This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with Naomi; this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to hear and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.  Israel’s heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without more ado than such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.

And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content, lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought to make men’s condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.

Israel was poor, but not penniless.  Out of the wreck of his fortune, after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was cast out of the town.  These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen.  He hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan.  The rains continued, the eggs of the locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the ground, and Israel found bread for both of them.  With such simple husbandry, and in such a home, giving no thought to the morrow, he passed with cheer and comfort from day to day.

And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his hope.  He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed the hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far away under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town lamps sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.

“They are yonder,” he would think, “wrangling, contending, fighting, praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet odour of God’s proper air.”

But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former life was the recollection of Naomi.  God had given back all her gifts, and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing?  They were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and riches of gold and silver had been without it.  And higher than the joy of Israel’s constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was the solemn thought that all this was but the sign and symbol of God’s pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had been lifted away.