he Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the
dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the
bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to
be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the
circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled
and still saddled, were up and feeding.

The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected
air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was
one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare.
But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not
until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on
him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man
who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled
with God.

With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside
Israel at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way,
telling him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came,
and whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a
brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen
clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves
of his fingers were also frozen.

Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the
head. He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to
prison, and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he
described the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how
she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face
that the affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully.
At last he recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had
yielded at length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child,
seeing her father in everything and thinking to save his life, though
she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from
Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel,