of the floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came

to the door. He flung the slipper away and threw open his arms.
Naomi--it must be she!

It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news
of what had been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken

to Israel too suddenly. He met her with a terrible question.
"Where is she laid?" he said in a voice of awe.

Fatimah saw his error instantly. "Naomi is alive," she said, and,
seeing how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly,

"and well, very well."
That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel,

with a cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her,
she saw what she had done.

"Where is she?" he cried. "Bring her, you dear, good soul.
Why is she not here? Lead me to her, lead me!"

Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. "Alas!" she said, weeping,
"that cannot be."

Israel steadied himself and waited. "She cannot come to you,
and neither can you go to her." said Fatimah. "But she is well, oh!

very well. Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--
oh no, she is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed,

she is at the palace--the women's palace--but set your mind easy--she--"
With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,

and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast,
and Israel lived a lifetime in that moment.

"The palace!" he said in a bewildered way. "The women's palace--
the women's--" and then broke off shortly. "Fatimah, I want to go

to Naomi," he said.
And Fatimah stammered, "Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--"

"Fatimah," said Israel, with an awful calm. "Can't you see, woman,
I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you

not understand?--I want to go to my daughter."
"Yes, yes," said Fatimah; "but you can never go to her any more.

She is in the women's apartments--"
Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.

"Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen," said Fatimah; "only listen."
But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore

down everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned.
"Silence!" he cried. "What need is there for words? She is

in the palace!--that's enough. The women's palace--the hareem--what more
is there to say?"

Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly
in all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters.

"O God!" he cried, "my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone.

I hasten home to her. But where is she? She is gone.
She is in the house of my enemy. Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no;

not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not that, whatever happens!
But the palace--the women's palace. Naomi! My little daughter!

Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn that
she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to see

that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell,
and Ben Aboo--that libertine! I have lost her for ever!

Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled with God for it--"
He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured,

he dropped to his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands
towards heaven, and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending,

"Kill her, O God! Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be
mine again!"

At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice
of tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah

returned the following morning he was talking to himself
in a childish way while sitting at the door, and gazing before him

with a lifeless look. Sometimes he quoted Scriptures
which were startlingly true to his own condition: "I am alone,

I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed my heart in vain. . . .
My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh slipped. . . .

I am as one whom his mother comforteth."
Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries

and simple foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi,
always softly and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing.

At times he appeared to think that he was back in prison,
and made a little prayer--always the same--that some one should be kept

from harm and evil. Once he seemed to hear a voice that cried,
"Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!" "Here! Israel is here!"

he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling him. The Kaid was the King.
"Yes, I will go back to the King," he said. Then he looked down

at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt, and tried
to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged threads of it.

At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he were
a master still, "Bring me robes--clean robes--white robes;

I am going back to the King!"
CHAPTER XXIV

THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,

the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away,
encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment

of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed
for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were

everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill,
and nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing

of the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.
Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,

and crying in a hoarse voice, "Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord!
Awake! Awake!"

In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.
The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel

of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange orchards
lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red

rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights
above them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself

the small red flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house,
and carpets of various colours swung on many walls.

The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive.
It was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment

of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped
about their heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted

as soldiers. They poured into the town at the western gate,
and shuffled and jostled and squeezed their way through the narrow streets

firing recklessly into the air, and shouting as they went,
"Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is coming! Dogs! Men! Believers!

Infidels! Come out! come out!"
Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering

in perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets
they passed through grew denser. But it was a grim satire

on their lawlessloyalty that almost at their heels there came
into the town, not the Sultan himself, but a troop of his prisoners

from the mountains. Ten of them there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers,
and they made a sorry spectacle. They were chained together,

man to man in single file, not hand to hand or leg to leg
but neck to neck. So had they walked a hundred miles,

never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,
or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn,

and dripping blood; the faces of all were black with grime,
and streaked with lines of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets