, for you are a freeman born.  You have been a son to me

+these fourteen years.  I have another task for you--a perilous task,

+a solemn duty--and when it is done I shall see you no more.

+My brave boy, you will go far, but I do not fear for you.

+When you are gone I shall think of you; and if you should sometimes think

+of your old master who could not keep you, we may not always be apart."

+

+The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment.

+That strange disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea

+that had forced itself upon his unwilling mind.  But that Israel,

+the greatest, noblest, mightiest man in the world--let the dogs

+of rasping Jews and the scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark

+as they would--should fall to be less than the least in Tetuan,

+and, having fallen that he should send him away--him, Ali,

+his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi's old playfellow--Allah!

+Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did his master mean?

+

+Ali's big eyes began to fill, and great beads rolled down

+his black cheeks.  Then, recovering his speech he blurted out

+that he would not go.  He would follow his father and serve him

+until the end of his life.  What did he want with wages?

+Who asked for any?  No going his ways for him!  A pretty thing, wasn't it,

+that he should go off, and never see his father again, no,

+nor Naomi--Naomi--that-that--but God would show!  God would show!

+

+And, following Ali's lead, Fatimah stepped up to Israel and offered her

+paper back.  "Take it," she said; "I don't want any liberty.

+I've got liberty enough as I am.  And here--here," fumbling

+in her waistband and bringing out a knitted purse; "I would have offered

+it before, only I thought shame.  My wages?  Yes.  You've paid us wages

+these nine years, haven't you; and what right had we to any,

+being slaves?  You will not take it, my lord?  Well, then,

+my dear master, if I must go, if I must leave you, take my papers

+and sell me to some one.  I shall not care, and you have a right to do it.

+Perhaps I'll get another good master--who knows?"

+

+Her brows had been knitted, and she had tried to look stern and angry,

+but suddenly her cheeks were a flood of tears.

+

+"I'm a fool!" she cried.  "I'll never get a good master again;

+but if I get a bad one, and he beats me, I'll not mind,

+for I'll think of you, and my precious jewel of gold and silver,

+my pretty gazelle, Naomi--Allah preserve her!--that you took my money,

+and I'm bearing it for both of you, as we might say--working

+for you--night and day--night and day--"

+

+Israel could endure no more.  He rose up and fled out of the patio

+into his own room, to bury his swimming face.  But his soul was big

+and triumphant.  Let the world call him by what names it would--tyrant,

+traitor, outcast pariah--there were simple hearts that loved

+and honoured him--ay, honoured him--and they were the hearts

+that knew him best.

+

+The perilous task reserved for Ali was to go to Shawan and to liberate

+the followers of Absalam, who, less happy than their leader,

+whose strong soul was at rest, were still in prison without abatement

+of the miseries they lay under.  He was to do this by power

+of a warrant addressed to the Kaid of Shawan and drawn under the seal

+of the Kaid of Tetuan.  Israel had drawn it, and sealed it also,

+without the knowledge or sanction of Ben Aboo; for, knowing what manner

+of man Ben Aboo was, and knowing Katrina also, and the sway she held

+over him, and thinking it useless to attempt to move either to mercy,

+he had determined to make this last use of his office,

+at all risks and hazards.

+

+Ben Aboo might never hear that the people were at large,

+for Ali was to forbid them to return to Tetuan, and Shawan was

+sixty weary miles away.  And if he ever did hear, Israel himself

+would be there to bear the brunt of his displeasure, but Ali

+the instrument of his design, must be far away.  For when the gates

+of the prison had been opened, and the prisoners had gone free,

+Ali was neither to come back to Tetuan nor to remain in Morocco,

+but with the money that Israel gave him out of the last wreck

+of his fortune he was to make haste to Gibraltar by way of Ceuta,

+and not to consider his life safe until he had set foot in England.

+

+"England!" cried Ali.  "But they are all white men there."

+

+"White-hearted men, my lad," said Israel; "and a Jewish man may find rest

+for the sole of his foot among them."

+

+That same day the black boy bade farewell to Israel and to Naomi.

+He was leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted.

+Israel was his father, Naomi was his sister, and never again should

+he set his eyes on either.  But in the pride of his perilous mission

+he bore himself bravely.

+

+"Well, good-night," he said, taking Naomi's hand, but not looking

+into her blind face.

+

+"Good-night," she answered, and then, after a moment, she flung her arms

+about his neck and kissed him.  He laughed lightly, and turned to Israel.

+

+"Good-night, father," he said in a shrill voice.

+

+ "A safe journey to you, my son," said Israel; "and may you do

+all my errands."

+

+"God burn my great-grandfather if I do not!" said Ali stoutly.

+

+But with that word of his country his brave bearing at length broke down,

+and drawing Israel aside, that Naomi might not hear, he whispered,

+sobbing and stammering, "When--when I am gone, don't, don't tell her

+that I was black."

+

+Then in an instant he fled away.

+

+"In peace!" cried Israel after him.  "In peace! my brave boy,

+simple, noble, loyal heart!"

+

+Next morning Israel, leaving Naomi at home, set off for the Kasbah,

+that he might carry out his great resolve to give up the office

+he held under the Kaid.  And as he passed through the streets

+his head was held up, and he walked proudly.  A great burden had fallen

+from him, and his spirit was light.  The people bent their heads

+before him as he passed, and scowled at him when he was gone by.

+The beggars lying  at the gate of the Mosque spat over their fingers

+behind his back, and muttered "Bismillah!  In the name of God!"

+A negro farmer in the Feddan, who was bent double over a hoof

+as he was shoeing a bony and scabby mule, lifted his ugly face,

+bathed in sweat, and grinned at Israel as he went along.

+A group of Reefians, dirty and lean and hollow-eyed, feeding

+their gaunt donkeys, and glancing anxiously at the sky over the heads

+of the mountains, snarled like dogs as he strode through their midst.

+The sky was overcast, and the heads of the mountains were capped

+with mist.  "Balak!" sounded in Israel's ears from every side.

+"Arrah!" came constantly at his heels.  A sweet-seller

+with his wooden tray swung in front of him, crying, "Sweets, all sweets,

+O my lord Edrees, sweets, all sweets," changed the name

+of the patron saint of candies, and cried, "Sweets, all sweets,

+O my lord Israel, sweets, all sweets!"  The girl selling clay peered

+up impudently into Israel's eyes, and the oven-boy, answering

+the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms thrust out at doors

+standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with a mocking echo

+of Israel's name.

+

+What matter?  Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.

+Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave.

+This morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be

+one of themselves.

+

+When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air

+about it that brought back recollections of the day--now nearly

+four years past--of the children's gathering at Katrina's festival.

+The lusty-lunged Arabs squatting at the gates among soldiers

+in white selhams and peaked shasheeahs the women in blankets standing

+in the outer court, the dark passages smelling of damp, the gusts

+of heavy odour coming from the inner chambers, and the great patio

+with the fountain and fig-trees--the same voluptuous air was

+over everything.  And as on that day so on this, in the alcove

+under the horseshoe arch sat Ben Aboo and his Spanish wife.

+

+Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face

+of the Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey

+and his hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise

+he was the same man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss

+of some teeth of the upper row, was the same woman.  And if the children

+had risen up before Israel's eyes as he stood on the threshold

+of the patio, he could not have drawn his breath with more surprise

+than at the sight of the man who stood that morning in their place.

+

+It was Mohammed of Mequinez.  He had come to ask for the release

+of the followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan.

+In defiance of courtesy his slippers were on his feet.  He was clad

+in a piece of untanned camel-skin, which reached to his knees

+and was belted about his waist.  His head, which was bare to the sun

+and drooped by nature like a flower, was held proudly up,

+and his wild eyes were flashing.  He was not supplicating

+for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and taxing Ben Aboo

+as a tyrant to his throat.

+

+"Give me them up, Ben Aboo," he was saying as Israel came

+to the threshold, "or, if they die in their prison, one thing

+I promise you."

+

+"And pray what is that?" said Ben Aboo.

+

+"That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer."

+

+Ben Aboo's brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina,

+and made pretence to laugh, and then said, "And pray, my lord,

+who shall the murderer be?"

+

+Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered,

+"Yourself."

+

+At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted

+in his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.

+

+Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed.  He was Kaid, he was Basha,

+he was master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles,

+but he was afraid of this man whom the people called a prophet.

+And partly out of this fear, and partly because he had more regard

+to Mohammed's courageous behaviour in thus bearding him in his Kasbah

+and by the walls of his dungeons than to the anger his hot word

+had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised him at that moment

+that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.

+

+But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause

+of indignation against this man, for it had been rumoured

+of late that Mohammed had openly denounced her marriage.

+

+"Wait, Sidi," she said.  "Is not this the fellow that has gone

+up and down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was

+against the law of Mohammed?"

+

+At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him,

+so he made pretence to laugh again, and said, "Allah! so it is!

+Mohammed the Third, eh?  Son of Mequinez, God will repay you!  Thanks!

+Thanks!  You could never think how long I've waited that I might look

+face to face upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid."

+

+He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter,

+but Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant.

+"Wait no longer, O Ben Aboo," he cried, "but look upon him now,

+and know that what you have done is an unclean thing, and you shall

+be childless and die!"

+

+Then Ben Aboo's passion mastered him.  He rose to his feet in his anger,

+and cried, "Prophet, you have destroyed yourself.  Listen to me!

+The turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison

+until they perish of hunger and rot of their sores.  By the beard

+of my father, I swear it!"

+

+Mohammed did not flinch.  Throwing back his head, he answered,

+"If I am a prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy.  Before that

+which you say shall come to pass, both you and your father's house

+will be destroyed.  Never yet did a tyrant go happily out of the world,

+and you shall go out of it like a dog."

+

+Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group

+of barefooted Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, "Take him!

+He will escape!"

+

+But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat,

+and Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.

+

+"In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt

+you had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought

+on our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you.

+And within this very court, and on that very spot where your feet

+now rest, your whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay

+over you wailing and your blood was on her face and on her hands,

+and only she was with you, for all else had forsaken you--all save one,

+and that was your enemy, and he had come to see you with his eyes,

+and to rejoice over you with his heart, because you were fallen and dead."

+

+Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again

+and reeled backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward

+at his feet where the eyes of Mohammed had rested.  It was almost

+as if he saw the awful thing of which Mohammed had spoken,

+so strong was the power of the vision upon him.

+

+But recovering himself quickly, he cried, "Away! In the name

+of God, away!"

+

+"I will go," said Mohammed; "and beware what you do while I am gone."

+

+"Do you threaten me?" cried Ben Aboo.  "Will you go to the Sultan?

+Will you appeal to Abd er-Rahman?"

+

+"No, Ben Aboo; but to God."

+

+So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place,

+for no man hindered him.  Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat

+as one that was speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body

+availed him, or the silver on his breast, against that simple man

+in camel-skin, who owned nothing and asked nothing, and feared

+neither Kaid nor King.

+

+When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing

+at the doorway, and he beckoned to him with the downward motion,

+which is the Moorish manner.  And rising on his quaking limbs

+he took him aside and said, "I know this fellow.  Ya Allah!  Allah!

+For all his vaunts and visions he has gone to Abd er-Rahman.

+God will show!  God will show!  I dare not take him!  Abd er-Rahman uses

+him to spy and pry on his Bashas!  Camel-skin coat?  Allah!

+a fine disguise!  Bismillah!  Bismillah!"

+

+Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision

+saw his body lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper,

+and said, "Listen!  You have my seal?"

+

+Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband,

+and drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.

+

+"Right!  Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God.

+Do not liberate these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them

+so much as bread to eat or water to drink, but let such as own them

+feed them.  And if ever the thing of which that fellow has spoken

+should come to pass--do you hear?--in the hour wherein it befalls--

+Allah preserve me!--in that hour draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan

+and seal it with my seal--are you listening?--a warrant to put every man,

+woman, and child to the sword.  Ya Allah!  Allah!  We will deal with

+these spies of Abd er-Rahman!  So shall there be mourning

+at my burial--Holy Saints!  Holy Saints!--mourning, I say,

+among them that look for joy at my death."

+

+Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking

+into loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words

+into Israel's ear.

+

+Israel made no answer.  His eyes had become dim--he scarcely saw

+the walls of the place wherein they stood.  His ears had

+become dense--he scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo,

+though the Kaid's hot breath was beating upon his cheek.

+But through the haze he saw the shadow of one figure tramping furiously

+to and fro, and through the thick air the voice of another figure

+came muffled and harsh.  For Katrina, having chased away

+with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel

+and was saying--

+

+"What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter--this Naomi

+of yours--that she has recovered her speech and hearing!

+When did that happen, pray?  No answer?  Ah, I see, you are tired

+of the deception.  You kept it up well between you.  But is she still

+blind?  So?  Dear me!  Blind, poor child.  Think of it!"

+

+Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless

+on the same place, holding the seal in his hand.  And Ben Aboo,

+in his restless tramping up and down, came to him again, and said,

+"Why are you a Jew, Israel ben Oliel?  The dogs of your people hate you.

+Witness to the Prophet!  Resign yourself!  Turn Muslim,

+man--what's to hinder you?"

+

+Still Israel made no reply.  But Ben Aboo continued: "Listen!

+The people about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all

+you are the best servant I have ever had.  Say the Kelmah,

+and I'll make you my Khaleefa.  Do you hear?--my Khaleefa,

+with power equal to my own.  Man, why don't you speak?

+Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XVIII

+

+THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER

+

+

+"Basha," said Israel--he spoke slowly and quietly; but

+with forced calmness--"Basha, you must seek another hand

+for work like that--this hand of mine shall never seal that warrant."

+

+"Tut, man!" whispered Ben Aboo.  "Do your new measles break out

+everywhere?  Am I not Kaid?  Can I not make you my Khaleefa?"

+

+Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire

+of his great resolve.

+

+"Basha," he said again calmly and quietly, "if you were Sultan

+and could make me your Vizier, I would not do it."

+

+"Why?" cried Ben Aboo; "why? why?"

+

+"Because," said Israel, "I am here to deliver up your seal to you."

+

+"You?  Grace of God!" cried Ben Aboo.

+

+"I am here," continued Israel, as calmly as before, "to resign

+my office."

+

+"Resign your office?  Deliver up your seal?" cried Ben Aboo.

+"Man, man, are you mad?"

+

+"No, Basha, not to-day," said Israel quietly.  "I must have been that

+when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago."

+

+Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his anger,

+his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel

+with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly

+by a new and terrible thought.  Quivering and trembling,

+and muttering short prayers under his breath, he recoiled from the place

+where Israel stood, and said, "There is something under all this?

+What is it?  Let me think!  Let me think!"

+

+Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint

+had grown white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath,

+by the swift instinct of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself

+the same question, "What does it mean?  What does it mean?"

+

+In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way.

+"Wait!" he cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces

+of his people about him.  "Who said that when he was away

+from Tetuan he went to Fez?  The Sultan was there then.

+He had just come up from Soos.  That's it!  I knew it!

+The man is like all the rest of them.  Abd er-Rahman has bought him.

+Allah!  Allah!  What have I done that every soul that eats my bread

+should spy and pry on me?"

+

+Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited

+for no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers

+and protests.  "O Giver of Good to all!  O Creator!

+It is Abd er-Rahman again.  Ya Allah!  Ya Allah!  Or else

+his rapacious satellites--his thieves, his robbers, his cut-throats!

+That bloated Vizier!  That leprous Naib es-Sultan!  Oh, I know them.

+Bismillah!  They want to fleece me.  They want to squeeze me

+of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings

+after my long service.  Curse them!  Curse their relations!

+O Merciful!  O Compassionate!  They'll call it arrears of taxes.

+But no, by the beard of my father, no!  Not one fels shall they have

+if I die for it.  I'm an old soldier--they shall torture me.

+Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I'll stand firm!  Allah!

+Allah!  Bismillah!  Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?  It's because

+I'm his brother--that's it, that's it!  But I've never risen against him.

+Never, never!  I've paid him all!  All!  I tell you I've paid everything.

+I've got nothing left.  You know it yourself, Israel, you know it."

+

+Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears,

+pleaded and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads

+of his rosary and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio

+until he drew up at length, with a supplicating look, face to face

+with Israel.  And if anything had been needed to fix Israel

+to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the service of Ben Aboo,

+he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of the Kaid's

+abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty,

+and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.

+

+But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said,

+speaking as slowly and calmly as at first, "Basha, have no fear;

+I have not sold myself to Abd er-Rahman.  It is true that I was

+at Fez--but not to see the Sultan.  I have never seen him.

+I am not his spy.  He knows nothing of me.  I know nothing of him,

+and what I am doing now is being done for myself alone."

+

+Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were

+the other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him,

+Ben Aboo made what poor shift he could to cover his shame

+at the sorry weakness he had just betrayed.  And first he gazed

+in a sort of stupor into Israel's steadfast face; and then he dropped

+his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn of his own words, as if trying

+to carry them off by a silly show of braggadocio, and to make believe

+that they had been no more than a humorous pretence, and that no man

+would be so simple as to think he had truly meant them.

+But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again, and,

+being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once more,

+without disguise and without shame.

+

+"And pray, sir," said he, with a ghastly smile, "what riches

+have you gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?"

+

+"None," said Israel shortly.

+

+Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning

+with Katrina.

+

+"And pray, again," he said, with a curl of the lip, "without office

+and without riches how may you hope to live?"

+

+"As a poor man among poor men," said Israel, "serving God and trusting

+to His mercy."

+

+Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him,

+but Israel stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.

+

+"Serving God is hard bread," said Ben Aboo.

+

+"Serving the devil is crust!" said Israel.

+

+At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed it,

+the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.

+

+"Allah!  What do you mean?" he cried.  "Who are you that you dare wag

+your insolent tongue at me?"

+

+"I am your scapegoat, Basha," said Israel, with an awful calm--"

+your scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.

+Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them

+and brings them by bitter tortures to the dust and death.

+That's what I am, Basha, and have long been, shame upon me!

+And while I am down yonder in the streets among your people--hated,

+reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are up here in the Kasbah

+above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and the mistaken love

+of all men."

+

+While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him

+from the opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey.

+His swarthy cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed,

+his heavy nose and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly,

+and from under his turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane

+over his ears.

+

+But Israel did not flinch.  With a look of quiet majesty,

+standing face to face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them,

+he spoke again and said, "Basha, I do not envy you, but neither

+will I share your business nor your rewards.  I mean to be your scapegoat

+no more.  Here is your seal.  It is red with the blood

+of your unhappy people through these five-and-twenty bad years past.

+I can carry it no longer.  Take it."

+

+In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand

+as he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement

+of the patio.

+

+"Fool!" he cried.  "So this is what it is!  Allah!  In the name

+of the most merciful God, who would have believed it?

+Israel ben Oliel a prophet!  A prophet of the poor!  O Merciful!

+O Compassionate!"

+

+Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery

+his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged

+and lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.

+

+"Who said it was the Sultan?" he cried again.  "He was a fool.

+Abd er-Rahman?  No; but Mohammed of Mequinez!  Mohammed the Third!

+That's it!  That's it!"

+

+So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before

+of Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio

+from side to side like a caged and angry beast.

+

+"And if I am a tyrant," he said in a thick voice, "who made me so?

+If I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it?

+Whose clever brain devised new means of revenue?  Ransoms,

+promissory notes, bonds, false judgments--what did I know of such things?

+Who changed the silver dollars at nine ducats apiece?  And who bought up

+the debts of the people that murmured against such robbery?

+Allah!  Allah!  Whose crafty head did all this?  Why,

+yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel!  By the beard of the Prophet, I swear it!"

+

+Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him,

+he answered calmly and sadly, "God's ways are not our ways,

+neither are His thoughts our thoughts.  He works His own will,

+and we are but His ministers.  I thought God's justice had failed,

+but it has overtaken myself.  For what I did long ago of my own free will

+and intention to oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering."

