darkness and muteness since the coming of her
gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different
tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself,
and to put out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than
a child untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and
broke down, and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must
do, only quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because
she was a girl and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and
thinking shame of it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her
father when she halted in her talk with him, and still more humbled by
Ali's impetuous help when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back
again on silence.

Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the
Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond "Yes" and "No," notwithstanding
Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings, and Habeebah's
breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst
of the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the
voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw
bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he
had possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.

"Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak," Israel
would say.

His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and
lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.

But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was
returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor
quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money
which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife's jewels. The
night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were
almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was
late, very late, and far and near the town was still.

With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm,
Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed
to cross it after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through
the sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of
the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.

All his mis