and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife,
which when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected

in his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.
Israel's heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading

of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus,
without more ado than such inquiries as were necessary,

he settled himself with Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.
And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer

until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,
lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought

to make men's condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.
Israel was poor, but not penniless. Out of the wreck of his fortune,

after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still
some three hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband

when he was cast out of the town. These he laid out in sheep and goats
and oxen. He hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool

and milk by the hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan.
The rains continued, the eggs of the locust were destroyed,

the grass came green out of the ground, and Israel found bread
for both of them. With such simple husbandry, and in such a home,

giving no thought to the morrow, he passed with cheer and comfort
from day to day.

And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine
for the loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart

in pursuit of his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit,
he had always present with him two bulwarks of his purpose

and sheet-anchors of his hope. He was reminded of the one as often as
in the daytime he climbed the hillside above his little dwelling

and saw the white town lying far away under its gauzy canopy of mist,
and whenever in the night the town lamps sent their pale sheet of light

into the dark sky.
"They are yonder," he would think, "wrangling, contending, fighting,

praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off
from them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence,

and sweet odour of God's proper air."
But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former life

was the recollection of Naomi. God had given back all her gifts,
and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing?

They were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world
and riches of gold and silver had been without it. And higher than

the joy of Israel's constantremembrance that Naomi had been blind
and could now see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb

and could now speak, was the solemn thought that all this was but the sign
and symbol of God's pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot

of the scapegoat had been lifted away.
More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man

was his delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life. She was like
a creature born afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened

into a world of strange sights.
But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure.

What had happened to her was, after all, a simple thing.
Born with cataract on the pupils of her eyes, the emotion

of the moment at the Kasbah, when her father's life seemed to be
once more in danger, had--like a fall or a blow--luxated the lens

and left the pupils clear. That was all. Throughout the day
whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when they were cast out

of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through the country
until they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes steadfastly closed.

The light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate lids,
and gave her pain. When for a moment she lifted her lashes

and saw the trees, she put out her hand as if to push them away;
and when she saw the sky, she raised her arms as if to hold it off.

Everything seemed to touch her eyes. The bars of sunlight seemed
to smite them. Not until the falling of darkness did her fears subside

and her spirits revive. Throughout the day that followed
she sat constantly in the gloom of the blackest corner of their hut.

But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world
of darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air

had been her baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence.
Within three days afterwards her terror began to give place to joy;

and from that time forward the world was full of wonder
to her opened eyes. Then sweet and beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy,

were her amazement and delight in every little thing that lay
about her--the grass, the weeds, the poorest flower that blew,

even the rude implements of the house and the common stones
that worked up through the mould--all old and familiar to her fingers,

but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an angel
out of heaven had dropped them down to her.

For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise
everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life

in the cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her
on the eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up

at him as he stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant,
being still in the mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes

again, and put out her hand to touch him, did her face brighten
with recognition and her lips utter his name. "My father," she murmured,

"my father."
Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back

to the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower
in her hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it

in her broken, lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her
that there were flowers that could see? Here was one which

while she looked upon it had opened its beautiful eye and laughed at her.
"What is it?" she asked; "what is it?"

"A daisy, my child," Israel answered.
"A daisy!" she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush

and quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed
her nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears,

and then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, "Oh, yes,
so it is; it is only a daisy."

But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi,
with what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder,

would be a long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside
the coast, but from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it

clearly; and one day when Naomi had gone so far with her father,
she drew up suddenly at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe,

"The sky! the sky! Look! It has fallen on to the land."
"That is the sea, my child," said Israel.

"The sea!" she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened,
and then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows

smoothed out and her beautiful face looked aside, "So it is--yes,
it is the sea."

Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her mind
were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she mounted

the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far,
she walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields

where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn
by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun,

until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast.
Still the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized

upon her sight. The gully was a lonesome place inhabited
by countless sea-birds. From high up in the rocks above,

and from far down in the chasm below, from every cleft on every side,
they flew out, with white wings and black ones and grey and blue,

and sent their voices into the air, until the echoing place seemed
to shriek and yell with a deafening clangour.

It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long hour
in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father,

she told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea,
and fought in the air and killed each other. "And see!" she cried;

"look at this, and this, and this!"