The Scapegoat

th, Israel knew that he was to be left alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it a

tterness that notice of it had not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout Tetuan. There was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken it to each house he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little groups of idle Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the stree

spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he had lost the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews that a body should be b

r his dead. It was just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of this burial, no Jew in the Mellah would

e? Either way their reckoning was a mistake. They might leave him terribly and awfully alone-alone in his hour of mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when he had married the dear soul who was dead. But hi

e to the Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six Sta

e body was brought down from the upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that had been rais

the least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in the larger sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his riches except to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down

annel of soul or sense she learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black women clinging to it, kissing its fringe a

y father, look at tha

ere but one thing in life that speaks to you?

led rags, and over them, and concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep, rich, velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two remaining prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand-the right arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a soldier, carrying a

flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling of the bells of the water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from the country were dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their panniers full of street-fil

hat they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet he did not flinch. His head was hel

n. Its flat white tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock of sheep asleep amo

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, an

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 th

d 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 peopl

a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a good God who had taken the mother from such a child-the child from such a mother? Isra

eless by the child itself he was yet to be saved from the devil's snare, and the ways wherein this sw