eing 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 f