+

+All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove

+with lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint,

+beating her fan restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid

+and audible breath.  And now, at this last word of Israel,

+though so sadly spoken, and so solemn in its note of suffering,

+she broke into a trill of laughter, and said lightly, "Ah!

+I thought your love of the poor was young.  Not yet cut its teeth,

+poor thing!  A babe in swaddling clothes, eh?  When was it born?"

+

+"About the time that you were, madam," said Israel, lifting his heavy eyes

+upon her.

+

+At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger.  "Husband," she cried,

+turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach,

+"I hope you now see that I was right about this insolent old man.

+I told you from the first what would come of him.  But no,

+you would have your own foolish way.  It was easy to see

+that the devil's dues were in him.  Yet you would not believe me!

+You would believe him.  Simpleton as you are, you are believing him now!

+The poor?  Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks!  I tell you again this man

+is trying to put his foot on your neck.  How?  Oh, trust him,

+he's got his own schemes!  Look to it, El Arby, look to it!

+He'll be master in Tetuan yet!"

+

+Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath,

+sometimes laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like

+an angry cry.  And now, rising to her feet and facing towards

+the Arab soldiers, who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried,

+"Arabs, Berbers, Moors, Christians, fight as you will,

+follow the Basha as you may, you'll lie in the same bed yet!

+But where?  Under the heels of the Jew!"

+

+A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile

+came back into the face of Ben Aboo.

+

+"You must be right," he said, "you must be right!  Ya Allah!  Ya Allah!

+This is the dog that I picked out of the mire.  I found him a beggar,

+and I gave him wealth.  An impostor, a personator, a cheat,

+and I gave him place and rank.  When he had no home, I housed him,

+and when he could find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves.

+I have banished his enemies, and imprisoned those he hated.

+After his wife had died, and none came near him, and he was left

+to howk out her grave with his own hands, I gave him prisoners

+to bury her, and when he was done with them I set them free.

+All these years I have heaped fortune upon him.  Ya Allah!

+His master!  No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting

+of his finger.  And all for what?  For this!  For this!  For this!

+Ingrate!" he cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again,

+"if you must give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool?

+Could you not come to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich,

+and have enough; I have served you long and faithfully;

+let me rest'--why not?  I say, why not?"

+

+Israel answered calmly, "Because it would have been a lie, Basha."

+

+"So it would," cried Ben Aboo sharply, "so it would: you are right--

+it would have been a lie, an accursed lie!  But why must you come to me

+and say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also;

+you have sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it'"

+

+"Because it is true, Basha," said Israel.

+

+At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous

+and awful.  Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end

+of the patio, he said, "There is another thing that is true.

+It is true that on the other side of that wall there is a prison," and,

+lifting his voice to a shriek, he added, "you are on the edge of a gulf,

+Israel ben Oliel.  One step more--"

+

+But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face,

+and the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die

+in his stifling throat.  If only he could have provoked Israel to anger

+he might have had his will of him.  But that slow, impassive manner,

+and that worn countenance so noble in sadness and suffering,

+was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort upon his words.

+

+And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story

+of his ingratitude he could tell a different tale.  This pitiful slave

+of rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin,

+shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him,

+was the master in whose service he had spent his best brain

+and best blood.  But for the strong hand that he had lent him,

+but for the cool head wherewith he had guarded him, where would

+the man be now?  In the dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither

+by way of the Sultan's wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture.

+By the mind's eye Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless,

+eyeless, hungry, gaunt.  But no, he was still here--fat, sleek,

+voluptuous, imperious.  And good men lay perishing in his prisons,

+and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself,

+his servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood

+he had sweated, stood before him there like an old lion,

+who had been wandering far and was beaten back by his cubs.

+

+But what matter?  He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should

+he speak it?  Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither read

+nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties

+of the Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him;

+yet why should he do so?  Through five-and-twenty evil years

+he had built up this man's house; yet why should he boast

+of what was done, being done so foully?  He had said his say,

+and it was enough.  This hour of insult and outrage had been written

+on his forehead, and he must have come to it.  Then courage! courage!

+

+"Husband," cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile

+to Ben Aboo as he crossed  the patio, "you must scour this vermin

+out of Tetuan!"

+

+"You are right," he answered.  "By Allah, you are right!  And henceforth

+I will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers."

+

+Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice

+of mockery, "Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?

+But you shall do more than that.  You shall resign your house as well,

+and all that's in it, and leave this town as a beggar."

+

+Israel stood unmoved.  "As you will," he said quietly.

+

+"Where are the two women--the slaves?" asked Ben Aboo.

+

+"At home," said Israel.

+

+"They are mine, and I take them back," said Ben Aboo.

+

+Israel's face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest,

+but he only drew a longer breath, and said again, "As you will, Basha."

+

+Ben Aboo's voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question.

+"Where is your money?" he cried; "the money that you have made

+out of my service--out of me--_my_ money--where is it?"

+

+"Nowhere," said Israel.

+

+"It's a lie--another lie!" cried Ben Aboo.  "Oh yes, I've heard

+of your charities, master.  They were meant to buy over my people,

+were they?  Were they?  Were they, I ask?"

+

+"So you say, Basha," said Israel.

+

+"So I know!" cried Ben Aboo; "but all you had is not gone that way.

+You're a fool, but not fool enough for that!  Give up your keys--the keys

+of your house!"

+

+Israel hesitated, and then said, "Let me return for a minute--

+it is all I ask."

+

+At that the woman laughed hysterically.  "Ah! he has something left

+after all!" she cried.

+

+Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, "Yes, madam,

+I _have_ something left--after all."

+

+Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again,

+saying, "El Arby, make him give up the key of that house.

+He has treasure there!"

+

+"It is true, madam," said Israel; "it is true that I have a treasure there.

+My daughter--my little blind Naomi."

+

+"Is that all?" cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.

+

+"It is all," said Israel, "but it is enough.  Let me fetch her."

+

+"Don't allow it!" cried Katrina.

+

+Israel's face betrayed feeling.  He was struggling to suppress it.

+"Make me homeless if you will," he said, "turn me like a beggar

+out of your town, but let me fetch my daughter."

+

+"She'll not thank you," cried Katrina.

+

+"She loves me," said Israel, "I am growing old, I am numbering the steps

+of death.  I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.

+Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha,

+as I am yours, and no one save her father--"

+

+"Ah!  Ah!  Ah!"

+

+Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling

+that had been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively.

+"Trust me," she cried, "I know what daughters are.  Girls like

+better things.  No, I'll give her what will be more to her taste.

+She shall stay here with me."

+

+Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, "Madam,

+I would rather see her dead at my feet."

+

+Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, "Don't wag your tongue at your mistress,

+sir."

+

+"_Your_ mistress, Basha," said Israel; "not mine."

+

+At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down

+upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead.

+He did not flinch or speak.  The blow had burst the skin,

+and a drop of blood trickled over the temple on to the cheek.

+There was a short deep pause.

+

+Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry.

+It came from behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.

+

+In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood

+in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered

+the patio.  It was Naomi.  How long she had been there no one knew,

+and how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets

+scarce any one--even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered thoughts

+of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate--could clearly tell.

+She stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast,

+which heaved visibly with emotion, and the other hand stretched out

+to touch the open iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance.

+Her head was held up, her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes

+seemed to stare wildly.  She had heard the hot words.  She had heard

+the sound of the blow that followed them.  Her father was smitten!

+Her father!  Her father!  It was then that she uttered the cry.

+All eyes turned to her.  Quaking, reeling, almost falling,

+she came tottering down the patio.  Soul and sense seemed

+to be struggling together in her blind face.  What did it all mean?

+What was happening?  Her fixed eyes stared as if they must burst the bonds

+that bound them, and look and see, and know!

+

+At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change,

+such as He has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born

+blind into His world of light.  In an instant, at a thought,

+by one spontaneous flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore

+down the dark curtains which had hung for seventeen years over the windows

+of her eyes, Naomi saw!

+

+They all knew it at once.  It seemed to them as if every feature

+of the girl's face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression

+of her lips, her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face,

+so fair before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing

+until then but a blank.  Nay, but they seemed to see her now

+for the first time.  This, only this, was she!

+

+And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been

+newly born into life.  She was meeting the world at last face to face,

+eye to eye.  Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light,

+everything had entered at a blow--the white glare of the sun,

+the blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife

+and his soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging

+on the fringe of his eyelid.  She could not realise the marvel.

+She did not know what vision was.  She had not learned to see.

+Her trembling soul had gone out from its dark chamber and met

+the mighty light in his mansion.  "Oh! oh!" she cried, and stood

+bewildered and helpless in the midst.  The picture of the world seemed

+to be falling upon her, and she covered her eyes with her hands,

+that she might abolish it altogether.

+

+Israel saw everything.  "Naomi!" he cried in a choking voice,

+and stretched out his hands to her.  Then she uncovered her eyes,

+and looked, and paused and hesitated.

+

+"Naomi!" he cried again, and made a step towards her.  She covered

+her eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her,

+and only listen to the voice that she knew so well.  Then she staggered

+into her father's arms.  And Israel's heart was big, and he gathered her

+to his breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, "Madam,

+we are in the hands of God.  Look!  See!  He has sent His angel

+to protect His servant."

+

+Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear.  He too, saw the finger of God

+in the wondrous thing which had come to pass.  And, falling back

+on his maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath,

+as he had done before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman,

+was the object of his terror.  "O Giver of good to all!  What is this?

+Allah save us!  Bismillah!  Is it Allah or the Jinoon?  Merciful!

+Compassionate!  Curses on them both!  Allah!  Allah!"

+

+The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled

+together in a group.  But Katrina fell to laughing.

+

+"Brava!" she cried.  "Brava!  Oh! a brave imposture!  What did I say

+long ago?  Blind?  No more blind than you were!  But a pretty pretence!

+Well acted!  Very well acted!  Brava!  Brava!"

+

+Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame

+of his crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.

+

+Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of Naomi,

+a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up

+from the lowest hell.  But he fought back the passion

+that was mastering him, and at the next instant the laughter had ceased,

+and Ben Aboo was saying--

+

+"Guards, take both of them.  Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk

+barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, 'So shall it be done

+to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman

+who is a play-actor and a cheat!' Thus let them pass through the streets

+and through the people until they are come to a gate of the town,

+and then cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XIX

+

+

+THE RAINBOW SIGN

+

+

+While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah

+a great blessing had fallen on the town.  The long-looked for,

+hoped for, prayed for--the good and blessed rain--had come at last.

+In gentle drops like dew it had at first been falling from the rack

+of dark cloud which had gathered over the heads of the mountains,

+and now, after half an hour of such moisture, the sky over the town

+was grey, and the rain was pouring down like a flood.

+

+Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!

+The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing

+and whitening as if the water washed it.  And the ground underfoot,

+which had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running

+like a wholesome river, and bearing back to the lips a taste

+as of the sea.

+

+And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the falling

+of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it.

+The streets and the marketplace were full of them.  In childish joy

+they wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought

+of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out

+their palms to the rain and drinking it.  Hailing each other

+in the voices of boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro

+they went and came without aim or direction.  The Jews trooped out

+of the Mellah, chattering like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed

+to them.  Mule-drivers cried "Balak" in tones that seemed to sing;

+gunsmiths and saddle-makers sat idle at their doors, greeting every one

+that passed; solemn Talebs stood in knots, with faces that shone

+under the closed hoods of their dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers

+encamped in the market-square capered about like flighty children,

+grinned like apes, fired their long guns into the air for love

+of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and sometimes embraced

+each other, thinking of their homes that were far away.

+

+Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene

+that the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out

+from the Kasbah.  At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand

+and gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah

+and crimson selham.  Behind him were four black police,

+and on either side of the company were two criers of the street,

+each carrying a short staff festooned with strings of copper coin,

+which he rattled in the air for a bell.  Between these came the victims

+of the Basha's order--Naomi first, barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all

+but the last garment that hid her nakedness, her head held down,

+her face hidden, and her eyes closed--and Israel afterwards,

+mounted on a lean and ragged ass.  A further guard of black police walked

+at the back of all.  Thus they came down the steep arcades

+into the market-square, where the greater body of the townspeople

+had gathered together.

+

+When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds

+from every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop,

+tent, and booth.  And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst

+into loud exclamations of surprise.

+

+"Ya Allah!  Israel the Jew!" cried the Moors.

+

+"God of Jacob, save us!  Israel ben Oliel!" cried the people

+of the Mellah.

+

+"What is it?  What has happened?  What has befallen them?" they all asked

+together.

+

+"Balak!" cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him

+to force a passage through the thronging multitude.  "Attention!

+By your leave!  Away!  Out of the way!"

+

+And as they walked the criers chanted, "So shall it be done to every man

+who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor

+and a cheat."

+

+When the people had recovered from their consternation they began

+to look black into each other's face, to mutter oaths between their teeth,

+and to say in voices of no pity or rush, "He deserved it!"

+"Ya Allah, but he's well served!"  "Holy Saints, we knew what

+it would come to!"  "Look at him now!"  "There he is at last!"

+"Brave end to all his great doings!"  "Curse him!  Curse him!"

+

+And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking

+of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along,

+came still the cry of the crier, "So shall it be done to every man

+who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor

+and a cheat."

+

+Then the mood of the multitude changed.  The people began to titter,

+and after that to laugh openly.  They wagged their heads at Israel;

+they derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight.  Where he was

+now he seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham

+and an imposture.  Look at him!  Look at his bony and ragged ass!

+Ya Allah!  To think that they had ever been  afraid of him!

+

+As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped

+in a blanket spat at Israel as he passed.  Then it was come to the door

+of the Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd

+and struck Israel with the back of his hand across the face.

+The woman had lost her husband and the man his son by death sentences

+of Ben Aboo.  Israel had succoured both when he went about

+on his secret excursions after nightfall in the disguise of a Moor.

+

+"Balak!  Balak!" cried the soldier in front, and still the chant

+of the crier rang out over all other noises.

+

+At every step the throng increased.  The strong and lusty

+bore down the weak in the struggle to get near to the procession.

+Blind beggars and feeble cripples who could not see or stir

+shouted hideous oaths at Israel from the back of the crowd.

+

+As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies

+came out into the town.  The one was a company of soldiers returning

+to the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house;

+the other was a company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki,

+Abraham Pigman, and Judah ben Lolo.  At the advent of the three usurers

+a new impulse seized the people.  They pretended to take the procession

+for a triumphal progress--the departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan.

+The soldier and police fell into the humour of the multitude.

+Salaams were made to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground

+before the feet of Naomi.  Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd,

+and walked backward, and cried, in his harsh, nasal croak--

+

+"Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor!  Make way for him!

+Make way! make way!"

+

+Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry

+of the hyena.  Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over

+the people's heads a huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier

+that walked within; and the black fellow, showing his white teeth

+in a wide grim, held it over Israel's head.

+

+Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.

+

+"God bless our Lord!"

+

+"Saviour of his people!"

+

+"Benefactor!  King of men!"

+

+And over and between these cries came shrieks  and yells of laughter.

+

+All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing

+humiliation nor fear.  His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned

+with a piteous fire.  He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked

+by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided

+by the Jews, spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths

+he had fed with bread.  Above all, he saw Naomi going before him

+in her shame, and at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred.

+And, thinking that it was he who had brought her to this ignominy,

+he sometimes yearned to reach her side and whisper in her ear, and say,

+"Forgive me, my child, forgive me."  But again he conquered the desire,

+for he remembered what God had that day done for her; and taking it

+for a sign of God's pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well,

+he raised his eyes on her with tears of bitter joy, and thought,

+in the wild fever of his soul, "She is sharing the triumph

+of my humiliation.  She is walking through the mocking and jeering crowd,

+but see!  God Himself is walking beside her!"

+

+The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot,

+the gate going out to Tangier and to Shawan.  There the way was so narrow

+and the concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought

+to a stand.  Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel

+and said, so that all might hear, "Look at the crowds that have come out

+to speed you, O saviour of your people!  Look! look!  We shall all

+remember this day!"

+

+"So you shall!" cried Israel.  "Until your days of death you shall all

+remember it!"

+

+He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh

+at his answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry,

+went to the hearts of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd

+straightway, and followed it no farther.  It was the cry of the voice

+of a brother.  They had been insulting calamity itself.

+

+"Balak!" shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more,

+and the procession moved again.

+

+It was the hour of Israel's last temptation.  Not a glance in his face

+disclosed passion, but his heart was afire.  The devil seemed

+to be jarring at his ear, "Look!  Listen!  Is it for people like these

+that you have come to this?  Were they worth the sacrifice?

+You might have been rich and great, and riding on their heads.

+They would have honoured you then, but now they despise you.  Fool!

+You have sold all and given to the poor, and this is the end of it."

+But in the throes and last gasp of his agony, hearing his voice

+in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted on the stones before him,

+an angel seemed to come to him and whisper, "Be strong.

+Only a little longer.  Finish as you have begun.  Well done,

+servant of God, well done!"

+

+He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry.  Once he lifted

+his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron

+of faces black and white.  "O pity of men!" he thought.

+"What devil is tempting _them_?"

+

+By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point

+near to the Bab Toot.  No one had observed until then that the rain was

+no longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once

+by sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west

+immediately over the arch of the gate.

+

+Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign.  It was God's hand

+in the heavens.  To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan,

+into the land beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man

+was wronged--God Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading

+them!

+

+What happened next Israel never rightly knew.  His proper sense

+of life seemed lost.  Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.

+

+First the voice of the crier, "So shall it be done to every man

+who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor

+and a cheat."

+

+Then the voice of the soldier, "Balak!  Balak!"

+

+After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply

+and then to come muffled and dense as from the other side

+of the closed gate.

+

+When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath

+that was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding

+Naomi by the hand.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XX

+

+

+LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE

+

+Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi

+were settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north

+of the town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak

+which lies on the road to Tangier.  From the hour wherein the gates

+had closed behind them, everything had gone well with both.

+The country people who lay encamped on the heath outside had gathered

+around and shown them kindness.  One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi's shame,

+had come behind without a word and cast a blanket over her head

+and shoulders.  Then a girl of the Berber folk had brought slippers

+and drawn them on to Naomi's feet.  The woman wore no blanket herself,

+and the feet of the girl were bare.  Their own people were haggard

+and hollow-eyed and hungry, but the hearts of all were melted

+towards the great man in his dark hour.  "Allah had written it,"

+they muttered, but they were more merciful than they thought their God.

+

+Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer

+of kind words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered

+on through the country from village to village, until in the evening,

+an hour after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made

+their home.  It was a poor, mean place--neither a round tent,

+such as the mountain Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone,

+with its garden in a court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears

+for his homestead, but an oblong shed, roofed with rushes

+and palmetto leaves in the manner of an Irish cabin.  And, indeed,

+the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been, who, escaping at Gibraltar

+from the ship that was taking him to Sidney, had sailed

+in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the land

+until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa.  Unlike the better part

+of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and gloomy temper,

+and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours, and when he died

+his house had been left alone.  That was the chance whereby Israel

+and Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and unclaimed.

+

+Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and values,

+yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes only

+from the hand of God.  Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses grew

+at the foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had

+first caught the eyes of Israel.  For suddenly through the mazes

+of his mind, where every perception was indistinct at that time,

+there seemed to come back to him a vague and confused recollection

+of the abandoned house, as if the thing that his eyes then saw they had

+surely seen before.  How this should be Israel could not tell,

+seeing that never before to his knowledge had he passed on his way

+to Tangier so near to Semsa.  But when he questioned himself again,

+it came to him, like light beaming into a dark room, that not

+in any waking hour at all had he seen the little place before,

+but in a dream of the night when he slept on the ground in the poor fondak

+of the Jews at Wazzan.

+

+This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with Naomi;

+this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to hear

+and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife,

+which when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected

+in his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.

+Israel's heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading

+of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus,

+without more ado than such inquiries as were necessary,

+he settled himself with Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.

+

+And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer

+until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,

+lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought

+to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.

+

+Israel was poor, but not penniless.  Out of the wreck of his fortune,

+after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still

+some three hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband

+when he was cast out of the town.  These he laid out in sheep and goats

+and oxen.  He hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool

+and milk by the hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan.

+The rains continued, the eggs of the locust were destroyed,

+the grass came green out of the ground, and Israel found bread

+for both of them.  With such simple husbandry, and in such a home,

+giving no thought to the morrow, he passed with cheer and comfort

+from day to day.

+

+And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine

+for the loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart

+in pursuit of his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit,

+he had always present with him two bulwarks of his purpose

+and sheet-anchors of his hope.  He was reminded of the one as often as

+in the daytime he climbed the hillside above his little dwelling

+and saw the white town lying far away under its gauzy canopy of mist,

+and whenever in the night the town lamps sent their pale sheet of light

+into the dark sky.

+

+"They are yonder," he would think, "wrangling, contending, fighting,

+praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off

+from them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence,

+and sweet odour of God's proper air."

+

+But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former life

+was the recollection of Naomi.  God had given back all her gifts,

+and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing?

+They were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world

+and riches of gold and silver had been without it.  And higher than

+the joy of Israel's constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind

+and could now see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb

+and could now speak, was the solemn thought that all this was but the sign

+and symbol of God's pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot

+of the scapegoat had been lifted away.

+

+More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man

+was his delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life.  She was like

+a creature born afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened

+into a world of strange sights.

+

+But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure.

+What had happened to her was, after all, a simple thing.

+Born with cataract on the pupils of her eyes, the emotion

+of the moment at the Kasbah, when her father's life seemed to be

+once more in danger, had--like a fall or a blow--luxated the lens

+and left the pupils clear.  That was all.  Throughout the day

+whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when they were cast out

+of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through the country

+until they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes steadfastly closed.

+The light terrified her.  It penetrated her delicate lids,

+and gave her pain.  When for a moment she lifted her lashes

+and saw the trees, she put out her hand as if to push them away;

+and when she saw the sky, she raised her arms as if to hold it off.

+Everything seemed to touch her eyes.  The bars of sunlight seemed

+to smite them.  Not until the falling of darkness did her fears subside

+and her spirits revive.  Throughout the day that followed

+she sat constantly in the gloom of the blackest corner of their hut.

+

+But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world

+of darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air

+had been her baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence.

+Within three days afterwards her terror began to give place to joy;

+and from that time forward the world was full of wonder

+to her opened eyes.  Then sweet and beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy,

+were her amazement and delight in every little thing that lay

+about her--the grass, the weeds, the poorest flower that blew,

+even the rude implements of the house and the common stones

+that worked up through the mould--all old and familiar to her fingers,

+but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an angel

+out of heaven had dropped them down to her.

+

+For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise

+everything by touch and sound.  Thus one morning early in their life

+in the cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her

+on the eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up

+at him as he stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant,

+being still in the mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes

+again, and put out her hand to touch him, did her face brighten

+with recognition and her lips utter his name.  "My father," she murmured,

+"my father."

+

+Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back

+to the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower

+in her hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it

+in her broken, lisping, pretty speech.  Why had no one told her

+that there were flowers that could see?  Here was one which

+while she looked upon it had opened its beautiful eye and laughed at her.

+"What is it?" she asked; "what is it?"

+

+"A daisy, my child," Israel answered.

+

+"A daisy!" she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush

+and quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed

+her nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears,

+and then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, "Oh, yes,

+so it is; it is only a daisy."

+

+But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi,

+with what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder,

+would be a long task if a beautiful one.  They were some miles inside

+the coast, but from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it

+clearly; and one day when Naomi had gone so far with her father,

+she drew up suddenly at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe,

+"The sky! the sky!  Look!  It has fallen on to the land."

+

+"That is the sea, my child," said Israel.

+

+"The sea!" she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened,

+and then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows

+smoothed out and her beautiful face looked aside, "So it is--yes,

+it is the sea."

+

+Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her mind

+were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she mounted

+the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far,

+she walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields

+where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn

+by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun,

+until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast.

+Still the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized

+upon her sight.  The gully was a lonesome place inhabited

+by countless sea-birds.  From high up in the rocks above,

+and from far down in the chasm below, from every cleft on every side,

+they flew out, with white wings and black ones and grey and blue,

+and sent their voices into the air, until the echoing place seemed

+to shriek and yell with a deafening clangour.

+

+It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long hour

+in fear and consternation.  And when she returned to her father,

+she told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea,

+and fought in the air and killed each other.  "And see!" she cried;

+"look at this, and this, and this!"

+

+Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her

+of the devilish warfare that she had witnessed and "This," said he,

+lifting one of them, "is a sea-bird's feather; and this,"

+lifting another, "is a sea-bird's egg; and this," lifting the third,

+"is a dead sea-bird itself."

+

+Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes

+and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.

+"Ah yes," she said meekly, looking into her father's eve, with a smile,

+"they are only that after all."  And then she said very quietly,

+as if speaking to herself, "What a long time it is before

+you learn to see!"

+

+It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company

+of Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes

+took shapes of supernatural horror or splendour.  One early evening,

+when she had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done,

+she came back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen

+in the sky.  They were in robes of crimson and scarlet,

+their wings blazed like fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes,

+and went down behind the world together, passing out of the earth

+through the gates of heaven.

+

+Israel listened to her and said, "That was the sunset my child.

+Every morning the sun rises and every night it sets."

+

+Then she looked full into his face and blushed.  Her shame

+at her sweet errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage

+of sight, and Israel heard her whisper to herself and say,

+"After all, the eyes are deceitful."  Vision was life's new language,

+and she had yet to learn it.

+

+But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world

+to be damped by any thought of herself.  Nay, the best and rarest part

+of it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her,

+came of herself alone.  On another early day Israel took her to the coast,

+and pushed off with her on the waters in a boat.  The air was still,

+the sea was smooth, the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf

+of cloud the sky was blue.  They were sailing in a tiny bay

+that was broken by a little island, which lay in the midst like a ruby

+in a ring, covered with heather and long stalks of seeding grass.

+Through whispering beds of rushes they glided on, and floated over banks

+of coral where gleaming fishes were at play.  Sea-fowl screamed

+over their heads, as if in anger at their invasion, and under their oars

+the moss lay in the shallows on the pebbles and great stones.

+It was a morning of God's own making, and, for joy of its loveliness

+no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi rose in the boat

+and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it played

+with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink

+and embrace it.

+

+At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden

+knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour

+when she knew it first.  For, tracing with her eyes the shadow

+of the cliff and of the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas

+of blue to where they were broken by the dazzling half-round

+of the sun's reflected disc on the shadowed quarter of the boat,

+she leaned over the side of it, and then saw the reflection of another

+and lovelier vision.

+

+"Father," she cried with alarm, "a face in the water!  Look! look!"

+

+"It is your own, my child," said Israel.  "Mine!" she cried.

+

+"The reflection of your face," said Israel; "the light and the water

+make it."

+

+The marvel was hard to understand.  There was something ghostly

+in this thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face

+that looked up at her and laughed and yet made no voice.  She leaned back

+in the boat and asked Israel if it was still in the water.

+But when at length she had grasped the mystery, the artlessness

+of her joy was charming.  She was like a child in her delight,

+and like a woman that was still a child in her unconscious love

+of her own loveliness.  Whenever the boat was at rest she leaned

+over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.

+

+"How beautiful!" she cried, "how beautiful!"

+

+She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water

+was the wonder of her dancing eyes.  "Oh! how very beautiful!"

+she cried without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move

+as she spoke and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed

+and laughed again with a heart of glee.

+

+Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and,

+for all his sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty,

+he could not find it in his heart to check her.  He had borne too long

+the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child

+to deny himself this choking rapture of her recovery.  "Live on

+like a child always, little one," he thought; "be a child

+as long as you can, be a child for ever, my dove, my darling!

+Never did the world suffer it that I myself should be a child at all."

+

+The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly

+some new fashion of charming strangeness.  All lovely things

+on the earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds

+and the flowers.  Also she would lie down in the grass and rest

+like a lamb, with as little shame and with a grace as sweet.

+Not yet had the great mystery dawned that drops on a girl

+like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and when it has covered her

+she is a child no more.  Naomi was a child still.  Nay, she was a child

+a second time, for while she had been blind she had seemed

+for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation

+of her infirmity and isolation.  Now she was a weak, patient,

+blind maiden no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again,

+a restless gleam of human sunlight gathering sunshine into

+her father's house.

+

+It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without

+the better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length

+in rare perfection.  Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen,

+but voice was the gift which she had in abundance.  So sweet, so full,

+so deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought

+he had never heard before.  Ruth's voice?  Yes, but fraught

+with inspiration, replete with sparkling life, and passionate

+with the notes of a joyous heart.  All day long Naomi used it.

+She sang as she rose in the morning, and was still singing

+when she lay down at night.  Wherever people came upon her,

+they came first upon the sound of her voice.  The farmers heard it

+across the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill

+by their hut.  Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden

+in a tree, and only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.

+

+Fatimah's ditties were still her delight.  Some of them fell strangely

+from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous.

+But her favourite song was still her mother's:--

+

+        Oh, come and claim thine own,

+        Oh, come and take thy throne,

+        Reign ever and alone

+            Reign glorious, golden Love.

+

+Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour

+a deeper fervour.  She was as innocent as a child of their meaning,

+but it was almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law

+of her nature as a maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love.

+Never did she think of Love, but it was just as if Love were always

+thinking of her; it was even as if the spirit of Love were hovering

+over her constantly, and she were walking in the way of its

+outstretched wings.

+

+Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like

+the drawing up of a curtain.  A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future

+would rise up before him.  Love had come to her.  The great mystery!

+the rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious

+palpitating joy.  He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day,

+perhaps to-morrow.  And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.

+

+In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle

+and look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams

+into Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn

+of young motherhood.  Her delicate face of pink an cream;

+her glance of pride and joy and yearning, an then the thrill

+of the little spreading red fingers fastening on her white bosom--oh,

+what a glimpse was there revealed to him!

+

+But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms,

+he could not help but feel pain from them also.  They had a perilous

+fascination for him, but he grudged them to Naomi.  He thought

+he could have given his immortal soul to her, but these shadows

+he could not give.  That was his poor tribute to human selfishness;

+his last tender, jealous frailty as a father.  He dreaded the coming

+of that time when another--some other yet unseen--should come before him,

+and he should lose the daughter that was now his own.

+

+Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross

+like a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour

+it was gone.  The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense

+but wonder.  Once she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel

+of something which she believed to have happened to her in the night.

+She had been carried away from him--she could not say when--and she knew

+no more until she found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed

+with tiles.  Men were standing together there in red peaked caps

+and flowing white kaftans.  And before them all was one old man

+in garments that were of the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves

+like the mouths of bells, a curling silver knife at his waistband,

+and little leather bags hung by yellow cords about his neck.

+Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing cruel face;

+and she herself, Naomi--alone her father being nowhere near--stood

+in the midst with all eyes upon her.  What happened next she did not know,

+for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in that interval

+they who had taken her away must have brought her back.

+For when she opened her eyes she was in her own bed, and the things

+of their little home were about her, and her father's eyes

+were looking down at her, and his lips were kissing her, and the sun

+was shining outside, and the birds were singing, and the long grass

+was whispering in the breeze, and it was the same as if

+she had been asleep during the night and was just awakening

+in the morning.

+

+"It was a dream, my child," said Israel, thinking only with how vivid

+a sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight

+the picture of that day at the Kasbah.

+

+"A dream!" she cried; "no, no!  I _saw_ it!"

+

+Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt

+of her own people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch

+of their hands or the sound of their voices.  By one of these

+she had always known them, and sometimes it had been her mother's arms

+that had been about her, and sometimes her father's lips

+that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes Ali's voice

+that had rung in her ears.

+

+Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both

+of her dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart,

+"She is a child, a child born into life as a maid, and

+without the strength of a child's weakness.  Oh! great is the wisdom

+which orders it so that we come into the world as babes."

+

+Thus realising Naomi's childishness, Israel kept close guard

+and watch upon her afterwards.  But if she was a gleam of sunlight

+in his lonely dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it,

+and one day he found her near to the track leading up to the fondak

+in talk with a passing traveller by the way, whom he recognised

+for the grossest profligate out of Tetuan.  Unveiled, unabashed,

+with sweet looks of confidence she was gazing full into the man's

+gross face, answering his evil questions with the artless simplicity

+of innocence.  At one bound Israel was between them; and in a moment

+he had torn Naomi away.  And that night, while she wept out

+her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown her,

+Israel himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out

+a new petition to God.  "O Lord, my God," he cried, "when she was blind

+and dumb and deaf she was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril

+from herself for Thy hand did guide her, and in none from the world,

+for no man dared outrage her infirmity.  But now she is a maid,

+and her dangers are many, for she is beautiful, and the heart

+of man is evil.  Keep me with her always, O Lord, to guard and guide her!

+Let me not leave her, for she is without knowledge of good and evil.

+Spare me a little while longer, though I am stricken in years.

+For her sake spare me, Oh Lord--it is the last of my prayers--the last,

+O Lord, the last--for her sake spare me!"

+

+God did not hear the prayer of Israel.  Next morning a guard of soldiers

+came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid.

+The release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison

+at Shawan had become known by the blind gratitude of one of them,

+who, hastening to Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down

+on his face before it.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXI

+

+ISRAEL IN PRISON

+

+

+Short as the time was--some three months and odd days--since the prison

+at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had sealed

+without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied

+by other prisoners.  The remoteness of the town in the territory

+of the Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis,

+had made the old fortress a favourite place of banishment

+to such Kaids of other provinces as looked for heavier ransoms

+from the relatives of victims, because the locality of their imprisonment

+was unknown or the danger of approaching it was terrible.

+And thus it happened that some fifty or more men and boys

+from near and far were already living in the dungeon from

+which Israel and Ali together had set the other prisoners free.

+

+This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from Naomi

+and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa.  "Ya Allah!

+Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his pups!"

+said Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel

+to the Kaid of Shawan.

+

+Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning

+of the second day after his arrest.  The sun was shining as he approached

+the rude old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down

+to the dungeon.  In a little court at the door of the place

+the Kaid el habs, the jailer, was sitting on a mattress,

+which served him for chair by day and bed by night.  He was amusing

+himself with a ginbri, playing loud and low according as the tumult

+was great or little which came from the other side of a barred

+and knotted doorway behind him, some four feet high, and having

+a round peephole in the upper part of it.  On the wall above

+hung leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in the corner.

+

+At Israel's approach there were some facetious comments between the jailer

+and the guard.  Why the ginbri?  Was he practising for the fires

+of Jehinnum?  Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon?  Well, what was a man

+to do while the dogs inside were snarling?  Were the thongs

+for the correction of persons lacking understanding?  Why, yes;

+everybody knew their old saying, "A hint to the wise, a blow to the fool."

+

+A bunch of great keys rattled, the low doorway was thrown open,

+Israel stooped and went in, the door closed behind him, the footsteps

+of the guard died away, and the twang of the ginbri began again.

+

+The prison was dark and noisome, some sixty feet long by half as many

+broad, supported by arches resting on rotten pillars, lighted only

+by narrow clefts at either hand, exuding damp from its walls,

+dropping moisture from its roof, its air full of vermin, and its floor

+reeking of filth.  And only less horrible than the prison itself

+was the condition of the prisoners.  Nearly all wore iron fetters

+on their legs, and some were shackled to the pillars.  At one side

+a little group of them--they were Shereefs from Wazzan--

+were conversing eagerly and gesticulating wildly; and at the other side

+a larger company--they were Jews from Fez--were languidly twisting

+palmetto leaves into the shape of baskets.  Four Berbers

+at the farther end were playing cards, and two Arabs that were chained

+to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a battered

+old draughtboard between them.  From both groups of players

+came loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation

+and of indignant and sarcastic comment.  Down went the cards

+with triumphant bangs, and the moves of the "dogs" were like lightning.

+First a mocking voice: "_You_ call yourself a player!

+There!--there!--there!"  Then a meek, piping tone: "So--so--verily,

+you are my master.  Well, let us praise Allah for your wisdom."

+But soon a wild burst of irony: "You are like him who killed

+the dog and fell into the river.  See! thus I teach you to boast

+over your betters!  I shave your beard!  There!--there!--and there!"

+

+In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft

+of light from the clefts at the ends might fall on them--a barber-doctor

+was bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm.  "We're all having it done,"

+he was saying.  "It's good for the internals.  I did it to a shipload

+of pilgrims once."  A wild-looking creature sat in a corner--he was

+a saint, a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa--rocking himself to and fro,

+and crying "Allah!  All-lah!  All-l-lah!  All-l-l-lah!"

+Near to this person a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking

+and dancing at his prayers.  And not far from either a Mukaddam,

+a high-priest of the Aissa, brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled

+through the country with a lion by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery

+of a Christian hymn to a tune that he had heard on the coast.

+

+Such was the scene of Israel's imprisonment, and such were the companions

+that were to share it.  There had been a moment's pause in the clamour

+of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered.  The prisoners

+knew him, and they were aghast.  Every eye looked up and

+every mouth was agape.  Israel stood for a time with the closed door

+behind him.  He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated,

+seemed to peer vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress,

+and then sat down helplessly by a pillar on the ground.

+

+A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered

+a bit of bread.  "Hungry, brother?  No?" said the youth.  "Cheer up, Sidi!

+No good letting the donkey ride on your head!"

+

+This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless,

+facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing

+for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs

+on every disaster that befell them.  He made one song on himself--

+

+        El Arby was a black man

+            They called him "'Larby Kosk:"

+        He loved the wives of the Kasbah,

+            And stole slippers in the Mosque.

+

+Israel was stunned.  Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken.

+"Stay here," he had said to Naomi when the first outburst

+of her grief was quelled; "never leave this place.  Whatever they say,

+stay here.  I will come back."  After that he had been like a man

+who was dumb.  Neither insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word

+or a cry out of him.  He had walked on in silence doggedly,

+hardly once glancing up into the faces of his guard, and never breaking

+his fast save with a draught of water by the way.

+

+At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported

+by their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel's arrival

+a number of women and children came to the prison with provisions.

+It was a wild and gruesome scene that followed.  First, the frantic search

+of the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters,

+and their wild shouts as each one found his own.  "Blessed be God!

+She's here! here!"  Then the maddening cries of the prisoners

+whose relatives had not come.  "My Ayesha!  Where is she?

+Curses on her mother!  Why isn't she here?"  After that the shrieks

+of despair from such as learned that their breadwinners were dying off

+one by one.  "Dead, you say?"  "Dead!"  "No, no!"  "Yes, yes!"

+"No, no, I say!"  "I say yes!  God forgive me! died last week.

+But don't you die too.  Here take this bag of zummetta."

+Then inquiries after absent children.  "Little Selam, where is he?"

+"Begging in Tetuan."  "Poor boy! poor boy!  And pretty M'barka,

+what of her?"  "Alas!  M'barka's a public woman now in Hoolia's house

+at Marrakesh.  No, don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven

+to it.  What were we to do with the children crying for bread?

+And then there was nothing to fetch you this journey, Jellali."

+"I'll not eat it now it's brought.  My boy a beggar

+and my girl a harlot?  By Allah!  May the Kaid that keeps me here

+roast alive in the fires of hell!"  Then, apart in one quiet corner,

+a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the lap of his

+beautiful young wife.  "You'll not be long coming again, dearest?"

+he whispers.  She wipes her eyes and stammers, "No--that is--well--"

+"What's amiss?"  "Ali, I must tell you--"  "Well?"  "Old Aaron Zaggoory

+says I must marry him, or he'll see that both of us starve."

+"Allah!  And you--_you_?"  "Don't look at me like that, Ali;

+the hunger is on me, and whatever happens I--I can love nobody else."

