The slave woman was touching his arm. "It is a girl," she said; "a girl!"
For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, "No matter!

She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none
to show them mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers

remembered against them! She shall see them beg their bread,
and seek it in desolate places! And now you can go! Go! go!"

He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm
he was driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded

and with their eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry
from the inner room.

It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went
in to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct,

followed him and listened from the threshold.
Ruth's face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came

from them.
And Israel said, "How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and

pride of my pride?"
Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said "The Lord has counted

my prayer to me as sin--look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!"
At that word Israel's heart died within him, but he muttered

out of his dry throat, "No, no, never believe it!"
"True, true, it is true," she moaned; "the child has not uttered a cry,

and its eyelids have not blinked at the light."
"Never believe it, I say!" Israel growled, and he lifted the babe

in his arms to try it.
But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened

upon the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him,
the eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish.

Then his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe
out of his arms and laid it again on its mother's bosom.

And Ruth wept over it, saying, "Even if it were a son never could it serve
in the synagogue! Never! Never!"

At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now
pushed themselves into the chamber, and they cried, "Peace! Peace!"

And old Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said,
"Is it not written that no one afflicted of God shall minister

in His temples?"
Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him,

first into the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies
whom he had bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying,

"What matter? Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!"
But after that he staggered, his knees gave way, he pitched half forward

and half aside, like a falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell
with his face to the floor.

The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with water;
but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves,

"The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up,
and into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot

to slip."
CHAPTER III

THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object

of contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low,
God Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man

show him mercy?
But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly

insult him. And, between their fear and their scorn of him,
the shifts of the rabble to give vent to their contempt were often

ludicrous enough. Thus, they would call their dogs and their asses
by his name, and the dogs would be the scabbiest in the streets,

and the asses the laziest in the market.
He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or

at the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of
pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily,

"Accursed old Israel! Get on home to your mother!" Then,
turning quickly round, he would find that close at his heels

a negro of most innocentcountenance was cudgelling his donkey
by that title.

He would go past the Saints' Houses in the public ways, and at the sound
of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under

the white walls crying "Allah! Allah! Allah!" would suddenly change
their cry to "Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!" "Go on! Go on! Go on!"

He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and
peals of laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth

turned in his direction, and he would know that the story-tellers
were mimicking his voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.

His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand
of God's displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place

spat out at sight of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber--they
all despised him!

Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not
crushed him. It had brought out every fibre of his being,

every muscle of his soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it,
and his quarrel with God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man

the fiercer.
There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form

of warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other,
the better for his person.

It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known
as Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been

none other than the late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother
of Abd er-Rahman, though by another mother, a negro slave.

To be a Sultan's brother in Morocco is not to be a Sultan's favourite,
but a possible aspirant to his throne. Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been

made a Kaid, a chief, in the Sultan's army, and eventually
a commander-in-chief of his cavalry. In that capacity he had led

a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni Hasan, the Beni Idar, and
the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit the country near to Tetuan,

and hence Ben Aboo's attention had been first directed to that town.
When he had returned from his expedition he offered the Sultan

fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha or Governor,
and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.

The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha
at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty.

The good man was summoned to the Sultan's presence, accused of
appropriating the Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had,

and cast into prison.
That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story

of how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is
no less curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by

his dubious transaction. His new function was partly military
and partly civil. He was a valiant soldier--the black blood of

his slave-mother had counted for so much; but he was a bad
administrator--he could neither read nor write nor reckon figures.

In this dilemma his natural colleague would have been his Khaleefa,
his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this man had been

the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him.
He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery

and his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell
the letters of his name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel,

his scribe the notary, Hosain ben Hashem, styled Haj, because he
had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but he was also the Imam,

or head of the Mosque, and the wily Ben Aboo foresaw the danger
of some day coming into collision with the religious sentiment

of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed ben Arby,
but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction,

and he wanted a man who should be under his hand. That was
the combination of circumstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan.

Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master