t is the last of my prayers--the last, O Lord, the last--for her
sake spare me!"

God did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers
came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The
release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had
become known by the blind gratitude of one of them, who, hastening to
Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before
it.

CHAPTER XXI

ISRAEL IN PRISON

Short as the time was--some three months and odd days--since the prison
at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had
sealed without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied
by other prisoners. The remoteness of the town in the territory of
the Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis, had made the
old fortress a favourite place of banishment to such Kaids of other
provinces as looked for heavier ransoms from the relatives of victims,
because the locality of their imprisonment was unknown or the danger
of approaching it was terrible. And thus it happened that some fifty or
more men and boys from near and far were already living in the dungeon
from which Israel and Ali together had set the other prisoners free.

This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from
Naomi and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa.
"Ya Allah! Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his
pups!" said Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel to
the Kaid of Shawan.

Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning of
the second day after his arrest. The sun was shining as he approached
the rude old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down
to the dungeon. In a little court at the door of the place the Kaid el
habs, the jailer, was sitting on a mattress, which served him for chair
by day and bed by night. He was amusing himself with a ginbri, playing
loud and low according as the tumult was great or little which came from
the other side of a barred and knotted doorway behind him, some four
feet high, and having a round peephole in the upper part of it. On the
wall above hung leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in
the corner.

At Israel's approach there were some facetious comments between the
jailer and the guard. Why the ginbri? Was he practising for the fires
of Jehinnum? Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon? Well