er the manner of the wives
whom she had seen going past to market.

When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild
errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. "Keep to the
track as far as Tetuan," they said to her, "and then ask for the road
to Shawan." One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a
way that it might cover her face. "Faces like yours are not for the
daylight," the old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her
journey. The women watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up
to the fondak, and then sinks out of sight beyond it. "Poor mad little
fool," they whimpered; "that's the end of her! She'll never come back.
Too many men about for that. And now," they said, facing each other with
looks of suspicion and envy, "what of the creatures?"

While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was
awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had
thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do
so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her,
and she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing
pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women
trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the
herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing
barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this
cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear
which had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her
neighbour had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as
they passed her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood
to tingle. They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning
of shame.

Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward.
"He is starving in prison," she told herself; "I must lose no time." It
was a weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything
was terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she
travelled she came upon men and women and children. It was so strange
that all the world was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more
people everywhere. That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no
house in sight and never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener
she wished that the people were not so many; and that was when the
childre