Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar.
Then she could go no farther.
"Holy saints, what is this ?" cried Habeebah.
"Didn't I tell you--the girl heard something ?" said Fatimah.
"God's face shine on us," said Habeebah.

"What is all this crowd ?" An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah.

It was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving mass of haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd of dark figures in black gowns and skull-caps.

The assemblage was of Jews only--Jews of every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold braid on his new kaftan.
They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard to the plague of locusts.

Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset.