"Perhaps I shall see Mother's face to-night," she thought. "And Ezra will be at the village gate waiting for me. He promised. And I am to wave my girdle at the first turn in the road if my eyes are opened. O Angel of the Pool, remember me, Naomi! Remember me here in the dark!" Naomi's father, who had never taken his eyes from the pool, leaned forward. "It moves, Naomi," he whispered. "The Angel comes, although we see him not. Be ready, for I must act quickly." The surface of the pool began to heave and swell, and at the precise moment that the water boiled up, Samuel bent over with Naomi in his arms and dipped her head under the water once, twice, three times! Dripping, sputtering, and crying, Naomi was placed upon her feet, while her father endeavored to wipe away the water that ran down into her neck and stained her little robe. "Dost thou see, Naomi?" asked Samuel with a tremble in his voice. "Open thine eyes and look! Dost thou see, my little pomegranate?" If the Angel of the Pool failed them, where should he turn for help? Naomi obediently opened her brown eyes and stared, sightless as ever, into her father's face. The Angel of the Pool had failed them! CHAPTER V ALL THE WORLD COMES VISITING It was the winter season in Palestine. In the darkness and despair that followed her trip to the Pool of Bethesda, Naomi had not cared what the weather might be. She had listened with indifference to the whistling, roaring wind-storm that had come suddenly one night in October telling the weather-wise that summer was over and the rainy season at hand. Huddled over the brazier of charcoal that smouldered under a rug in a shallow hole in the middle of the floor, Naomi had not heeded the wild dash of rain against the house nor its melancholy dripping in the deserted garden. Even the excitement of Ezra and Jonas over a slight fall of snow, the first either one had ever seen, had failed to rouse her. Samuel and his wife were troubled beyond words at this calamity that had come upon their child. Aunt Miriam and Simon were sympathetic, but could offer no advice. Ezra was at his wits' ends, for all his schemes and devices to amuse failed, and the hollow words of encouragement died upon his honest lips. Samuel, too, had a fresh worry of which Naomi knew nothing, and which, slight though it was in comparison with the little girl's misfortune, did not tend to make the daily life of the family more pleasant. "Aye, Samuel the weaver's child is blind," said the neighbors, wagging their heads in knowing fashion. "What sin hath he committed, think you, that this calamity befalls him? Truly the way of the transgressor is hard." "It may be that his wife is the sinner," was whispered about. "Or perhaps both." And little by little the village people turned aside when they saw Samuel coming, and fewer and fewer were the friendly words said to Naomi's mother when she went patiently down to the fountain for her supply of water.