as almost as if her soul
were struggling to burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might
speak and ask and know.

"Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?"

Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, "It is dead, my
child--the goat is dead."

But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in
a dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that
hour had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken
of death had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that
he had spoken of life, and of the little things which concerned their
household? And if Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these--if
she had not pondered and interpreted them--if they had fallen on her ear
only as voices in a dark cavern--only as dead birds on a dead sea--what
of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?

Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
great gift a mockery?

Israel's feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself
of God's mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand?
Only a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi
had heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked
and cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer
deaf. Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication
and why had He received his prayer?

But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi's new
gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.

"Give her speech, O Lord!" he cried, "speech that shall lift her above
the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know!
Give her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!"

CHAPTER XIV

ISRAEL AT SHAWAN

AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts of
the young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his
hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will
of Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled
the land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had
unjustly extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had
returned do