The kadi, with other Moslems, went at once to En Nebi Daûd, but when the room was opened, no Jewess could be found. The sheykh swore solemnly that she had been there when he locked the door. “I know her well,” he said; “it was my washer- woman.” “That it was not,” said one who stood by, “for not a quarter of an hour ago my servant went to her house with a bundle of clothes, and saw her there hard at work.” The inquisitors adjourned to the woman’s house. There she was, at her washing, and ready to swear that she had been there since daybreak.
Convinced by her earnestness, the kadi charged the sheykh of En Nebi Daûd with perjury, and had him severely punished. It was not until the woman came to die, that she told the true story of her adventure. Then, having summoned the elders of the Jewish community, she confessed that the sheykh had locked her in the dark room, as he had said he did, but that a noble-looking old man, clad in apparel as of shining lead, had straightway appeared to her, saying: “Fear not, but follow me.” He had led her by a path that wound through the heart of the earth to a door which opened on a dunghill in the Meydân.[1] There he ordered her to go home at once and get to work, and on no account to publish what had happened to her.
- ↑ The Meydân is in the Jewish quarter, on the north-eastern brow of the traditional Mount Zion. The exact spot where the washer-woman came out was, till the early part of 1905, marked by a large octagonal stone, which has now disappeared.