+"Curses on Aaron Zaggoory!  Curses on you!  Curses on everybody!"

+

+No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this 'Larby the negro

+swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of bread--

+

+        Rusks are good and kiks are sweet

+        And kesksoo is both meat and drink;

+        It's this for now, and that for then,

+        But khalia still for married men.

+

+"You're like me, Sidi," he said, "you want nothing," and he made

+an upward movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence.

+That was the gay rascal's way of saying that he stole from the bags

+of his comrades while they slept.

+

+"No?  Fasting yet?" he said, and went off singing as he came--

+

+        It will make your ladies love you;

+        It will make them coo and kiss--

+

+"What?" he shouted to some one across the prison "eating khalia

+in the bird-cage?  Bad, bad, bad!"

+

+All this came to Israel's mind through thick waves of half-consciousness,

+but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air of the place

+must have poisoned him.  He sat by the pillar at which he had first

+placed himself, and hardly ever rose from it.  With great slow eyes

+he gazed at everything, but nothing did he see.  Sometimes he had the look

+of one who listens, but never did he hear.  Thus in silence and languor

+he passed from day to day, and from night to night, scarcely sleeping,

+rarely eating, and seeming always to be waiting, waiting, waiting.

+

+Fresh prisoners came at short intervals, and then only

+was Israel's interest awakened.  One question he asked of all.

+"Where from?"  If they answered from Fez, from Wazzan, from Mequinez,

+or from Marrakesh, Israel turned aside and left them without more words.

+Then to his fellows they might pour out their woes in loud wails

+and curses, but Israel would hear no more.

+

+Strangers from Europe travelling through the country were allowed

+to look into the prison through the round peephole of the door

+kept by the Kaid el habs, who played the ginbri.  The Jews who made

+baskets took this opportunity to offer their work for sale;

+and so that he might see the visitors and speak with them Israel

+would snatch up something and hang it out.  Always his question was

+the same.  "Where from last?" he would say in English, or Spanish,

+or French, or Moorish.  Sometimes it chanced that the strangers knew him.

+But he showed no shame.  Never did their answers satisfy him.

+He would turn back to his pillar with a sigh.

+

+Thus weeks went on, and Israel's face grew worn and tired.

+His fellow prisoners began to show him deference in their own rude way.

+When he came among them at the first they had grinned and laughed

+a little.  To do that was always the impulse of the poor souls,

+so miserably imprisoned, when a new comrade joined him.

+But the majesty and the suffering in Israel's face told on their hearts

+at last.  He was a great man fallen, he had nothing left to him;

+not even bread to eat or water to drink.  So they gathered about him

+and hit on a way to make him share their food.  Bringing their sacks

+to his pillar, they stacked them about it, and asked him to serve out

+provisions to all, day by day, share and share alike.  He was honest,

+he was a master, no one would steal from him, it was best,

+the stuff would last longest.  It was a touching sight.

+

+Still the old eagerness betrayed itself in Israel's weary manner

+as often as the door opened and fresh prisoners arrived.

+Once it happened that before he uttered his usual question he saw

+that the newcomers were from Tetuan, and then his restlessness

+was feverish.  "When--were you--have you been of late--" he stammered,

+and seemed unable to go farther.

+

+But the Tetawanis knew and understood him.  "No," said one in answer

+to the unspoken question; "Nor I," said another; "Nor I," said a third,

+"Nor I neither," said a fourth, as Israel's rapid eyes passed

+down the line of them.

+

+He turned away without a word more, sat down by the pillar

+and looked vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story.

+Ben Aboo was a villain.  The people of Tetuan had found him out.

+His wife was a harlot whose heart was a deep pit. Between them

+they were demoralising the entire bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom.

+Hardly a child in the streets was safe, and no woman, whether wife

+or daughter, whom God had made comely, dare show herself on the roofs.

+Their own women had been carried off to the palace at the Kasbah.

+That was why they themselves were there in prison.

+

+This was about a month after the coming of Israel to Shawan.

+Then his reason began to unsettle.  It was pitiful to see

+that he was conscious of the change that was befalling him.

+He wrestled with madness with all the strength of a strong man.

+If it should fall upon him, where then would be his hope and outlook?

+His day would be done, his night would be closed in, he would be

+no more than a helpless log, rolling in an ice-bound sea,

+and when the thaw came--if it ever came--he would be only a broken,

+rudderless, sailless wreck.  Sometimes he would swear at nothing

+and fling out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame

+hang down his head and mutter, "No, no, Israel; no, no, no!"

+

+Other prisoners arrived from Tetuan, and all told the same story.

+Israel listened to them with a stupid look, seeming hardly to hear

+the tale they told him.  But one morning, as life began again

+for the day in that slimy eddy of life's ocean, every one became aware

+that an awful change had come to pass.  Israel's face had been worn

+and tired before, but now it looked very old and faded.

+His black hair had been sprinkled with grey, and now it was white;

+and white also was his dark beard, which had grown long and ragged.

+But his eye glistened, and his teeth were aglitter in his open mouth.

+He was laughing at everything, yet not wildly, not recklessly,

+not without meaning or intention, but with the cheer of a happy

+and contented man.

+

+Israel was mad, and his madness was a moving thing to look upon.

+He thought he was back at home and a rich man still, as he had been

+in earlier days, but a generous man also, as he was in later ones.

+With liberal hand he was dispensing his charities.

+

+"Take what you need; eat, drink, do not stint; there is more

+where this has come from; it is not mine; God has lent it me

+for the good of all."

+

+With such words, graciously spoken, he served out the provisions

+according to his habit, and only departed from his daily custom

+in piling the measures higher, and in saluting the people by titles--Sid,

+Sidi, Mulai, and the like--in degree as their clothes were poor

+and ragged.  It was a mad heart that spoke so, but also

+it was a big one.

+

+From that time forward he looked upon the prisoners as his guests,

+and when fresh prisoners came to the prison he always welcomed them

+as if he were host there and they were friends who visited him.

+"Welcome!" he would say; "you are very welcome.  The place is your own.

+Take all.  What you don't see, believe we have not got it.

+A thousand thousand welcomes home!"  It was grim and painful irony.

+

+Israel's comrades began to lose sense of their own suffering

+in observing the depth of his, and they laid their heads together

+to discover the cause of his madness.  The most part of them concluded

+that he was repining for the loss of his former state.

+And when one day another prisoner came from Tetuan with further tales

+of the Basha's tyranny, and of the people's shame at thought

+of how they had dealt by Israel, the prisoners led the man back

+to where Israel was standing in the accustomed act of dispensing bounty,

+that he might tell his story into the rightful ears.

+

+"They're always crying for you," said the Tetawani; "'Israel ben Oliel!

+Israel ben Oliel!' that's what you hear in the mosques

+and the streets everywhere.'  Shame on us for casting him out,

+shame on us!  He was our father!' Jews and Muslimeen, they're all

+saying so."

+

+It was useless.  The glad tidings could not find their way.

+That black page of Israel's life which told of the people's ingratitude

+was sealed in the book of memory.  Israel laughed.  What could

+his good friend mean?  Behold! was he not rich?  Had he not troops

+of comrades and guests about him?

+

+The prisoners turned aside, baffled and done.  At length

+one man--it was no other than 'Larby the wastrel--drew some

+of them apart and said, "You are all wrong.  It's not his former state

+that he's thinking of.  _I_ know what it is--who knows so well as I?

+Listen! you hear his laughter!  Well, he must weep, or he will be mad

+for ever.  He must be _made_ to weep.  Yes, by Allah! and I must do it."

+

+That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place,

+and the prisoners tied up their cotton headkerchiefs and lay down

+to sleep, 'Larby sat beside Israel's place with sighs and moans

+and other symptoms of a dejected air.

+

+"Sidi, master," he faltered, "I had a little brother once,

+and he was blind.  Born blind, Sidi, my own mother's son.

+But you wouldn't think how happy he was for all that?  You see,

+Sidi he never missed anything, and so his little face was like

+laughing water!  By Allah!  I loved that boy better than all the world!

+Women?  Why--well, never mind!  He was six and I was eighteen,

+and he used to ride on my back!  Black curls all over, Sidi,

+and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn't see.

+Well a bleeder came from Soos--curse his great-grandfather!

+Looked at little Hosain--'Scales!' said he--burn his father!

+Bleed him and he'll see!  So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah!

+yes, for a minute--half a minute!  'Oh, 'Larby,' he cried--I was

+holding him; then he--he--' 'Larby,' he cried faint, like a lamb

+that's lost in the mountains--and then--and then--'Oh, oh, 'Larby,'

+he moaned Sidi, Sidi, I _paid_ that bleeder--there and then--_this_ way!

+That's why I'm here!"

+

+It was a lie, but 'Larby acted it so well that his voice broke

+in his throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel's hand.

+

+The effect on Israel himself was strange and even startling.

+While 'Larby was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling:

+"Where?  When?  Naomi!" as if grappling for lost treasures

+in an ebbing sea.  And when 'Larby finished, he fell on him

+with reproaches.  "And you are weeping for that?" he cried.

+"You think it much that the sweet child is dead--God rest him!

+So it is to the like of you, but look at me!"

+

+His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries.  "Look at me!

+Am I weeping?  No; I would scorn to weep.  But I have more cause

+a thousandfold.  Listen!  Once I was rich; but what were riches

+without children?  Hard bread with no water for sop.  I asked God

+for a child.  He gave me a daughter; but she was born blind and dumb

+and deaf.  I asked God to take my riches and give her hearing.

+He gave her hearing; but what was hearing without speech?

+I asked God to take all I had and give her speech.  He gave her speech,

+but what was speech without sight?  I asked God to take my place

+from me and give her sight.  He gave her sight, and I was cast out

+of the town like a beggar.  What matter?  She had all,

+and I was forgiven.  But when I was happy, when I was content,

+when she filled my heart with sunshine, God snatched me away from her.

+And where is she now?  Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born

+into the world at the mercy of liars and libertines.  And where am I?

+Here, like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless,

+stupid, powerless, mad.  No, no, not mad, either!  Tell me, boy,

+I am not mad!"

+

+In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling

+like a drowning man.  "Yet I do not weep," he cried in a thick voice.

+"God has a right to do as He will.  He gave her to me for seventeen years.

+If she dies she'll be mine again soon.  Only if she lives--only

+if she falls into evil hands--Tell me, _have_ I been mad?"

+

+He gave no time for an answer.  "Naomi!" he cried, and the name broke

+in his throat.  "Where are you now?  What has--who have--your father

+is thinking of you--he is--No, I will not weep.  You see I have

+a good cause, but I tell you I will never weep.  God has a right--

+Naomi!--Na--"

+

+The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly

+he rose and cried in an awful voice, "Oh, I'm a fool!  God has done

+nothing for me.  Why should I do anything for God?  He has taken

+all I had.  He has taken my child.  I have nothing more to give Him

+but my life.  Let Him take that too.  Take it, I beseech Thee!"

+he cried--the vault of the prison rang--"  Take it, and set me free!"

+

+But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place,

+and was sobbing like a little child.  The other prisoners had risen

+in their amazement, and 'Larby, who was shedding hot tears

+over his cold ones, was capering down the floor, and singing,

+"El Arby was a black man."

+

+Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot

+into the dark place.  The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier,

+who carried an order for Israel's release.  Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan,

+was to keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo,

+to celebrate the visit, had pardoned Israel.

+

+It was coals of fire on Israel's head.  "God is good," he muttered.

+"I shall see her again.  Yes, God has a right to do as He will.

+I shall see her soon.  God is wise beyond all wisdom.

+I must lose no time.  Jailer can I leave the town to-night?

+I wish to start on my journey.  To-night?--yes, to-night!

+Are the gates open?  No?  You will open them?  You are very good.

+Everybody is very good.  God is good.  God is mighty."

+

+Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late

+intemperate outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish,

+he said, "A man's a fool when he loses his only child.  I don't mean

+by death.  Time heals that.  But the living child--oh,

+it's an unending pain!  You would never think how happy we were.

+Her pretty ways were all my joy.  Yes, for her voice was music,

+and her breath was like the dawn.  Do you know, I was very fond

+of the little one--I was quite miserable if I lost sight of her

+for an hour.  And then to be wrenched away ! . . . .  But I must

+hasten back.  The little one will be waiting.  Yes, I know quite well

+she'll be looking out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes

+in the morning.  It's always the way of these tender creatures,

+is it not?  So we must humour them.  Yes, yes, that's so that's so."

+

+His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief

+knotted under his chin--gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light

+of the jailer's lantern.

+

+"Farewell, brothers!" he cried; and one by one they touched his hand

+and brought it to their breasts.

+

+"Farewell, master!"  "Peace, Sidi!"  "Farewell!"  "Peace!"  "Farewell!"

+

+The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps

+dying away outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate,

+and then silence--empty and ghostly.

+

+In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening,

+and then a croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing--

+

+        El Arby was a black man,

+            They called him "'Larby Kosk;"

+        He loved the wives of the Kasbah,

+            And stole slippers in the Mosque.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXII

+

+HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA

+

+

+What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half

+while Israel lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony

+of their parting, in which she was driven back by the soldiers

+when she attempted to follow them, she sat down in a maze of pain,

+without any true perception of the evil which had befallen her,

+but with her father's warning voice and his last words in her ear:

+"Stay here.  Never leave this place.  Whatever they say, stay here.

+I will come back."

+

+When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep

+and fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still,

+and then she knew for the first time what the meaning was,

+and what the penalty, of this strange and dread asundering.

+She was alone, and, being alone, she was helpless; she was no better

+than a child, without kindred to look to her and without power to look

+to herself, with food and drink beside her, but no skill to make

+and take them.

+

+Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother

+has been swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom.

+It was not so much love as loss.  What to do, where to look,

+which way to turn first, she knew no longer, and could not think,

+for lack of the hand that had been wont to guide her.

+

+The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi,

+and some of the women among them came to see her.  They were poor

+farming people, oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things

+they saw were the cattle and sheep, and the next thing was

+the simple girl with the child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways

+wherein a lonely woman must fend for herself.

+

+"You cannot live here alone, my daughter," they said; "you would perish.

+Then think of the danger--a child like you, with a face like a flower!

+No, no, you must come to us.  We will look to you like one of our own,

+and protect you from evil men.  And as for the creatures--"

+

+"But he said I was never to leave this place," said Naomi.  "'Stay here,'

+he said; 'whatever they say, stay here.  I will come back.'"

+

+The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined,

+and murdered.  It was in vain.  Naomi's answer was always the same:

+"He told me to stay here, and surely I must do so."

+

+Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger.

+"Tut!" they thought, "what should we want with the Jew child?  Allah!

+Was there ever such a simpleton?  The good creatures going to waste, too!

+And as for her father, he'll never come back--never.  Trust the Basha

+for that!"

+

+But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness,

+they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple

+offices--milking and churning, and baking and delving--in pity

+of the sweet girl with the great eyes who had been left to live alone.

+And Naomi, seeing her helplessness at last, put out all her powers

+to remedy it, so that in a little while she was able to do

+for herself nearly everything that her neighbours at first did for her.

+Then they would say among themselves, "Allah! she's not such a baby

+after all; and if she wasn't quite so beautiful, poor child,

+or if the world wasn't so wicked--but then, God is great!  God is great!"

+

+Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her

+that her father had been cast into prison, and every night

+when she left her lamp alight by the little skin-covered window

+that was half-hidden under the dropping eaves, and every morning

+when she opened her door to the radiance of the sun she had whispered

+to herself and said, "He will come back, Naomi; only wait, only wait;

+maybe it will be tonight, maybe it will be to-day; you will see,

+you will see."

+

+But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon her

+as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men

+who had been there, her old content in her father's command

+that she should never leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire

+to go to him.

+

+"Who's to feed him, poor soul?  He will be famishing.

+If the Kaid finds him in bread, it will only be so much more added

+to his ransom.  That will come to the same thing in the end,

+or he'll die in prison."

+

+Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought

+she did not listen.  And though it was little she understood of Kaids

+and ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father's peril,

+and at length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction,

+go to him she should and must.  With that resolve, her mind,

+which had been the mind of a child seemed to spring up instantly

+and become the mind of a woman, and her heart, that had been timid,

+suddenly grew brave, for pity and love were born in it.

+"He must be starving in prison," she thought, "and I will take him food."

+

+When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands

+in consternation and horror.  "God be gracious to my father!" they cried.

+"Shawan?  You?  Alone?  Child, you'll be lost, lost--worse,

+a thousand times worse!  Shoof! you're only a baby still."

+

+But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now

+as their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it.

+"He must be starving in prison," she said, "and I will take him food."

+

+Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.

+

+"Allah!" they said, "who would have believed it, that the little

+pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!"

+

+Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey.

+She saved up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes

+of the country; also she churned some butter in the simple way

+which the women had taught her, and put the milk that was left

+in a goat's-skin.  In three days she was ready, and then she packed

+her provisions in the leaf panniers of a mule which one

+of the neighbours had lent to her, and got up before them on the front

+of the burda, after the manner of the wives whom she had seen

+going past to market.

+

+When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of

+her wild errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her.

+"Keep to the track as far as Tetuan," they said to her, "and then ask

+for the road to Shawan."  One old creature threw a blanket over her head

+in such a way that it might cover her face.  "Faces like yours

+are not for the daylight," the old body whispered, and then Naomi

+set forward on her journey.  The women watched her while she mounted

+the hill that goes up to the fondak, and then sinks out of sight

+beyond it.  "Poor mad little fool," they whimpered; "that's the end

+of her!  She'll never come back.  Too many men about for that.

+And now," they said, facing each other with looks of suspicion and envy,

+"what of the creatures?"

+

+While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them,

+Naomi was awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers.

+She had thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need

+to do so she was afraid to speak.  The sight of a strange face

+alarmed her, and she was terrified when she met a company

+of wandering Arabs changing pasture, with the young women and children

+on camels, the old women trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles,

+the boys driving the herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks,

+riding their prancing barbs.  Her poor little mule came to a stand

+in the midst of this cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on.

+Also her fear which had first caused her to cover her face

+with the blanket that her neighbour had given her, now made her forget

+to do so, and the men as they passed her peered close into her eyes.

+Such glances made her blood to tingle.  They seared her very soul,

+and she began to know the meaning of shame.

+

+Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward.

+"He is starving in prison," she told herself; "I must lose no time."

+It was a weary journey.  Everything was new to her, and nearly

+everything was terrible.  She was even perplexed to see that however far

+she travelled she came upon men and women and children.

+It was so strange that all the world was peopled.  Yet sometimes

+she wished there were more people everywhere.  That was when she was

+crossing a barren waste with no house in sight and never a sign

+of human life on any side.  But oftener she wished that the people

+were not so many; and that was when the children mocked at her mule,

+or the women jeered at her as if she must needs be a base person

+because she was alone, or the men laughed and leered into her

+uncovered face.

+

+Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail.

+Everything was unlike what she expected.  She had thought the world

+so good that she had but to say to any that asked her of her errand,

+"My father is in prison, they say that he is starving;

+I am taking him food," and every one would help her forward.

+Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had reckoned

+in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours.

+But no one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill,

+and fewer still with pity and cheer.

+

+The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast,

+had flattened the panniers that hung by its side, and made

+the round cakes of bread to protrude from the open mouth of one of them.

+Seeing this, a line of market-women going by, with bags of charcoal

+on their backs, snatched a cake each as they passed and munched them

+and laughed.  Naomi tried to protest.  "The bread is for my father,"

+she faltered; "he is in prison; they say he--"  But the expostulation

+that  began thus timidly broke down of itself, for the women laughed

+again out of their mouths choked with the bread, and in another moment

+they were gone.

+

+Naomi's spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front still.

+To speak of her father again would be to shame him.  The poor little

+illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which,

+in spite of vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled,

+since the coming of her sight, to build up in her fresh young soul,

+were now tumbling to pieces.  After all, the world was very cruel.

+It was the same as if an angel out of the clouds had fallen on

+to the earth and found her feet mired with clay.

