It was a solemn sound—­nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive to hear it.

O gratitude that is only a death-song!  O fame that is only a funeral!

Israel listened and smiled again.  “Ah, God is great!” he whispered; “God is great!”

To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to the door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession approaching—­a moving black shadow against the sky.  Also over their billowy heads he could see a red glow far away in the clouds.  It was the last smouldering of the fire of the modern Sodom.

While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice behind him.  It was Israel’s voice.  He was speaking to Naomi.  “Yes,” he was saying, “it is hard to part.  We were going to be very happy. . . .  But you must not cry.  Listen!  When I am there—­eh? you know, there—­I will want to say, ’Father, you did well to hear my prayer.  My little daughter—­she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.’  So you must not weep.  Never, never, never!  Remember! . . . .  Ah! that’s right, that’s right.  My simple-hearted darling!  My sunny, merry, happy girl!”

Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father’s will.  She was combing his white beard with her fingers—­it was knotted and tangled—­and he was labouring hard to speak again.

“Naomi, do you remember?” he said; and then he tried to sing, and even to lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done.  “Do you remember—­

     Within my heart a voice
     Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
     Sings ’Love’—­”

But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.

“Sing it,” he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure.  And then the brave girl—­all courage and strength, a quivering bow of steel—­took up the song where he had left it, though her voice trembled and the tears started to her eyes.

As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her, though once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast.  When she had done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her, and smiled, as if he and she and the song were one to him.

But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again, now nearer than before, and louder.  Israel heard it.  “Hark!  They are coming.  Keep close,” he muttered.

He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan.  The Mahdi thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct of help that a woman has in scenes like these, understood him better.  In the disarray of his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself that he might listen the easier to the song outside.  The girl slid her arm under his neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest.  “Ah! closer.  ’God is great’!” he murmured again. “’God—­is—­great’!” With that word on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back.  It was now quite dark.