The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every one knew them for what they were.  It was on the face of Israel also, yet he did not flinch.  His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.

The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the procession came to it the darkness had closed in.  Its flat white tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock of sheep asleep among the grass.  It had no gate but a gap in the fence, and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.

Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi her father.  He had asked no man’s permission to do so, but if no one had helped at that day’s business, neither had any one dared to hinder.  And when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel forget and none did he omit.  He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch in his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a padlock and flung away the key.  Last of all, when the body had been taken out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in after it, and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern.  And then, kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both his hands, and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down at her where she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the synagogue, and speaking to her as though she heard:  “Ruth, my wife, my dearest, for the cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered you to marry me, being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people, forgive me now, my beloved, and ask God to forgive me also.”

The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted man kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet no more until the resurrection itself reunited them!  The traffic of the streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.

The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for each carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day following.  But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened mind.  As he had plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over his shoulder, saying, “They shall spring in the cities as the grass in the earth,” he had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the world were peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was dead.  God had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert.  Only one glimpse of human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken from him for ever.