ertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
privations patiently--the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains
of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the
Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of both
in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or
sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild
bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.

So the people's faces grew black, and they looked into each other's eyes
in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What
of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them
as He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was
seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour,
He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to
plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it.
"The hunger is on us!" "Our children are perishing!" "Find us food!"
"Food!" "Food!"

With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
their leader when he answered them.

First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
quivering nostrils. "Do you think I am Moses," he cried, "that I should
smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full?
If you are naked, am I clothed?"

But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
was saying in a very moving voice, "My good people, who have followed
me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than
you can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that
death itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that
Allah sees a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that,
unknown to us all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass!
Patience, I beg of you; patience, my poor people--patience and trust!"

At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered
the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan
had burdened him. They were jewels and orn