nd Ali and the black women knelt beside him.

The negro's prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything;
it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away
and might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three
days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was
blind and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her.
She was his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man.
He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were
gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart would be
broken and his very soul in peril.

Such was the Taleb's prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb
angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole
of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager
and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down
mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.

And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by
the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and
Naomi lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.

The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
"El hamdu l'Illah!" (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete
the miracle, and to establish the old man's faith in it, a strange and
wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
Naomi's ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept
softly through the night and has just awakened in the morning.

Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment
of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was
a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And
then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while
the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle
hand and covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of
dread.

S