The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret.It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings.In spasms, in gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father, who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.
These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled.Let come what would, the man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.
The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning, and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep.The town was quiet, the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest.It was a wonderful night.