rieks of despair from such as learned that their
breadwinners were dying off one by one. "Dead, you say?" "Dead!" "No,
no!" "Yes, yes!" "No, no, I say!" "I say yes! God forgive me! died
last week. But don't you die too. Here take this bag of zummetta." Then
inquiries after absent children. "Little Selam, where is he?" "Begging
in Tetuan." "Poor boy! poor boy! And pretty M'barka, what of her?"
"Alas! M'barka's a public woman now in Hoolia's house at Marrakesh. No,
don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven to it. What were we
to do with the children crying for bread? And then there was nothing to
fetch you this journey, Jellali." "I'll not eat it now it's brought. My
boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah! May the Kaid that keeps me
here roast alive in the fires of hell!" Then, apart in one quiet corner,
a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the lap of his beautiful
young wife. "You'll not be long coming again, dearest?" he whispers. She
wipes her eyes and stammers, "No--that is--well--" "What's amiss?" "Ali,
I must tell you--" "Well?" "Old Aaron Zaggoory says I must marry him, or
he'll see that both of us starve." "Allah! And you--_you_?" "Don't look
at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on me, and whatever happens I--I can
love nobody else." "Curses on Aaron Zaggoory! Curses on you! Curses on
everybody!"

No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this 'Larby the negro
swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of
bread--

Rusks are good and kiks are sweet
And kesksoo is both meat and drink;
It's this for now, and that for then,
But khalia still for married men.

"You're like me, Sidi," he said, "you want nothing," and he made an
upward movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence.
That was the gay rascal's way of saying that he stole from the bags of
his comrades while they slept.

"No? Fasting yet?" he said, and went off singing as he came--

It will make your ladies love you;
It will make them coo and kiss--

"What?" he shouted to some one across the prison "eating khalia in the
bird-cage? Bad, bad, bad!"

All this came to Israel's mind through thick waves of
half-consciousness, but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air
of the place must have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he
had first placed himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow
eyes he gazed at everything, but nothing did h