t I told you! The
angels I see in my dreams do not smile, they look away and vanish when I
think of Mohammed. Yusuf does not love him! Let not Amzi!" pleaded the
orphan.

But the Meccan was gone. Hastening on towards the outskirts of the city,
he met a great crowd of people, pressing about Mohammed and Abu Beker,
each of whom was dressed in a white garment, and riding triumphantly
upon a white camel, the prophet being mounted on his own beast El Kaswa.

The little peddler, assigning himself a lower place, rode behind on a
pack-mule.

Mohammed had come, and was, from the very beginning, a monarch,
surrounded by an army of blind devotees, believers in his holy mission,
and slavishly obedient to his will.

Amzi took the prophet to his house, and there entertained him as a
respected Meccan friend, until Mohammed's home was erected. It was at
Amzi's house, too, that the nuptials of Mohammed and the beautiful
Ayesha, also those of Ali and the prophet's daughter Fatimah, took
place.

One of Mohammed's first acts was to have a mosque built, and, from it,
morning and night the call to prayers was given:

"God is great! There is no God but God! Mohammed is the prophet of God!
Come to prayers. Come to prayers! God is great!"

And from this mosque Mohammed exhorted with wondrous eloquence, the
music of his voice falling like a spell on the multitudes, as they
listened to teachings new and more living than the old, dead,
superstitious idolatry to which they were in bondage; yet, had they
known it, teachings whose choicest gems were but crumbs borrowed from
the words of One who had preached in all meekness and love on the shores
of Galilee and the hills of Palestine more than six hundred years
before.

They listened in wonder to condemnation of their belief in polytheism.

"In the name of the most merciful God," Mohammed would say, "say God is
one God, the Eternal God; he begetteth not, neither is he begotten, and
there is not anyone like unto him!" Thus did he aim at the foundation of
Christianity, seeking to overthrow belief in the "only begotten Son of
God" as a divine factor of the Trinity. Jesus he recognized as a
prophet, not as God's own Son; and, while he borrowed incessantly from
the Scriptures, he refused to accept them, declaring that they had
become perverted, and that the original Koran was a volume of Paradise,
from which Gabriel rendered him transcripts, and was, therefore, the
true word of God which had be