+

+Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a fondak

+which stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan

+on the south-western side.  The darkness had closed in by this time,

+and she must needs rest there for the night, but never until then

+had she reflected that for such accommodation she would need money.

+Only a few coppers were necessary, only twenty moozoonahs,

+that she might lie in the shelter and safety of one of the pens

+that were built for the sleep of human creatures, and that her mule

+might be tethered and fed on the manure heap that constituted

+the square space within.  At last she bethought her of her eggs,

+and, though it went to her heart to use for herself what was meant

+for her father, she parted with twelve of them, and some cakes

+of the bread besides, that she might be allowed to pass the gate,

+telling herself repeatedly, with big throbs of remorse

+between her protestations, that unless she did so her father might never

+get anything at all.

+

+The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go

+on to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden,

+and of countless dogs.  It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal,

+and between the twilight and the coming of night certain

+of the men watched for the new moon, and when its thin bow appeared

+in the sky they signalled its advent after their usual manner

+by firing their flintlocks into the air, while their women,

+who were squatting around, kept up a cooing chorus.  Then came eating

+and drinking, and laughing and singing, and playing the ginbri,

+and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and quarrelling and fighting,

+and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel wielded by the keeper

+of the fondak.  With such exercises the night passed into morning.

+

+Naomi was sick.  Her head ached.  The smell of rotten fish, the stench

+of the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs,

+the grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her

+light-headed.  She could neither eat nor sleep.  Almost as soon as

+it was light she was up and out and on her way.  "I must lose no time,"

+she thought, trying not to realise that the blue sky was spinning

+round her, that noises were ringing in her head, and that her poor little

+heart, which had been so stout only yesterday, was sinking very low.

+

+"He must be starving," she told herself again, and that helped her

+to forget her own troubles and to struggle on.  But oh,

+if the world were only not so cruel, oh, if there were anyone to give her

+a word of cheer, nay, a glance of pity!  But nobody had looked

+at her except the women who stole her bread and the men who shamed her

+with their wicked eyes.

+

+That one day's experience did more than all her life before it

+to fill her with the bitter fruit of the tree of the knowledge

+of good and evil.  Her illusions fell away from her, and

+her sweet childish faith was broken down.  She saw herself as she was:

+a simple girl, a child ignorant of the ways of the world,

+going alone on a long journey unknown to her, thinking to succour

+her father in prison, and carrying a handful of eggs and a few poor cakes

+of bread.  When at length the scales fell from the eyes of her mind,

+and as she trudged along on her bony mule, afraid to ask her way,

+she saw herself, with all her fine purposes shrivelled up,

+do what she would to be brave, she could not help but cry.

+It was all so vain, so foolish; she was such a weak little thing.

+Her father knew this, and that was why he told her to stay

+where he left her.  What if he came home while she was absent!

+Should she go back?

+

+She had almost resolved to return, struggle as she might to push forward,

+when going close under the town walls, near to the very gate,

+the Bab Toot whereat  she had been cast out with her father remembering

+this scene of their abasement with a new sense of its cruelty

+and shame born of her own simple troubles, she lit upon a woman

+who was coming out.

+

+It was Habeebah. She was now the slave of Ben Aboo, and was just then

+stealing away from the Kasbah in the early morning that she might go

+in search of Naomi, whose whereabouts and condition she had lately learned.

+

+The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled,

+but that Naomi had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered.

+In another moment the poor frightened girl, with all her brave bearing

+gone, was weeping on the black woman's breast.

+

+"Whither are you going?" said Habeebah.

+

+"To my father," Naomi began.  "He is in prison; they say he is starving;

+I was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don't know my way;

+and besides--"

+

+"The very thing!" cried Habeebah.

+

+Habeebah had her own little scheme.  It was meant to win emancipation

+at the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died.

+Naomi, who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima.  That was all.

+Then her troubles would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her,

+and her father who was in prison would be set free.

+

+Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant.

+The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father

+was everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah's bold promises

+like a drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.

+

+"My father will be let out of prison?  You are sure--quite sure?"

+she asked.

+

+"Quite sure," answered Habeebah stoutly.

+

+Naomi's hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint,

+and her poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly

+to her new-born worldliness.

+

+"Very well," she said.  "I will turn Muslima."

+

+A few minutes afterwards she was riding by Habeebah's side into the town,

+through the Bab Toot across the Feddan, and up to the courtyard

+of the Kasbah, which had witnessed the beginning of her own

+and her father's degradation.  Then, tethering the beast

+in the open stables there, Habeebah took Naomi into her own little room

+and left her alone for some minutes, while she hastened to Ben Aboo

+in secret with her wondrous news.

+

+"Lord Basha," she said, "the beautiful Jewess Naomi, the daughter

+of Israel ben Oliel, will turn Muslima."

+

+"Where is she?" said Ben Aboo.

+

+"Sidi," said Habeebah, "I have promised that you will liberate her father."

+

+"Fetch her," said Ben Aboo, "and it shall be done."

+

+But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah's room and found Naomi there,

+and heard of the vain hope which had brought her.

+

+"My sweet jewel of gold and silver," the black woman cried,

+"you don't know what you are doing.  Turn Muslima, and you will be parted

+from your father for ever.  He is a Jew, and will have no right to you

+any more.  You will never, never see him again.  He will be lost

+to you--lost--I say--lost!"

+

+Habeebah, with two of the guard, came back to take Naomi to Ben Aboo.

+The poor girl was bewildered.  She had seen nothing but her father

+in Fatimah's protest, just as she had seen nothing but her father

+in Habeebah's promises.  She did not know what to do, she was such

+a poor weak little thing, and there was no strong hand to guide her.

+

+They led her through dark passages to an open place which she thought

+she had seen before.  It was a great patio, paved and walled with tiles.

+Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and

+flowing white kaftans.  And before them all was one old man

+in garments that were of the colour of the afternoon sun,

+with sleeves like the mouths of bells, a silver knife at his waistband,

+and little leather bags, hung by yellow cords, about his neck.

+Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing cruel face,

+and she herself, Naomi, stood in the midst, with every eye upon her.

+Where had she seen all this before?

+

+Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he

+committed her father to prison.  He cherished schemes concerning her

+which he did not share with his wife Katrina.  But he had hitherto been

+withheld by two considerations: the first being that he was beset

+with difficulties arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money

+than he could find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity

+that might perchance arise of recalling Israel to his post.

+Out of these grave bedevilments he had extricated himself at length

+by imposing dues on certain tribes of Reefians, who had never yet

+acknowledged the Sultan's authority, and by calling on the Sultan's army

+to enforce them.  The Sultan had come in answer to his summons,

+the Reefians had been routed, their villages burnt, and that morning

+at daybreak he had received a message saying that Abd er-Rahman intended

+to keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan.  So this capture of Naomi

+was the luckiest chance that could have befallen him at such a moment.

+She should witness to the Prophet; her father, the Jew, would thereby

+lose his rights in her; and he himself, as her sole guardian,

+would present her as a peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing

+the boundary of his bashalic.

+

+Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing

+the news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded

+it to Katrina.  But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft,

+so timid, so tired, yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties,

+with the light of the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes

+and the sweet mouth of a child, his evil passions had all they could do

+not to go back to his former scheme.

+

+"So you wish to turn Muslima?" he said.

+

+Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear

+"No, no, no!"

+

+Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with protests

+and remonstrances.  "She said so," Habeebah cried.  "'I will turn

+Muslima,' she said.  Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!"

+

+"Did you say so?" asked Ben Aboo.

+

+"Yes," said Naomi faintly.

+

+"Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now," said Ben Aboo;

+and he told her what was the penalty of apostasy.  It was death.

+She must choose between them.

+

+Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead

+with her.  Still she saw one thing only.  "But what of my father?"

+she said.

+

+"He shall be liberated," said Ben Aboo.

+

+"But shall I see him again?  Shall I go back to him?" said Naomi.

+

+"The girl is a simpleton!" said Katrina.

+

+"She is only a child," said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more

+at her flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments

+of his women.

+

+These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds,

+with a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room

+that was stifling from many perfumes, and certain smaller chambers.

+The garden was inhabited by a gazelle, whose great startled eyes looked

+out through the long grass; and the oblong room by a number of women

+of varying ages, among whom were a matronly Mooress, called Tarha,

+in a scarlet head-dress, and with a string of great keys swung

+from shoulder to waist; a Circassian, called Hoolia, in a gorgeous rida

+of red silk and gold brocade; a Frenchwoman, called Josephine,

+with embroidered red slippers and black stockings; and a Jewess,

+called Sol, with a band of silk handkerchiefs tied round her forehead

+above her coal-black curls, with her fingers pricked out with henna

+and her eyes darkened with kohl.

+

+Such were Ben Aboo's wives and concubines and captives,

+whom he had not divorced according to his promise; and when Naomi came

+among them they did their duty by their master faithfully.

+Being trapped themselves, they tried to entrap Naomi also.

+They overwhelmed her with caresses, they went into ecstasies

+over her beauty, and caused the future which awaited her to shine

+before her eyes.  She would have a noble husband, magnificent dresses,

+a brilliant palace, and the world would be at her feet.

+"And what's the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?" said Sol;

+"look at me!"  "Tut!" said Josephine, "there's nothing to choose

+between them."  "For my part," said Tarha, "I don't see what it matters

+to us; they say Paradise is for the men!"  "And think of the jewels,

+and the earrings as big as a bracelet," said Hoolia, "instead of this";

+and she drew away between her thumb and first finger the blanket

+which Naomi's neighbour had given her.

+

+It was all to no purpose.  "But what of my father?" Naomi asked

+again and again.

+

+The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations,

+ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs.  "Tut!"

+they said, "why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan?

+She would only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan."

+

+Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their tales,

+their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon Naomi

+at last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child.

+In this hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together,

+having no occupation but that of eating and drinking and sleeping,

+no education but devising new means of pleasing the lust

+of their husband's eye, no delight than that of supplanting one another

+in his love, no passion but jealousy, no diversion but sporting

+on the roofs, no end but death and the Kabar.

+

+Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi

+to the prison, and set Habeebah to guard her.  The black woman was

+in terror at the turn that events had taken.  There was nothing to do now

+but to go on, so she importuned Naomi with prayers.  How could she be

+so hard-hearted?  Could she keep her father famishing in prison

+when one word out of her lips would liberate him?  Naomi had no answer

+but her tears.  She remembered the hareem, and cried.

+

+Then Ben Aboo thought of a daring plan.  He called the Grand Rabbi,

+and commanded him to go to Naomi and convert her to Islam.

+The Rabbi obeyed with trembling.  After all, it was the same God

+that both peoples worshipped, only the Moors called Him Allah

+and the Jews Jehovah.  Naomi knew little of either.  It was not of God

+that she was thinking: it was only of her father.  She was too innocent

+to see the trick, but the Rabbi failed.  He kissed her, and went away

+wiping his eyes.

+

+Rumour of Naomi's plight had passed through the town, and one night

+a number of Moors came secretly to a lane at the back of the Kasbah,

+where a narrow window opened into her cell.  They told her in whispers

+that what she held as tragical was a very simple matter.  "Turn Muslima,"

+they pleaded, "and save yourself.  You are too young to die.

+Resign yourself, for God's sake."  But no answer came back

+to them where they were gathered in the darkness, save low sobs

+from inside the wall.

+

+At last Ben Aboo made two announcements.  The first, a public one,

+was that Abd er-Rahman would reach Tetuan within two days,

+on the opening of the feast of the Moolood, and the other, a private one,

+that if Naomi had not said the Kelmah by first prayers

+the following morning she should die and her father be cut off

+as the penalty of her apostasy.

+

+That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was

+occupied by a group of Jews.  "Sister," they whispered,

+"sister of our people, listen.  The Basha is a hard man.

+This day he has robbed us of all we had that he may pay

+for the Sultan's visit.  Listen!  We have heard something.

+We want Israel ben Oliel back among us.  He was our father,

+he was our brother.  Save his life for the sake of our children,

+for the Basha has taken their bread.  Save him, sister, we beg,

+we entreat, we pray."

+

+Naomi broke down at last.  Next morning at dawn, kneeling among men

+in the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, she repeated the Word after the Iman:

+"I testify that there is no God but God, and that our Lord Mohammed is

+the messenger of God; I am truly resigned."

+

+Then she was taken back to the women's apartments, and clad gorgeously.

+Her child face was wet with tears.  She was only a poor weak little thing,

+she knew nothing of religion, she loved her father better than God,

+and all the world was against her.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXIII

+

+ISRAEL'S RETURN FROM PRISON

+

+

+Such was the method of Israel's release.  But, knowing nothing

+of the price which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy.

+Nay, his happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness

+which hung over his life been lifted away.  Any one who had seen him

+in prison would have been puzzled by the change as he came away from it.

+He laughed with the courier who walked with him to the town gate,

+and jested with the gate porter as with an old acquaintance.

+His voice was merry, his eye gleamed in the rays of the lantern,

+his face was flushed, and his step was light.  "Afraid to travel

+in the night?  No, no, I'll meet nothing worse than myself.

+Others _may_ who meet me?  Ha, ha!   Perhaps so, perhaps so!"

+"No evil with you, brother?"  "No evil, praise be God."

+"Well, peace be to you!"  "On you be peace!"  "May your morning

+be blessed!  Good-night!"  "Good-night!"  Then with a wave of the hand

+he was gone into the darkness.

+

+It was a wonderful night.  The moon, which was in its first quarter,

+was still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead,

+making a silvery dome that almost obliterated the blue.

+Rivers were rumbling on the hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance,

+kine that could not be seen were chewing audibly near at hand,

+and sheep like patches of white in the gloom were scuttling

+through the grass before Israel's footsteps.  Israel walked quickly,

+tracing his course between the two arms of the Jebel Sheshawan,

+whose summits were visible against the sky.  The air was cool and moist,

+and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea.  Oh! the joy of it to him

+who had lain long months in prison!  Israel drank in the night air

+as a young colt drinks in the wind.

+

+And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel's heart.

+"I am going to be happy," he told himself, "yes, very happy,

+very happy."  He raised his eyes to heaven, and a star,

+bigger and brighter than the rest, hung over the path before him.

+"It is leading me to Naomi," he thought.  He knew that was folly,

+but he could not restrain his mind from foolishness.  And at least

+she had the same moon and stars above her sleep, for she would

+be sleeping now.  "I am coming," he cried.  He fixed his eye

+on the bright star in front and pushed forward, never resting,

+never pausing.

+

+The morning dawned.  Long rippling waves of morning air came

+down the mountains, cool, chill, and moist.  The grey light became tinged

+with red.  Then the sun rose somewhere.  It had not yet appeared,

+but the peak of the western hill was flushed and a raven flew out

+and perched on the point of light.  Israel's breast expanded,

+and he strode on with a firmer step.  "She will be waking soon,"

+he told himself.

+

+The world awoke.  From unseen places birds began to sing--the wheatear

+in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes

+of the rivers.  The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then

+all the earth below was bright.  Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers,

+and lay like vast spiders' webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat,

+dogs to bark, kine to low, horses to cross each other's necks,

+and over the freshness of the air came the smell of peat and

+of green boughs burning.  Israel did not stop, but pushed

+on with new eagerness.  "She will have risen now," he told himself.

+He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door and looking out for him

+in the sunlight.

+

+"Poor little thing," he thought, "how she misses me!  But I am coming,

+I am coming!"

+

+The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed

+since he saw it last.  Then it had been like a dead man's face;

+now it was like a face that was always smiling.  And though the year was

+so old it seemed to be quite young.  No tired look of autumn, no warning

+of winter; only the freshness and vigour of spring.  "I am going

+to see my child, and I shall be happy yet," thought Israel.

+The dust of life seemed to hang on him no longer.

+

+He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer--"the house

+of the poor one."  The place did not even justify its name,

+for it was a cinereous wreck.  Not a living creature was

+to be seen anywhere.  The village had been sacked by the Sultan's army,

+and its inhabitants had fled to the mountains.  Israel paused a moment,

+and looked into one of the ruined houses.  He knew it must have been

+the house of a Jew, for he could recognise it by its smell.

+The floor was strewn over with rubbish--cans, kettles, water-bottles,

+a woman's handkerchief, and a dainty red slipper.  On the ragged grass

+in the court within there were some little stones built up

+into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the ground in lines.

+A young girl had lived in that house; children had played there;

+the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits still.

+"Poor souls!" thought Israel, but the troubles of others could not really

+touch him.  At that very moment his heart was joyful.

+

+The day was warm, but not too hot for walking.  Israel did not feel weary,

+and so he went on without resting.  He reckoned how far it was from Shawan

+to his home near Semsa.  It was nearly seventy miles.

+That distance would take two days and two nights to cover on foot.

+He had left the prison on Wednesday night, and it would be Friday

+at sunset before he reached Naomi.  It was now Thursday morning.

+He must lose no time.  "You see, the poor little thing will be waiting,

+waiting, waiting," he told himself.  "These sweet creatures are

+all so impatient; yes, yes, so foolishly impatient.  God bless them!"

+

+He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer.

+They answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him

+of their trouble.  Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded

+a hundred dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan,

+that he had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army,

+his twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan.

+But Israel hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear

+to their story.  He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future.

+With Naomi he was to leave Morocco.  They were to sail for England.

+Free, mighty, noble, beautiful England!  Ah, how it shone in his memory,

+the little white island of the sea!  His mother's home!  England!

+Yes, he would go back to it.  True, he had no friends there now;

+but what matter of that?  Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call

+of his kindred showed him pitiful gaps.  His mother!  Ruth!

+But he had Naomi still.  Naomi!  He spoke her name aloud, softly,

+tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on her hair.

+Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be so childish.

+

+Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.

+It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards.  The animals were

+picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing,

+and the voices of men and women came from inside the tents.

+Fires were burning under kettles swung from triangles, and sight

+of this reminded Israel that he had not eaten since the previous day.

+"I must have food," he thought, "though I do not feel hungry."

+So he stopped, and the wandering Arabs hailed him.  "Markababikum!"

+they cried from where they sat within.

+

+"You are very welcome!  Welcome to our lofty land!"  Their land was

+the world.

+

+Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled beans

+and black bread.  It was very sweet.  A man was eating beside him;

+a woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child

+while she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles.

+Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing,

+and a young girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin

+and baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling

+in a hole over three stones.  All were laughing together,

+and Israel laughed along with them.

+

+"On a long journey, brother?" said the man,

+

+"No, oh no, no," said Israel.  "Only to Semsa, no farther."

+

+"Well, you must sleep here to-night," said the Arab.

+

+"Ah, I cannot do that," said Israel.

+

+"No?"

+

+"You see, I am going back to my little daughter.  She is alone,

+poor child, and has not seen her old father for months.

+Really it is wrong of a man to stay away such a time.

+These tender creatures are so impatient, you know.  And then they imagine

+such things, do they not?  Well, I suppose we must humour them--

+that's what I always say."

+

+"But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!" said the woman.

+

+"Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister," said Israel."  Well, peace!

+Farewell all, farewell!"

+

+Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far

+the darkness overtook him.  It came down from the mountains

+like a dense black cloud.  Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land,

+darkness ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air

+on every side.  Still for a while he toiled along.  Every step was

+an effort.  The ground seemed to sink under him.  It was like walking

+on mattresses.  He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless.

+A cold sweat broke out on his brow, and at length, when the sound

+of a river came from somewhere near, though on which side of him

+he could not tell, he had no choice but to stop.  "After all,

+it is better," he thought.  "Strange, how things happen for the best!

+I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I will get no sleep at all.

+No, for I shall have so many things to say and to ask and to hear."

+

+Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept

+upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles

+of dense night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself

+in a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart.

+"Yes, I must sleep--sleep--to-morrow _she_ must sleep and I must watch

+by her--watch by her as I used to do--used to do--how soft and

+beautiful--how beautiful--sleeping--sleep--Ah!"

+

+When he awoke the sun had risen.  The sea lay before him in the distance,

+the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky.

