e 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 thin