AFTER Israel's return from his journey he had followed the precepts of the young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will of Katrina, the Kaid's Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled the land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had unjustly extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had returned double—once for the tax and once for the excess; and if any man, having been unjustly taxed for the Kaid's tribute, had given bond on his lands for his debt and been cast into the Kasbah and died, without ransoming them, then to his children he had returned fourfold—double for the lands and double for the death. Israel had done this continually, and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out of his own purse, so that from being a rich man he had fallen within a month to the condition of a poor one, for what was one man's wealth among so many? Yet no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity and contempt, for the people that had taken his money had thanked the Kaid for it, who, according to their supposals, had called on him to correct what he had done amiss. And with Ben Aboo himself he had fared no better, for the Basha was provoked to anger with him when he heard from Katrina of the good money that he had been casting away in pity for the poor.

“What have I told you a score of times?” said the woman. “That man has mints of money.”

“My money, burn his grandfather,” said Ben Aboo.

Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world's reckoning. When he lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done the devil's work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before he had made more powerful. People who had showed him lip-service when he was thought to be rich did not conceal the joy they had that he was brought down so near to be a beggar. Upstarts, who owed their promotion to his intercession, found in his charities an easy handle given them to be insolent, for, by carrying to Katrina their secret messages of his mercy to the people, they brought things at length to such a pass between him and the Kaid that Ben Aboo openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not once or twice but many times.

“And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?” said Ben Aboo. “Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity you've got too much of it, I say.”

“The people are poor, Lord Basha,” said Israel; “they are famishing, and they have no refuge save with God and with us.”

“Tut!” cried Ben Aboo. “A famine in my bashalic! Let no man dare to say so. The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness, mistress Israel. You poor old grandmother! I always suspected,” he added, facing about upon his attendants, “I always suspected that I was served by a woman. Now I am sure of it.”

Israel felt the indignity. He had given good proof of his manhood in the past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo between him and his people, making him rich by his extortions, keeping him safe in his seat, and thereby saving him from the wooden jellab which Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, kept for Kaids that could not pay. But Israel mastered his anger and held his peace.

Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour of the Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him in the streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor, thinking himself accountable to God for their sufferings. He could have crushed the better part of his insulters to death in his brawny arms, but he was slow to anger and long-suffering. All the heed he paid to their insults was to do his good work with more secrecy.

Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised him on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this difficulty. When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well down over his black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his face. In this innocent disguise he went out night after night for many nights among the poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters of the grain markets near the Bab Ramooz. How he bore himself being there, with what harmless deceptions he unburdened his soul by stealth, what guileless pretences he made that he might restore to the poor the money that had been stolen from them, would be a long story to tell.

“Who are you?” he was asked a hundred times.

“A friend,” he answered

“Who told you of our trouble?”

“Allah has angels,” he would reply.

Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw the very children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention of his name. And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people whisper together and say, “He is a saint. He comes from the Kabar at nightfall. Allah sends him to help poor men who have been in the clutches of Israel the Jew.”

Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it was the breath of angels.

One day, about a month after his return from his journey, when he was near to the end of his substance, a message came to him that the followers of Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison at Shawan. Their relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now, but the plague of the locust had fallen on the bread-winners, and they had no more bread to send. Israel concluded that it was his duty to succour them. From a just view of his responsibilities he had gone on to a morbid one. If in the Judgment the blood of the people of Absalam cried to God against him, he himself, and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into hell.

Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began to take a view of his condition. Then he saw, to his dismay, that little as he had thought he possessed, even less remained to him out of the wreck of his riches. Only one thing he had still, but that was a thing so dear to his heart that he had never looked to part with it. It was the casket of his dead wife's jewels. Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to sell it now, and, taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept it—a closet that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart for ever, but in his house no more.

Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the doorpost, and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour came out to them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried air itself had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay on everything. But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate shawls and gauzy haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red slippers, and many dainty things such as women love. And to him that came again after ten heavy years they were as a dream of her that had worn them when she was young that now was dead when she was beautiful that now was in the grave.

“Ah me, ah me! Ruth! My Ruth!” he murmured. “This was her shawl. I brought it from Wazzan. . . . And these slippers—they came from Rabat. Poor girl, poor girl! . . . . This sash, too, it used to be yellow and white. How well I remember the first time she wore it! She had put it over her head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman. But her brown curls fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them. And then she laughed. My poor dear girl. How happy we were once in spite of everything! It is all like yesterday. When I think Ah no, I must think no more, I must think no more.”

Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket of the jewels where it stood by the wall. With trembling hands he took it and opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets, and rings and earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering of dust. He lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers, and looked at them while his eyes grew wet.

“Not for myself,” he murmured, “not for myself would I have sold them, not for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of worlds!”

All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood by his side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks and looked serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed, and now at the jingling of the jewels she stretched out her hand and took one of them from her father's fingers, and feeling it, and finding it to be a necklace, she clasped it about her neck and laughed.

At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed. It brought back the memory of the day when she danced to her mother's death, decked in that same necklace and those same ornaments. More on this head Israel could not think and hold to his purpose, so he took the jewels from Naomi's neck and returned them to the casket, and hastened away with it to a man to whom he designed to sell it.

This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the Jews; for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop in the Sok el Foki. Israel was moved to go to this person by the remembrance of two things, of which either seemed enough for his preference—first, that he had bought the jewels of Reuben in the beginning, and next, the Reuben had never since ceased to speak of them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the gems of Ethiopia and the gold of Ophir.