+He was on the borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and,

+after wading the river, which he had heard in the night, he began again

+on his journey.  It was now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day

+he would be back at his home near Semsa.  Already he could see Tetuan

+far away, girt by its white walls, and perched on the hillside.

+Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with the snow-tipped heights above it,

+a white blaze surrounded by orange orchards.

+

+But how dizzy he was!  How the world went round!  How the earth trembled!

+Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes

+grown dim?  Going blind?  Well, even so, he would not repine,

+for Naomi could see now.  She would see for him also.  How sweet

+to see through Naomi's eyes!  Naomi was young and joyous,

+and bright and blithe.  All the world was new to her, and strange

+and beautiful.  It would be a second and far sweeter youth.

+

+Naomi--Naomi--always Naomi!  He had thought of her hitherto

+as she had appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives

+at Semsa.  But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her

+since then.  Two months and a half--it seemed so long!  He had visions

+of Naomi grown from a sweet girl to a lovely woman.  A great soul

+beamed out of her big, slow eyes.  He himself approached her meekly,

+humbly, reverently.  Nevertheless, he was her father still--her old,

+tired, dim-eyed father; and she led him here and there,

+and described things to him.  He could see and hear it all.

+First Naomi's voice: "A bow in the sky--red, blue, crimson--oh!"

+Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness:

+"A rainbow, child!"  Ah! the dreams were beautiful!

+

+He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice--the voice

+of his poor dead Ruth--and to remember the song that she used

+to sing--the song she sang in the patio on that great night

+of the moonlight, when he was returning home from the Bab Ramooz,

+and heard her singing from the street--

+

+        Within my heart a voice

+        Bids earth and heaven rejoice.

+

+He sang the song to himself as he toiled along.  With a little lisp

+he sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice

+he was making was Naomi's voice and not his own.

+

+Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan,

+between the Sultan's gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by

+the escaping sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews.

+They were a deputation that had come out from the town to meet him,

+and at first sight of his face they were shocked.  He had left Tetuan

+a stricken man, it was true, but strong and firm, fifty years

+of age and resolute.  Six months had passed, and he was coming back

+as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering, infirm old man of eighty.

+Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but after a pause

+one of them--Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name was

+Solomon Laredo--stepped up and said, "Israel ben Oliel,

+our poor Tetuan is in trouble.  It needs you.  Alas! we dealt ill

+with you, but God has punished us, and we are brothers now.

+Come back to us, we pray of you; for we have heard of a great thing

+that is coming to pass.  Listen!"

+

+Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower

+of Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless,

+and also something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel,

+who was to bombard Marteel.  But Israel heard very little.

+"I think my hearing must be failing me," he said; and then

+he laughed lightly, as if that did not greatly matter.  "And to tell you

+the truth, though I pity my poor brethren, I can no longer help them.

+God will raise up a better minister."

+

+"Never!" cried the Jews in many voices.

+

+"Anyhow," said Israel, "my life among you is ended.  I set no store

+by place and power.  What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand

+of God I stand.' Shakespeare--oh, a mighty creature--one who knew

+where the soul of a man lay.  But I forget, you've not lived in England.

+Do you know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter?

+You remember her--Naomi--a charming girl.  She can see now, and hear,

+and speak also!  Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her,

+and I am going to be very happy.  Well, I must leave you, brothers.

+The little one will be waiting.  I must not keep her too long, must I?

+Peace, peace!"

+

+Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was

+on every tongue.  A wave of compassion swept over all.

+The deputation stood and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.

+

+And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him

+of some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears.

+He began to think of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi.

+His absence had been so long, and so many things might have happened

+since he went away.  In this mood he tried to run.  It was

+a poor uncertain shamble.  At nearly every step the body lurched

+for poise and balance.

+

+At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew,

+the little rush-covered house ought to be seen.  "It's yonder,"

+he cried, and pointed it out to himself with uplifted finger.

+The sun was sinking, and its strong rays were in his face.  "She's there,

+I see her!" he shouted.  A few minutes later he was near the door.

+"No, my eyes deceived me," he said in a damp voice.  "Or perhaps

+she has gone in--perhaps she's hiding--the sweet rogue!"

+

+The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house.  "Naomi!"

+he called in a voice like a caress.  "Naomi!"  His voice trembled now.

+"Come to me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!"

+He listened.  There was not a sound, not a movement.  "Naomi!"

+The name was like a gurgle in his throat.  There was a pause,

+and then he said very feebly and simply, "She's not here."

+

+He looked around, and picked up something from the floor.

+It was a slipper covered with mould.  As he gazed upon it a change came

+over his face.  Dead?  Was Naomi dead?  He had thought

+of death before--for himself, for others, never for Naomi.

+At a stride the awful thing was on him.  Death!  Oh, oh!

+

+With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle

+of the floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came

+to the door.  He flung the slipper away and threw open his arms.

+Naomi--it must be she!

+

+It was Fatimah.  She had come in secret, that the evil news

+of what had been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken

+to Israel too suddenly.  He met her with a terrible question.

+"Where is she laid?" he said in a voice of awe.

+

+Fatimah saw his error instantly.  "Naomi is alive," she said, and,

+seeing how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly,

+"and well, very well."

+

+That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel,

+with a cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her,

+she saw what she had done.

+

+"Where is she?" he cried.  "Bring her, you dear, good soul.

+Why is she not here?  Lead me to her, lead me!"

+

+Then Fatimah began to wring her hands.  "Alas!" she said, weeping,

+"that cannot be."

+

+Israel steadied himself and waited.  "She cannot come to you,

+and neither can you go to her." said Fatimah.  "But she is well, oh!

+very well.  Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--

+oh no, she is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed,

+she is at the palace--the women's palace--but set your mind easy--she--"

+

+With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,

+and tried to deaden the blow of it.  But the soul lives fast,

+and Israel lived a lifetime in that moment.

+

+"The palace!" he said in a bewildered way.  "The women's palace--

+the women's--" and then broke off shortly.  "Fatimah, I want to go

+to Naomi," he said.

+

+And Fatimah stammered, "Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--"

+

+"Fatimah," said Israel, with an awful calm.  "Can't you see, woman,

+I have come home?  I and Naomi have been long parted.  Do you

+not understand?--I want to go to my daughter."

+

+"Yes, yes," said Fatimah; "but you can never go to her any more.

+She is in the women's apartments--"

+

+Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.

+

+"Poor child, it was not her fault.  Listen," said Fatimah; "only listen."

+

+But Israel would hear no more.  The torrent of his fury bore

+down everything before it.  Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned.

+"Silence!" he cried.  "What need is there for words?  She is

+in the palace!--that's enough.  The women's palace--the hareem--what more

+is there to say?"

+

+Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly

+in all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters.

+"O God!" he cried, "my enemy casts me into prison.  I lie there, rotting,

+starving.  I think of my little daughter left behind alone.

+I hasten home to her.  But where is she?  She is gone.

+She is in the house of my enemy.  Curse her! . . . .  Ah! no, no;

+not that, either!  Pardon me, O God; not that, whatever happens!

+But the palace--the women's palace.  Naomi!  My little daughter!

+Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn that

+she was innocent.  My love! my dove!  I had only to look at her to see

+that she loved me!  And now the hareem--that hell,

+and Ben Aboo--that libertine!  I have lost her for ever!

+Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled with God for it--"

+

+He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured,

+he dropped to his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands

+towards heaven, and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending,

+"Kill her, O God!  Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be

+mine again!"

+

+At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut.  It was the last voice

+of tottering reason.  After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah

+returned the following morning he was talking to himself

+in a childish way while sitting at the door, and gazing before him

+with a lifeless look.  Sometimes he quoted Scriptures

+which were startlingly true to his own condition: "I am alone,

+I am a companion to owls. . . .  I have cleansed my heart in vain. . . .

+My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh slipped. . . .

+I am as one whom his mother comforteth."

+

+Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries

+and simple foolish play-words.  Again and again he called on Naomi,

+always softly and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing.

+At times he appeared to think that he was back in prison,

+and made a little prayer--always the same--that some one should be kept

+from harm and evil.  Once he seemed to hear a voice that cried,

+"Israel ben Oliel!  Israel ben Oliel!"  "Here!  Israel is here!"

+he answered.  He thought the Kaid was calling him.  The Kaid was the King.

+"Yes, I will go back to the King," he said.  Then he looked down

+at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt, and tried

+to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged threads of it.

+At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he were

+a master still, "Bring me robes--clean robes--white robes;

+I am going back to the King!"

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXIV

+

+THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN

+

+

+Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,

+the Sultan Abd er-Rahman.  He had been heard of about four hours away,

+encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment

+of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar.  His entry was fixed

+for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were

+everywhere afoot.  All other occupations were at a standstill,

+and nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing

+of the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.

+

+Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,

+and crying in a hoarse voice, "Awake!  Awake!  Come and greet your Lord!

+Awake!  Awake!"

+

+In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.

+The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel

+of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange orchards

+lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red

+rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights

+above them were crimson rather than white.  In the town itself

+the small red flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house,

+and carpets of various colours swung on many walls.

+

+The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive.

+It was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment

+of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped

+about their heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted

+as soldiers.  They poured into the town at the western gate,

+and shuffled and jostled and squeezed their way through the narrow streets

+firing recklessly into the air, and shouting as they went,

+"Abd er-Rahman is coming!  The Sultan is coming!  Dogs!  Men!  Believers!

+Infidels!  Come out! come out!"

+

+Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering

+in perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets

+they passed through grew denser.  But it was a grim satire

+on their lawless loyalty that almost at their heels there came

+into the town, not the Sultan himself, but a troop of his prisoners

+from the mountains.  Ten of them there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers,

+and they made a sorry spectacle.  They were chained together,

+man to man in single file, not hand to hand or leg to leg

+but neck to neck.  So had they walked a hundred miles,

+never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,

+or faint or strong.  The feet of some were bare and torn,

+and dripping blood; the faces of all were black with grime,

+and streaked with lines of sweat.  And thus they toiled into the streets

+in that sunlight of God's own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco,

+by the many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah

+beyond the market-place.  They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had

+just stripped, whose villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children

+he had just driven into the mountains.  And they were going to die

+in his dungeons.

+

+It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it

+that the Sultan's train was moving down the valley.  From the roofs

+of the houses a vast human ant-hill could be seen swarming

+across the plain in the distance.  Then came some rapid transformations

+of the scene below.  First the streets were deserted by every decent

+blue jellab and clean white turban within range of sight.

+These presently reappeared on the roofs of the principal thoroughfare,

+where groups of women, closely covered in their haiks,

+had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants.

+Next, a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard

+on the walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army

+that was coming.  Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace,

+came pouring from their own little quarter within its separate walls

+a throng of Jewish people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps,

+men and women and children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions,

+twanging at tambourines and crying in wild discords, "God bless our Lord!"

+"God give victory to our Lord the Sultan!"

+

+The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the Caliphs

+of the Prophet.  Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them

+with exclamations of menace and abhorrence.  Even the blind beggar

+crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.

+

+"Get out, you Jew!  God burn your father!  Dogs, take

+off your slippers--Abd er-Rahman is coming!"

+

+Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed,

+jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation.

+Their banners were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken,

+their voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back

+into their Mellah and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry

+of the Sultan even from their roofs.

+

+And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,

+having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace

+among themselves.  They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried

+and laughed and clamoured down this main artery of the town

+through which the Sultan's train must pass.  Men and boys, women also

+and young girls, donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least

+one dirty and terrified old camel.  It was a confused and uproarious babel.

+Angry black faces thrust into white ones, flashing eyes

+and gleaming white teeth, and clenched fists uplifted.

+Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like hyenas, shrill and guttural,

+piercing and grating.  Prayings, beggings, quarrellings, cursings.

+

+"Arrah!  Arrah!  Arrah!"

+

+"O Merciful!  O Giver of good to all!"

+

+"Curses on your grandfather!"

+

+"Allah!  Allah!  Allah!"

+

+"Balak!  Balak!  Balak!"

+

+But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence.

+The gate of the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out,

+headed by the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall.

+The rabble were thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines

+on either side of the street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself,

+took a position by the western gate.

+

+By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen

+who had gathered there.  The Sultan's army was drawing near,

+a confused and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain.

+As they came up to the walls, the people who were standing

+on the house-roofs could see them, and as they were ordered away

+to encamp by the river, none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.

+

+When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off

+to their camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide,

+for the Sultan himself was at hand.

+

+First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen,

+with their small pieces packed on mules.  Next came mounted

+standard-bearers four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green.

+Then came the outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's

+six led horses.  And then at length with the great red umbrella

+of royalty held over him, came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist,

+with his dusky cheeks, his rheumy eyes, his thick lips,

+and his heavy nostrils.  The fat Father of Islam was mounted that day

+on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in gorgeous trappings.

+Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold.  Solomon's seal

+was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar--a safeguard

+against the evil eye--was suspended from its neck.  Its saddle was

+of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were

+of chased silver.  The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour

+of his horse.  His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered

+leathern girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also

+white and transparent.

+

+As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon

+of the Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed

+his stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.

+

+"God bless our Lord!"

+

+"Sultan Abd er-Rahman!"

+

+"God prolong the life of our Lord!"

+

+He seemed hardly to hear them.  Once his hand touched his breast

+when the Kaid approached him.  After that he looked neither to the right

+nor to the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition.

+Nevertheless the people in the streets ceased not to greet him

+with deafening acclamations.

+

+"All's well, all's well," they told each other, and pointed

+to the white horse--the sign of peace--which the Sultan rode,

+and to the riderless black horse--the sign of strife--that pranced

+behind him.

+

+The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks,

+welcomed the Sultan with a shrill ululation: "Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!"

+

+Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation,

+some of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back

+their muslin coverings, exposed their faces to his face,

+and welcomed him with more articulate cries.

+

+He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.

+Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air

+before his podgy cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him

+rode his Ministers of State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites

+on carrion that his head might be like his stomach, and their power

+over him thereby the greater.  After the Ministers of State came a part

+of the royal hareem.  The ladies rode on mules, and were attended

+by eunuchs.

+

+Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman.

+In their heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit?  No.

+Too well they knew  that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects

+but take their taxes.  Not a man had he protected from injustice;

+not a woman had he saved from dishonour.  Never a rich usurer among them

+but trembled at his messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons.

+His law existed only for himself; his government had no object

+but to collect his dues.  And yet his people had received him

+amid wild vociferations of welcome.

+

+Fear, fear!  Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,

+whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul

+of the blind beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out

+long ago because he dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.

+

+But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners

+of quiet streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars,

+among the horses tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men

+could stand and talk unheard and unobserved by a third,

+one secret message of twofold significance passed with the voice

+of smothered joy from lip to lip.  And this was the way

+and the word of it:

+

+"She is back in the Kasbah!"

+

+"The daughter of Ben Oliel?  Thank God!  But why?  Has she recanted?"

+

+"She has fallen sick."

+

+"And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?"

+

+"He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest."

+

+"Allah save us!  The dog of dogs!  But God be praised! At least

+she is saved from the Sultan."

+

+"For the present, only for the-present."

+

+"For ever, brother, for ever!  Listen! your ear.  A word of news

+for your news: the Mahdi is coming!  The boy has been for him."

+

+"Bismillah!  Ben Oliel's boy?"

+

+"Ali.  He is back in Tetuan.  And listen again!  Behind the Mahdi

+comes the--"

+

+"Ya Allah! well?"

+

+"Hark!  A footstep on the street--some one is near--"

+

+"But quick.  Behind the Mahdi--what?"

+

+"God will show!  In peace, brother, in peace!"

+

+"In peace!"

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXV

+

+THE COMING OF THE MAHDI

+

+

+The Mahdi came back in the evening.  He had no standard-bearers going

+before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers

+of state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings,

+and was himself bedecked in no snowy garments.  His ragged following

+he had left behind him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham

+of rough grey cloth was all his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier

+than the monarch who had entered Tetuan that day.

+

+He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint;

+not like a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel.

+Outside the town he had come upon the great body of the Sultan's army

+lying encamped under the walls.  The townspeople who had shut the soldiers

+out, with all the rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them

+fifty camels' load of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts,

+half a pound to each man.  Where this meal had already been eaten,

+the usual charlatans of the market-place had been busily plying

+their accustomed trades.  Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers

+from the desert, and story-tellers both grave and facetious,

+all twanging their hideous ginbri, had been seated on the ground

+in half-circles of soldiers and their women.  But the Mahdi had broken up

+and scattered every group of them.

+

+"Away!" he had cried.  "Away with your uncleanness and deception."

+

+And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise

+of the indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale,

+had slunk off like a pariah dog.

+

+As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan

+were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude

+of excited spectators.  Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs,

+were charging in line from opposite sides of the square, some seated,

+some kneeling, some standing.  Midway across the market-place

+they were charging, horses at full gallop, firing their muskets,

+then reining in at a horse's length, throwing their barbs

+on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping back, amid deafening shouts

+of "Allah!  Allah!  Allah!"

+

+"Allah indeed!" cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without fear.

+"That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and bloodshed.  Away, away!"

+

+The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah.

+As he approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared

+for the mad antics of the Aissawa.  Before they saw him the fanatics

+came out in all the force of their acting brotherhood,

+a score of half-naked men, and one other entirely naked,

+attended by their high-priests, the Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs

+with long white beards, wearing dark flowing robes and carrying torches.

+Then goats and dogs were riven alive and eaten raw; while women

+and children; crouching in the gathering darkness overhead looked down

+from the roofs and shuddered.  And as the frenzy increased

+among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each fanatic turned

+upon himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head

+against the stones until blood ran like water.

+

+"Fools and blind guides!" cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him

+like sheep.  "Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer?

+Oh, the abomination of desolation!  You tear yourselves

+in the name of God, but forget His justice and mercy.  Away!

+You will have your reward.  Away!  Away!"

+

+At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and,

+after various parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted

+the winding ways of the gloomy place, he was introduced

+to the Basha's presence.  The Basha received him in a room so dark

+that he could but dimly see his face.  Ben Aboo was stretched on a carpet,

+in much the position of a dog with his muzzle on his forepaws.

+

+"Welcome," he said gruffly, and without changing his own

+unceremonious posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.

+

+The Mahdi did not sit.  "Ben Aboo," he said in a voice

+that was half choked with anger, "I have come again on an errand

+of mercy, and woe to you if you send me away unsatisfied."

+

+Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,

+"What is it now?"

+

+"Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?" said the Mahdi.

+

+With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands

+on which his dusky muzzle had rested.

+

+"Ah, do not lie to me," cried the Mahdi.  "I know where she is--she is

+in prison.  And for what?  For no fault but love of her father,

+and no crime but fidelity to her faith.  She has sacrificed the one

+and abandoned the other.  Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo?

+Set her free."

+

+The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment,

+and some half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room

+shuffled about in their consternation.  At length Ben Aboo

+raised his head, and said with an air of mock inquiry, "Ya Allah!

+who is this infidel?"

+

+Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, "Sir, I know who you are!

+You come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not

+your purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez!  Mohammed the Third!

+What fool said you were a spy of the Sultan?  Abd er-Rahman is here--

+my guest and protector.  You are a spy of his enemies,

+and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin our religion and our State.

+The penalty for such as you is death, and by Allah you shall die!"

+

+Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite

+of his superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi,

+he half deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely.

+But the Mahdi took a step nearer and looked straight into his face,

+and said--

+

+"Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool.  You talk of putting me

+to death.  You dare not and you cannot do it."

+

+"Why not?" cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a swagger.

+"What's to hinder me?  I could do it at this moment, and no man need know."

+

+"Basha," said the Mahdi, "do you think you are talking to a child?

+Do you think that when I came here my visit was not known

+to others than ourselves outside?  Do you think there are not some

+who are waiting for my return?  And do you think, too," he cried,

+lifting one hand and his voice together, "that my Master in heaven

+would not see and know it on an errand of mercy His servant perished?

+Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I say; you are a fool."

+

+The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage.  But he was cowed.

+He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air

+of braggadocio--

+

+"And what if I do not liberate the girl?"

+

+"Then," said the Mahdi, "if any evil befalls her the consequences shall be

+on your head."

+

+"What consequences?" said the Basha.

+

+"Worse consequences than you expect or dream," said the Mahdi.

+

+"What consequences?" said the Basha again.

+

+"No matter," said the Mahdi.  "You are walking in darkness,

+and do not know where you are going."

+

+"What consequences?" the Basha cried once more.

+

+"That is God's secret," said the Mahdi.

+

+Ben Aboo began to laugh.  "Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,"

+he shouted to his people.

+

+"Enough!" cried the Mahdi.  "I have delivered my message.

+Now woe to you, Ben Aboo!  A second time I have come to you as a witness,

+but I will come no more.  Fill up the measure of your iniquity.

+Keep the girl in prison.  Give her to the Sultan.  But know that

+for all these things your reward awaits you.  Your time is near.

+You will die with a pale face.  The sword will reach to your soul."

+

+Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha

+where he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion,

+"This is the last word that will pass between you and me.

+So part we now for ever, Ben Aboo--I to the work that waits for me,

+and you to shame and contempt, and death and hell."

+

+Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place

+where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks

+under a blow.  Then with head erect he went out unhindered.

+

+But he was not yet done.  In the garden of the palace,

+as he passed through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness

+under the stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay,

+and cried, "Abd er-Rahman!  Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful!

+Listen: I hear the sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war.

+My heart makes a noise in me for my country, but the day

+of her tribulation is near.  Woe to you, Abd er-Rahman!

+You have filled up the measure of your fathers.  Woe to you,

+slave of the Compassionate!"

+

+The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State;

+the women of the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards

+and the soldiers.  But his voice and his message came over them

+with the terror of a ghostly thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.

+

+"The Mahdi," they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.

+

+The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah.  The rabble

+of mountaineers of Aissawa were  gone.  Hooded Talebs,

+with prayer-mats under their arms, were picking their way in the gloom

+from the various mosques; and from these there came out

+into the streets the plash of water in the porticos and the low drone

+of singing voices behind the screens.

+

+The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure

+called the M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him

+in secret.  It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master,

+whom she had visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble

+and in madness; also of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume

+in her memory, as well as of Naomi, their daughter, and

+all her sufferings.  In spasms, in gasps, without sequence

+and without order, she told her story; but he listened to her

+with emotion while the agitated black face was before him,

+and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of night,

+a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was imprisoned

+in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father,

+who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy

+while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.

+These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit

+of Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled.  Let come what would,

+the man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.

+

+The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,

+and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep.  The town was quiet,

+the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's following

+had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest.  It was a wonderful night.

+The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter,

+but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens

+behind the town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper

+of a leaf.  Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white

+on the white walls and minarets.  Nowhere is night so full of the spirit

+of sleep as in an Eastern city.  Below, under the moonlight,

+lay the square white roofs, and between them were the dark streets

+going in and out, trailing through and along, like to narrow streams

+of black water in a bed of quarried chalk.  Here or there,

+where a belated townsman lit himself homeward with a lamp,

+a red light gleamed out of one of the thin darknesses,

+crept along a few paces, and then was gone.  Sometimes a clamour

+of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place,

+and again everything was still.  Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.

+

+"O Tetuan," thought the Mahdi, "how soon will your streets be uprooted

+and your sanctuaries destroyed!"

+

+The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter

+at the gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town

+in the dawn.  He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying

+on the bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky.  Not one of them seemed

+to be awake.  Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose,

+in the circles where they had last fed.  Only their mules and asses,

+all hobbled and still saddled, were up and feeding.

+

+The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa.  So poor a place

+he had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land.

+Its walls were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was

+of rushes, which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel.

+Israel was in his right mind.  He was sitting by the door of his house,

+with a dejected air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason.

+His clothing was one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless,

+and his head was bare.  But so grand a head the Mahdi thought

+he had never beheld before.  Not until then had he truly seen him,

+for the poverty and misery that sat on him only made his face stand out

+the clearer.  It was the face of a man who for good or ill,

+for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled with God.

+

+With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down

+beside Israel at a little distance.  He began to speak to him

+in a tender way, telling him who he was, and where they had met before,

+and why he came, and whither he was going.  And Israel listened to him

+at first with a brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man

+were a frozen clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face

+and even the nerves of his fingers were also frozen.

+

+Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the head.

+He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to prison,

+and Israel listened with a great outward calmness.  After that

+he described the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him,

+and how she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw

+by Israel's face that the affection of the father was tearing

+his old heart woefully.  At last he recited the incidents

+of her cruel trial, and how she had yielded at length, knowing nothing

+of religion, being only a child, seeing her father in everything

+and thinking to save his life, though she herself must see him no more

+(for all this he had gathered from Fatimah), and then the great thaw came

+to Israel, and his fingers trembled, and his face twitched,

+and the hot tears rained down his cheeks.

+

+"My poor darling!" he muttered in a trembling undertone,

+and then he asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.

+

+The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling

+against the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine

+of the Sultan.

+

+"My brave girl!" he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light

+that was both pride and pain.

+

+He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice

+as if she could hear: "Forgive me, Naomi!  Forgive me, my poor child!

+Your weak old father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!"

+

+This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned

+to him, and said in almost a childish tone, "I suppose there is

+no help for it now, sir.  I meant to take her to England--

+to my poor mother's home, but--"

+

+"And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives," said the Mahdi,

+rising to his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue

+which he had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected,

+which had clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away

+as a barbarous impulse, should at length be carried into effect.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXVI

+

+ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN

+

+

+The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali's,

+for the black lad was back in Tetuan.  After he had fulfilled his errand

+of mercy at Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there,

+with a spirit afire for the wrongs of his master, from whom he was

+so cruelly parted, he had set himself with shrewdness and daring

+to incite the Spanish powers to vengeance upon his master's enemies.

+This had been a task very easy of execution, for just at that time

+intelligence had come from the Reef, of barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo

+upon mountain tribes that had hitherto offered allegiance

+to the Spanish crown.  A mission had gone up to Fez, and returned

+unsatisfied.  War was to be declared, Marteel was to be bombarded,

+the army of Marshal O'Donnel was to come up the valley of the river,

+and Tetuan was to be taken.

+

+Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been

+so strangely revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter.

+This was the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it,

+probably the eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo

+the Basha was to give a "gathering of delight," to the Sultan,

+his Ministers, his Kaids, his Kadis, his Khaleefas, his Umana,

+and great rascals generally.  Ali's stout heart stuck at nothing.

+He was for having the Spaniards brought up to the gates of the town,

+on the very night when the whole majesty and iniquity of Barbary

+would be gathered in one room; then, locking the entire kennel

+of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and burning it

+to the ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like rats

+in a trap.

+

+One danger attended his bold adventure, for Naomi's person was

+within the Kasbah walls.  To meet this peril Ali was himself

+to find his way into the dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate,

+and deliver up to another the key that should serve as a signal

+for the beginning of the great night's work.

+

+Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah

+there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment

+for the siege--no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely

+not to lead them blindfold into a trap.  To meet this difficulty Ali

+had gone in search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan,

+and asked him to help in the downfall of his master's enemies

+by leading the Spaniards at the right moment to the gates

+that should be thrown open to receive them.

+

+Hearing Ali's story, the Mahdi had been aflame with tender thoughts

+of Naomi's trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo's tyrannies, and pity

+of Israel's miseries.  But at first his humanity had withheld him

+from sympathy with Ali's dark purpose, so full, as it seemed,

+of barbarity and treachery.

+

+"Ali," he had said, "is it not all you wish for to get Naomi

+out of prison and take her back to her father?"

+

+"Yes, Sidi," Ali had answered promptly.

+

+"And you don't want to torture these tyrants if you can do

+what you desire without it?"

+

+"No-o, Sidi," Ali had said doubtfully.

+

+"Then," the Mahdi had said, "let us try."

+

+But when the Mahdi was gone to Tetuan on his errand of warning

+that proved so vain, Ali had crept back behind him, so that secretly

+and independently he might carry out his fell design.

+The towns-people were ready to receive him, for the air was full

+of rebellion, and many had waited long for the opportunity of revenge.

+To certain of the Jews, his master's people, who were also

+in effect his own, he went first with his mission, and they listened

+with eagerness to what he had come to say.  When their own time came

+to speak they spoke cautiously, after the manner of their race,

+and nervously, like men who knew too well what it was to be crushed

+and kept under; but they gave their help notwithstanding,

+and Ali's scheme progressed.

+

+In less than three days the entire town, Moorish and Jewish,

+was honeycombed with subterranean revolt.  Even the civil guard,

+the soldiers of the Kasbah, the black police that kept the gates,

+and the slaves that stood before the Basha's table were waiting

+for the downfall to come.

+

+The Mahdi had gone again by this time, and the people had resumed

+their mock rejoicings over the Sultan's visit.  These were

+the last kindlings of their burnt-out loyalty, a poor smouldering pretence

+of fire.  Every morning the town was awakened by the deafening crackle

+of flintlocks, which the mountaineers discharged in the Feddan

+by way of signal that the Sultan was going to say his prayers

+at the door of some saint's house.  Beside the firing of long guns

+and the twanging of the ginbri the chief business of the day seemed to be

+begging.  One bow-legged rascal in a ragged jellab went about constantly

+with a little loaf of bread, crying, "An ounce of butter for God's sake!"

+and when some one gave him the alms he asked he stuck

+the white sprawling mess on the top of the loaf and changed his cry

+to "An ounce of cheese for God's sake!"  A pert little vagabond--

+street Arab in a double sense--promenaded the town barefoot,

+carrying an odd slipper in his hand, and calling on all men

+by the love of God and the face of God and the sake of God

+to give him a moozoonah towards the cost of its fellow.

+Every morning the Sultan went to mosque under his red umbrella,

+and every evening he sat in the hall of the court of justice,

+pretending to hear the petitions of the poor, but actually

+dispensing charms in return for presents.  First an old wrinkled reprobate

+with no life left in him but the life of lust: "A charm to make

+my young wife love me!"  Then an ill-favoured hag behind a blanket:

+"A charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has taken

+instead of me!"  Again, a young wife with a tearful voice:

+"A charm to make me bear children!"  A greasy smile from the fat Sultan,

+a scrap of writing to every supplicant, chinking coins dropped

+into the bag of the attendant from the treasury, and then up and away.

+It was a nauseous draught from the bitterest waters of Islam.

+

+But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived

+by the outward marks of devotion.  At the corners of the streets,

+on the Feddan, by the fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard,

+there they stood in little groups, crossing their forefingers,

+the sign of strife, or rubbing them side by side, the sign of amity.

+It was clear that, notwithstanding the hubbub of their loyalty

+to the sultan, they knew that the Spaniard was coming and were glad of it.

+

+Meantime Ali waited with impatience for the day that was to see

+the end of his enterprise.  To beguile himself of his nervousness

+in the night, during the dark hours that trailed on to morning,

+he would venture out of the lodging where he lay in hiding

+throughout the day, and pick his steps in the silence

+up the winding streets, until he came under a narrow opening

+in an alley which was the only window to Naomi's prison.

+And there he would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought

+that besides the comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi,

+the tramp, tramp, tramp of his footsteps, which once or twice provoked

+the challenge of the night-guard on his lonely round, would be company

+to her in her solitude.  And sometimes, watching his opportunity

+that he might be unseen and unheard, he would creep in the darkness

+under the window and cry up the wall in an underbreath, "Naomi!  Naomi!

+It is I, Ali!  I have come back!  All will be well yet!"

+

+Then if he heard nothing from within he would torture himself

+with a hundred fears lest Naomi should be no longer there,

+but in a worse place; and if he heard a sob he would slink away

+like a dog with his muzzle to the dust, and if he heard his own name

+echoed in the softer voice he knew so well he would go off

+with head erect, feeling like a man who walked on the stars

+rather than the stones of the street.  But, whatever befell,

+before the day dawned he went back to his lodging less sore at heart

+for his lonely vigil, but not less wrathful or resolute.

+

+The day of the feast came at length, and then Ali's impatience

+rose to fever.  All day he longed for the night, that the thing he had

+to do could be done.  At last the sunset came and the darkness fell,

+and from his place of concealment Ali saw the soldiers of the assaseen

+going through the streets with lanterns to lead honoured guests

+to the banquet.  Then he set out on his errand.  His foresight and wit

+had arranged everything.  The negro at the gate of the Kasbah pretended

+to recognise him as a messenger of the Vizier's, and passed him through.

+He pushed his way as one with authority along the winding passages

+to the garden where the Mahdi had called on Abd er-Rahman

+and foretold his fate.  The garden opened upon the great hall,

+and a number of guests were standing there, cooling themselves

+in the night air while they waited for the arrival of the Sultan.

+His Shereefian Majesty came at length, and then, amid salaams

+and peace-blessings, the company passed in to the banquet.

+"Peace on you!"  "And on you the peace!"  "God make your evening!"

+"May your evening be blessed!"

+

+Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment?  No, a thousand times no!

+While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen

+and scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup

+and to laugh and to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel

+broken and alone in the poor hut which had been described to him,

+and Naomi lying in her damp cell beyond the wall.

+

+Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests

+entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop

+in after them with great dishes under huge covers.  Then he held

+a short parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him,

+and in another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi's prison.

+

+Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise,

+down to the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door,

+one fact he had never counted with, and that seemed to him then

+the chief fact of all--the fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi

+she had come by the gift of sight, and would now first look upon _him_.

+That he would be the same as a stranger to her, and would have to tell

+her who he was; that she would have to recognise him by whatsoever means

+remained to belie the evidence of the newborn sense--this was the least

+of Ali's trouble.  By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear

+that had haunted him in the days before he left her with her father

+on his errand to Shawan.  He was black, and she would see him.

+

+With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,

+flashed upon his mind.  His shame was abject.  It cut him to the quick.

+On the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him

+since times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood.

+She had played with him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen

+his face.  And she was fair as the morning, and he was black as the night!

+He had come to deliver her.  Would she recoil from him?

+

+Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything.

+But his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose.

+"What matter?" he thought.  "What matter about me?" he asked himself aloud

+in a shrill voice and with a brave roll of his round head.

+Then he found himself inside the cell.

+

+The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief.

+Naomi must have been lying at the farther end of it.  She spoke

+when the door was opened.  As though by habit, she framed the name

+of her jailer Habeebah, and then stopped with a little nervous cry

+and seemed to rise to her feet.  In his confusion Ali said simply,

+"It is I," as though that meant everything.  Recovering himself

+in a moment he spoke again, and then she knew his voice: "Naomi!"

+

+"It's Ali," she whispered to herself.  After that she cried

+in a trembling undertone "Ali!  Ali!  Ali!" and came straight

+in the accustomed darkness to the spot where he stood.

+

+Then, gathering courage and voice together, Ali told her hurriedly

+why he was there.  When he said that her father was no longer in prison,

+but at their home near Semsa and waiting to receive her,

+she seemed almost overcome by her joy.  Half laughing, half weeping,

+clutching at her breast as if to ease the wild heaving of her bosom

+she was transformed by his story.

+

+"Hush!" said Ali; "not a sound until we are outside the town,"

+and Naomi knitted her fingers in his palm, and they passed

+out of the place.

+

+The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors

+where they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by,

+and coming into the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle

+of laughter from the great hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals

+feasted together.  They reached the quiet alley outside the Kasbah

+(for the negro was gone from his post), and drew a lone breath,

+and thanked Heaven that this much was over.  There had been no group

+of beggars at the gate, and the streets around it were deserted;

+but in the distance, far across the town in the direction

+of the Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel,

+they heard a low hum as of vast droves of sheep.  The Spaniard was coming,

+and the townsmen were going out to meet him.  Casual passers-by

+challenged them, and though Ali knew that even if recognised

+they had nothing to fear from the people, yet more than once

+his voice trembled when he answered, and sometimes with a feeling

+of dread he turned to see that no one was following.

+

+As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame

+of that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door

+of Naomi's prison.  By the light of the lamps in the hands

+of the passers-by Naomi was looking at him.  Again and again,

+as the glare fell for an instant, he felt the eyes of the girl

+upon his face.  At such moments he thought she must be drawing away

+from him, for the space between them seemed wider.  But he firmly held

+to the outstretched arm, kept his head aside, and hastened on.

+

+"What matter about me?" he whispered again.  But the brave word

+brought him no comfort.  "Now she's looking at my hand," he told himself,

+but he could not draw it away.  "She is doubting if I am Ali after all,"

+he thought.  "Naomi!" he tried to say with averted head,

+so that once again the sound of his voice might reassure her;

+but his throat was thick, and he could not speak.  Still he pushed on.

+

+The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm

+that has been gathering is about to break.  In the air a deep rumble,

+and then a loud detonation.  Blackness overhead, and things around

+that seemed to move and pass.

+

+Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene

+of Israel's humiliation and Naomi's shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,

+came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people.

+It was the Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands,

+entering the town on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought

+up to the gates were coming in on the east.  The Mahdi himself

+was locking the synagogues and the sanctuaries.

+

+"Lock them up," he was saying.  "It is enough that the foreigner

+must burn down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion

+of our God."

+

+Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.

+

+"I have brought her," he said breathlessly; "Naomi, Israel's daughter,

+this is she."  And then there was a moment of surprise and joy,

+and pain and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look

+of the eyes of the three.

+

+The Mahdi looked at Naomi, and his face lightened.  Naomi looked at Ali,

+and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair

+across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break

+from her mouth.  Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted

+and her eyes shone.  Ali looked at both, and his face twitched and fell.

+

+This was only the work of an instant, but it was enough.

+Enough for the Mahdi, for it told him a secret that the wisdom

+of life had not yet revealed; enough for Naomi, for a new sense,

+a sixth sense, had surely come to her; enough for Ali also,

+for his big little heart was broken.

+

+"What matter about me?" thought Ali again.  "Take her, Mahdi,"

+he said aloud in a shrill voice.  "Her father is waiting for her--

+take her to him."

+

+"Lady," said the Mahdi, "can you trust me?"

+

+And then without a word she went to him; like the needle to the magnet

+she went to the Mahdi--a stranger to her, when all strangers were

+as enemies--and laid her hand in his.

+

+Ali began to laugh, "I'm a fool," he cried.  "Who could have believed it?

+Why, I've forgotten to lock the Kasbah!  The villains will escape.

+No matter, I'll go back."

+

+"Stop!" cried the Mahdi.

+

+But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear.  "I'll see to it yet,"

+he cried, turning on his heel.  "Good night, Sidi!  God bless you!

+My love to my father!  Farewell!"

+

+And in another moment he was gone.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXVII

+

+THE FALL OF BEN ABOO

+

+

+The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance

+of the doom that was impending.  Squatting on the floor in little circles,

+around little tables covered with steaming dishes, wherein each plunged

+his fingers, they began the feast with ceremonious wishes,

+pious exclamations, cant phrases, and downcast eyes.  First,

+"God lengthen your age"  "God cover you," and "God give you strength."

+Then a dish of dates, served with abject apologies from Ben Aboo:

+"You would treat us better in Fez, but Tetuan is poor;

+the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!"  Then fish in garlic,

+eaten with loud "Bismillah's."  Then kesksoo covered with powdered sugar

+and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned fowls,

+and fowls and olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters,

+each eaten in its turn amid a chorus of "La Ilah illa Allah's."

+Finally three cups of green tea, as thick and sweet as syrup,

+drunk with many "Do me the favour's," and countless "Good luck's."

+Last of all, the washing of hands, and the fumigating of garments

+and beard and hair by the live embers of scented wood burning

+in a brass censer, with incessant exchanges of "The Prophet--

+God rest him--loved sweet odours almost as much as sweet women."

