mong men, a creature banished from all human
intercourse, a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a
good God who had taken the mother from such a child--the child from such
a mother? Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not
God but the devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that
governed it.

Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child's
loss and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to
be saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
fresh from God's hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
strange and beautiful.

CHAPTER VI

THE SPIRIT-MAID

The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should
not lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time
forward he became as father and mother both to the child.

At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of
the tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and
blind, but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied.
It implied that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest
of the family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart
as if she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could
reach her in joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In
the midst of a world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was
in a world of silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a
living and buried soul.

And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had
memory, for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had
love, for she had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love
and memory without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet
locked in a casket--idle and useless to any purposes of man or the
world.

Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not
merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human
speech.

For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
father might have spoken with her, and if s