The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves as Israel awoke to consciousness.  He opened his eyes as if from sleep, and saw Naomi beside him.  No surprise did he show at this, and neither did he at first betray pleasure.  Dimly and softly he looked upon her, and then something that might have been a smile but for lack of strength passed like sunshine out of a cloud across his wasted face.  Naomi pressed a pillow-under his loins, and another under his head, thinking to ease the one and raise the other.  But the iron hand of unconsciousness fell upon him again, and through many hours thereafter Naomi and the Mahdi sat together in silence with the multitudinous company of invisible things.

During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of Tetuan.  The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of his Ministers had escaped.  Ben Aboo had tried to follow them, but he had been killed in the alcove of the patio.  Ali had killed him.  He had rushed in upon him through a line of his guards.  One of the guards had killed Ali.  The brave black lad had fallen with the name of Israel on his lips and with a dauntless shout of triumph.  The Kasbah was afire; it had been burning since the banquet of the night before.

Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that the end was very near.  Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and the Mahdi was standing at his left.  Israel looked at the girl with a world of tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening his noble face.  More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he wished to say something, and yet could not do so, because the power of life was low; but at last his voice found strength.

“I have left it too late,” he said.  “I cannot go to England.”

Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words, and it was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.

“Think no more of that,” he said, and then he stopped, as if the word that he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.

“It is hard to leave her,” said Israel, “for she is alone; and who will protect her when I am gone?”

“God lives,” said the Mahdi, “and He is Father to the fatherless.”

“But what Jew,” said Israel, “would not repeat for her her father’s troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?”

“Who that trusts in God,” said the Mahdi, “need fear the Kaid?”

“But what man can save her?” cried Israel again.

And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi’s tears as well as her father’s importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said—­

“Peace, peace!  If there is no one else to take her, from this day forward she shall go with me.”

Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes as he has often since, but had never before seen there, and Israel ben Oliel who had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly at his wrist.