s towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips
working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant
the stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he
reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself
like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that
came from his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and
fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue
lolling out. Faster and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered
upon him, darting out of the darkness like swallows of the night. His
clothes were rent, his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast
staggers in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up, and
he fell in a round heap like a ball.

The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of
Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower
upon his body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it.
Then they left it with curses of content and went their ways. When the
Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside while the work was done, came up
with their lanterns to look at this monument of Eastern justice, the
heap of stones was still moving with the terrific convulsions of death.

Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"ALLAH-U-KABAR"

Travelling through the night,--Naomi laughing and singing snatches in
her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals at the huge
outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,--they came to the
hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day. But they had come too
late. Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England. He
was going on a longer journey. His lonely hour had come to him, his dark
hour wherein none could bear him company. On a mattress by the wall he
lay outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end. Two neighbours
from the village were with him, and but for these he must have been
alone--the mighty man in his downfall deserted by all save the great
Judge and God.

What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her,
what she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task to
tell. Oh, the irony of fate! Ay, the irony of God! That scene, and what
followed it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest--none the less cruel
because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.

It was useless to go out in s