heart speaks now, mother. Ah, but your Jewish women
are too soft-hearted! Know you not that Bedouin mothers have not only
sent their sons to battle, but have gone themselves and fought in the
thickest of the fray?"

"Ah, you are a true Bedouin, and ashamed of your mother!" returned Lois,
with a sigh. "Truly, a Jewess has no place among the tribes of the
wilderness."

The youth's face softened. "I am not ashamed of my mother!" he said,
quickly. "But my blood leaps for the glory of battle, for the clash of
cymbals, the speed of the charge, the tumult, and the victory!"

"But a hollow glory you will find it," she said scornfully. "Murder and
pillage,--and all sanctioned in the name of religion!"

"Even so, is not the name of harami (brigand) accounted honorable among
the desert tribes?" asked the youth, quickly.

"Alas, yes. Ye reck not that it has been said, 'Thou shalt not steal.'
But you, Kedar, care not for the Jewish Scripture. Why need I quote it
to you."

"Arabian religion, Arabian honor, for the Arab, say I!" returned the
youth haughtily. "Let me roam over the wild on my steed, racing with the
breeze, lance in hand, bound for the hunt or fray; let me swoop upon the
cowardly caravans whose hundreds shriek and scream and fall back before
a handful of Bedouin lads, if I will. More honorable it is to me than to
plod along in a shugduf on a long-legged camel with a bag of corn or a
trifle of cloth to look after. Be the Jew if you will, but give me the
leaping blood, the soaring spirit of the Bedouin!"

The woman sighed again. "You will be killed, Kedar," she said. "Then
what will all this profit you?"

"To die on the field is more glorious than to breathe one's life out
tamely in bed," replied the other.

There was no use of reasoning with this rash youth.

"And think you this Mohammed is worthy of your sacrifice?" she asked.

"If he be really inspired, as hundreds now believe, is he not worthy of
every sacrifice? Does he not promise his followers an eternal felicity?"

"A vile impostor!" exclaimed the woman harshly. "Yet you will not
believe what I say, until your own eyes see and your own ears hear! Go!
Go! I shall talk no more to you! If you fall it shall be no fault of
Lois'!"

She arose and waved him off with an impatient gesture. Yet he lingered.

"You will forgive me, mother?" he asked, gently.

The woman's mother-heart welled to the brim. She answered brokenly:

"My son, my son! Could I do aug