secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of
battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded,
passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about
Mequinez. And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been
so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as
Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan: "God will feed
us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He
clothes the fields."

Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his
people too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties
were enough already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a
palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom
had the dusty and tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the
fast of Ramadhan, and Israel's men were Muslims. So, to save himself the
double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his
famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the
night. In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some
obstacles, but his time was long.

And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan,
so he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed
through, and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes
very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was
passing through his own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people
think but that he had come to make a new assessment of their lands and
holdings, their cattle and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and
more fully. So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of
their houses as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse,
and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot
in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord), a title never
before given to a Jew, and offered him presents out of their meagre
substance.

"A gift for my lord," they would say, "of the little that God has given
us, praise His merciful name for ever!"

Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.

Israel was touched by the people's terror, but he betrayed no f