ever seen it before. With broad white
flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the
valley to the white peaks of the mountains. At every flash the little
people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort
them save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw.
With helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the
darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light,
leading on, yet seeing nothing.

But Israel saw Naomi's shame. The blindness which was a sense of
humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him. He had asked
God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied. "Give her
speech, O Lord," he had cried, "speech that shall lift her above the
creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know." But
what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind? What was
all the world to one who had never seen it? Only as Paradise is to Man,
who can but idly dream of its glories.

Israel took back his prayer. There were things to know that words could
never tell. Now was Naomi blind for the first time, being no longer
dumb. "Give her sight, O Lord," he cried; "open her eyes that she may
see; let her look on Thy beautiful world and know it! Then shall her
life be safe, and her heart be happy, and her soul be Thine, and Thy
servant at last be satisfied!"

CHAPTER XVII

ISRAEL'S GREAT RESOLVE

It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok,
and no rain had yet fallen. The eggs of the locust might be hatched
at any time. Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the
earth like snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were
coming green out of the ground would wither before them. The country
people were in despair. They were all but stripped of their cattle; they
had no milk; and they came afoot to the market. Death seemed to look
them in the face. Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they
offer petitions to God for rain. They had long ceased their prayers.
Only in the Feddan at the mouths of their tents did they lift up their
heavy eyes to the hot haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, "It is
written!"

Israel was busy with other matters. During these six-and-twenty days he
had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.
He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he
held unde