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."