“How they hate—those devils!” said a man just under Obil’s chin, to his neighbor in the crowd. “It is hard to know which kind is most evil, this one that shrieks, or the dumb—but all hate, mark you! When a man begins to hate with all his soul, then comes in the devil!”
“I have not a devil,” said this man’s neighbor, “yet I know for myself that what you say is true. When I am only mad against my wife Josepha I get dumb—I do not speak! So I know if I went far enough I would have a dumb devil, which God forbid! But know you this one?”
“Why, this”—came the answer—“this is the great Rabbi Elkanah, he of the Palace of Palms, by Jericho. By Simon the Just, how he must have hated!”
Obil heard. Heard, too, the larks on the wide hills of Hebron, away back in the dim years; heard the voice of his star-eyed son, fresh as theirs, talking of heroes!
A dread voice tolled in his soul and shut out all the world—the universe—with its vast resounding. “Kill! Now! Now is the time—the time!”
And out there in the hot, white space where the devil threw a black, writhing, horrible shadow on the ground, an answering shriek and wild, taunting laughter responded to that tolling bell in the soul of Obil.
“Obil! Thou hast come at last! Wouldst thou have thy son learn the Law, thou dog of Ishmael? Shall my son die and thine live, thou Accursed? Hear thou, hear, Obil, Son of the Desert! Why hast thou waited so long? Kill, kill, and die!”
Then the stormy blood rushed hotly in Obil from head to heel. But he remembered the Look, the Covenant. His soul melted in an ocean of love. He ran into that naked space. His shadow braided itself with that horrible writhing one on the ground.
On the torn white hair he laid his hand. Around that old bleeding shoulder he threw his encircling arm.