The day was warm, but not too hot for walking.  Israel did not feel weary, and so he went on without resting.  He reckoned how far it was from Shawan to his home near Semsa.  It was nearly seventy miles.  That distance would take two days and two nights to cover on foot.  He had left the prison on Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset before he reached Naomi.  It was now Thursday morning.  He must lose no time.  “You see, the poor little thing will be waiting, waiting, waiting,” he told himself.  “These sweet creatures are all so impatient; yes, yes, so foolishly impatient.  God bless them!”

He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer.  They answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their trouble.  Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan.  But Israel hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their story.  He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future.  With Naomi he was to leave Morocco.  They were to sail for England.  Free, mighty, noble, beautiful England!  Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little white island of the sea!  His mother’s home!  England!  Yes, he would go back to it.  True, he had no friends there now; but what matter of that?  Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful gaps.  His mother!  Ruth!  But he had Naomi still.  Naomi!  He spoke her name aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on her hair.  Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be so childish.

Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.  It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards.  The animals were picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the voices of men and women came from inside the tents.  Fires were burning under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel that he had not eaten since the previous day.  “I must have food,” he thought, “though I do not feel hungry.”  So he stopped, and the wandering Arabs hailed him.  “Markababikum!” they cried from where they sat within.

“You are very welcome!  Welcome to our lofty land!” Their land was the world.

Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled beans and black bread.  It was very sweet.  A man was eating beside him; a woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent’s two upright poles.  Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat’s-skin and baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three stones.  All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.