she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from
Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers
trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his
cheeks.

"My poor darling!" he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he
asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.

The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against
the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine of the
Sultan.

"My brave girl!" he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
that was both pride and pain.

He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she
could hear: "Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old
father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!"

This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
and said in almost a childish tone, "I suppose there is no help for
it now, sir. I meant to take her to England--to my poor mother's home,
but--"

"And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives," said the Mahdi, rising to
his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he
had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
impulse, should at length be carried into effect.