But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy, he eyed both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear to his covetous and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself in his need, and bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction that could come to it.

“And what is this that you bring me?” said Reuben languidly.

“A case of jewels,” said Israel, with a downward look.

“Jewels? umph! what jewels?”

“My poor wife's. You know them, Reuben See!”

Israel opened the casket.

“Ah, your wife's. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere.”

“You have seen them here, Reuben.”

“Here?—do you say here?”

“Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago.”

“Sold them to you? Never. I don't remember it. Surely you must be mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these.”

Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in expressions of contempt.

Israel watched him closely. “Give them back to me,” he said; “I can go elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling.”

Reuben's lip straightened instantly. “Wrangling? Who is wrangling, brother? You are too impatient, Sidi.”

“I am in haste,” said Israel.

“Ah!”

There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said, “The things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with them?”

“To buy them,” said Israel.

“Buy them?”

“Yes.”

“But I don't want them.”

“Are they worth your money?—you don't want that either.”

“Umph!”

A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben's face, and he proceeded to examine the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems—the rich onyx, the sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the topaz, and first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back again. And seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben's hairy fingers, the precious jewels which had clasped his Ruth's soft wrist and her white neck, Israel could scarcely hold back his hand from snatching them away. But how can he that is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his twitching hands behind him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of Absalam, and when at length Reuben tendered him for the casket one half what he had paid for it, he took the money in silence and went his way.

“Five hundred dollars—I can give no more,” Reuben had said.

“Do you say five hundred—five?”

“Five—take it or leave it.”

It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through was a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow wooden boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a shelter from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay raisins and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers crouched in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous straw hats, with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats at their feet. Under arcades of dried leaves—made, like desert graves, of upright poles and dry branches thrown across—the butchers lay at their ease, flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. “Buy! buy! buy!” they all shouted together. A dense throng of the poor passed between them in torn jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought. Asses and mules crushed through amid shouts of “Arrah!” “Arrah!” and “Balak!” “Ba-lak!” It was a lively scene, with more than enough of bustle and swearing and vociferation.

There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers for penance. “God forgive me,” he muttered, “God forgive me, God forgive me,” and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, “How much?” The merchant continued his prayers and did his business at a breath. “(God forgive me) How much? (God forgive me) Four pesetas (God forgive me),” and round went the restless rosary. “Too much,” said the buyer; “I'll give three.” The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, “(God forgive me) Couldn't take it for as much as you might put in your tooth (God forgive me); gave four myself (God forgive me).” “Then I'll leave it, old sweet-tooth,” said the buyer, as he moved away. “Here! take it for nothing (God forgive me),” cried the merchant after the retreating figure. “(God forgive me) I'm giving it away (God forgive me); I'll starve, but no matter (God forgive me), you are my brother (God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me).”

Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the prisoners needed—enough for the present and for many days to come. Then he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man two days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he knew full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of Absalam receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his short journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was highest, hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to escape observation.

His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate at which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a strange procession. It was a procession of penance and petition, asking God to wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and eating up the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white beard, walked side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in the folds of his snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews and the Imam of the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors walked abreast in the burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were Berbers were bareheaded also.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!” the Imam cried, and the Muslims echoed him.

“By the God of Jacob!” the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words after him.

“Spare us! Spare the land!” they all cried together. “Send rain to destroy the eggs of the locust!” cried the Rabbi. “Else will they rise on the ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor; and neither fire nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we ourselves will die, and our children with us!”

And the Jews cried, “God of Jacob, be our refuge.”

And the Muslims shouted, “Allah, save us!”

It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance—the haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike, walking and praying in the public streets together.

Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved. And being come into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that, if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself for what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no merit could he make of his poverty.

“Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her,” he thought. Naomi was his hope and his salvation. His faith in God was his love of the child. He was only bribing God to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he journeyed towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for them that lay there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their miseries, the mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to himself. So the nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his breast, as if the sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head had eyes to peer into his deceiving soul.

The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of the mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and vineyards that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners and pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from Tetuan and his heavy taxings.

“It's Israel ben Oliel,” whispered one.

“God of Jacob, save us!” whispered another.

“He has followed us for the arrears of taxes.”

“We must fly.”

“Let us go home first.”

“No time for that.”

“There is Rachel—”

“She's a woman.”

“But I must warn my son—he has children.”

“Then you are lost. Come on.”

Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress and was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within, had heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild disorder of all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his visit, as if they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women and young children, gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some with faces that were hard and stony, some with faces that were weak and simple, some with eyes that were red as blood, all weary with waiting and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom of the foul place where they were immured together. Shedding tears, beating their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour, these unhappy creatures of God, who had been great of soul when they sang their death-song with the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front, now quaked for the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger and cherished in bitterness.

By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to their knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women in front, and mothers holding out their babes before their breasts so that he might see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart made for pity.

Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in wonder.

“Arise,” he said; “I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and God bless you!”

So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.

And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat. For a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained their wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his new poverty such as his riches had never brought him—no, not once in all the days of his old prosperity.

At length an old man—he was a Muslim—looked steadily into Israel's face and said, “May the God of Jacob bless thee also, brother!”

After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet with hearts so different.

“May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!”

“May the child of thy wife be blessed!”

“Stop,” he cried; “stop! you don't know what you are saying.”

He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had stung him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips; they pushed their children under his hands for his blessing.

“No, no,” he cried; “no, no, no!”

Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town like one who was ashamed.