Naomi—­Naomi—­always Naomi!  He had thought of her hitherto as she had appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.  But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then.  Two months and a half—­it seemed so long!  He had visions of Naomi grown from a sweet girl to a lovely woman.  A great soul beamed out of her big, slow eyes.  He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.  Nevertheless, he was her father still—­her old, tired, dim-eyed father; and she led him here and there, and described things to him.  He could see and hear it all.  First Naomi’s voice:  “A bow in the sky—­red, blue, crimson—­oh!” Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness:  “A rainbow, child!” Ah! the dreams were beautiful!

He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi’s voice—­the voice of his poor dead Ruth—­and to remember the song that she used to sing—­the song she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the street—­

     Within my heart a voice
     Bids earth and heaven rejoice.

He sang the song to himself as he toiled along.  With a little lisp he sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was making was Naomi’s voice and not his own.

Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the Sultan’s gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews.  They were a deputation that had come out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his face they were shocked.  He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true, but strong and firm, fifty years of age and resolute.  Six months had passed, and he was coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering, infirm old man of eighty.  Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but after a pause one of them—­Israel knew him:  a grey-bearded man, his name was Solomon Laredo—­stepped up and said, “Israel ben Oliel, our poor Tetuan is in trouble.  It needs you.  Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God has punished us, and we are brothers now.  Come back to us, we pray of you; for we have heard of a great thing that is coming to pass.  Listen!”

Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O’Donnel, who was to bombard Marteel.  But Israel heard very little.  “I think my hearing must be failing me,” he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if that did not greatly matter.  “And to tell you the truth, though I pity my poor brethren, I can no longer help them.  God will raise up a better minister.”

“Never!” cried the Jews in many voices.