h a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, "A man's
a fool when he loses his only child. I don't mean by death. Time heals
that. But the living child--oh, it's an unending pain! You would never
think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her
voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was
very fond of the little one--I was quite miserable if I lost sight
of her for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must
hasten back. The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well
she'll be looking out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in
the morning. It's always the way of these tender creatures, is it not?
So we must humour them. Yes, yes, that's so that's so."

His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief
knotted under his chin--gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light of
the jailer's lantern.

"Farewell, brothers!" he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and
brought it to their breasts.

"Farewell, master!" "Peace, Sidi!" "Farewell!" "Peace!" "Farewell!"

The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps
dying away outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then
silence--empty and ghostly.

In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a
croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing--

El Arby was a black man,
They called him "'Larby Kosk;"
He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
And stole slippers in the Mosque.

CHAPTER XXII

HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA

What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel
lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which
she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them,
she sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil
which had befallen her, but with her father's warning voice and his last
words in her ear: "Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say,
stay here. I will come back."

When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and
fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she
knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of
this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she
was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look
to her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink besi