hungry into the markets, and they themselves that were town-dwellers
and tradesmen would be perishing for bread, both they and their children
with them.

Thus in Israel's absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had--contrary to
Jewish custom--tried and convicted him. God would not let them perish
for this man's life, and neither would He charge them with his blood.

Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They
could only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That
the Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel's sin?
Ben Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, "It is written."
That to appease God's wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die?
Convince the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land
of the Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the
whole community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.

The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding
on to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him--though
sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful.
But the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for
them, upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them;
but visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.

The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow
lane of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of
the oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other
ground of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find
it. At length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the
trial of an Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset.
Also they had been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a
capital case must not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So
they had broken up and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they
had told the crowds that waited there that judgment had fallen upon
Israel ben Oliel, but that his doom could not be made known until