came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close line on either side
of the course which the procession must take. And through this avenue
of onlookers the strange company made its way--the two prisoners
bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the two soldiers
carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported and alone.
Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of the feet
of the six men, and the clank of their chains.

The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every
one knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet
he did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither
to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.

The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the
procession came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white
tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock
of sheep asleep among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence,
and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.

Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi
her father. He had asked no man's permission to do so, but if no one had
helped at that day's business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch
in his kaftan; he took from his breast 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