But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon her as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been there, her old content in her father’s command that she should never leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.

“Who’s to feed him, poor soul?  He will be famishing.  If the Kaid finds him in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom.  That will come to the same thing in the end, or he’ll die in prison.”

Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought she did not listen.  And though it was little she understood of Kaids and ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father’s peril, and at length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she should and must.  With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind of a child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman, and her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and love were born in it.  “He must be starving in prison,” she thought, “and I will take him food.”

When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in consternation and horror.  “God be gracious to my father!” they cried.  “Shawan?  You?  Alone?  Child, you’ll be lost, lost—­worse, a thousand times worse!  Shoof! you’re only a baby still.”

But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it.  “He must be starving in prison,” she said, “and I will take him food.”

Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.

“Allah!” they said, “who would have believed it, that the little pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!”

Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey.  She saved up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the country; also she churned some butter in the simple way which the women had taught her, and put the milk that was left in a goat’s-skin.  In three days she was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf panniers of a mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got up before them on the front of the burda, after 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?”