and his fingers
trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his
cheeks.

"My poor darling!" he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he
asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.

The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against
the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine of the
Sultan.

"My brave girl!" he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
that was both pride and pain.

He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she
could hear: "Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old
father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!"

This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
and said in almost a childish tone, "I suppose there is no help for
it now, sir. I meant to take her to England--to my poor mother's home,
but--"

"And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives," said the Mahdi, rising to
his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he
had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
impulse, should at length be carried into effect.

CHAPTER XXVI

ALI'S RETURN TO TETUAN

The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali's, for the black
lad was back in Tetuan. After he had fulfilled his errand of mercy at
Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there, with a spirit afire for the
wrongs of his master, from whom he was so cruelly parted, he had set
himself with shrewdness and daring to incite the Spanish powers to
vengeance upon his master's enemies. This had been a task very easy of
execution, for just at that time intelligence had come from the Reef, of
barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo upon mountain tribes that had hitherto
offered allegiance to the Spanish crown. A mission had gone up to Fez,
and returned unsatisfied. War was to be declared, Marteel was to be
bombarded, the army of Marshal O'Donnel was to come up the valley of the
river, and Tetuan was to be taken.

Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely
revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was
the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the
eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to
give a "gathering of delight," to the Sultan, his Ministers, his Kaids,
his Kadis, his Khaleefas, h