and expands after every
besetting plague of life, but the heart withers and wears away.

So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together to
beat him down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means of
settling there.

His opportunity came early. The Governor, either by qualm of conscience
or further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the
Oomana, the three Administrators of Customs at Tangier. He held the post
six months only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid, but amid the
muttered discontent of the merchants and tradesmen. Then the Governor of
Tetuan, a bigger town lying a long day's journey to the east, hearing
of Israel that as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled the custom revenues in
half a year, invited him to fill an informal, unofficial, and irregular
position as assessor of tributes.

Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did in
his new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and appointed a
Mut'hasseb, a clerk of the market, to collect them--so many moozoonahs
for every camel sold, so many for every horse, mule, and ass, so many
floos for every fowl, and so many metkals for the purchase and sale of
every slave; how he numbered the houses and made lists of the trades,
assessing their tribute by the value of their businesses--so much for
gun-making, so much for weaving, so much for tanning, and so on through
the line of them, great and small, good and bad, even from the trades
of the Jewish silversmiths and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the
callings of the Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.

All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran, which
entitled the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever; but it would
not wrong the truth to say that he did it also by the impulse of a sour
and saddened heart. The world had shown no mercy to him, and he need
show no mercy to the world. Why talk of pity? It was only a name, an
idea a mocking thought. In the actual reckoning of life there was no
such name as pity. Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings,
whatever their severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.

And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed
it.

"Ya Allah! Allah!" the Moors would cry. "Who is this Jew--this son of
the English--that he should be made our master?"

They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him, and at
length they insulted h