When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel’s feet the dying man seemed to have been feeling for his hand.  Taking it now, he brought it to his breast, where Naomi’s hand lay under his own trembling one.  With that last effort, and a look into the girl’s face that must have pursued him home, his grand eyes closed for ever.

In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell of the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air:  “Allah Akbar!  Al-lah-u-kabar!”

In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had come out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.

“He has gone,” said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes towards heaven, he added, “TO THE KING!”

Notes:  1.  Italic text starts and ends with an underscore. 2.  Where spelling inconsistencies in the printed text appear to be unintentional, they have been made consistent in this Etext version, either by adopting the dictionary spelling or the spelling most frequently used in the printed text. 3.  In the printed text, many representations of Arabic words use accented characters; in this Etext version, the accents have been removed to allow transmission by email using the 7-bit character set.