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
paradi