+

+But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed

+down to a warm and flowing brotherhood.  Lolling at ease on their rugs,

+trifling with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries

+for idleness more than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling

+on the pavement the carved ends of their silver knife-shields,

+they laughed and jested, and told dubious stories, and held

+doubtful discourse generally.  The talk turned on the distinction

+between great sins and little ones.  In the circle of the Sultan

+it was agreed that the great sins were two: unbelief in the Prophet,

+whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking keef and tobacco,

+which no man could do and be of correct life and unquestionable Islam.

+The atonement for these great sins were five prayers a day,

+thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the Koran,

+and as many inclinations.  All the rest were little sins;

+and as for murder and adultery, and bearing false witness--well,

+God was Merciful, God was Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak

+children.

+

+This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors

+of the great sins.  These were terrible.  Putting on a profound air,

+the Vizier, a fat man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco

+and denied the Prophet had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned

+in his grave with his face from Mecca.  Then the Kaid of Fez,

+head of the Mosque and general Grand Mufti, led away with stories

+of the little sins.  These were delightful.  They pictured the shifts

+of pretty wives, married to worn out old men, to get at their

+youthful lovers in the dark by clambering in their dainty slippers

+from roof to roof.  Also of the discomfiture of pious old husbands

+and the wicked triumph of rompish little ladies, under pretences

+of outraged innocence.

+

+Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told,

+was the conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah.

+At every fresh story the laughter became louder, and soon the reserve

+and dignity of the Moor were left behind him and forgotten.

+At length Ben Aboo, encouraged by the Sultan's good fellowship,

+broke into loud praises of Naomi, and yet louder wails over the doom

+that must be the penalty of her apostasy; and thereupon Abd er-Rahman,

+protesting that for his part he wanted nothing with such a vixen,

+called on him to uncover her boasted charms to them.  "Bring her here,

+Basha," he said; "let us see her"; and this command was received

+with tumultuous acclamations.

+

+It was the beginning of the end.  In less than a minute more,

+while the rascals lolled over the floor in half a hundred

+different postures, with the hazy lights from the brass lamps

+and the glass candelabras on their dusky faces, their gleaming teeth,

+and dancing eyes, the messenger who had been sent for Naomi came back

+with the news that she was gone.  Then Ben Aboo rose in silent

+consternation, but his guests only laughed the louder,

+until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running

+with more startling news.  Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards;

+the army of Marshall O'Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan,

+and their own people were opening the gates to him.

+

+The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement

+does not need to be detailed.  Shoutings for the mkhaznia,

+infuriated commands to the guards, racings to the stables

+and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of horses, stamping and clattering

+of hoofs, and scurryings through dark corridors of men carrying torches

+and flares.  There was no attempt at resistance.  That was seen

+to be useless.  Both the civil guard and the soldiery had deserted.

+The Kasbah was betrayed.  Terror spread like fire.  In very little time

+the Sultan and his company with their women and eunuchs, were gone

+from the town through the straggling multitude of their disorderly

+and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on the southern side

+of it.

+

+Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman.  He remembered

+that he had treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it.

+There were fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood

+of innocent people.  No one knew the strong-room except himself,

+for with his own hand he had killed the mason who built it.

+In the dark he found the place, and taking bags in both his hands

+and hiding them under the folds of his selham, he tried to escape

+from the Kasbah unseen.

+

+It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades,

+and Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground,

+near the wall of the Kasbah gate.  From that dark cell, crouching

+on the grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror

+to the sounds of the night.  First the galloping of horses

+on the courtyard overhead; then the furious shouts of the soldiers,

+and, finally, the mad cries of the crowd.  "Damn it--they've given us

+the slip"  "Yes; they've crawled off like rats from a sinking ship."

+"Curse it all, it's only a bungle."  This in the Spanish tongue,

+and then in the tongue of his own country Ben Aboo heard

+the guttural shouts of his own people: "Sidi, try the palace."

+"Try the apartments of his women, Sidi."  "Abd er-Rahman's gone,

+but Ben Aboo's hiding."  "Death to the tyrant!"  "Down with the Basha!"

+"Ben Aboo!  Ben Aboo!"  Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence.

+"Silence, you shrieking hell-babies, silence!"

+

+Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground

+and to hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear

+without going mad.  So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers,

+who had ransacked the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it;

+and then he crept out, made for the women's apartments, and rattled

+at their door.  It was folly, it was lunacy; but he could not resist it,

+for he dared not be alone.  He could hear the sounds of voices

+within--wailing and weeping of the women--but no one answered

+his knocking.  Again and again he knocked with his elbows

+(still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw

+through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood.

+Still the door remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better

+of his quest for company, fled to the patio, hoping to escape

+by a little passage that led to the alley behind the Kasbah.

+

+Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers

+who were helping her flight.  "We are safe," she whispered--they've

+gone back into the Feddan--come;" and by the light of a lamp

+which she carried she made for the winding corridor that led

+past the bath and the sanctuary to the Kasbah gate.  But Ben Aboo

+only cursed her, and fumbled at the low door of the passage that went

+out from the alcove to the alley.  He was lumbering through

+with his armless roll, intending to clash the door back in Katrina's face,

+when there was a fierce shout behind him, and for some minutes

+Ben Aboo knew no more.

+

+The shout was Ali's.  After leaving the Mahdi on the heath

+outside the Bab Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha.

+When the Spanish soldiers abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search.

+Up and down he had traversed the place in the darkness;

+and finding Ben Aboo at last, on the spot where he had first seen him,

+he rushed in upon him and brought him to the ground.  Seeing Ben Aboo

+down, the black soldiers fell upon Ali.  The brave lad died with a shout

+of triumph.  "Israel ben Oliel," he cried, as if he thought

+that name enough to save his soul and damn the soul of Ben Aboo.

+

+But Ben Aboo was not yet done with his own.  The blow that had been aimed

+at his heart had no more than grazed his shoulder.  "Get up,"

+whispered Katrina, half in wrath; and while she stooped to look

+for his wounds, her face and hands as seen in the dim light

+of the lantern were bedaubed with his blood.  At that moment

+the guards were crying that the Kasbah was afire, and at the next

+they were gone, leaving Katrina alone with the unconscious man.

+"Get up," she cried again, and tugging at Ben Aboo's unconscious body

+she struck it in her terror and frenzy.  It was every one for himself

+in that bad hour.  Katrina followed the guards, and was never afterwards

+heard of.

+

+When Ben Aboo came to himself the patio was aglow with flames.

+He staggered to his feet, still grappling to his breast the money-bags

+hidden under his selham.  Then, bleeding from his shoulder

+and with blood upon his beard, he made afresh for the passage leading

+to the back alley.  The passage was narrow and dark.  There were

+three winding steps at the end of it.  Ben Aboo was dizzy and he stumbled.

+

+But the passage was silent, it was safe, and out in the alley

+a sea of voices burst upon him.  He could hear the tramp

+of countless footsteps, the cries of multitudes of voices,

+and the rattle of flintlocks.  Lanterns, torches, flares and flashes

+of gunpowder came and went at both ends of the long dark tunnel.

+In the light of these he saw a struggling current of angry faces.

+The living sea encircled him.  He knew what had happened.

+At the first certainty that his power was gone and that there was nothing

+to fear from his vengeance, his own people had gathered together

+to destroy him.

+

+There were two small mean houses on the opposite side of the alley,

+and Ben Aboo tried to take refuge in the first of them.  But the woman

+who came with uncovered face to the door was the widow of the mason

+who had built his strong-room.  "Murderer and dog!" she cried,

+and shut the door against him.  He tried the other house.  It was

+the house of the mason's son.  "Forgive me," he cried.  "I am corrected

+by Allah!  Yes, yes, it is true I did wrong by your father,

+but forgive me and save me."  Thus he pleaded, throwing himself

+on the ground and crawling there.  "Dog and coward," the young man

+shouted, and beat him back into the street.

+

+Ben Aboo's terror was now appalling to look upon.  His face was that

+of a snared beast.  With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks,

+and short thick breath, he ran from dark alley to dark alley,

+trying every house where he thought he might find a friend.

+"Alee, don't you know me?"  "Mohammed, it is I, Ben Aboo."

+"See, El Arby, here's money, money; it's yours, only save me, save me!"

+With such frantic cries he raced about in the darkness

+like a hunted wolf.  But not a house would shelter him.

+Everywhere he met relatives of men who had died through his means,

+and he was driven away with curses.

+

+Meantime, a rumour that Ben Aboo was in the streets had been

+bruited abroad among the people, and their lust of blood was thereby

+raised to madness.  Screaming and spitting and raving,

+and firing their flintlocks, they poured from street into street,

+watching for their victim and seeing him in every shadow.

+"He's here!"  "He's there!"  "No, he's yonder!"  "He's scaling

+the high wall like a cat!"

+

+Ben Aboo heard them.  Their inarticulate cries came to him laden

+with one message only--death.  He could see their faces,

+their snarling teeth.  Sometimes he would rave and blaspheme.

+Then he would make another effort for his life.  But the whirlpool

+was closing in upon him; and at last, like one who flings himself

+over a precipice from dizziness, fears, and irresistible fascination,

+he flung himself into the middle of the infuriated throng

+as they scurried across the open Feddan.

+

+From that moment Ben Aboo's doom was sealed.  The people received him

+with a long furious roar, a cry of triumphant execration,

+as if their own astuteness at length had entrapped him.  He stood

+with his back to the high wall; the bellowing crowd was before him

+on either side.  By the torches that many carried all could see him.

+Turban and shasheeah had fallen off, and the bald crown of his head

+was bare.  His face retained no human expression but fear.

+He was seen to draw his arms from beneath his selham, to hold

+both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a hand into the necks

+of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people.  "Silver," he cried;

+"silver, silver for everybody."

+

+The despairing appeal was useless.  Nobody touched the money.

+It flashed white through the air, and fell unheard.  "Death to the Kaid!"

+was shouted on every side.  Nevertheless, though half the men

+carried guns, no man fired.  By unspoken consent it seemed

+to be understood that the death of Ben Aboo was not to be the act of one,

+but of all.  "Stones," cried somebody out of the crowd,

+and in another moment everybody was picking stones, and piling them

+at his feet or gathering them in the skirt of his jellab.

+

+Ben Aboo knew his awful fate.  Gesticulating wildly, having flung

+the money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul

+was seen to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips

+working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven.  At the next instant

+the stones began to fall on him.  Slowly they fell at first,

+and he reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck

+arched itself like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull

+was the groan that came from his throat.  Then they fell faster,

+and he swayed to and fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing

+at his breast, and his tongue lolling out.  Faster and faster,

+and thicker and thicker they showered upon him, darting out

+of the darkness like swallows of the night.  His clothes were rent,

+his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast staggers

+in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up,

+and he fell in a round heap like a ball.

+

+The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled.  They hailed the fall

+of Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued

+to shower upon his body.  In a little while they had piled

+a cairn above it.  Then they left it with curses of content

+and went their ways.  When the Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside

+while the work was done, came up with their lanterns to look

+at this monument of Eastern justice, the heap of stones was still moving

+with the terrific convulsions of death.

+

+Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XXVIII

+

+"ALLAH-U-KABAR"

+

+

+Travelling through the night,--Naomi laughing and singing snatches

+in her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals

+at the huge outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,--they came

+to the hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day.  But they had come

+too late.  Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England.

+He was going on a longer journey.  His lonely hour had come to him,

+his dark hour wherein none could bear him company.  On a mattress

+by the wall he lay outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end.

+Two neighbours from the village were with him, and but for these

+he must have been alone--the mighty man in his downfall deserted by all

+save the great Judge and God.

+

+What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her,

+what she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task

+to tell.  Oh, the irony of fate!  Ay, the irony of God!  That scene,

+and what followed it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest--

+none the less cruel because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.

+

+It was useless to go out in search of a doctor.  The country was

+as innocent of leechcraft as the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham.

+All they could do was to submit, absolutely and unconditionally.

+They were in God's hands.

+

+The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves

+as Israel awoke to consciousness.  He opened his eyes as if from sleep,

+and saw Naomi beside him.  No surprise did he show at this,

+and neither did he at first betray pleasure.  Dimly and softly he looked

+upon her, and then something that might have been a smile but

+for lack of strength passed like sunshine out of a cloud

+across his wasted face.  Naomi pressed a pillow-under his loins,

+and another under his head, thinking to ease the one and raise the other.

+But the iron hand of unconsciousness fell upon him again,

+and through many hours thereafter Naomi and the Mahdi sat together

+in silence with the multitudinous company of invisible things.

+

+During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news

+of Tetuan.  The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman

+and most of his Ministers had escaped.  Ben Aboo had tried to follow them,

+but he had been killed in the alcove of the patio.  Ali had killed him.

+He had rushed in upon him through a line of his guards.

+One of the guards had killed Ali.  The brave black lad had fallen

+with the name of Israel on his lips and with a dauntless shout of triumph.

+The Kasbah was afire; it had been burning since the banquet

+of the night before.

+

+Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew

+that the end was very near.  Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand,

+and the Mahdi was standing at his left.  Israel looked at the girl

+with a world of tenderness, though the hard grip of death was

+fast stiffening his noble face.  More than once he glanced at the Mahdi

+also as if he wished to say something, and yet could not do so,

+because the power of life was low; but at last his voice found strength.

+

+"I have left it too late," he said.  "I cannot go to England."

+

+Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words,

+and it was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.

+

+"Think no more of that," he said, and then he stopped, as if the word

+that he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.

+

+"It is hard to leave her," said Israel, "for she is alone;

+and who will protect her when I am gone?"

+

+"God lives," said the Mahdi, "and He is Father to the fatherless."

+

+"But what Jew," said Israel, "would not repeat for her

+her father's troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?"

+

+"Who that trusts in God," said the Mahdi, "need fear the Kaid?"

+

+"But what man can save her?" cried Israel again.

+

+And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi's tears as well as

+her father's importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said--

+

+"Peace, peace!  If there is no one else to take her, from this day forward

+she shall go with me."

+

+Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes

+as he has often since, but had never before seen there,

+and Israel ben Oliel who had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly

+at his wrist.

+

+"God bless you!" he said, as well as he could for the two angels,

+the angel of love and the angel of death, were struggling at his throat.

+

+Israel looked steadily at the Mahdi for a moment more, and then said

+very softly--

+

+"Death may come to me now; I am ready.  Farewell, my father!

+I tried to do your bidding.  Do you remember your watchword?

+But God _has_ given me rewards for repentance--see," and he turned his eyes

+towards the eyes of Naomi with a wasting yet sunny smile.

+

+"God is good," said the Mahdi; "lie still, lie still,"

+and he laid his cool hand on Israel's forehead.

+

+"I am leaving her to you," said Israel; "and you alone can protect her

+of all men living in this land accursed of God, for God's right arm is

+round you.  Yes, God is good.  As long as you live you will cherish her.

+Never was she so dear to me as now, so sweet, so lovable, so gentle.

+But you will be good to her.  God is very good to me.  Guard her

+as the apple of your eye.  It will reward you.  And let her think

+of me sometimes--only sometimes.  Ah! how nearly I shipwrecked all this!

+Remember!  Remember!"

+

+"Hush, hush!  Do not increase your pains," said the Mahdi.

+"Are you feeling better now?"

+

+"I am feeling well," said Israel, "and happy--so happy."

+

+The sun had set, and the swift twilight was passing into night,

+when another messenger arrived from Tetuan.  It was Ali's old Taleb,

+shedding tears for his boy, but boasting loudly of his brave death.

+He had heard of it from the black guards themselves.  After Ali fell

+he lived a moment, though only in unconsciousness.  The boy must have

+thought himself back at Israel's side, "I've done it, father," he said;

+"he'll never hurt you again.  You won't drive me away from you any more;

+will you, father?"

+

+They could see that Israel had heard the story.  The eyes of the dying

+are dry, but well they knew that the heart of the man was weeping.

+

+The Taleb came with the idea that Israel also was gone, for a rumour

+to that effect had passed through the town.  "El hamdu l'Illah!" he cried,

+when he saw that Israel was still alive.  But then he remembered

+something, and whispered in the Mahdi's farther ear that a vast concourse

+of Moors and Jews including his own vast fellowship was even then

+coming out to bury Israel, thinking he was dead.

+

+Israel overheard him and smiled.  It seemed as if he laughed

+a little also.  "It will soon be true," he muttered under his breath,

+that came so quick.  And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came

+from the distance.  It was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.

+

+Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear.

+First a mighty bass voice: "Allah Akbar!"  Again another

+and another voice: "Allah Akbar!" and then the long roar

+of a vast multitude: "Al--l--lah-u-kabar!"  Finally a slow melancholy wail,

+rising and falling on the darkening air: "There is no God but God,

+and Mohammed is the Prophet of God."

+

+It was a solemn sound--nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive

+to hear it.

+

+O gratitude that is only a death-song!  O fame that is only a funeral!

+

+Israel listened and smiled again.  "Ah, God is great!" he whispered;

+"God is great!"

+

+To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped

+to the door, and then in the distance he could descry

+the procession approaching--a moving black shadow against the sky.

+Also over their billowy heads he could see a red glow far away

+in the clouds.  It was the last smouldering of the fire

+of the modern Sodom.

+

+While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice

+behind him.  It was Israel's voice.  He was speaking to Naomi.

+"Yes," he was saying, "it is hard to part.  We were going to be

+very happy. . . .  But you must not cry.  Listen!  When I am there--eh?

+you know, _there_--I will want to say, 'Father, you did well to hear

+my prayer.  My little daughter--she is happy, she is merry, and her soul

+is all sunshine.'  So you  must not weep.  Never, never, never!

+Remember! . . . .  Ah! that's right, that's right.  My simple-hearted

+darling!  My sunny, merry, happy girl!"

+

+Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father's will.

+She was combing his white beard with her fingers--it was knotted

+and tangled--and he was labouring hard to speak again.

+

+"Naomi, do you remember?" he said; and then he tried to sing,

+and even to lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might

+have done.  "Do you remember--

+

+        Within my heart a voice

+        Bids earth and heaven rejoice,

+        Sings 'Love'--"

+

+But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.

+

+"Sing it," he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure.

+And then the brave girl--all courage and strength, a quivering bow

+of steel--took up the song where he had left it, though her voice trembled

+and the tears started to her eyes.

+

+As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her,

+though once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast.

+When she had done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her,

+and smiled, as if he and she and the song were one to him.

+

+But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again,

+now nearer than before, and louder.  Israel heard it.  "Hark!

+They are coming.  Keep close," he muttered.

+

+He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan.

+The Mahdi thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct

+of help that a woman has in scenes like these, understood him better.

+In the disarray of his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself

+that he might listen the easier to the song outside.  The girl slid

+her arm under his neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest.

+"Ah! closer.  'God is great'!" he murmured again.  "'God--is--great'!"

+With that word on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back.

+It was now quite dark.

+

+When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel's feet the dying man

+seemed to have been feeling for his hand.  Taking it now, he brought

+it to his breast, where Naomi's hand lay under his own trembling one.

+With that last effort, and a look into the girl's face

+that must have pursued him home, his grand eyes closed for ever.

+

+In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell

+of the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air: "Allah Akbar!

+Al-lah-u-kabar!"

+

+In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had come

+out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.

+

+"He has gone," said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes

+towards heaven, he added, "TO THE KING!"

+

+

+

+

+

+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Scapegoat, by Hall Caine

+

+

+

+

+

+Notes:

+1. Italic text starts and ends with an underscore.

+2. Where spelling inconsistencies in the printed text appear

+to be unintentional, they have been made consistent in this

+Etext version, either by adopting the dictionary spelling

+or the spelling most frequently used in the printed text.

+3. In the printed text, many representations of Arabic words

+use accented characters; in this Etext version, the

+accents have been removed to allow transmission by email

+using the 7-bit character set.

+

+

+

+

+

diff --git a/old/old/scpgt10.zip b/old/old/scpgt10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51e0724
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/scpgt10.zip