If the unconcerned spectators were moved even to tears on witnessing this scene, what were the feelings of the parents who were eye-witnesses of all that passed! Love, tenderness, and sorrow, every emotion that could agitate them, struggled for utterance within their breasts. Haim and Simla and the young Ysajar, fell on their knees, and sent up to Heaven their hearts' supplications; they followed with their eyes the departing cavalcade, their gaze riveted like those of a spectre; no need was there now to enjoin them to keep silence, for their utterance was stifled on their lips; a red-hot iron seemed to weigh upon their breasts; they raised their eyes to the heavens, to that beautiful African sky, pure and transparent as an arch of azure crystal, and it seemed to them like a roof of lead, in which the bright sun appeared a rolling ball of blood-red hue; their hands, with a convulsive grasp, tore the hair from their heads, and rending their garments in despair, they fell senseless to the earth. Their relatives and friends conveyed them, still insensible, to their homes, and applied restoratives to recall animation. But, alas! to what a consciousness were they restored! to the keener and keener sense of that grief which must follow them to the latest hour of their existence! The beautiful Sol, meanwhile, travelled on, in the manner already described, silently enduring the separation from her native soil. About three miles of the journey were completed, when there encountered them, as though by accident, a man, who joined himself to the travellers. This was the Jew already mentioned, who being almost a stranger to the Moors, had engaged himself to the friends of Sol not to lose sight of her during her journey. He entered into conversation with the soldiers, and feigning ignorance of the circumstances of the case, soon obtained from them an account both of their destination, and of the recent occurrences at Tangier. The sagacious Hebrew, having thus gained the confidence of the escort, addressed a few words to the prisoner, giving her to understand that she ought to embrace the law of the Prophet, and become a Mahometan, as he himself had done. The beautiful Sol heard him with much tranquillity, but without giving any answer; but at a moment when the escort were off their guard, he succeeded in attracting her attention by signs, and in making known to her that he was there for her protection. The poor victim comprehended his meaning, and they were thus more than once enabled to communicate by stealth.