ill deaf as a stone.

"Tut! What is all this talking about?" she snapped and grunted. "Reuben
Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don't give them too much of
it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll
laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is
to ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her
a miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
children!"

The people laughed--it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets the
teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of the
crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the counter-currents
of an angry sea. "She's right," said a shrill voice. "He deserves it,"
snuffled a nasal one. "At least let us drive him out of the town," said
a third gruff voice. "To his house!" cried a fourth voice, that pealed
over all. "To his house!" came then from countless hungry throats.

"Come, let us go," whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold
of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
strange sounds to herself.

"To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!" the people howled in a
hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.

It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.

Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait
for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means
whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry
the sentence into effect. The procession was even then forming. It
was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the
Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front
of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were
the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his
pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez.
By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.

But no one saw either Rabbis or M