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