The sky was overcast, and the heads of the mountains were capped with mist.
"Balak!" sounded in Israel's ears from every side.

"Arrah!" came constantly at his heels.

A sweet-seller with his wooden tray swung in front of him, crying, "Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Edrees, sweets, all sweets," changed the name of the patron saint of candies, and cried, "Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all sweets!" The girl selling clay peered up impudently into Israel's eyes, and the oven-boy, answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms thrust out at doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with a mocking echo of Israel's name.
What matter?
Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.
Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave.

This morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be one of themselves.
When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air about it that brought back recollections of the day--now nearly four years past--of the children's gathering at Katrina's festival.

The lusty-lunged Arabs squatting at the gates among soldiers in white selhams and peaked shasheeahs the women in blankets standing in the outer court, the dark passages smelling of damp, the gusts of heavy odour coming from the inner chambers, and the great patio with the fountain and fig-trees--the same voluptuous air was over everything.