ed 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.