e foresaw the necessity that
might perchance arise of recalling Israel to his post. Out of these
grave bedevilments he had extricated himself at length by imposing
dues on certain tribes of Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the
Sultan's authority, and by calling on the Sultan's army to enforce them.
The Sultan had come in answer to his summons, the Reefians had been
routed, their villages burnt, and that morning at daybreak he had
received a message saying that Abd er-Rahman intended to keep the feast
of the Moolood at Tetuan. So this capture of Naomi was the luckiest
chance that could have befallen him at such a moment. She should witness
to the Prophet; her father, the Jew, would thereby lose his rights
in her; and he himself, as her sole guardian, would present her as a
peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing the boundary of his bashalic.

Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing
the news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to
Katrina. But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid,
so tired, yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the
light of the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet
mouth of a child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back
to his former scheme.

"So you wish to turn Muslima?" he said.

Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear "No,
no, no!"

Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with
protests and remonstrances. "She said so," Habeebah cried. "'I will turn
Muslima,' she said. Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!"

"Did you say so?" asked Ben Aboo.

"Yes," said Naomi faintly.

"Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now," said Ben Aboo; and he
told her what was the penalty of apostasy. It was death. She must choose
between them.

Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead
with her. Still she saw one thing only. "But what of my father?" she
said.

"He shall be liberated," said Ben Aboo.

"But shall I see him again? Shall I go back to him?" said Naomi.

"The girl is a simpleton!" said Katrina.

"She is only a child," said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more at her
flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments of
his women.

These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds,
with a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room that was
st